THE DESTINY OF PHYSICS

by Mauricio Mendivelso-Villaquiran
CCA Group CH6 6-8
Physics is really far to be a concluded science. At the beginning of the XIXth century, almost
every western scientist considered that physics was over. So, to continue making physics a
prolific field of knowledge, scientists began to clarify some details related to the applications of
physics in real life; no more new theories were required. Moreover, some experiments showed
that the goal was not reached and the illusion of a final physical theory was only a delusion. This
situation has been extended until our days and we do not have better perspectives so far.
What does specific fact (or set of facts) bring us to this scenario? Experiment is the natural
judge of physical theories. In 1900, there was a description of how hot bodies emitted radiation
and this description was the final success of the thermal theory known until that date.
Nevertheless, a special kind of bodies did not fix that explanation: the black body. Black body
(like a star, a stove or an iron) emit radiation using a pattern of intensity that grows as frequency
of radiation grows until a maximum of intensity. If frequency continues increasing, intensity
decreases as is expected in the real world. Classical thermal theory predicts and increasing
intensity after that intensity maximum; this fact is known as Ultraviolet Catastrophe.
This unreal result was fixed in the doctoral thesis written by Max Planck, German physicist, who
established with his work the basis of quantum theory. His work has been the base of a bunch
of phenomena like the superconductivity (the existence of electrical currents in materials with
null electric resistance), the existence of laser (a kind of super coherent light with one only color
with multiple uses in industry) and the transition circuits (as observed in the transistor, the base
device of modern electronics). Instead of tend to finish our work and reach the goal of a final
physical theories, new phenomena have appeared without a satisfactory explanation: the origin
of mass of the elementary particles, the diversity of those particles, the existence of
consciousness and so on.
Other facts like like the origin of the Universe and the existence of antimatter have escaped to
the scope of physics and they promise to be in that way for a long time. That is why we get an
unfinished knowledge between our hands. And it is great because an unfinished knowledge is a
really funny adventure. For real.