Talk:Theoretical physics

"Quantum Gravity" - Mainstream theory?

First of all, it's not properly capitalized. It should just be "quantum gravity". It's also out of alphabetical order. Second, "quantum gravity" is a field of physics, not a single theory, mainstream or otherwise. Third, no theory of quantum gravity has yet supplanted general relativity in mainstream science, so it wouldn't belong in the that category. Finally, string theory and loop quantum gravity are already included as examples of proposed theories of quantum gravity. At 14:03 on 29 July 2013‎, Ammarsakaji1967 threw "Quantum Gravity" into the list and either no one ever noticed or no one had the ability to correct the mistake. Requested edit: delete it from the list. 108.34.151.191 (talk) 18:01, 6 April 2017 (UTC)

Actually, there are several items in the list that do not seem to be mainstream theories: Black hole thermodynamics, Dark energy, Dark matter, Quantum gravity. It might be interesting to look through the edit history and see who put them there and why.—Anita5192 (talk) 20:02, 6 April 2017 (UTC)

@Anita5192:: Black hole thermodynamics was added here, Quantum Gravity added here. Not sure when Dark matter and energy were added. Stickee (talk) 02:02, 7 April 2017 (UTC)

Dark energy was added here. Dark matter was added here. As all four edits were unexplained and these examples are not mainstream, I have removed them.—Anita5192 (talk) 05:21, 7 April 2017 (UTC)

Long Examples sections

There are three Examples sections in this article, and two of them are now quite long. I suggest moving all three sections to their own list articles and linking to them.—Anita5192 (talk) 17:41, 21 March 2018 (UTC)

Suggested edit/removal of "fringe" section

The theories listed under "fringe theories" mostly point to some pseudo-scientific/esoteric/religious constructs, like "Orogone", "Qi", "Odic Force" or "Prana" or to views of certain individuals like Tesla. I think the only entry that should stay is the one on the Aether, which is of interest for the history of sciene/physics. Hence, I would propose to remove the "fringe theory" section entirely and mention the "Aether" theory in the history section, if at all. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 178.2.186.106 (talk) 21:40, 2 March 2019 (UTC)

I recommend leaving the Fringe theories section mostly as is, and removing Odic force, Orgone, Prana, and Qi from the examples, as these are not even fringe theories, they are simply pseudoscience.—Anita5192 (talk) 22:00, 2 March 2019 (UTC)

I was going to write a long section, but seems Anita5192 (talk · contribs) beat me to the punch and said in two lines what would have taking me two paragraphs. Whatever happens to the section, there should be a strong distinction between obsolete (e.g. aether), fringe (modified Newtonian dynamics), versus pseudo (e.g. orgone) physics. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 23:57, 2 March 2019 (UTC)

(Sorry to not be logged) I cannot understand the relevance of pseudoscience in theoretical physics. I have never seen any of this is in any course or any published paper in physics. Physics is only concerned by science, and theoretical physics is part of physics. Thus even protoscience cannot be part of theoretical physics. In my opinion, the fringe theory section only adds confusion. Many people are already confused about what is a theory in physics. Some people think they can be as great as Galileo by developing their personal views and claiming it is a theory. References should be easy to find about that. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.43.226.175 (talk) 05:20, 3 April 2021 (UTC)

I removed Odic force, Orgone, Prana, and Qi (see above). I think the current descriptions at the beginning of the sections Mainstream theories, Proposed theories, and Fringe theories clarify the standing of each for a neophyte. There is also a link to pseudoscience to clarify the distinction between that and real science. Does the article need further clarification?—Anita5192 (talk) 16:14, 3 April 2021 (UTC)

Phenomenology

change ((phenomenology|phenomenologists)) to ((Phenomenology (physics)|phenomenologists))

Done.—Anita5192 (talk) 03:35, 27 October 2019 (UTC)

This page is a mess and should probably be deleted - 7 June 2024

I will disregard the philosophical talk in the Overview section and the random walk through history in History and just focus on the sections afterwards since they are less open to interpretation. In particular, the subsequent sections are clearly written by a non-expert, but also by someone who doesn't even try to make clear distinctions between the links. In my opinion, this is reflected in the earlier sections as well, but I won't object since writing is a matter of taste. Let's give some examples (non-exhaustive):

1. There is some confusion about what constitutes a "theory" and what things just have "theory" in the name despite not being a "theory of physics" and other general purely mathematical frameworks. For example, the first entry is the "Big Bang" which is totally a respectable example of a "Mainstream theory" or model that describes the early universe. The next entry, "Chaos theory," is a branch of mathematics and is a framework/toolset that can be applied to physics in different scenarios. It is not up for debate, it is just applied mathematics, it is not even in the same realm as the Big Bang conceptually.

This issue repeats through the entire list. For example, classical mechanics, classical field theory, field theory, Landau-Ginzburg theory, Perturbation theory (quantum mechanics), Quantum field theory, Quantum information theory, Quantum mechanics, Relativistic quantum mechanics, Scattering theory, Statistical physics, are essentially all mathematical frameworks. It is essentially no different from listing "calculus" as a theory of physics. All of these could possibly be made relevant to the discussion if they were supplanted with huge amounts of surrounding text, for example: "Classical mechanics - as applied to model and describe objects and their interactions at intermediate length scales in nature." Again, this is not a physical claim about their accuracy at describing nature, the fact of the matter is that these are mathematical frameworks. Dynamo theory, kinetic theory of gases, and the standard model are much better examples of things on the level of the Big Bang.

There are also more middle ground examples. For example, is Quantum chromodynamics a physics theory? In particular, it's just a particular example of a quantum field theory (which is a framework like calculus). But perhaps "Quantum chromodynamics as applied to describe the strong interaction," but, again, this is a middle ground example because Quantum chromodynamics is usually implied in nature.

2. The list has entries which overlap with high redundancy. For example, why list relativistic quantum mechanics if both quantum mechanics and quantum field theory are included? Why list field theory if classical field theory and quantum field theory are listed? Essentially by definition, there is nothing else.

3. The list of proposed theories similarly makes no sense. Chern-Simons theory is not a theory which is up for debate, in the sense that it's just a particular Lagrangian/action in field theory. This is like calling the Lagrangian for the harmonic oscillator a theory. Of course, the article probably means "as applied to nature" (since it also has seen humongous applications to pure mathematics, since it's literally just collections of related equations and concepts). But even with that, Chern–Simons theory is largely accepted to be the effective field theory describing the quantum hall effect since at least the 90s (note that this is a highly cited review, and the original connection was understood and tested even before this).

4. There are other examples echoing the issues above, I will be more terse now: "graviton" is not a theory, it's an excitation/particle in dynamical theories of quantum gravity. This is like calling the "photon" a theory, it is not a theory, it is an excitation of the electromagnetic field in quantum electrodynamics. Similarly for magnetic monopole. They are not theories, they are theoretical concepts that arise in some theories.

5. Why is Luminiferous aether, a well motivated, but essentially disproven (to the extent that can be done in science), theory, an example of a fringe theory? It is not a speculative/fringe subject, it is a historical wrong idea about how nature actually works. Moreover, why is it nested as a sublist of Aether (classical element), a medieval concept? It is true that the names share historical origins (because they are intuitively similar), but this is like sublisting Chaos theory under Chaos (cosmogony).

6. In my opinion, the article also too strongly suggests that fringe theories of physics are on the same footing as proposed theories of physics and mainstream theories of physics. It is also a very bizarre cross-section of fringe theories. LightBlob (talk) 09:43, 7 June 2024 (UTC)