Take a fresh look . .

I posted something profound the other day.  Richard Feynmann is quoted by John Gribbin as saying that if each point in space takes a huge (infinite?) amount of computing effort to describe what it is and does, then something is wrong with our understanding.  It has to be fundamentally simple.  And in a whimsical post on a forum I asked (independently) how did all those electrons learn all that maths? We do seem to be a pre-Copernican maelstrom, like  trying to make sense of planets in curly orbits around the Earth.  Whatever happened to Occam's razor?

I still wonder why physicists hope or expect to reconcile the three main forces with gravitation.  They do so because they are part of the same universe, and clearly all involved in the processes we observe, like star evolution.  But it does not follow that the container should be directly related to the contents, even in this context.

Gravitation is a feature of the shape and (I contend) motion of spacetime, whereas the strong, weak and electromagnetic forces are properties of the 'medium' of spacetime and the particles in it.  Mass is a property of some particles, and masses interact with spacetime as they resist being pulled along by it, but that does not mean that gravitation is related.  The same can be argued for radiation, that it follows the shortest path through spacetime even though it is bent by the interaction with large masses.  It doesn't "know" it is being bent.

This separation approach seems to me to be the only way to progress the explanation for dark energy and dark matter, since otherwise it makes no sense that with all our detection means and theories there is no direct evidence for either.  They have to be results of the interaction between masses and the motion of spacetime, clearly measurable only on the same large scale as relativistic effects.

I think a good new approach will be for experts to define contrary projects and spend at least 10% of their time on them.  In other words, take some of their pet theories or dogma or "facts" and try to show they are not true.  Peers will then check how honest and diligent they have been, the payoff being that a thorough honest contradiction by an expert, which fails, will properly enhance their orignal premise.  But there are bound to be some successes in the contradiction, or new ambiguities, or new pathways discovered, leading to some answers.

This may be a way for amateurs or undergrads to contribute, because they can come up with contradictory project ideas without necessarily understanding the subject to the detail of the expert.  In fact it is an area where naivity may allow a question to be asked, that an expert (or his expert rivals) would not.

Well it worked for Galileo, Copernicus, Newton, Maxwell, Schrodinger et al.  Maybe time to study alchemy . .