Is the end in sight for theoretical physics?

“Is the end in sight for theoretical physics?” by Hawking appeared in 1981 in Physics Bulletin, which was the predecessor to Physics World. He investigated whether by 2000 “we might have a complete, consistent and unified theory of the physical interactions which would describe all possible observations”.

Is theoretical physics a job?

Many successful careers in theoretical physics involve making calculations with existing models and equations. One benefit of a career in theoretical physics as opposed to experimental physics is that experiments have to be funded. Doing experimental work involves getting access to laboratory facilities.

What is the future of Science according to Dijkgraaf?

Dijkgraaf basically just completely ignored HEP physics and the issues it is facing. He advertised the future of science as leaving the river of “what is” and entering a new ocean of “what can be”, with the promising “what can be” fields biotech, designer materials and AI/machine learning.

Are there reports of the death of Physics?

I don’t know of any “reports of the death of physics”, but there are a lot of reports of the death of string theory (Dijkgraaf’s specialty) and of the larger subject of attempts to go beyond the Standard Model, experimentally or theoretically.

Can Oneone redefine fundamental physics?

One is then free to redefine “fundamental physics” as whatever theorists manage to come up with of some relevance to still healthy fields like condensed matter and hot new topics like machine learning and quantum computing.

Is there a future for string theory?

The failure of heavily promoted ideas about string theory and supersymmetric extensions of the Standard Model is rebranded a success, a discovery that there’s no longer any point to pursue the traditional goals of the subject. Instead, the way forward to a brighter future is to give up on unification and trying to do better than the Standard Model.