DECADES WITHOUT MUCH PROGRESS IN THEORETICAL PHYSICS — WHY?
Those without funding and status at risk are all too aware that, whereas experimental physics has been booming in recent decades, theoretical physics has been in a deep slump for the last four decades. Witness the lack of success of string theory, supersymmetry, WIMP/axion/sterile neutrino dark matter, etc. Then there is the desperation move to give up traditional science and accept multiverse speculations purely on faith.
Maybe the answer to the question in the title above is that some fundamental assumptions dating to the previous century have been seriously retarding progress in physics. Here are 3 quick suggestions for which fundamental assumptions might be holding physics back.
1. First and foremost at the beginning of the 1900s physicists assumed that the Newtonian gravitational constant is absolutely the same on all scales of nature’s hierarchy. In a discrete fractal or conformal model of nature, this assumption fails badly. The value of G within an atom or subatomic particle has never been measured; it is purely assumed to be the conventional value. If G changes by large and discrete amounts for each cosmological scale [atomic, stellar, galactic], as predicted by Discrete Scale Relativity, then you get a whole new paradigm for understanding the structure and dynamics of nature.
2. We have assumed that strict reductionism is the “only game in town”. This is a questionable assumption and flagrantly ignores the clear fractal and conformal properties of nature. At the very least, non-reductionist paradigms should be given the chance to show their potential for reinvigorating theoretical physics.
3. Physics has suffered because of its inability to bring the fundamental symmetry of relativity of scale into its theories. It has been wrongly assumed that scale is absolute. This is probably false and very misleading.
Weyl, Einstein, Dirac and a host of others tried repeatedly to work relativity of scale into physics, but it never seemed to work quite right. However, if your emphasis is on studying nature, instead of building Platonic models, then there are new alternatives for understanding how nature could accomplish this.
Nature cannot have continuous conformal symmetry because that strongly violates our empirical knowledge of nature. But discrete conformal symmetry does not need to conflict with empirical results. If the laws of physics, especially gravitation, are recast with discrete conformal symmetry, then you get a new and completely different understanding of nature in terms of a discrete self-similar hierarchy that has no bounds.
With this new paradigm you have a clear path to unifying GR and QM; you can at last explain the enigmatic fine structure constant, demystify h-bar, resolve the vacuum energy density crisis, predict the exact nature of the dark matter, retrodict the masses of all particles (including the electron), and have a proper understanding of the hierarchy of Planck scales. And all this only required changing a few inadequately tested assumptions.
The new paradigm of Discrete Scale Relativity predicted pulsar-planets before they were discovered, and it predicted the hundreds of billions of unbound planetary-mass objects recently discovered roaming free throughout the Galaxy. It makes an exact prediction for the dark matter mass spectrum. Here are 15 definitive predictions of this paradigm: http://www.academia.edu/2917630/Predictions_of_Discrete_Scale_Relativity
The website below serves as a teaching resource for this new paradigm.
RLO
http://www3.amherst.edu/~rloldershaw