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Jun 5, 2023

Why has there been no progress in physics since 1973?

Posted by in categories: particle physics, quantum physics

The twentieth century was a truly exciting time in physics.

From 1905 to 1973, we made extraordinary progress probing the mysteries of the universe: special relativity, general relativity, quantum mechanics, the structure of the atom, the structure of the nucleus, enumerating the elementary particles.

Then, in 1973, this extraordinary progress… stopped.

I mean, where are the fundamental discoveries in the last 50 years equal to general relativity or quantum mechanics?

Why has there been no progress in physics since 1973?

For this high-budget, big-hair episode of The Last Theory, I flew all the way to Oxford to tell you why progress stopped, and why it’s set to start again: why progress in physics might be about to accelerate in the early twenty-first century in a way we haven’t seen since those heady days of the early twentieth century.

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