This is something I’ve been wondering about for some time. Is it possible that some laws of physics are straight-up wrong, and can be disproved as our understanding/technology improves? How concrete are the laws of physics? Is it possible for us to be absolutely certain about anything?
In: Physics
As others have commented, at this point the laws of physics have been (mostly) tested and found to be “correct” in that their results have been found to be reproducible.
A current example of this has to do with something you might have heard about in the general news of late – the “g-2 muon anomaly.” [Here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBzn4o4z5Bk) is a detailed explanation, but to summarize: the theoretical calculation of the muon dipole moment (for this ELI, what that means is not important) is not matching up with the experimental measurement (though the uncertainties in the measurement are not *quite* good enough to be certain). How much “not matching up”? The difference is in the ~~eighth~~ **ninth** decimal point – 2.00233318362 vs 2.00233318412! What does this difference mean? That there is (potentially) physics involving elementary particles that we do not understand. The theory would be incomplete.
Similarly, one of the first hints that something was wrong with the physics governing how the planets move was the realization that Mercury was not *quite* where it was predicted to be. “Fixing” the theory ultimately required relativity to explain (or, conversely, the error spurred others, especially Einstein, to “discover” the ideas behind relativity).
This iteration – compare the theoretical prediction to the experimental value, and then “fix” the theory – is at the heart of the scientific method.
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