WE CAN DO BETTER!
Conventional physics requires that 26 fundamental parameters be put into the “standard model” of particle physics by hand.
Conventional physics has not been able to resolve the vacuum energy density crisis (120 orders of magnitude difference between quantum theory expectations for the VED and astrophysical measurements of the VED).
Conventional physics cannot explain the fine structure constant.
Conventional physics cannot specifically identify the universal dark matter.
Conventional physics cannot predict the masses of fundamental particles.
Conventional physics cannot reconcile General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics.
Conventional physics cannot explain why galaxies exist, or why they come in radically different flavors like ellipticals and spirals.
Conventional physics has major problems explaining the basics and details of star formation, not to mention that supernova models have to be fudged to get them to explode.
Ahhh, Houston, we have a problem!
Particle physicists seem to be mostly making it up as they go. Here’s an archetypal example: They could not find even a single free quark after many years of heroic searching, so they made it a “law” that quarks are hidden from view and confined inside other particles (just so!).
Here’s another. The standard model of particle physics predicted that all particles are massless (which was obviously wrong). Solution: invent a Higgs field (unobservable of course) that gives particles mass as they plow through it (just so!). Note also that one cannot directly observe the Higgs boson because it is too unstable. One can only infer its putative existence from its putative decay products. Same old bait and switch.
For the last 45 years it has been mainly heuristic model-building and ad hoc epicycles (when needed) in theoretical particle physics, no matter how vociferously they sell it to a credulous public and put down skeptics. Definitive predictions are nonexistent and pseudo-predictions can be finessed with multiple hedges and “adjustments” to fit contradictory results .
There is a very different and far better way to do physics than ad hoc model-building, as exemplified by Einstein. It’s called Theories of Principle. Theories of Principle, like special and general relativity, seek to do more than reproduce observational results. They attempt to explain how nature actually works.
Because of the strict principles at their very foundations, Theories of Principle generate definitive predictions that are: prior to testing, feasibly tested, quantitative, most importantly non-adjustable, and unique to the theory being tested.
Theories of Principle are the way the best science is done. Unfortunately this approach to science has been largely abandoned in the theoretical physics of the last few decades, especially in particle physics and cosmology.
You would think that after 45 years of this mediocre situation theoretical physicists might be ready to entertain the possibility that some (many?) of their cherished assumptions are wrong. Unfortunately for progress in physics, this has not been the case.
If, as David Gross and Steven Weinberg imply, we need new and different ideas, with an emphasis on “different”, then the physics community needs to stop ignoring and/or belittling ideas that are truly new and different. There already exists a clear path toward the unification of General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics. The new way of understanding nature is based primarily on General Relativity, Electromagnetism, relative scale, fractal geometry, nonlinear dynamical systems, deterministic chaos, discrete global conformal symmetries, irreversibility, inherent limits to certainty and predictability, and self-similarity.
If you do a search on fractal cosmology you will find at least one new paradigm that explicitly was derived from observations of nature, has achieved a substantial number of successful retrodictions, and makes 15 definitive predictions (one of which on the existence of pulsar/planets has been verified, and others are doing very well so far).
So what is it going to be: just lip-service to new/different ideas, or genuine engagement?
Discrete Scale Relativity