The physics detective is a fundamental physics website. It features blog-style essays which refer to historical papers and hard scientific evidence. The aim is to play the detective and come up with coherent descriptions of some of the things that tend to be overlooked. Such as how gravity works, how a magnet works, and how the nuclear force works. Plus other things like how pair production works and what the electron is. There’s some excellent material out there offering some vital clues. See for example Schrödinger’s 1926 paper quantization as a problem of proper values, part II. On page 18 he said this: “let us think of a wave group… which in some way gets into a small closed ‘path’, whose dimensions are of the order of the wave length”.

I think this sort of thing is the low-hanging fruit that can cure the current malaise in physics. Yes, I’m just an IT guy. But I’ve always loved physics, with a passion, and I’ve become increasingly concerned about the lack of scientific progress. The public seem to be losing interest in physics, and in science. So do politicians, and I don’t like it. So I decided I’d try to do something about it.

Hence I’ve read a great deal of physics material, including a large number of historical papers as well as contemporary papers, some of which don’t get too much publicity. I’ve also read books like The Trouble with Physics and Farewell to Reality. Along with Bert Schroer’s 2003 essay Pascual Jordan, his contributions to quantum mechanics and his legacy in contemporary local quantum physics. On page 9 Bert said this: “in times of stagnation and crisis as the one we presently face in the post standard model era of particle physics, it is helpful to look back at how the protagonists of quantum field theory viewed the future and what became of their ideas and expectations. Perhaps the past, if looked upon with care and hindsight, may teach us where we possibly took a wrong turn and what alternative path was available”. You bet Bert. My job title for many years was systems analyst. Now I think it’s time I put my skills to use. I hope it helps.

John Duffield aka “Farsight”
Poole, England, 2018