It is this mathematical formulation of nature’s laws that embodies what physicists today mean when they use the word “theory.” Physical theories derive their utility and predictive power from the fact that they describe the real world in terms of abstract mathematical equations that one can manipulate in order to predict what will happen without actually observing or performing the experiment. And it works! From the discovery of Neptune to the sensing of gravitational waves to the prediction of new elementary particles and antiparticles, time and again the mathematical groundings of the laws
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