"Physics experiments are approaching the highest energies it will ever be possible to test by any collider experiment, both for financial and technical reasons. We can’t build a collider bigger than the surface of the Earth"<p>We can't build a collider bigger than the surface of the earth TODAY.<p>We had not gone outside of the earth, but that does not mean that in the future they wont.<p>That "we already know everything about the world" had been said for long. It was said to Socrates centuries before Jesus was born, and it was said to the inventor of the microscope(why do we need something to see everything we already know bigger?).<p>The interesting part is that we don't know what we don't know. E.g we know 0 about the real cause of gravity.
Dr. George Ellis speaks about physicists that knock philosophy, while they themselves regularly engage in metaphysics.<p><i>[...] George F. R. Ellis, the physicist-mathematician-cosmologist, an authority on the Big Bang and other cosmic mysteries. [...]</i><p><i>Horgan: Lawrence Krauss, in A Universe from Nothing, claims that physics has basically solved the mystery of why there is something rather than nothing. Do you agree?</i><p><i>Ellis: Certainly not. He is presenting untested speculative theories of how things came into existence out of a pre-existing complex of entities, including variational principles, quantum field theory, specific symmetry groups, a bubbling vacuum, all the components of the standard model of particle physics, and so on. He does not explain in what way these entities could have pre-existed the coming into being of the universe, why they should have existed at all, or why they should have had the form they did. And he gives no experimental or observational process whereby we could test these vivid speculations of the supposed universe-generation mechanism. How indeed can you test what existed before the universe existed? You can’t.</i><p><i>Thus what he is presenting is not tested science. It’s a philosophical speculation, which he apparently believes is so compelling he does not have to give any specification of evidence that would confirm it is true. Well, you can’t get any evidence about what existed before space and time came into being. Above all he believes that these mathematically based speculations solve thousand year old philosophical conundrums, without seriously engaging those philosophical issues. The belief that all of reality can be fully comprehended in terms of physics and the equations of physics is a fantasy. As pointed out so well by Eddington in his Gifford lectures, they are partial and incomplete representations of physical, biological, psychological, and social reality.</i>
I'm disappointed with how he brushes determinism aside. "If you don't have free will then you are not responsible for what you say." is supposed to imply "you aren't worth talking to"?<p>Pretty crappy given his declared respect for philosophical foundations.
To understand Ellis' motivation, note:<p>"Q: You are a Christian, more specifically a Quaker. Does your faith have any effect on your scientific views, or vice versa?<p>Ellis: It may affect to some degree the topics I choose to tackle (...)"<p>He just wants to remain religious. Good that the interviewer didn't miss that question.<p>On another side, it's interesting that one of the books by the interviewer is: "Horgan, John and Reverend Frank Greer (2002). Where Was God on September 11? (A Scientist Asks a Ground Zero Pastor). San Francisco: Browntrout Publishers." Why "scientist" when the Wikipedia article on Horgan cites his education as "Columbia University School of Journalism (1983)" I don't know.
I'm not a physicist.<p>But I look at statements like the ones in this article--that we've probed pretty much everything we can probe--and I think, what have we learned? Aren't the best estimates now that dark energy makes up 68%, dark matter 27%, and normal matter 5% of the mass-energy of the universe?<p>If the dark stuff does not interact electromagnetically, then wouldn't we need gravitational observatories to probe 95% of the known universe? Which are in their infancy. We haven't reliably detected one gravity wave yet, let alone probed all frequencies.<p>Like I said, I'm not a physicist, but when 95% of the known universe is a mystery, it seems early to call the game.
Interesting fact to consider about free will as it relates to philosophy and religion: A god can have free will and predict the future, but he (or she or it) can't do both. If you can predict exactly what will happen at any point in time, you don't have the ability to change it. And absolute free will prevents you from predicting the future.
"the computer on which I am writing this could not possibly have come into being through the agency of physics alone.<p>The issue is that these scientists are focusing on some strands in the web of causation that actually exist, and ignoring others that are demonstrably there – such as ideas in our minds, or algorithms embodied in computer programs. These demonstrably act in a top-down way to cause physical effects in the real world. All these processes and actual outcomes are contextually dependent, and this allows the effectiveness of processes such as adaptive selection that are the key to the emergence of genuine complexity."<p>"they should stop indulging in low-grade philosophy in their own writings."<p>I think Dr. Ellis needs to take his own advice on this one.