Me: Why physics?
Myself: Because I want to know what it means to "be", to "exist".
Me: How to find out?
Myself: Do experiments to test hypotheses about the nature of "things", "space", and "time".
Me: Can experiments reveal truth?
Myself: No. But they can reveal falsehoods.
Me: And then - what?
Myself: Well, then we do what we can, use what we know, to build a new
hypothesis avoiding the falsehood, and a new experiment, one that puts
the new hypthesis to the test.
Me: Why challenge the new hypothesis if it avoids the falsehood?
Myself: Could be another falsehood hiding behind it, no?
Me: Is there not no end to this game?
Myself: Could be. But how would we know unless we tried?
Have at least so far not most truths failed us eventually?
Me: But not all. Some bridges are still standing, and for most of the
bridges that do not our engineers seem to have good excuses.
Myself: That's the point.
Old Sir Isaac
apparently hit on a truth, a truth that to this day allows us to confidently
build good bridges. And it still holds, despite old
Albert
decisively pulling the rug out from under some of Sir Isaac's assertions.
We only had change our thinking about when those assertions are still
meaningful, and in the process learned to do new things, beyond the limits
of what the old perception allowed us to think of.
Me: So, how to move forward?
Myself: Use what we have, like data from our experiments, to get at what we
do not know, like the true nature of Dark Matter or if a neutrino is
different from its antineutrino.
Me: And what would that have to do with "existence" or "being"?
Myself: Unless of course
the Wachowskis
got it right, I'd say most likely EVERYTHING!
Dark matter - among other things - shaped the
original atomic content of the Universe,
and neutrinos let the
Sun shine.
And at the end of their shorter lives the Sun's bigger siblings made the
stuff we and our beautiful planet are made of.
But let's stop arguing - let's get to it, shall we?
Me: Okay, so what's it gonna be?
Myself: XENONnT
for dark matter
and
Super-Kamiokande
for neutrinos, of course!