General Relativity
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2009[edit]
Me: Grampa, do you realize you're older than General Relativity? GF: Oh, please! I knew him when he was a Lieutenant.
H.Rubin (1913-2008)
2010[edit]
That Quantum Field Theory is now far more geometric than General Relativity ever was, seems a needlessly well kept secret from the layman.
2011[edit]
Calling General Relativity a brand/meme/mashup/remix communicates a deep confusion about the relationship of tech's tail to nature's dog.
2018[edit]
1/ "Theories of Everything": A Taxonomy.
It is often said that "Theories-of-Everything are a dime a dozen" or that "All theoretical physicists worth their salt have several in a drawer." So far as I can tell, this is simply untrue. We've barely ever, if at all, seen candidates.
2/ The Escher Lithograph used in the first tweet points to the core of why TOEs are rare. A candidate TOE has to have some quality of "a fire that lights itself", which is difficult to think about beyond the equations that would instantiate it. Hence very few such theories exist.
3/ I'm going to lean on the following dictionary of analogies:
Physical Paper = Void Pictured Canvas = Manifold and/or Einsteinian Spacetime Ink=Matter & non-gravitational force fields Pencils = Pre-Conscious Lego (e.g. amino acids) Hands = Consciousness Paradox = Self-awareness
4/ In my taxonomy, Type I TOEs are our least ambitious but they best match our state of the world. They are distinguished by two *separate* sources of origin: one for the Canvas (General Relativity or Witten's point i) ) & one for the Ink (Standard Model or Witten's point ii) ).
5 Type II TOE's are more ambitious & seek to derive the Ink from the choice of a mathematically distinguished Canvas that is anything but blank. My arch-nemesis @garrettlisi's theory is Type II. E8 is his 248 dimensional canvas. The intricacy is there, but doesn't quite match up.
6/ In Type III TOEs the ink is to be derived from canvas, but the canvas is essentially blank; it simply permits mathematics to happen (e.g. calculus and linear algebra). In such theories the ink has to be bootstrapped into existence. My lectures on Geometric Unity were Type III.
7/ Type IV TOE's try to change the question from Einstein's "Unified Field Theory." In String Thy, "Quantizing Gravity" became substituted for "Unified Field." For this crowd, many are now betting that the canvas & ink are both *emergent* from some deeper fundamental quantum thy.
8/ Type V TOEs are of a type I've never been able to fully contemplate; they are without boundaries or origins. There is no "Why is there something rather than nothing" within them. That which is not forbidden is compelled into existence. Void creates canvas & canvas begets void.
9/ Type VI TOEs begin with the hands. Religions are of this type. I pass over this in silence as they aren't scientific.
I will leave open higher types, but I've really only seen attempts at I-IV & I wouldn't call String-Thy/M-Thy a full TOE try since events of the last 15 yrs.
10/ I believe fundamental physics is stalled out because we are finally at the doorstep of a TOE and we haven't really bothered to think about what that would actually mean because we've never been here before. A final step need not look like any previous one. In fact, it cannot.
END/ My bet is on Type III for a reason:
Type I is not unified.
Type II is possible, but appears to be unworkable in details.
Type IV appears to lack sufficient guidance from Quantum theory to actually 'ship' despite consuming resources for yrs.
Types V & VI lack any progress.
1/ APRIL FOOLS' SCIENCE: Theory into Practice.
I was challenged by someone as to why I wasn't taking my own medicine referenced in the sub-tweet below this April 1st. Ok. Here goes.
What I believe about the universe that is quite different and why I don't talk about it much...
1/ APRIL FOOL'S SCIENCE: A proposal.
Already bored of the coming "April Fools' Day!" pranks? Same here. And it's still March!
Consider how we might re-purpose this resource for science. What if 1 day a year, we explored big ideas that'd normally result in professional shunning?
2/ When I was around 16-17, I learned of a story that fascinated me much more than it seemed to captivate any other mathematician or physicist. It was the story of the discovery of the "Wu-Yang" dictionary around 1975-6, involving 3 super-minds: Jim Simons, CN Yang & Is Singer.
3/ What was learned was that the Quantum of Planck, Bohr & Dirac was built on an internal Geometry, just as surely as General Relativity was built on an external geometry of space-time. Only the two geometries weren't the same! One was due to B Riemann; the other to C Ehresmann.
4/ Further the 2 geometries had different advantages. Riemann's geometry allowed you to compress the curvature & measure the 'torsion' while Ehresmann's encouraged "Gauge Rotation"... as long as you didn't do either of those two things. So I asked could the geometries be unified?
5/ This would be a change in physics' main question. Instead of asking if Einstein's gravity could fit within Bohr's quantum, we could ask "Could Einstein's structures peculiar to Riemann's geometry be unified & rotated within Ehresmann's?" The answer was almost a 'No!'
Almost.
6/ While physicists said the Universe was known to be chiral, I came to believe it was fundamentally symmetric. While we seemed to observe there being 3 or more generations of matter, I came to believe that there were but 2 true generations, plus an improbable "imposter." etc...
7/ In short a great many things had to be slightly off in our picture of the world in the 1980s to get the two geometric theories into a "Geometric Unity." Then in 1998, it was found that neutrinos weren't massless! This started to tip the scales towards the alterations I needed.
8/ In short the April 1st "trick" that is being played on me is that I see a *natural* theory where chirality would be emergent (not fundamental), the number of true generations would be 2 not 3, there would be 2^4 and not 15 Fermions in a generation, and the geometries unify.
9/ I spoke on this nearly 5 years ago; I have been slow to get back to it as I found the physics response bewildering. I have now decided to return to this work & to disposition it. So over the coming year, I'll begin pushing out "Geometric Unity" (as a non-physicist) to experts.
END/ I am sorry that this was a bit technical for lay folks and not technical enough for experts, but it's twitter. I may begin to say more in the weeks and months ahead that may be clarifying.
If you are interested, do stay tuned. Until then, I thank you for your time.
2021[edit]
The way we speak now may ensure nothing transcendent can ever happen again:
âBruh, Leonardo was da GOAT among cross platform creators. If heâd crowdfunded or pivoted to a freemium model coupled to a revenue share, meme distribution could have scaled his content. lol! Self-own.â
War and Peace? âTL;DRâ
General Relativity? âThatâs cool Albert, but like, Thatâs just your opinion and my friend Sarah is like wicked smart on spiral dynamics and has been waiting patiently while you mansplained her.â
Shackleton? âTotal Narcissist. Didnât do his shadow work.â
Also: Get off my lawn. Apparently.
Notice this style of article. It confuses the *instantiation* of an idea which experiment *can* probe w/ the idea *itself* which experiment *cannot* probe. This is one of the most basic errors in science, philosophy of science & science reporting.
Iâm sorry but whatâs being addressed is closer to Naive Mildly Broken Spacetime SuperSymmetry models based on SUSY extensions of the symmetries of flat spacetime. Which many, if not most, sane theorists didnât believe. But that seems to be a mouthful to say. Hence this silliness.
The bottomline is that the scientific method doesnât work on ideas. It only works on instantiations of ideas & executions of experiments. That is why I call the Scientific Method the âRadio Edit of Great Scienceâ. Itâs scienceâs Golden Calf. It isnât how top science works at all.
So why do we keep making this error. Because the real issue is keeping out bad ideas and keeping order. The Scientific Method can be invoked selectively against loons and heretics and suspended selectively for those we believe in. Read Dirac on Schrodinger. Or Einstein&Grossman.
You will see that General Relativity actually has Grossman as a coauthor at the level of ideas. The main mind blowing insight is in a co-authored 1913 paper seldom discussed. All that changes after that is the instantiation. Science fetishizes instance over insight. So bizarre...
Letâs be clear about this weird sounding issue.
@elonmusk is one of the only minds properly focused in public on the issue of the current danger to human consciousness from having all known intelligent life in the universe on a single terrestrial surface. His top idea: rockets.
I think thatâs great. Where we differ is that I donât think Earth, our Moon & Mars plus space stations connected by rockets give us much real diversity. Itâs barely doable. But assume you could make it work. I would want to run 1000s of uncorrelated experiments as most will fail.
And if we are stuck in this solar system with the physics we know there is only one good surface and two marginal ones.
Faster than light spacetime travel is bullshit. But going beyond Einstein is not.
Itâs unbelievably hard, but everything Elon does is hard. Like hope.
But yes, he believes. In fun. In hope. In ending the epidemic of learned helplessness that has infected everyone else. So Iâm a pretty die hard Elon supporter. Not because I agree w/ everything. But he gets **the** big issue right. We need to end the single correlated experiment.
So on the main issue we agree. The second issue is where we differ. A multi multi billionaire (12 digits!) as smart as Elon w a physics background could diversify & place a small 2nd bet on rendering General Relativity a mere effective theory by single handedly fixing physics.
Now he may have a reason. But I have never heard him address this so it just makes no sense to me. No one is taking the need to go beyond Einstein seriously so we are pretty much trapped here in this solar system with the physics we know. That means three terrestrial surfaces.
But because Elon is so smart, I donât discount the idea that he isnât interested in finding out if post-Einsteinian physics for some reason. I just doesnât add up to me, but maybe he knows something I donât. But north of $100B w/ his knowledge of physics, he could change it all.
I just want to know why no one asks this question. Lex could do it. Joe could do it. But he doesnât seem to address it so I have no idea what is going on. Itâs not some special insight of mine. Our best hope for his stated dream is new physics. And making physics rich is cheap.
Imagine you wanted to pay 2m salary to all the top 50 theorists in the world for 10 years to get them all to move to a couple of centers to free them from careerist temptations so they could at last swing for the fences. The salaries would be about 0.005 of current net worth.
Now that doesnât strike me as a small ask. Itâs a big bill. But it is also our best hope. Imagine COVID was radioactive fallout from a serious nuclear exchange and compute half lives. Or imagine a climate disaster.
Elon shouldnât have to do this. But government canât anymore.
And the two multi billionaires I believe have the best technical chops to do this are Jim Simons and Elon Musk. But no one wants to build institutions that can do this because our institutions havenât worked well enough since the Apollo program. So, Iâm hopeful he gets asked.
Either way I want to encourage him. But I want to know why rockets over physics. Why not both? Why is a physics guy w a HUGE risk appetite not trying to do for Einstein & his speed limit what Einstein did for Newtonâs Gravity? If you know the answer, Iâd love to know it as well.
There isnât much left that works in this area. Iâm still betting on Elon making sense. Itâs one of our last really good hopes. And returning fun and mischief to public spirited scientific attempts to âpreserve the light of human consciousnessâ is something Iâm 100% behind.
#OccupyMars is good, but #FreeThePhysicists isnât even as popular as #FreeTheNipple or #FreeBeer
Take a look around you. Much as I love it, this place is likely going to blow.
Elon is right: time to diversify. And we need to have fun if we are going to be saving ourselves. đ
@finaltoe Physics is subject to survivor bias in a system of perverse incentives. We induce physicists to work within failed paradigms if they want to eat or house their families. Itâs an insane thing to do. We shoot ourselves in the foot when we take away their independence.
@jetpen No one sane wants to have to lean on time dilation for the reason you state.
But I *formally* agree.
2022[edit]
Huh. Letâs seeâŚ
General Relativity: Fiber Bundle
Our universe: Derived from SM+GR
SoâŚuhâŚyeah. So far. Crazy right?
Weird flex, but it checked out.
When all youâve got is gauge theory, everything looks like a fiber bundle
Hi Michael,
Not updating my priors on all UFO sightings. Iâm updating my priors on âThe Golden Age of General Relativityâ, B DeWitt, L Witten, RIAS, the Martin Company, etc.â And Iâm doing it based on a government report inconsistent with the closing report of BlueBook. And you?
Dear @EricRWeinstein
According to UFOlogists 95% of all sightings for all time are explained by natural/terrestrial phenom (planes, blimps, geese, sun dogs, lens flares, etc.). 5% unexplained (â ET or Russian tech). X new sighting is made. Which bin is X most likely to be in?
We have been spun. And as skeptics we have to notice the inconsistencies.
We were likely either spun this last summer, or spun at the closure of Operation BlueBook.
The whole thing sounds like total bullshit. But we also have a lot of weird stuff from real 1950s science.
Who were Babson and Bahnson? Those stories donât make much sense. Why Bryce and Cecile DeWitt and Peter Higgs in Chappell hill funded as part of a weird anti-gravity program?
Simple question: how did you tutor your priors last summer? Not at all? A tiny amount?
Skeptically, E
A claim that you find repeatedly when you look into UFOs is that Aerospace Companies hold the most advanced knowledge of Physics. Not academe.
I do **not** believe this claim. Happy to be wrong. Can someone tell me what its origin is? Why do so many believe it?
Thx #UFOtwitter!
Note: Iâm agnostic on materials science or condensed matter claims. I was trying to engage in fundamental physics beyond the Standard Model or General Relativity here. Likely unsuccessfully.
Video source: @AlchemyAmerican
You arenât getting it.
For example: Feynmanâs story about âThe Alibi Roomâ is also about great math-physics minds of the 1940s-60s dipping into Aerospace companies (Curtiss-Wright in Buffalo). Same with Solomon Lefshetz. Likely Wheeler, Deser, DeWitt.
Yâall just never noticed.
That famous âG-mu-nuâ story where Feynman canât remember which North Carolina University is hosting the Gravity conference? Is about Bahnson and an *anti-gravity* initiative. Again, you just didnât notice because of the way we tell the story. Higgs? UNC Physical Fields institute.
The entire âGolden Age of General Relativityâ is misportrayed. Feynman and Uri Geller? Pauling and Feynman at Esselen? The LSD stories? The story about nuclear powered airplane patents? Itâs some super freaky pseudo-scientific seeming story about many of our greatest scientists.
The fact that many of you never noticed is on you. Do I know what it means? No. My leading theory is that scientists disappeared into the military industrial complex to take $$ for pseudo-science. But thatâs only one theory. Shoot the messenger if you like, but you didnât get it.
And by the way, everything I put together I ran by experts like physics historian David Kaiser at MIT.
What do I make of the fact that most physicists know zip about this? We fictionalized this story to make it respectable. But it wasnât. Our rigorous minds were getting jiggy.đ
Iâd like to point out that we donât know whether we are functionally trapped in this solar system.
We are with modern science & technology. But we donât know if it is easy or hard to escape this place. And we wonât know if we stagnate in General Relativity & the Standard Model.
Request for Help: have any of the technical folks claiming UAP knowledge been interviewed by technical folks w/ knowledge of General Relativity & Particle physics?
I would like to watch such a conversation dealing with the dry science of how UAP are claimed/thought to work. đ
This could include someone like Eric Davis, Bob Lazar, Travis Taylor, etc. maybe at blackboard talking over equations/Lagrangians, rather than merely speaking in prose
And if this doesnât exist, why doesnât it exist? Forgive me, but I donât know the history here. Seems odd. Thx.
1) General Relativity
2) (Pseudo-)Riemannian Geometry
3) Quantum Field Theory
4) Material Science/Condensed Matter
5) Nuclear Physics/Weaponry
6) Disinformation Theory
7) Cult Indoctrination/Deprogramming
8) Propaganda
9) Preference Falsification Theory
10) Mansfield Amendment
@LueElizondo recently gave a small list of topics he would recommend for study to begin to wrangle "the Phenomenon", if he "were king". What areas of intersectional learning do YOU think are needed and should be more deeply looked into? Your ufology curriculum. Thanks, Eric.
11) Science Policy Theory (V Bush)
12) Selection (Abstracted)
13) Comparative Eschatology
14) Anti-Gravity Pseudo-science involving top physicists and mathematicians in the era of the So-Called âGolden age of General Relativityâ.
15) GU
16) Mind control.
Remember: you asked! ;-)
PrimaoMansfield amendment of 1969⌠or 1973?
Wow! Thanks for asking Dale. 1969âŚbut 1973 is closely related.
Nobody gets this anymore. Itâs like talking to the wind. Thanks for spotting that entry. Truly.
(Was supposed to read, âPrimarily Mansfield AmendmentâŚâ but fat-fingered the iPhone word prompt)
Thanks for the reply!
I got it immediately. Stay in touch? Thx.
2023[edit]
2024[edit]
Ya know, I disagree with @elonmusk here because I donât know how he got to such a strong conclusion. I wish he would say more. Seems unwarranted.
But @martinmbauer is clearly also not right here either! Examples:
1915: Einsteinâs first explicit equation for General Relativity was mathematically wrong; it set a divergence free 2-tensor equal to a non-divergence free 2-tensor. But it wasnât fundamentally wrong. It needed a small fix reversing the trace component.
In the 1920s E. SchrĂśdingerâs theory didnât agree with experiment. Why? Because the spin wasnât properly incorporated. It wasnât fundamentally wrong, and was patched. Same theory.
In 1928, P. Diracâs Quantum Field Theory gave nonsense answers? Why? A small goof conflating bare and dressed masses. Harder to fixâŚbut in no way a fundamental error. The theory of Quantum Electrodynamics or QED still stands.
Etc. Etc.
Not a big dealâŚbut this point is just so wrong as to be unsalvageable. Very curious error to make.
Martin (with whom I usually deeply disagree) is normally pretty great. But sometimes I think pretending that all outsiders talking about the current physics disaster are cranks, causes insiders to say very simplistic unnuanced and wrong things. This feels like that. And Iâm not even a physicist.
Itâs like the insiders donât realize that the outsiders have any validity. All outsiders donât immediately become cranks by virtue of disagreeing at a profound level with the abjectly failing communities from which they came.
[Note: this is *NOT* a gotcha. I fully expect Martin to realize the error and just admit it. No big deal. We all say incautious things. And this is just obviously wrong. Not an indictment.]
In physics, theories are "fundamentally wrong" if they're mathematically inconsistent or contradict experimental evidence
Here it means *doesn't feel right to me*
And Nature absolutely doesn't care for personal feelings
@lexfridman @elonmusk @PhysInHistory Can you explain? I keep hearing this. Thx.
@elonmusk @PhysInHistory Huh. What are you seeing that others are not? Iâm confused by the repeated references to an implied argument that I donât think I know. Thanks.
@codeslubber @elonmusk @martinmbauer Ken Wilson kinda did. He sorta created a new one. But that is different. I think he succeeded pretty well.
@codeslubber @elonmusk @martinmbauer 1984.
Not sure what's the argument here. I didn't say every wrong theory must be fundamentally wrong ?
My point is that personal feelings from 'outsiders' or 'insiders' (weird distinction) don't have any bearing on whether a theory is wrong or not
You wrote: âIn physics, theories are "fundamentally wrong" if they're mathematically inconsistent or contradict experimental evidence.â
That is simply untrue. I mean it sounds superficially reasonable in a kind of Wolfgang Pauli hard ass wayâŚbut it is clearly wrong. And I gave 3 examples which I could be sure we both knew. I could have given 10 more without too much effort. Feel free to challenge them.
Combatting this hardline belief and any simplistic reliance on the Scientific Method was the entire point of Diracâs famous 1963 essay quote about mathematical beauty being more important than agreement with experiment. We donât appreciate Diracâs revolutionary point if all we repeat is the quote. Here is the context for the quote which makes the argument against the danger of letting experiment or consistency dictate that something is âfundamentally wrongâ as you say in your reponse to Elon:
âI think there is a moral to this story, namely that it is more important to have beauty in one's equations than to have them fit experiment. If Schrodinger had been more confident of his work, he could have published it some months earlier, and he could have published a more accurate equation. That equation is now known as the Klein-Gordon equation, although it was really discovered by Schrodinger, and in fact was discovered by Schrodinger before he discovered his nonrelativistic treatment of the hydrogen atom. It seems that if one is working from the point of view of getting beauty in one's equations, and if one has really a sound insight, one is on a sure line of progress. If there is not complete agreement between the results of one's work and experiment, one should not allow oneself to be too discouraged, because the discrepancy may well be due to minor features that are not properly taken into account and that will get cleared up with further developments of the theory.â
P.A.M. Dirac
I have no illusion that the point will ever die. But I was scratching my head when YOU made it, just as I was scratching my head watching you and @CburgesCliff hosted by some guy who seems to rely on strawmanning and personal invective as his schtick or act. I find you are usually pretty reasonable. That discussion was painfully biased and was pretty anti-collegial low level internet bullshit in my opinion. Yuck.
Anyway, here is the source:
https://scientificamerican.com/blog/guest-blog/the-evolution-of-the-physicists-picture-of-nature/
I'm confused. This lecture doesn't negate the geometric foundations of GR. Einstein differentiates between how gravity and electromagnetism relate to the structure of space, all the while pointing to his ultimate goal of unification. As for the rest of the original article linked, I'm unsure how the quotes from Einstein support the author's title. GR is indeed a geometric theory; however, Einstein's viewpoint was that its geometric nature doesn't singularly distinguish it from the broader domain of physics, where geometry has always played a fundamental role. If anything, Einstein is saying not to confuse the map with the territory.
He is correctly anticipating the Simons-Yang discovery of the âWu Yang dictionaryâ.
Maxwell became Yang Mills
Yang Mills became Simons Yang.
Simons Yang became the Wu Yang Dictionary.
Wu Yang was (except for one entry) was Ehressmann fiber bundle geometry.
Think of metric geometry, fiber geometry and symplectic geometry as the geometry of symmetric metric 2-tensors, fiber bundle connections and anti-symmetric 2 tensors respectively.
[Note for Curt: This is the whole point of Geometric Unity. They are three geometries. Which are all one geometry, and that is only possible in the rarest of circumstances. Which we are in oddly.
Metric Geometry: General Relativity GR Fiber Geometry: Standard Model SM Symplectic Geometry: Hamiltonian Quantization of the SM. ]
Interesting. If thatâs whatâs wrong, what would physics done right be?
Q1: What are the 3 most promising general lines of attack on fundamental physics?
Q2: Who are 5 theorists, in your opinion, closest to pursuing a breakthrough beyond the Standard Model/General Relativity? đ
Yet another cut would be:
If the caption were instead reversed to read âAll that is right with theoretical physics in one simple graph.â, what would that look like visually?
Iâm genuinely super curious to learn about what youâre most excited, as I realized I donât really know!
NOTE: I was addressing these questions directly to my friend @skdh as a reponse to the OP when I posted. That said, many people are interpreting this as a general request and I am delighted to hear their takes as well.
2025[edit]
Letâs try a science post to show you the problem with the hijacking of science:
CLAIM: Quantum Gravity has been a 41 year disaster for physics. EVERYONE knows the String Theory leadership told us exactly what they were about to do, and then FAILED physics.
A mitigated disaster:
Everyone who has followed fundamental physics closely since â84 knows this is true.
If science were healthy we would discuss that. But we canât, because we have unwanted leaders. Those leaders are refereeing their OWN games. And, they win all games that they both play & referee.
So has physics failed you? No! Fundamental Physics is fine. But it got hijacked by a crew. That crew created a cult called âThe Only Game In Townâ or TOGIT. Literally. That is what they called it. Pure hubris and murder.
TOGIT failed you. And TOGIT hijacked fundamental physics for 41 years. But science didnât.
Fundamental physics is sitting right where it was overpowered, mugged, robbed, and tied up by String Theory and Quantum Gravity and left for dead in 1984.
Itâs fine. The Standard Model is amazing. As is general relativity. In fact: itâs totally spectacular. We could get back to work tomorrow if we could get out from under the cult and get our own resources back.
But we canât yet run De-Stringification schools, undo Quantum Gravity Indoctrination and get back to actual science. We are still run by zombie ideologies refereeing fundamental physics. Or what is left of it. And that is why I post like this. Itâs a fight to get you to grasp what happened.
Similarly for COVID Zoonotic origin theory. Or Economic Theory and Neo-Classical theory. Or Neo-Darwinism. Etc. Etc. You got hijacked. We all did.
One and all. And I am suggesting we take OUR cockpits back.