alt Hacker NewsSometimes I am wondering what if there is theory which have been on right track but it's (false?) falsified and already forgotten. Sure theory could be incomplete or incorrect on some ways but would that right part be noticed? For example I think it's too easy to imagine world where relativity or quantum theory would be socially falsified and/or left without any attention.
Simple example experience I had when I was beginning of my physic studies (which I never finished) was when discussed with elder/smarter student about wheel friction. I was explaining that I had figured out that wheel spin actually matters when there is also side slip. [Total slip direction is dependent from spin speed.] But because he -knew- that wheel spin does not matter and he -knew- that he was better/smarter/etc. he was so focused to correct my mistake I was unable to convince him. How much this happens on higher stakes?
So if situation is that there has not been much progress for a long time I think it could be valuable also understand these failed theories and of course very importantly why they are falsified.
When I am working with hard problem I usually go this order:
1. Describe the problem.
2. Describe bunch of naive solutions.
3. Describe problems in those naive solutions.
4. "Describe problems in those problems": Why some of those problems do not hold water. Those can be workarounded, fixed or they actually are not really problem in this case or maybe some combination of naive solution properties gives working solution.
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My theory is that physics went down a parallel path that leads to a dead end. The fork was too far back and nobody is willing to backtrack enough. A part of this is that almost all of modern physics takes mathematical shortcuts of dubious validity because “modern” physics was developed in the era of pencil and paper. With computer algebra systems and numerical methods new have available to us now a lot of old assumptions ought to be revisited.
Also some theories were ignored for political or even religious reasons. Or as you said, they couldn’t fix some basic issue at the time and just shelved the theory.
Some random examples:
The Many Worlds Interpretation is one of the least “popular” but the only sane and consistent theory of Quantum Mechanics.
One of Einstein’s last collaborations was Kaluza Klein theory which has many excellent features such as smoothly integrating EM and gravitational effects. The maths was too hard at the time so it languished.
Multiple time dimensions (a variant of MWI above) were all completely ignored because one paper “disproved” their feasibility. I read that paper and it only disproved a specific subset of theory space.
Etc…
Did you run the experiment? I don't think wheel spin does matter when there's side slip. It matters when there would otherwise be static friction (e.g. if you're in a car with an ABS system), but I don't think it matters when it's just kinetic friction. (Of course, there are other kinds of friction, which might behave differently. I'm no friction expert. I imagine things get weird when water's involved, though.)
Btw this potential false falsify also popped up newest Sabine's video: https://youtu.be/NHrL4fkyWKI?si=nCuagTnP3WJIDbSv
For some reason I cannot reply to your comment wizzwizz4.
We are talking about dynamic friction in it's simplest form. You can treat it as simple math problem too. Let's consider two extreme cases:
A: Side slip is 1m/s and wheel spin zero or very small.
B: Side slip is 1m/s and wheel spin extremely big, let's say 1000m/s.
I think we can agree that friction is always opposite to surface speed. If wheel spin is on x axis and side slip on y:
On A case friction is (0, 1).normalized() * friction-coefficiency => (0, friction-coefficiency)
On B case friction is (1000, 1).normalized() * friction-coefficiency => [approximately] (friction-coefficiency, 0)
On classroom teacher says that slip does not matter. What teacher actually means that slip does not effect into -magnitude- of friction but this is left behind because problem is presented in context of 1D. Tho in 1D slip still matters little bit because there is difference is slip 1m/s or -1m/s.