{"id":483219,"date":"2026-05-13T21:21:14","date_gmt":"2026-05-13T21:21:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/483219\/"},"modified":"2026-05-13T21:21:14","modified_gmt":"2026-05-13T21:21:14","slug":"one-of-the-largest-physics-surveys-ever-finds-no-one-agrees-on-anything","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/483219\/","title":{"rendered":"One of the Largest Physics Surveys Ever Finds No One Agrees on Anything"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last summer, Nature conducted a survey asking physicists about some quantum hot takes. That venture revealed significantly disparate interpretations<\/a> of core concepts among scientists, 100 years after the emergence of modern quantum mechanics.<\/p>\n

Well, around a similar time, the American Physical Society (APS) invited<\/a> researchers and science enthusiasts to chime in on 10 broad questions on major concepts\u2014of arguable contention\u2014in physics as a whole. In a statement<\/a> yesterday, APS published the results, along with an e-print<\/a> and an interactive dashboard<\/a>. The survey drew in around 1,660 people, 20% of whom identified as \u201cscience enthusiasts.\u201d The rest were scientists studying gravity (10%), astrophysics (12%), particle physics (18%), or another discipline (30%). This makes the survey one of the largest ever conducted in physics, APS claims.<\/p>\n

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the responses were all over the place. The only exception was the very first question on the definition of the Big Bang. The majority (68%) said it was a \u201chot, dense state\u2014which may or may not correspond to an absolute beginning of time.\u201d Fascinatingly, just 25% of respondents considered the Big Bang to be the absolute beginning of the universe.<\/p>\n

\"Big\u00a9 Physics Magazine, APS\/Perimeter Institute <\/p>\n

\u201cThe most striking result is how few of the \u2018standard answers\u2019 in fundamental physics command overwhelming support, with most falling short of a majority,\u201d Niayesh Afshordi of the Perimeter Institute, which co-managed the survey with APS, said in a statement<\/a>. \u201cThe interesting point is not that physicists are confused. It is that the frontier is genuinely alive.\u201d<\/p>\n

Quantum callbacks <\/p>\n

I personally had to start with Question 7\u2014interpretations of quantum mechanics\u2014and compare the answers with those from the Nature survey last year.<\/p>\n

In the Nature survey, 36% of physicists chose the Copenhagen interpretation, which argues that particles in quantum states only gain properties when they\u2019re measured by an observer in the classical realm. For APS\u2019s survey, 35.7% of respondents agreed, suggesting that the Copenhagen approach\u2014sometimes scathingly referred to as the \u201cshut up and calculate\u201d school\u2014still tops the list.<\/p>\n

But Copenhagen\u2019s reign isn\u2019t absolute. For instance, a good chunk of respondents subscribed to \u201cmany worlds<\/a>\/consistent histories<\/a>,\u201d at 15% in Nature and 16.2% for APS (the latter survey had the two in separate categories). Other contenders included the Bohm-de Broglie pilot wave theory<\/a> (Nature: 7%; APS: 5.8%) and collapse theories<\/a> (Nature: 4%; APS: 6.5%).<\/p>\n

Grappling with the universe <\/p>\n

A little over half of respondents, 50.8%, agreed that the very early universe experienced cosmic inflation. As for how that inflation is unfolding today, no clear majority opinion emerged. Participants varied in their view of dark energy, hypothesized to drive cosmic expansion.<\/p>\n

\"Big\u00a9 Physics Magazine, APS\/Perimeter Institute <\/p>\n

The standard model of cosmology, \u039bCDM, which stipulates constant-density dark energy, surprisingly lost to time-varying dark energy (25.9%) by a margin of just 1.9%. This is perhaps due to results from experiments like DESI, whose findings continue to hint that dark energy changes over time, according to the Perimeter Institute.<\/p>\n

Views on dark matter\u2014the invisible mass of the universe\u2014diverged even further. According to APS, more participants \u201cfavored what were once considered less-mainstream possibilities\u201d over weakly interacting massive particles (10%), which used to be a \u201cclear front-runner.\u201d Instead, 17.4% answered light particles like axions, 10.1% effects of quantum gravity and 5.4% primordial black holes. Notably, 20.6% said it could be a hybrid of everything, whereas 15.1% expressed they had no opinion.<\/p>\n

11.5% of respondents chose some modification of classical gravity, although a physicist panel discussing the results<\/a> hypothesized this comes from members of the general public, as opposed to academic researchers.<\/p>\n

No idea? <\/p>\n

One noticeable feature of the survey was that, for most questions, the top three responses included \u201cNo opinion.\u201d This was the case for interpretations of quantum mechanics (13.4%), early universe cosmology (13.5%), Hubble tension (24.4%), gravitational anomalies (15.1%), accelerated cosmic expansion (14.9%), and matter inside black holes (17.3%).<\/p>\n

Of this (rather disappointing) list, the largest proportion of participants, 28.7%, declined to subscribe to any view of quantum gravity\u2014the holy grail of physics that seeks to unite quantum mechanics and general relativity. Among respondents who did express a preference, however, string theory topped the charts at 18.9%. However, alternative models like loop quantum gravity<\/a> (12.7%) and asymptotic safety<\/a> did follow suit (5.3%), while 17.7% actually said gravity isn\u2019t quantum.<\/p>\n

Good luck, physics <\/p>\n

For length, I\u2019ll stop here, but I invite any and all science enjoyers to take a look. In physics, most, if not all, fundamental questions seek to illuminate how and why the universe became what it is today. So there\u2019s something to be said for the lack of consensus surrounding those questions. There\u2019s also a video podcast of leading theoretical physicists breaking down the results in detail, which you can watch here:<\/p>\n

\u201cIn this sense, lack of consensus can be a clue,\u201d Afshordi said. \u201cIt marks places where better data, sharper theory, or new connections between subfields may be needed. In the eternal words of the Canadian singer and songwriter, Leonard Cohen: \u2018There is a crack in everything, that\u2019s how the light gets in.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Last summer, Nature conducted a survey asking physicists about some quantum hot takes. That venture revealed significantly disparate…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":483220,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[77],"tags":[18,19,17,452,1284,133,3550],"class_list":["post-483219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-eire","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-physics","tag-quantum-gravity","tag-science","tag-theoretical-physics"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116569367932869618","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=483219"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483219\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/483220"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=483219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=483219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=483219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}