EINSTEINIANS HORRIFIED BY THEIR OWN SCIENCE

http://www.perimeterinstitute.ca/pdf...09145525ca.pdf
Albert Einstein (1954): "I consider it entirely possible that physics cannot be based upon the field concept, that is on continuous structures. Then nothing will remain of my whole castle in the air, including the theory of gravitation, but also nothing of the rest of contemporary physics."

http://www.amazon.com/Faster-Than-Sp.../dp/0738205257
Joao Magueijo, Faster Than the Speed of Light, p. 250: "Lee [Smolin] and I discussed these paradoxes at great length for many months, starting in January 2001. We would meet in cafés in South Kensington or Holland Park to mull over the problem. THE ROOT OF ALL THE EVIL WAS CLEARLY SPECIAL RELATIVITY. All these paradoxes resulted from well known effects such as length contraction, time dilation, or E=mc^2, all basic predictions of special relativity. And all denied the possibility of establishing a well-defined border, common to all observers, capable of containing new quantum gravitational effects."

https://edge.org/response-detail/25477
What scientific idea is ready for retirement? Steve Giddings: "Spacetime. Physics has always been regarded as playing out on an underlying stage of space and time. Special relativity joined these into spacetime... (...) The apparent need to retire classical spacetime as a fundamental concept is profound..."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U47kyV4TMnE
Nima Arkani-Hamed (06:11): "Almost all of us believe that space-time doesn't really exist, space-time is doomed and has to be replaced by some more primitive building blocks."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2013...reality-review
"And by making the clock's tick relative - what happens simultaneously for one observer might seem sequential to another - Einstein's theory of special relativity not only destroyed any notion of absolute time but made time equivalent to a dimension in space: the future is already out there waiting for us; we just can't see it until we get there. This view is a logical and metaphysical dead end, says Smolin."

http://www.amazon.com/Time-Reborn-Cr.../dp/0547511728
"Was Einstein wrong? At least in his understanding of time, Smolin argues, the great theorist of relativity was dead wrong. What is worse, by firmly enshrining his error in scientific orthodoxy, Einstein trapped his successors in insoluble dilemmas..."

http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=7266
Peter Woit: "I don't think though that this will have any effect on multiverse mania and its use as an excuse for the failure of string theory unification. It seems to me that we're now ten years down the road from the point when discussion revolved around actual models and people thought maybe they could calculate something. As far as this stuff goes, we're now not only at John Horgan's "End of Science", but gone past it already and deep into something different."

http://www.worddocx.com/Apparel/1231/8955.html
Mike Alder: "This, essentially, is the Smolin position. He gives details and examples of the death of Physics, although he, being American, is optimistic that it can be reversed. I am not."

http://www2.macleans.ca/2013/09/05/p...odern-physics/
Neil Turok: "It's the ultimate catastrophe: that theoretical physics has led to this crazy situation where the physicists are utterly confused and seem not to have any predictions at all."

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/07/op...f-physics.html
Adam Frank and Marcelo Gleiser: "A Crisis at the Edge of Physics. Do physicists need empirical evidence to confirm their theories? You may think that the answer is an obvious yes, experimental confirmation being the very heart of science. But a growing controversy at the frontiers of physics and cosmology suggests that the situation is not so simple. (...) ...a mounting concern in fundamental physics: Today, our most ambitious science can seem at odds with the empirical methodology that has historically given the field its credibility."

http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/fe...tific-theories
Frank Close, professor of physics at the University of Oxford: "In recent years, however, many physicists have developed theories of great mathematical elegance, but which are beyond the reach of empirical falsification, even in principle. The uncomfortable question that arises is whether they can still be regarded as science. Some scientists are proposing that the definition of what is "scientific" be loosened, while others fear that to do so could open the door for pseudo-scientists or charlatans to mislead the public and claim equal space for their views."

http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=7793
Peter Woit: "The New York Times had an op-ed piece this weekend by Adam Frank and Marcelo Gleiser, entitled A Crisis at the Edge of Physics. They make some of the usual criticisms of string theory and the multiverse, ending with: "Are superstrings and the multiverse, painstakingly theorized by hundreds of brilliant scientists, anything more than modern-day epicycles?" I mostly agree, although I don't think they make clear what the real problem is, that these theories predict nothing and explain nothing. In contrast, epicycles were a quite useful, well tested model that was highly predictive and approximately correct. If we had modern day epicycles, that would be a huge advance..." Sabine Hossenfelder (Bee): "Look, on the one hand there's people who couldn't care less whether their theories are testable at all. That's bad of course. But on the other hand (should I say other coast?) are people who cook up models just because they can be tested with the next experiment, and I can't see there's more value in that. Lisa Randall's talk (at the same conference) was an explicit example for that. That's searching under the lamp post. Does any one really believe a model becomes more plausible because it can soon be testable? No. So why do they do it? Because it will get published and when it doesn't get found one twiddles some parameters and moves the "phenomenology" to next decade's experiments. That's equally sick if you ask me."

Pentcho Valev

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22029410.900
New Scientist: "Saving time: Physics killed it. Do we need it back? (...) Einstein landed the fatal blow at the turn of the 20th century. According to his special theory of relativity, there is no way to specify events that everyone can agree happen simultaneously. Two events that are both "now" to you will happen at different times for anyone moving at another speed. Other people will see a different now that might contain elements of yours - but equally might not. "You can define it, but people won't necessarily agree," says physicist Sean Carroll of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. The result is a picture known as the block universe: the universe seen from that impossible vantage point outside space and time. You can by all means mark what you think is "now" with a red dot, but there is nothing that distinguishes that place from any other, except that you are there.. Past and future are no more physically distinguished than left and right. There are things that are closer to you in time, and things that are further away, just as there are things that are near or far away in space. But the idea that time flows past you is just as absurd as the suggestion that space does. George Ellis, a cosmologist at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, does not buy any of that. The block universe contradicts every single experience we have, he says."

Pentcho Valev