“In the clear blue sky of physics on the horizon, two small clouds of misunderstanding remained, obscuring beauty and clarity. (“Knowledge in physics is like the big blue sky, with only two small clouds of misunderstanding on the horizon.”) These famous words were uttered in 1900 by the great British physicist Lord Kelvin, the creator of “absolute zero”, from whom the temperatures bearing his name are calculated – in front of his peers at the Royal Institute in London.
These two “small clouds” were, one, an unconvincing result of the experiment of Michaelson and Morley, which failed to show a mismatch in the speed of light propagation in space, and the other, a problem caused by the so-called “black”. body “, emitted by an object heated to a high temperature. Lord Kelvin believed that there was an anomaly in the details, as there was nothing new to discover in physics, after Newton’s universal gravitation and Maxwell’s electromagnetism, only measurements had to be reconsidered.
From clouds to devastating storms
However … behind the first of these two clouds is no less than the theory of relativity, behind the second quantum mechanics! Think about the two main theories on which twentieth-century physics is built. An age that has radically changed our view of fundamental concepts such as time, space, matter or energy. This often-reported anecdote may be the starting point for a new article by philosopher and astrophysicist Aurelien Barrot on these small anomalies that sometimes make us jump from one model to another.
More than a century after Lord Kelvin, the situation in this regard has not changed fundamentally. Organized around “standard models” (particles for the infinitesimal, cosmology for the infinitesimal, etc.), modern physics also faces its share of deviations. In addition, there are two – or three, or four – “small clouds”, at least some of which (but which ones?) Will sooner or later break out in destructive storms, which sets out our strongest theories. And Aurelien Barrot explains to us that it will always be so … and for this reason he warns us from the beginning: “Literally all theories are wrong”!
cosmic anomaly
by Aurelien Barau. Donod Editions, 192 pages, € 16.90 (published on 7 September).
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