This video comes with a quiz that helps you make your new knowledge stick: quizwithit.com/start_thequiz/1689034259496x415360144818764740

Got my PhD in particle physics and while the subject is awesome, seeing “how the sausage is made” and seeing the egos involved was a huge turn off. Glad to be working in the software industry now.

You should have posted a helpline number for any particle physicist affected by this video

I think a philosophy of science course should be required for undergraduate physics majors. It has always been my impression that particle physicists lack a basic understanding of what science is.

So yeah, I am a member of LHCb at CERN, I have been doing this for more than a decade and what she said in the video is 100% true. People at LHCb know it, they do not like it, feel embarrassed about it but their only choice is to just keep doing it or find a job elsewhere. For instance, we had a collaboration wide meeting a few months ago and Sabine was ridiculed by the Physics coordinator. Were there arguments? No, just plain mockery and it was endorsed by senior people, not students or postdocs, but faculty. I frankly would have expected either to have a discussion with Sabine, if the disagreement is so important and they care that much about Sabine's videos; or just ignore her, if they believe she's a crackpot. But mockery? That should be beneath our community. I felt deeply disappointed to see our community falling so low. When I started in the field I thought scientists were objective, data driven and open. No, they are tribal, sensitive and when they feel attacked that group mentality emerges. Do you remember the B meson anomaly that went away? Well, we cannot use the word "mistake", we have to talk about the new result "superseding" the old one, no one really wants to recognize mistakes here. One faculty from ATLAS used the word "mistake" in the seminar about the B meson anomaly that went away and immediately the LHCb physics coordinator (yes, the same one from whom the mockery mentioned above came from) reacted trying to keep LHCb safe. For all those people wanting to go into science because it is full of nice people who are only interested on science, the truth, etc Think twice, there is politics here too, I guess not unlike industry; you just make less money and have a short term contract, unless you are tenured. And that's why I am not posting with my real name, I am not going to expose myself to oversensitive angry colleagues.

I worked in science my entire career almost. I also left it as I'm really a "old-fashioned" one, where I think the process should be simple and straightforward. I'm talking about the "rules" of doing proper science. In my work I got frustrated by the amazing amount of politics and management going on, having to pay to get published and if you didn't have 10 papers, you were a loser. Many get their PhD because it's required for a job later on, etc. All of which have nothing to do with science and in my opinion degrade it. Also, when applying for grant money, always include that it may cure cancer or something like that. :)

As a theoretical physics myself (complex system) that used to work in a department very famous for Particle Physics, I have to say that I fully understand Sabine but also Particle Physicists. It is not easy to be trained to understand and fix a refined and beautiful model - the greatest human achievement of all time - and, after finishing 10 years of specific training and getting a PhD, finding that the model works and there is nothing much left to do. Everything in our energy range has been understood, and we already made efforts to go 5-6 order of magnitudes more in the experimental range to find the missing parts (Higgs). A slow transition to a world with less particle physicists will be needed, but I understand why they keep trying to understand more of it, a last hit or miss to chisel their name in the model, to say "I am also part of the greatest human wonder, I was just born 10 years too late!"

Very well put, and thank you! I'm not a scientist myself, and have only recently retired from a career of repairing cars, but the foundations of physics has always been a fascinating thing to me. Now with some time on my hands I can learn a bit, and it really helps to have someone rather unmercifully separating the wheat from the chaff. There seems to be a lot of chaff. I'd also add, as a mechanic, I always emphasized to the new guys how mistakes are inevitable, and machines don't care at all how confident or enthusiastic or certain you are that you are right. You either get it right or you don't. If you get it wrong as a mechanic, you need to explain to a customer how you wasted their money but you'd like another chance. Some guys never really get that part; honesty can be hard, and admitting you were wrong is hard. That's one thing I always looked at in trainees - how they dealt with their own mistakes. I haven't "lost faith in science" or anything like that, but I could judge a lot of particle physicists based on those terms, I guess. Not that I could do better, but I was a good mechanic: whenever I made a mistake or was wrong about something I'd talk about it with everyone, so they didn't make the same mistake themselves. If you ever hung out in the break room of a good shop, most of the best stories are guys talking about mistakes they made. I wonder if there is a string theorist's break room somewhere, and what kinds of stories they tell...

Hi Sabine, My guess is that the reason for what you describe is due to the fact that universities put tremendous pressure on professors to publish. Coming up with good solid experiments is difficult. But, coming up with those experiments where over fitting is typically the result, is much easier. Thus you get 50 years of crappy experiments and papers that don’t end up proving anything. But they served a purpose. And that was to check a box for a professor to publish something that year.

Back when I was in particle physics 20 years ago, shortly before a talk on super symmetry, the video projector wasn't connected to the speakers laptop yet, so it just said "no signal". That one super symmetry-sceptical experimentalist professor enters the room, checks the screen and goes, "Oh, the conclusion already?" We students had a great laugh. The theoretical physicists, not so much.

I am so impressed by the way you convey information. Very professional, and also the pace is excellent.

This video cemented one of the reasons why after my PhD I didn't dare do a post-doc or go further into academic research.

I completely agree. I did my PhD in gravitational theory and found similar attitude problems in the camp of gravitation and cosmology. I always resisted getting in the bandwagon and it didn't do my career any favors. It feels kind of vindicating to see Sabine articulating so clearly what has been my fundamental intuition for a very long time.

It reminds me about the story of Johannes Kepler who, until the end of his life, kept trying to fit the orbits of the six known planets into the ratios of the sizes of nested platonic solids. Even though he was the guy who figured out that the orbits are elliptical, he still felt his platonic solid theory was the true underlying structure of the orbits.

Excellent, though challenging, presentation. I got my PhD in physics back in 1986 but didn't have the theory chops for particle physics (though Steven Weinberg was one of my professors). What I really regret was not joining the LIGO gravity wave experiment...now that was possibly the last beautiful experiment we will see for a long, long time. Though I'm not up on the latest particle theories and experimental results, Sabine offers a persuasive (to me) argument that the field is floundering. It's a shame.

Sabine, this was a great lecture. I am an engineer, not a scientist. I have long envied the mathematical sophistication of particle physicists, and I hate ignorance, especially my own. Once I was reading a popular treatment of string theory and M theory. The author did a good job of setting up the historical context of the research, and of recounting the achievements of the brilliant pioneers in the field. As long as the story was about people, it was a good read. When the author tried to make concrete statements about the theories, it fell apart. I set the book down when, three-quarters of the way through, it descended into gibberish. In the later chapters the author went on and on gushing about the wonderfulness of these theories while explaining that they couldn’t be falsified using any experimental technology we possess. Supposedly there are as many as 15 dimensions, most of which are too small, in some sense, to be examined. No workable experiments can be conceived that might test these theories. This is very unsatisfactory to me. I felt that the string theory enterprise had tipped over into metaphysics. As far as the dimensions in which we are actually able to run tests go, it occurred to me that if one devised an overarching theory that was sufficiently complex, one might explain, or rather model accurately without explaining, anything that might be observed. Such a theory would be an ideal vehicle for overfitting data, with impressive untestable ramifications for dimensions we can never see. That theory would be string theory or its other non-falsifiable successors. That being said, your discussion raises some practical questions. How are we to train particle physicists if the standard model is perfectly correct? Must all particle physicists become experimental ones, forever searching for some falsification of the orthodox theory so that the field of theoretical particle physics may be reopened? Who will be capable of acquiring the necessary mathematical acumen if no one is working in the field? Please consider the possibility that the field has reached a state analogous to the pre-Rutherford era when a bright young man was advised not to go into physics because everything important had already been discovered. This was just before the early evidence for quantum mechanics blew the doors off that understanding and opened up a new era of discovery. Finally, we must have people working in unifying quantum theory and relativity. Couldn’t theoretical particle physicists make a contribution to that effort? Perhaps some of that talent and energy could be usefully redirected.

I remember as a physics undergraduate studying particle physics module in the late 70s. At times it felt like the more energy you could throw at the problem, the more exotic particles you could predict, and still fundamentally miss what was really happening. My friend, a fellow physics undergraduate, was so disillusioned with particle physics that he wrote poetry during his particle physics module exam and still came away with a 2:1 physics degree.

This was crushing to hear, but I'm really glad this video exists. I'm not a scientist but I took supersymmetry and proton decay for granted, because I didn't know particle physicists approach creating new theories like my friend making up new Naruto theories to explain what's going on with the aliens in Boruto.

The problem with the video is that we know for a fact that Standard Model is WRONG. It predicts 0 neutrino mass, so there should be (almost certainly) no neutrino oscillations (but there are). SM doesn't work with gravity and that's a problem not because we want all forces to be describes by one neat equation (that would be great though), but because at least one of the theories has to be inconsistent in certain conditions. So, yes, we are not entirely sure where exactly to dig, but we know for a fact that there is physics beyond SM. That's why the search for the breaking point of SM is important - it is what we need to drag ourselves beyond SM.

Brilliant, as always. You keep reminding me why I had hesitations and so many unanswered questions when I became a physicist.

I would be very interested in a companion video, about the non-pseudo problems that are mentioned here. What they are and if there is any work being done on them. Having said that, as a non-phyisicist, it might just go way over my head. 😄 Thank you for the clarity of your perspective. It always makes me reevaluate the assumptions in my own (completely unrelated) field. 🙂

For me as an experimental neutrino physicist I can say, this is why I work with Neutrinos... they exist and there are still fundamental questions open =)

A mere thumbs up and a thank you do not covey the gratitude I carry for the motivation you give to reach for books and read continuosly. I love your videos and appreciate your effort.

Got me! I pride myself in how fast I can detect the segue into the ad. This time the word 'Brilliant" slipped in before I knew it. Congrats Dr. Hossenfelder.

13:56 "Change should be an improvement, not a complication." This is a beautifully blunt and delightfully well-reasoned video, one of your best. Three cheers for the Standard Model!

Sabine, I so strongly appreciate you. As a clinical psychologist, these problems show up a lot in my field, too. The tragedy is that those who are knowledgeable enough to speak to these fundamental issues are either 1) benefitting from the status quo and have a career wrapped up in psuedoproblems, 2) grad students don’t have enough power and risk destroying their future prospects at a research career, or 3) people throw in the towel because they feel like it’s not worth it and focus on shifting out of academia to industry (or in my field, clinical work).

You are brilliant ma'am. Truly I can't overstate what a transformative influence you've had on me. How you manage to use wit, sarcasm, logic, facts and humour to create credible scientific narratives with universal acceptability in its common sense, this to someone like me - with no background in physics - being able to understand and appreciate these complicated theories, you ate my hero..it's incredible. Thank you, keep doing the good work, and it's true, science should always question and challenge dogmas. It appears like we some sections among the scientific community have retrogressed back to the age of ideology and belief. With people like you, I believe, there is still hope.

When I was undergraduate physics major in my twenties I was influenced by Lee Smollin's critique of string theory, and was always surprised to see the contrast between the popular depiction in documentaries of string theory as something "scientists now know..." and the many physicists I met in person that thought it wasn't very promising. The arguments in this video are parallel to some that Lee Smolin brought up, and I'm so glad to see this perspective. It's desperately needed.

Hey Sabina: you will certainly not make any new friend in the particles phisics community but you made thousands of new ones in the science education field. Good job!

As a spectator of physics, I have also thought that for years. The most serious problem that derives from that is that if you play to extend a model artificially, since there can be infinite ways to extend it, it is very very easy for you to add complexity that explains the universe of particles in a fallacious way, far from Ockham's principle, and that is a deeply anti-scientific behavior. unsightly and harmful for having the potential to fool all future physicists for decades only to have to dismantle the last great extension of the Standard Model that came loaded with inventive and false sugar.

the issue is: as per standard model we expect to see some new physics at about 10^12 higher energies than current particle accelerators can deliver. However that means we can unlikely ever build a machine to measure these effects, it is beyond any technical possibilities. So, unless the standard model is really really wrong there is no point to build a bigger particle accelerator

I did my master's degree in supersymmetry. I always felt stupid because I really never understood the importance of the field that seemed so obvious to the community. When I had to defend the thesis in front of the jury, I was afraid because I couldn't find a proper motivation to do SUSY. Everyone overlooked my dull explanations. It was at that time when I decided to leave the field. My decision was also influenced by your shared thoughts, and for that I'm grateful. Thanks to you Sabine and your team for your work.

One thing you have to respect is how much Sabine puts herself out there. If one of these wacky theories is proven in the colliders, a lot of folks would seek immediate revenge on her. But she's confident enough to put out this material anyway.

I just want to thank you for the videos you make. They help us mortals (high school grad that thought school wasn’t cool) listen to topics that otherwise with equations we wouldn’t even know up from down

Very salty, but also very convincing. As a physics student I can say that the principles of model overfitting and careless extrapolation she used for argumentation are very commonly known and well accepted. I first learned about this in a lecture on machine learning and found it to crop up again and again in every field of physics.

This video very well summs up why I left particle physics more than 10 years ago after my first postdoc position. I had a strong impression that the golden years of particle physics are over and something is going wrong but couldn't explain to myself what exactly was going wrong. Because funding was still good and papers were being published and detectors being built... but there was a kind of flaw in all this.

In the 90's I dropped out (for personal reasons) of a PhD in WIMP dark matter. A quarter- century later it really looks like I dodged a bullet.

Well that sums up very well my general feeling about particle physics. As a young master student I went for an internship in particle physics as I thought that was my dream job, and that’s where the best physicists would go (and who wouldn’t want to be among the best?). After spending time in the literature and talking to actual particle physicists I realized exactly all of that, and it didn’t fit with my view of what is good science (I mean compare a generic current particle physicist with, say, a Feynman…). Knowing that I had only little experience with experimental physics work (which otherwise would probably have been my first choice) my goal then became to slowly shift to maths, which at least has the advantage of being much more demanding in terms of level of proof, and, doesn’t require gigantic amounts of money to be wasted in gigantic experiments testing hypothesis which by design (!) will almost surely turn out to be wrong. Plus I can still look at physics inspired problems (a lot of what I do is related to complex systems, statistical physics and quantum information), so it’s for the best. The shame is that they are a few bright minds in particle physics and they’d certainly be much more useful for science or society working on other problems.

This is a lovely talk by a physicist who can explain what I've been thinking about physics with a whole lot better Concepts and Foundation of course but it fits with a pattern that I've been feeling at an intuitive level that the science is broken and people are just making s*** up.

"but Bigfoot would probbably have gotten me more views" and she also delivered that line martini-dry. Had me laughing for quite a while there. Well played :)

I envy you: I didn't give up on physics, physics gave up on me when I didn't get a postdoc position anywhere despite graduating Summa cum Laude and writing about 50 applications around the world. But then, I worked in heterotic string theory and ran around telling everyone they were using the wrong lattice classification in their orbifold compactifications and that didn't net me many friends either. Now that I'm long out of the field I seem to be racking up citations which feels like an additional insult.

I'm no scientist Sabine, but I do enjoy the fact that you make science as clear as you can to people all over the world. The fact that there is "tribalism" and "politics" in science is no surprise to me, particularly if there is money involved or a tenure... Keep your head up and keep being the you I am still getting to know.

A similar thing happens in the software world. We have tons of programmers who are obsessed with how pretty their code is, but they don't really seem to care about the measurable results of their code (How fast does this draw a frame in a video game? Does this make the user happy? etc) It's just, "That's too much code to put in one file," or "This solution isn't elegant." Oftentimes, the best software is just straightforward boring inelegant procedures that do exactly what is needed and no more.

This articulate summary of the problem with high energy physics was a long time coming. You've certainly been chomping at it for a while, but this time you really got to the bone. Brilliant. One of you're all time bests.

That was exactly what I was thinking when I was a particle physics' student and that was exactly the reason why I quit it. I don't regret about my decision, but I feel so bad about the current situation in particle physics since it's still my favorite area of research. Thank you for verbalizing and sharing your thoughts, so I can see that I'm are not crazy and not alone with this vision of the situation.

The philosopher of science Imre Lakatos, who happens to have been Karl Popper's successor at the LSE, put forward an interesting theory for evaluating competing scientific theories. He also drew attention to theories that need to complicate themselves in order to fit with observation. He observed that that, in general, this was unavoidable (we should not be too quick to refute) but that any such change is an ad hoc modification and theories that do this frequently are degenerate (A theory can also become degenerate if it ceases to make new interesting predictions).

Thank you for sharing your sincere opinion. What do you think would be the best way to make progress by optimizing the dedicated ressources? Are there promising alternatives or variants to the standard model? What do you think about Janus model from Jean Pierre Petit? Kind regards

"Invisible axions never detected". Reminds me of a letter my wife has of one of her distant relatives from the 1830s. All the sisters in that distant family were named after virtues, Faith, Hope, Charity... One sister writing to the other says "I'm worried about Silence, I haven't heard from her lately".

wow, information and points just flow effortless in my head! Your presentation structure is amazing

Only found out your channel recently but boy does the world need more people like you!

As an Economist this really resonates with me, though I do not know anything about particle physics, I am all too familiar with a profession obsessed with pushing the goal posts and over fitting models to data ex-post!

As a statistician, I loved your analogy between data overfitting and how particle physicists invent bad models!

"Change should be an improvement, not a complication" NGL I think many, MANY people need to take this line to heart these days.

Dr. Hossenfelder, thanks for this. I'm tired listening to the so-called " popularizers" of science talking about their "discovery" without empirical basis. I teach Kant in my literary criticism classes, i understand how his philosophy of science shapes our understanding of reality.

I would like to pose the question... how are they able to secure funding? Are the people bankrolling these projects just completely inept and incapable of seeing that doing the same thing over and over is not a good investment... its insanity? I'm not even college educated but I understand 100% of what you're talking about. you did an excellent job breaking it down for the layman. I can recognize a pattern even in unfamiliar territory though.

As an experimental astrophysicist I'm glad you spoke out. Many theoretical physicist are driven by a purely aesthetic ideal, wich comes from a romantic and idealist view on the history of science. I feel more and more that many are getting diminishing results as they get into that platonic way of thinking about reality.

Best roast of Particle physicist for greater good of future of Physics. Great and bold video by Sabine.

A friend of mine's wife is a theoretical physicist, one day while talking to her he found out that she didn't know that objects fall to the ground with the same acceleration. She was working with unimaginably complex mathematics but had no understanding of the basic physics of the actual physical world.

This was fascinating and a little discouraging. I am grateful for Sabine's honest and integrity though. I can only hope we find the path again

I studied Mathematics and Computer Science but fell in love with all things Physics as a "hobby". Thank you for your videos and I plan to check out Brilliant. I realize this will be a very small subset of your viewers but I have fairly major hearing issues and usually lip read. Your diction and tone are perfect for these old ears as they let me concentrate on the subject instead of losing processing power to read the subtitles. I hope that came out as the compliment it was meant to be!

One problem is that in many institutions your performance is based on the number of publications, and it's certainly easier to just modify something theoretically than really discovering something new. I'll organize a conference, invite my colleagues from other institutions, publish the proceedings, and then my next friend will organize the conference next year, invite me, publish the proceedings, and so on and so forth.

@user-kc9wt6rx1l 28 seconds ago Could the Space/Time background noise have anything to do with a particle’s wave function and collapse?

I think also the problem is that we forgot the difference between a Model and the Objective. There are infinite models that can be theorized and found, agreeing to a certain degree to the precision we want to have (e.g. the Newton physics works really well with most everyday stuff). But we do not needs model. The objective is to solve stuff that does not work, or stuff that has not been found. I.e. my objective is that I wanna travel the universe in seconds, my current theory does not permit that, thus I try to find new theories that allow it.

That...was the best explanation of overfitting I have ever seen.

"That's possible but not a good strategy for knowledge discovery " 👏 . I am a data scientist, now a days a lot of data scientists are creating models because that is what they do. But it doesn't solve the problem. Your video is so relatable. No matter what scientific profession you are in , quest for knowledge needs to be the utmost priority, for betterment of human kind

Other than The Higgs boson, CERN has discovered nadda correct? I know that was an important confirmation for the model, it does suggest it's time to look in other directions.

I completely agree with you Sabine, and I had great difficulty on working on somthg else than string Theory while I was in theoretical particle physics. Physicists fail enormously on finding evidences elsewhere than expensive particle colliders. It is an addiction! Only a bigger toy will make them happier, and SUSY and String are never falsifiable! They can always push to a higher scale! Unbelievable!

Hi Sabine, Thank you very much! As a 68 year old trying to keep his neurons functional, I am at best only average in understanding at the level where you excel. I watch your videos in hopes of better understanding how and why matter exists. Sometimes, regardless of your simplification of an explanation, I still don't quite understand completely but at least get the gist which keeps me coming back for more! This time I watched intently to the very end and actually understood everything you were saying, partly because I watched many of your other videos, and partly because this wasn't heavy on theory and more of an insight into the wizardry of particle science and where ideas come from. Seeing how some "ideas" are just fantasy somehow makes me feel a tiny bit less "dumb" on the subject, haha. It's seems like a waste of the above average intelligence that I wish I had. 😆

I got my bachelors in physics and helped with nuclear physics research during that time. The title of the video worried me but after watching i appreciate this video. Getting so focused on the small details and forgetting the big picture was at times very easy to do in the work and research i did and am glad my teachers and mentors would push me in the right direction. That kind of thinking has stuck with me even in my current job that is not strictly science. It almost feels like these physicists are betting on their horse/model so if it wins then they could get more praise and recognition. This on top of the other negative aspects mentionedin other comments (politics, management, etc.) is what worries me about going into a PhD program in the future.

Great video. I was a graduate in particle physics and had the same thoughts, same doubts. Considering the amount of studying you have to commit to publish a decent paper, those who "survive" in the particle physics society are those who are mathematical nerds and those who doesn't have the time to pose these kind of questions. Because in the end it's the sum of published journals that you'll get a job anywhere in this field. Only if youtube and internet were as popular back then I could've also seek out people who had these same views to particle physics, but after thinking on my own I quit before getting a Ph.D. As a child, researching superstring theories was my dream job, now I don't regret having left this field. I turned my career to software engineering and A.I. which I think is a much more interesting subject. Who knows, that in the far future it would be faster to let generative A.I. to learn all the particle physics theories and then it could come up with a much more convincing theory.

I believe that Popper's falsification concept led directly to Kuhn's paradigm shifts which described science as "good ideas being replaced with better ideas". Not "Good ideas being replaced by more complex ideas". It also occurs to me that in physics, the best ideas are (by far!) the simplest ones. And Newton was correct: when looking at the same stuff, there is no need to come up with a different explanation - which nicely distills down to Occam's Razor, and simplicity.

I was going to fix particle physics--but then things got really busy at work.

This video demonstrates why I love Sabine - she tells it the way it is, not the way we want it to be. Thank you, Sabine.

Really excellent post, Dr. Sabine.

Sabine, I cannot give you enough “thumbs up”! I met a couple from the LHC riding their motorcycle in Alaska. I brought up your name and the woman said, “oh, she’s our enemy” then said, not really but you give them fit’s about their work. I have to chuckle over that😆

This is the closest thing I've ever seen to Sabine having a hot take and I am here for it.

Wow! Spot on analysis. So glad I didn’t continue with a career in particle physics. One aspect that wasn’t discussed but needs to be is the entrapment of graduate students and postdocs for sometimes 7 to 9 years trying to get there degrees. It’s down right abusive and financially crippling.

Sabina can u please give me your opinion on plasma physics per Wall Thornhill. He has some compelling points but being a layperson I wouldn't know for sure. Really enjoy your work. Thank you

Have you ruled out Black Magic ?

14:00 haha I’m not a particle physicist but this pseudo-problem phenomenon has been a terrible habit of mine I’ve applied to way too many things. Fantastic work on this video! It’s incredible how clear and concise you’ve broken down this topic and it’s trend of asymmetrical practices.

Hi Sabine, great video as always! I received my master's in particle physics last year and started a PhD working with the CMS collaboration last fall, and I definitely feel like an outlier for sharing the majority of your views (I was one of two out of ~250 people at a conference last year who dared to mention that we found the physics case for building the FCC to be flimsy at best, for example). It seems that most of the grievances you mention focus on theorists rather than experimentalists (understandable considering your own background), and I would add that the problem is worse than portrayed here because those claiming "it's falsifiable" are likely the minority, with many others working on models that have no chance of being verified/falsified in the foreseeable future-hence anyone claiming that their model is falsifiable believing that they're "one of the good ones." I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on the problems in experimental HEP, and if you have any advice for someone just starting out in the field on what we can do to try pushing ourselves back on track. Thank you again for all that you do!

Can't build a bigger collider without a good reason, can't find anything new without a bigger collider. I get the distinct feeling we're in a negative feedback loop of scientists grasping at straws for bigger toys looking for a breakthrough.

This lady is a very important for the return of the scientific method. It just serms like we've made a culdisac of highly talented scientific minds that are engaged in complex and imaginitive exercises that would be part of a Monty Python script.

When I studied physics at university, I wanted to get into particle physics. But i switched to computer science and for a long time I regretted not sticking it out with the physics. This video makes me feel a bit better about not getting into particle physics. Astrophysics I find way more interesting now.

I feel your pain, though from a different perspective: In 1953, when I was 10 years old, my Bohemian single-mother's landlord was Frank Crawford, a physicist working on his doctorate at UC Berkeley. I have a vivid memory of Frank's excitement when he got wind of the work of Cowan and Reines: first hint of neutrino detection 1953; full report 1956. Frank introduced me to the periodic table; gave me a chemistry set; taught me algebra; took me on a tour of the brand-new Bevatron in 1954, etc. Those were incredibly exciting times. And although I went into a different field (Ph.D. in Chinese), I can sense the immense sea change in what particle physics is these days versus what it was back then, toward the end of its Golden Age. No comparison. (Some bibliographic notes: Wu et al Phys Review 105, 1957 [for my money, her demonstration that the universe has handedness marked the end of Golden Age of particle physics]; Crawford Phys Review 107, 1957 [follow-on to Wu 1957]; Crawford, WAVES -- Berkeley Physics Course Volume 3, 1965.)

This is complicated for me to understand, after all I am not a physicist. But I understand the basics and I think you are right. But there are big problems in physics that maybe need a new approach that maybe do not need a new particle. A big problem in physics is the lack of a quantum theory of gravity and the explanation for "dark matter", meaning "why the universe looks like it does"

If I understood correctly, which maybe I didn't, Sabine said that we don't have to think about the structure of dark matter, it's 'details', only its gravitational effects. I don't think the structure of dark matter, if it exists, should, or could, be off limits. Finding anything that doesn't fit the standard model would be an immense discovery about the possibly other 85% if the universe. I would also have liked it if Sabine had addressed gravitons. Does she think them likely or unlikely and where they and any associated particles like maybe gravity bosons or 'quark-like' particles would fit in the standard model. I was also wondering about string theory but I see she has a video about that so that's next because I really like her work.

I was majoring physics, but caught the same problem you are talking, and I switched to applied math since. For me, math turns out to be a surprisingly concrete subject. It may often seem too abstract to be useful, but no direct physical correspondence (some algebraic structures for example) doesn't imply it's useless (e.g. cryptography). p.s. ofc physics still has a lot of interesting problems, but it's no longer finding first principles, and more like applying first principles to physical systems.

Brilliant ❤ Back to the real problems which add real value and not only ego papers.

I’m not sure I would trust someone with less than 5,000 citations to appropriately appraise an entire subfield.

Every particle physics student should watch this video. Not to deter them from their studies, but just to protect them from doing math, not physics

For a layman, this is an absolutely clear, brilliant presentation. Sabine is the perfect presenter. I think she could also be the sublime stand-up comedian.

Lovely. For whatever strange reason I got the feeling that maybe what we need is Occam's Razor to be far more substantial than a metaphor

I'm not a physicist by any means; I'm a linguist and it really struck me how strangely relevant a lot of this video is to the academic linguistics community (cough cough syntacticians). It's really lovely to know that there are problems like this everywhere. And I can't lie, it upsets me deeply that some physicists get the funding to make incorrect predictions yet departments like mine are constantly starved of any money or opportunity 🙃

People may complain about a challenge like this but a) it's healthy to have one's way of life challenged once in a while, b) people don't trust institutions that put themselves above challenge, so making discussions about challenges like this public can actually build trust (I can't wait to see response videos!) c) the rest of us can learn from the experience as well! Wanna hear how many JavaScript frameworks are overcomplicating things by "solving" imaginary problems? Thanks Sabine!

I think your analogy was describing what Copernicus did. They only difference is, when his math got too complicated, he realized maybe the universe was simpler than he assumed in the first place. Basically, when the mathematical model didn’t fit, he looked for an alternate explanation and changed his theory.

"though bigfoot would probably have gotten me more views" Oml, I officially love this channel.

I bet Sabine is so happy over a million people are wanting to hear her speak. It would make any nerd happy (speaking from a biased P.O.V).

In high school I wanted to be a Particle Physicist. I've always had the opinion that people are researching "problems" that distract from the actual ground breaking experiments. Since I'm in America, traditional education is expensive for me. I still like to learn though, and I'm really thankful for you to make videos like this. I recently found your channel and I already rate it 10/10!

Thia is an absolutely fantastic presentation, Sabine.