During my grad school life, I remember going to a conference on Lorentz violation. I had the pleasure of meeting one of the pioneers of the Standard Model Extension (SME). The SME encompasses operators that violate Lorentz invariance, but, again the coefficients are highly suppressed. One of the moments in the workshops that I cannot forget was when he expressed his frustration over how biased the physics community is about Lorentz symmetry. One of the examples he gave was regarding CPT violation. He said that the community is fine with CPT violation however there is a seminal paper by Greenberg (2002) proving that CPT violation implies Lorentz violation, which is strictly ignored by the community.
Now wait, I am not saying that this symmetry is not important, it is, but in my view no idea should be sacred in physics to this extent. Another example I can give you is from contemporary condensed matter physics which is filled with operators that violate Lorentz symmetry. In one of my published papers I have shown that a Lorentz violated operator from the SME is significantly enhanced in condensed matter physics. In another paper, which I did not even try to publish for obvious reasons described above, I gave examples of different operators in condensed matter physics where enhanced Lorentz violating operators are being used.
Any physicist knows that Einstein's theory was formulated in the vacuum and condensed matter physics is not about the vacuum. I always imagine what would happen if I transform an electron from the vacuum to a condensed matter system where the properties of the electron typically change. Not only that properties of photons typically change as well and light typically slows down in materials. There are a wide range of effects that are being observed in contemporary condensed matter physics. But, physicist will never mention Lorentz violation in all of this because they dont want to loose their jobs or they are too old to be innovative.
Another example I can give is entanglement in quantum mechanics. It appears obvious to me that entanglement is a form of superluminal transfer of information. Prof. Michio Kaku says that entanglement can be considered as a transfer of information thats not useful. This again demonstrates how biased physicists are when it comes to information transfer at superluminal speeds since it will implies violation of Lorentz invariance. On one hand there is a lot of research being done on storing information in spin while on the other hand particle physicists keep on emphasizing that this useful information cannot be transferred using spins.
Physicists have stopped thinking about things philosophically. Moreover, well known physicists have said terrible things about philosophy. But I think that one of the reasons progress in physics have stopped is because physicists have stopped thinking philosophically. I want to refer every physicist, especially the young physicists, to an article by Don Howard. In it he discusses the philosophical mindset of Einstein. I will end this article by quoting Einstein where he warns us to strictly adhere to established ideas:
"Concepts that have proven useful in ordering things easily achieve such authority over us that we forget their earthly origins and accept them as unalterable givens. Thus they come to be stamped as “necessities of thought,” “a priori givens,” etc. The path of scientific progress is often made impassable for a long time by such errors. Therefore it is by no means an idle game if we become practiced in analyzing long-held commonplace concepts and showing the circumstances on which their justification and usefulness depend, and how they have grown up, individually, out of the givens of experience. Thus their excessive authority will be broken. They will be removed if they cannot be properly legitimated, corrected if their correlation with given things be far too superfluous, or replaced if a new system can be established that we prefer for whatever reason."
[1] CPT Violation Implies Violation of Lorentz Invariance, Greenberg, O. W.
[2] The Joy Of Condensed Matter Physics, Inna Vishik.
[3] Albert Einstein as a Philosopher of Science, Don Howard.
[4] Understanding Lorentz violation with Rashba interaction, M. Adeel Ajaib.
