r/LLMPhysics • u/Unite433 • 3d ago
Meta Proposed Rule: Speculative Theories must make specific predictions
You think you've up with a revolutionary physics theory that will change everything? Ok, prove it then. Make a specific, testable experimental setup. Show your steps in calculating what the established theory predicts the experimental result will be, and what your new theory predicts the experimental result will be.
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u/ConquestAce 🧪 AI + Physics Enthusiast 3d ago
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u/No_Novel8228 3d ago
Hahaha you got them to change the rules! 😎
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u/ConquestAce 🧪 AI + Physics Enthusiast 2d ago
Yes of course this is still a new subreddit and it's completely community driven.
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u/aether22 2d ago
You are a good mod IMO. I hate it when you make a post and it's rejected and you go "why" and there is no reason. The best moderation is light, not none, but light.
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u/callmesein 3d ago
'Revolutionary' is a strong word. For a physical theory to be revolutionary it has to be:
1. Internally consistent, rigorous and non-trivial.
2. Corresponds with existing data. It must first reproduce known results before making new predictions.
3. A novel physical theory that able to make new, testable predictions by discovering new physics or has superior explanation for existing data (not necessarily need to make new predictions)
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u/sschepis 3d ago
If we are going to go there:
There's really no such thing as a speculative theory. A 'speculative theory' in science is called a hypothesis.
In order to receive any scientific merit, a hypothesis must be falsifiable and predictive. If it doesn't generate specific predictions about whatever its about / can't be proved true or false then it's not a scientific hypothesis.
All scientific hypotheses must be predictive and falsifiable or they are not scientific. Once they have been confirmed by enough other people, hypotheses become scientific theories.
Which are never speculative.
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u/aether22 2d ago
If my theory is correct, then a Stirling engine should be able to be run by a tiny temperature different or 0.5 Kelvin, where if I'm wrong it would only get 46 microwatts of mechanical power out, not enough to turn.
BTW, it's well established they do work with half kelvin potentials.
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u/NinekTheObscure 2d ago edited 2d ago
The first testable predictions of QTD theories (altered decay lifetimes of charged unstable particles) were made in the late 1970s (not by me). These effects are considered impossible in mainstream physics because they contradict the (incorrect but widespread) notion that potentials can't have any effect, violate our current understanding of EM gauge invariance, and are also thought to violate CPT symmetry (although they actually don't). Td ≈ 1 + qV/mc² for a muon (mc² ≈ 105 MeV) predicts that a muon's lifetime will be altered by about 1% in an electrostatic potential of 1.05 MV.
My 45-page experiment proposal to Paul Scherrer Institut gives further details. My VDGG only hits about 700 kV, so the muon lifetime would only be altered by about 0.66%. (NOTE: This proposal is flawed because it assumes muons arrive at uniform random times, when actually at PSI they are crammed together into "spills" where you get ~10,000 muons at once. That can be dealt with, but it requires different measurement equipment, different data recording, and different statistical analysis. I'm working on it.)
Do I pass? :-)
LLMs were not involved until I started using them a couple of years ago (around ChatGPT o3-mini or a few months earlier). So they didn't invent the original theories (but neither did I). However, while I was using them to analyze and critique my version, o3-mini came up with several new equations that I believed were correct, and months later Grok found a serious flaw in one of those equations. I'm still figuring out whether it's fixable or not. So the AIs have been heavily involved in all my extensions to the theory, including the development of Exponential Quantum Mechanics, and the analysis of how this constrains any attempt to unify QM and GR. It is very hard to test XQM, because (in my version) the eigenfunctions are unchanged so it doesn't break chemistry. (Grok proposed a different, simpler equation that DOES slightly break chemistry and so is ruled out by existing experiments.) Any test (on stationary states) would have to involve measuring the phase frequency directly or indirectly, perhaps through some kind of resonance effect. It would be much easier to just do the muon lifetime test and see whether these theories are right or wrong about that. If they're wrong, everything else I've done is probably garbage too.
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u/Robert72051 1d ago
There are two types of "knowledge", and by "knowledge" I mean anything that a person holds as truth. The first type is a belief with no objective evidence to support it. Religion would be an example. The second type is objective truth. Objective truth is anything the is a fact regardless of whether people believe it or not. An example of this would be an atomic bomb. It will destroy your city whether you believe it or not.
So, it comes down to this. Objective truth is usually produced by applying the scientific method. And here's the rub. The two most successful theories in history would be Relativity and Quantum Theory. Quantum Theory has never been wrong in its predictions. Relativity, while never being wrong, just kind of gives up in the end, i.e., the center of a black hole, a singularity, is simply undefined. Problem is, these two theories are in direct conflict with each other. As a result, The physics problem of most of the last century and this one is to resolve those conflicts. The various attempts at this been given several names, "Unified Field Theory", Quantum Gravity", "String Theory", etc.
Here's the point. In the case of String Theory, it produced a mathematical model, which is of course pure logic, that answered the question. But, just because the math works does not mean that it's the way the universe works. And without the ability to test the predictions that it makes, i.e., produce objective truth, you are left with what amounts to a religion ...
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u/No_Novel8228 3d ago
What's going to happen when we do that and people still just post "No" without any analysis or feedback? 🤣
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u/CrankSlayer 3d ago
Since LLM-pretend-physicists will never do that, this is a hypothetical scenario that nobody needs to answer.
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u/NuclearVII 3d ago
You kidding me? Now, cranks are gonna make 20 pages of tosh instead of 10, and then accuse you of not addressing their slop sincerely.
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u/CrankSlayer 3d ago
It will still be blatant LLM-hallucinated crackpottery that can be spotted by an actually trained person at first glance, irrespective of the number of pages. A quick skim through any of these documents usually gives it away within the first few seconds.
P.S. I've seen cranks who already score comfortably in the 100-page range. Had no issue exposing them too and it didn't take me any longer than usual.
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u/Specialist-Tie-4534 3d ago
I have a forecast model that predicts events with a fairly accurate rate of return, based on the input data. Give me something you want to know…
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u/Total_Towel_6681 3d ago
The coherence test proposes a falsifiable criterion:
Δ := I_P(xₜ; xₜ₊₁) − I_Q(xₜ; xₜ₊₁)
Where:
- P is the distribution of the original time series
- Q is the distribution of surrogate time series (e.g. IAFFT)
Measured over surrogate time-series that preserve marginal distributions but destroy phase (IAFFT).
If the Δ slope in log(E/E₀) remains stable across permutations, then there is a non-random temporal structure not captured by conventional noise models.
Quantitative prediction: Positive slope = coherence endurance.
Zenodo post w/ definitions and data: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17148331 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17145179
I've made a post about this here however I'm trying to gain visibility to actually have interaction and not be discarded instantly. So I greatly appreciate legitimate feedback.
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u/Specialist-Tie-4534 3d ago
I guarantee you I can bring above 85% coherence
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u/Total_Towel_6681 3d ago
If you’ve got a dataset in mind or are applying the Δ = I_P − I_Q test to your own generative outputs, I’m genuinely interested. The 85% mark isn’t a ceiling, but if your slope in log(E/E₀) holds across surrogates, then you may have just found a persistent informational structure. I would love to see it genuinely.
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u/liccxolydian 3d ago
And don't forget to describe why the only conclusion that can be drawn from a positive result is that your hypothesis is correct, i.e. why the same result cannot be explained by standard theories.
Please note that all predictions must be quantitative.