(July 19, 2017 at 4:00 pm)Alex K Wrote:(July 18, 2017 at 9:50 pm)mh.brewer Wrote: What is the least understood and/or most controversial thingy that physics is looking at?
You might expect that I mention the usual cosmological phenomena like dark matter or dark energy, but I think what's much more complicated is the behavior of complex and chaotic systems such as high temperature superconductivity. Noted physicist and Nobel laureate Robert Laughlin has written an entire book moaning about how fundamental physics is doomed because we don't understand complex systems. He is wrong about fundamental physics, but it is true that deriving properties of complex systems from the basic laws is very difficult. In the same vainvein, for most controversial, I'd vote for the claim that consciousness is tied to the effects of quantum physics, and that quantum physics plays an essential role in how consciousness arises in the brain. Legendary physicist Roger Penrose has been a famous advocate of that idea. He's wrong though.
The Everett ("many worlds") interpretation of quantum mechanics is obviously very controversial, but several very smart people such as David Deutsch and Sean Carroll swear by it, claiming that it is the only philosophically sound interpretation of QM. I also find it very compelling, but I wouldn't bet my life on there being parallel copies of myself.
And I'm off to google. Thanks (no sarcasm, no really, seriously, camon-what do I have to say?)
Being told you're delusional does not necessarily mean you're mental.
