If his theory proves right, he'll deserve the title of Time Lord!

It could explain all sorts of things, like the clumpiness of the early universe that led to the formation of stars and galaxies..

That's already explained by quantum fluctuations. Gravity doesn't really come into it at that early point. If Oppenheim's hypothesis turns out to be true (well, a better theory than nothing until something else pops up, as is the way of things) it might offer a more exact description but not a new explanation.

Nothing like a stiff drink to sooth the nerves, right ?

The "quantum imperialists" have always tried too hard IMO to subsume GR, for no good reason AFAICS ;)

When all is said and done, both theories are merely mathematical models, not "reality", and there is no reason to assume that a model covering all ranges of validity should even exist.

“ merely mathematical models, not "reality"”

Proof that reality and mathematics are different things is not yet shown. Other than the “how do we know that we aren’t living in a simulation” rants, we also were wrong about “the Earth is special”, “electrical activity in the body is special”, “humans are not animals” and “the soul is special”

We are probably wrong about “reality is special and totally not mathematics”….

As opposed to "mathematics is special and totally not reality"?

But don't Gödel's incompleteness theorems say maths is in trouble anyway?

Not really. Incompleteness just says that not everything can be proved from axioms. That doesn’t make it incorrect.

Some famous bloke once said:

“If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.”

Then Oppenheim says:

"It's quite mathematical. Picturing it in your head is quite difficult."

That's like 10 year old explaining why he didn't do his homework.

More like an adult making excuses to the ten year old to avoid having to try explaining something they don't understand themselves...

Try explaining Recursion errors to your 90 year old Granny who has never used a computer? Or perhaps the intricacies of Superheat Phases in a non-ideal Rankine cycle? Or quite frankly String Theory or any of the other competing Unification Theories?

There are some topics that require a minimum level of expertise to be able to communicate effectively. And let's face it, the entire realm of Theoretical Physics is by now almost entirely pure mathematics.

I'm sure with time, Oppenheim would be able to come up with a suitable abstraction, but quite frankly does it help anyone outside the Theoretical Physics community? Leave it at, "It's complicated, but we have ideas for experiments that could prove or disprove it...". If enough people in the community of theoretical physicists start taking it seriously, then those tests will happen, and we'll quickly see if it joins the thousands of other disproven Unification Theories or if it joins the not-yet-disproven pile...

First you need to explain to her what is recursion.

And as part of that explanation, you need to explain to her what is recursion.

But to understand recursion you must first understand recursion!

Your 90-year old Granny will explain it to you.

I was listening to an old "In Our Time" on Einstein the other day, and one of the Profs opined that Einsteins tendency to use analogies, and the press lapping up things like E=MC^2 from his special theory of relativity set hugely unrealistic expectations for future physicists (and also Einstein himself, with his general theory of relativity a few years later). Physics from that point on became increasingly mathematical and harder to understand for the layperson.

It sounds as if he's saying it's monotonic but not rectilinear. Even a non-mathematician like me can grok that. Doing it 4 dimensions - maybe a bit trickier.

And if you want a physical representation, think of an old surveyor's tape (it's probably an old surveyor who owns it). It's a bit stretched in places - the tape, not the surveyor (well, maybe the surveyor as well). As you trace along the tape the numbers get bigger all the time (monotonic) but sometimes the next number is further away and sometimes it's closer (not rectilinear).

Now you can roll it up but keep it safe - I may need it later to explain the difference between accuracy and precision.

If it's very mathematical, then the real challenge is to point to something tangible as a prediction. This is why we refer to General Relativity on its own, and not as General Relativity Theory. There are a number of predictions of GR that have been successfully tested. String Theory on the other hand, is only ever referred to as theory. Good on them for having a crack. Maths is important but it's not so important to frame the question as it is to explain the answer.

Experiments can prove wrong theories are wrong. They can also fail to prove theories wrong even if they are through lack of precision or range - you need a fairly long experiment performed with reasonable accuracy just to prove the Earth is not flat.

Betting against a theory being proved correct is always safe. No matter how closely experimental results match theory just claim that more precision or a longer/shorter scale would have proved the theory false.

All theories have levels of accuracy. Newton’s laws aren’t “wrong”, they are inaccurate (particularly at high speeds/mass/small sizes)

In fact, “right or wrong” is not usually the correct metric.

Asymmetrical symmetry anyone?

So we're creating a new definition for "Chucking a Wobbly"?

…talk is cheap. Experimental predictions, please!

I read elsewhere that the 2nd paper was suggesting that fluctuations in successive weighing of the standard 1kg mass might be the basis of a test. I'm not sure what you'd weigh it against that wouldn't be subject to the same fluctuations.

The 'standard 1kg mass' is no longer a standard, the kg was redefined a few years ago based only on fundamental constants. So now you could measure the fluctuations of its mass, provided your instruments are precise enough.

I believe that there's already much experimental evidence for such a theory :

1) Take a person and put them in a 90 minute meeting discussing which database access framework a new application should use. Time will be observed to have stretched out to what felt like a week amongst all observers.

2) Take the same person and send them on a week's holiday to some sunny island where good food and wine are abundant and cheap. Time will be observed to pass so quickly that it's time to go home again before they know it.

This is ample proof that we live in a giant cosmic jelly.

The solution is to have work meetings during holiday.

"This is ample proof that we live in a giant cosmic jelly."

What flavour? And are you going to trifle with it?

Turritopsis dorhnii flavour. And it's not to be trifled with, because it always wins in the end.

I cussed hard at these puns.

Rule #1:

Don't back bets championed by people with names like Oppenheim in the field of physics...

"Oppenheimer himself had bet ten dollars against George Kistiakowsky's entire month's pay that the bomb would not work at all"

But what was George Kistiakowsky's monthly pay?

A college professor's salary at the time was about $4000 on average, but since Kistiakowsky had been at Harvard he'd likely have earned more there. He also headed the Explosives Research Lab before joining the Manhattan Project, so the government was probably paying him more than Harvard. A monthly pay of about $500-$600 seems likely.

No scientific theory is ever proven 'right'. At best. it's 'not wrong, so far'...