Since entering the 21st century, many people have been looking forward to the new revolutionary progress of science . After all, in the eyes of ordinary people, the scientists we are familiar with all come from the last century or even earlier, which makes everyone worry about whether the scientific development of mankind is facing the situation of "running out of energy".
Has modern science come to an end?
So, has scientific development really stagnated? Why hasn't there been anyone who can compete with Newton and Einstein for a long time? What is the reason for this situation? Next, let us take a look!
Great and outstanding scientists
Newton and Einstein
Whenever Newton is mentioned , the first thing that most people think of is the proposal of gravity, but they don't know that Newton's contribution is far more than this . As a person born in 1643, Newton is indeed an antique in our eyes.
However, this "old antique" is indeed very powerful. not only plays multiple roles, but also made considerable contributions to the establishment of the physics system, and can even be regarded as one of the founders of science .
Isaac Newton is known as the "Father of Modern Physics"
Before Newton Galileo The iron ball dropped from the Leaning Tower of Pisa marked the birth of experimental physics, and Copernicus The heliocentric theory and the three laws of planetary motion proposed by Kepler both laid the foundation for Newton's later achievements.
Standing on the shoulders of his predecessors, Newton combined Galileo's mechanical experiments with Kepler's three laws and summarized Newton's equations of motion , laying the foundation for classical physics. In this case, many people say that Newton unified heaven and earth.
Later, established Maxwell's equations in Maxwell, found electromagnetic waves whose propagation speed is the speed of light, and then unified electromagnetics and optics, the development of classical physics went further, relying on Newtonian mechanics and Maxwell's theory of electromagnetism became an enduring presence.
Maxwell and Maxwell's Equations
I thought that the development of science would be the end of at this point. After all, many people at that time believed that the existing research had reached its peak , and there was no need to explore further.
At that time, the British physicist Kelvin said: "The building has been completed, and all that is left is just some decoration work."
"Father of Thermodynamics" Kelvin
But Einstein appeared, and he did not feel that physics had reached this stage. At the end of the day, science stops there. He has his own opinions on physics. Therefore, Einstein's theory of relativity came out, which directly denied ether and Newton's absolute space and time, and brought the study of physics into a more microscopic field, which is " quantum physics " .
In this way, the classical physics building that was still considered perfect at the end of the 19th century has been challenged unprecedentedly, and Einstein can indeed be regarded as the main initiator of the challenge. When the theory of relativity set off a new revolution among scientists, Einstein became the "Father of Modern Physics" .
Everyone is very familiar with the scientist Einstein
To sum up, Newton and Einstein are indeed comparable scientific giants. Although Newton may not accept being on the same list as Einstein, after all, Einstein found many of his mistakes, , but their contributions to physics and science are obvious to all . And without the "dark clouds" left by the research on classical physics, the birth of modern physics in the twentieth century would not have been so smooth.
In addition, according to the development history of physics, has been unified with through many times, and this unification is by no means that can be easily achieved in just a few decades.
Physics is a subject with a very long history
Multiple unifications of physics
First of all, let’s take classical physics as an example. When we introduced Newton, we pointed out that he combined the experience and results of his predecessors to arrive at the Basics of classical physics . And so far, the development of classical physics has not ended. Later, the unification of electricity and magnetism , the unification of electromagnetism and optics, etc. have proved that the development of science must "step by step" .
Next, let's take modern physics as an example. In the eyes of most people, Einstein, the "unparalleled genius", directly proposed those amazing theories, and established modern physics by dividing three by five and two. But is it really that simple?
Schematic diagram of the development trend of physics
On the surface, we can only see the final results obtained by these scientists, but we do not know what repeated research and verification they went through to obtain these results . Compared with classical physics, the road to unification of modern physics is more bumpy, and there are obviously more aspects of unification.
For example, at the beginning of the 20th century, Planck 's blackbody radiation theory laid the foundation of quantum theory , and then Heisenberg and Schrödinger respectively proposed the basic equations of quantum mechanics . This is calculated The above is the first unification of microphysics in .
and Einstein's special theory of relativity , unified time and space, mass and energy . Later, Einstein created the general theory of relativity , which reduced universal gravity to the curvature of space and time. This unified physics and geometry .
Einstein believed that gravity is caused by the curvature of space and time.
There are many other unifications that I won’t go into details. However, looking at the history of the development of physics, we can see that every unification is actually a human response to the natural world. The result of deepening the understanding of .
And this process is not accomplished overnight . If Newton had not been inspired by the theories of Copernicus, Galileo and others, would he have been able to lay the foundation of classical physics so quickly? If Einstein had not had the help of Planck and others, would he have been able to build a new modern physics building so quickly?
It is obviously impossible for a giant to stand on the shoulders of giants
. No one can become fat in one bite. Without the foundation accumulated by predecessors, , it is actually quite difficult to achieve greater scientific achievements or even promote scientific development. Difficult things .
It is worth mentioning that another reason why we feel that scientific development has stagnated, is that there are too many "good people" in the 20th century . These scientists came together to compose the great movement of twentieth-century physics.
The scientific community in the 20th century can be said to be full of flowers.
The 20th century is the century of physics.
The famous physicist Yang Zhenning wrote a special article at the beginning of this century, discussing the development of physics in the 20th century, pointing out that in this physics In this era of rapid scientific development, there is actually a "main theme". The main theme of is quantization , symmetry and phase factor .
During this period of research, people blew away the "two dark clouds" that had appeared in the field of physics before, allowing physics to officially enter an era of bright stars . Whether it is Einstein or other highly accomplished scientists, they actually went through long-term research and accumulation before turning themselves into "stars of science."
Scientists achieve success through continuous experiments
Take Einstein for example. Although he proposed many amazing theories when he was alive, it was difficult to understand based on the observation methods and scientific development at that time. was used to verify 's , so many of Einstein's theories were called "prophecies" at that time.
After the death of this great man, it does not mean that what he proposed has been stranded, because there are still countless scientists who continue to study on the basis of his predictions, trying to confirm these "prophecies" .
The verification of theory also takes a lot of time
Nowadays, many predictions of have been confirmed, and some of them were only confirmed after the arrival of the 21st century. Isn't this a manifestation of scientific progress?
Furthermore, it has been less than a hundred years since Einstein's death. It would be biased to judge that scientific development has "run out" because no similar scientists have appeared in such a short period of time. In fact, when we compare two important years in the history of science related to Newton and Einstein, we can see that it will take at least hundreds of years to wait until the next comparable scientist is born.
The development of science will never stagnate.
You must know that there is a gap of 9 years between Newton's Miracle Year and Einstein's Miracle Year. This time can show that scientific development does not happen overnight.
In addition, current scientific research is still facing a problem, that is, even if people find "errors", they dare not correct them . For example, if any scientist is asked to deny that one of Einstein's pillar theories is wrong, he will definitely refuse.
Einstein (left) and Newton (right)
In this case, the existence of great predecessors not only did not play a good guiding role, but instead became a mountain standing on the road of scientific advancement. At this time, I have to mention a scientist who has made equally great achievements and is still alive today. He is Yang Zhenning .
The reason why Yang Zhenning was able to win the Nobel Prize before he was forty years old is actually because he dared to point out mistakes, and this mistake was still related to "symmetry", the pillar of physics..
Yang Zhenning, the scientist who proposed the law of parity conservation
It can be said that the proposal of parity non-conservation also brought a big "earthquake" to the physics community, but many people did not pay so much attention to . So of course science is progressing, we just don’t notice it!
