Pati-Salam
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Iâd propose total reassessment of the National Physics program.
Much greater autonomy for theorists.
*Much* higher salaries.
Much greater *diversity* of approaches.
More high precision work.
Fewer graduate programs.
Physics = economic/security priority.
Admit String Thy failure.
We need to hire people who will upset the living hell out of the people doing the hiring.
We need to put fundamental physics theory in receivership. No theory lead advance in fundamental physics for almost 50 years, yet no soul searching about who lost physics?? Are we kidding?
Itâs time to stop listening to the same voices as if they hadnât failed. This is a national priority, not a cult of personality for a STEM generation that had their time..and then ate their own young across every field. Is no one following what we did to destroy our own capacity?
Or should we do yet more 2D Yang Mills on irrelevant groups in non physical signatures? Squarks/Sleptons? Ha!
Letâs say it clearly as everyone young is terrified to say it: the baby boomer theorists were successful as geometers while avoiding actual physics over entire careers.
By mumbling âQuantum Gravityâ every 2 minutes as a mantra and recasting actual High Energy Physics as âPhenomenologyâ they mis-educated an entire generation to think âtoy physicsâ was real physics. Itâs unbelievable.
Toy physics is real geometry & topology. But it ainât physics.
Real physics:
A) Works with dimension 4.
B) Works with SU(3)xSU(2)xU(1).
C) Uses observed quantum numbers.
D) Accepts Lorentzian Signature.
E) Focuses on 3 Generation.
There is *Nothing* wrong with toy models now and then. But we are talking *entire careers* playing with toys.
We tell people who are basically mathematicians that theyâre physicists.
Well, they arenât. Physicists say things about the world. And those things *need* to be potentially wrong to qualify as physics.
We have a culture of people who canât *afford* error. So they just do math.
Also, to be a fundamental physicist you really should be telling us what we now have wrong. Every advance partially recovers the one before it but also invalidates it, telling us where to look for error. Weâve made hidden assumptions so you have to tell your elders they goofed.
Well, young people canât say that to elders who hold their academic lives in the palms of their hands. Thatâs why young/iconoclast physicists need FU salaries.
Elder âYou should work on AdS/CFT or âBH informationâ if you want to get a job.â
Young Colleague: âHow does NO sound?â
When I say âThere are only two true generations of Fermions.â Iâm potentially wrong.
When I listed quantum numbers of the remaining particles, Iâm potentially wrong.
As when I claimed Pati-Salam is a maximal compact subgroup of the normal bundle of metrics.
Thatâs not a bug.
Yet you canât do this in academic depts.
Moral: we destroyed our ability to self-police. Peer review wonât work. We need to go back to doing physics. Whatâs holding us back may not be physics but the political economy of academic labor, citation, reputation & attribution.đ
One last thought. If there arenât very compelling UAF revelations coming our way, Iâd redirect our interest in aliens towards terrestrial physics done by humans. If there were such revelations, then Iâd *still* look to physics before tech, as đ˝ *still* implies new physics to me.