How much do you think we know about physics?

well, looking at some things like the double slit experiment, the problems at the LHC and all the other things we have trouble with. i would have to say we are still well in the dark ages.

3% or 4% and thats being generous.

@poisonedantidote
I agree about the double slit experiment but the LHC are having engineering problems.

@Meagainandagin

well, if they knew a bit more about physics they would have fixed it by now :P

everything is physics. so for me to say we know 100% we would need to be able to do all kinds of things. things that if we saw done at the moment we would atribute to god like magical powers.

such as cunjering matter out of raw energy, warping space. and other things that are just beyond imagination for now.

EDIT:

however, if we are going to stick to just traditional physics, newtonian laws and what not, i would say we do know quite a bit.

i’ve been reading about the holographic principle and if that’s the case then there’s a whole other realm/reality that we may never be able to study since our all whole experience is just the illusion of something much grander going on in higher dimensions.

That’s a very hard question to answer accurately. I’d have to agree with @poisonedantidote that we only know the very basics of all the possibilities physics is capable of.

If our world were like Fringe, then we’d know quite a bit more!

It is my understanding that from a strictly practical point of view the Standard Model covers pretty much anything that anyone would have a need to do.

@anarekist, what are you reading, if you don’t mind my asking? I’ve been reading this book which also talks about quantum physics and how holograms work.

The sum of the known unknowns and unknown unknowns has to dominate the known knowns by at least a billion to one. Humans have been thinking about these things for what… 10,000 or 20,000 years? Assuming we do not self-emolate maybe we can think on physicsthings for another 20,000 years.

@kevbo, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holographic_universe and http://www.earthportals.com/hologram.html

0.(0)1(zero period) percent of all

@Christian95 You would know, Einstein.

Certainly phycisists know a whole bunch more about physics than I do. It was not my favorite class.

The question assumes there is a finite number of things about the universe that can be “known.”

I think, at the level we experience life and our world, we know an extraordinary amount about physics. Think of all the questions that people used to ask, even 100 years ago:

“Why is the sky blue?”

“How many stars are there?”

“Why do things fall”

“What is light?”

We actually know the answers to those questions now. But in answering them, physicists have opened up more mysteries that ancient people didn’t even know enough to ask about.

We don’t know anything. We can only infer based on observation.

One difficulty with estimating how much we know, is that each time we figure something out we come up with more questions that we didn’t know to ask before. Hence, as we make more observations, we also realize that there are more observations to make.

I wouls usually shudder at having to quote Donald Rumsfeld, but in this case his remarks were apposite: “There are known knowns, there are known unknowns, and there are unknown unknowns.”

I’m guessing 3 or 4% at best.

What a strange question.

The discoveries of physics remind me of a dark hallway where a new light bulb lights up with every few paces we make, illuminating that the hallway goes on for at least another few meters, to be covered before we will activate the next lamp and see if that one is the final one.
It’s hard to tell how much there is to discover as long as we haven’t yet discovered the lot of it.

I’m not sure whether that’s an appropriate analogy at all.

@poisonedantidote
“such as cunjering matter out of raw energy, warping space. and other things that are just beyond imagination for now.”
If those things were really beyond our imagination, you wouldn’t be able to refer to them so easily. ;)

I think the potential of magnetism alone offers us astounding possibilities with regards to transportation, energy, maybe even health & well being.

Physics in it’s entirety? Possibly %.01.

1%-2% IMO

Well, take a look at this list:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unsolved_problems_in_physics

Even the experts don’t know all about physics, and when some problem gets solved – let’s say it’s the Higgs mechanism in 2010 – this might actually create 2 new entries in this list. One answer. Two new questions.

So the question ‘how much % wise’ begs the question ‘how much of everything, but what is everything?’

@mattbrowne
“So the question ‘how much % wise’ begs the question ‘how much of everything, but what is everything?’”
^ What he said.
This is in fact a better formulation of what I didn’t quite manage to convey with my own post.

Being a physicist is the perfect job. Physics as a knowledge base cannot be outsourced. It cannot go stale, stagnate, or be superceded by some new invention. Nothing in our fundamental knowledge base can be denied access to by government laws and patents.

[...fine, someone can use a clever combination of ideas to create a device and patent it and make some big bucks and that is sort of a holy grail , as is winning a scholarly prize for unique expansions of that physics knowledge base via Nobel Peace Prizes, etc.]

@Fyrius – Thanks :-)

@virtualist I think you are being confused with a mathematician’s job there. The only science with perfect truth :p.

Besides kick boxing.

@Ame_Evil I’ve got that covered. Math is the language of Physics. <g>

How about phonetics? It’s the physics of language.

@Fyrius Touche’ ! LOL

Probably not very much at all.