Big Mysteries: Survey Reveals Physicists' Disagreements ⚡ экспресс
We present the results of the Big Mysteries Survey — a large-scale survey conducted through the American Physical Society’s Physics Magazine on fundamental and controversial questions in modern physics. The survey covered topics of cosmology, black hole physics, quantum mechanics, quantum gravity, and anthropic coincidences. The central finding: many positions that are often publicly presented as the 'consensus' in the scientific community are in practice supported by only a relative majority or a slim margin, not an absolute majority. The results point to significant heterogeneity of opinions among physicists and caution against simplistic claims of universal agreement.
Physics often resembles the construction of a giant ship — the Universe. The physicist-engineers have yet to agree on the basic blueprints. The large-scale 'Big Mysteries' survey exposed this: even the nature of black holes (about which Stephen Hawking argued for decades) and the Big Bang remains controversial. Dark matter and dark energy — the invisible scaffolding of the cosmos — are accepted by many, but Vera Rubin, who discovered anomalous galaxy rotation, sparked a discussion that hasn't subsided in half a century. Even spacetime curvature — a kind of structural beam of the edifice — still provokes heated debate.
The survey's biggest surprise: less than half of scientists consider quantum mechanics a complete theory. And yet every transistor in your smartphone is an indisputable miracle of it. So it goes: the ship sails, but the builders doubt the properties of water. Science is not a museum of answers but a living argument, where precisely disagreement promises breakthroughs.
🎯 According to the survey, less than half of physicists are confident that quantum mechanics is a complete theory, even though all modern electronics is based on it.