Standard Model
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2009[edit]
2017[edit]
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.
2019[edit]
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It really depends. Being totally honest:
âString Theoryâ has done a *tremendous* amount of good while âString Maximalismâ has done even more harm.
If the String Theorists who led the movement were to undo some of the damage by admitting what happened, itâd be a major positive.
Here is where I respectfully disagree with my colleague @skdh. You canât âget rid of string theoryâ. String-like objects are natural and have an unbelievably rich and beautiful interlocking mathematics. The beguiling beauty isnât the problem in my opinion. Beauty is the excuse.
The problem is that string theory on its own has taken the last 40years to PROVE it doesnât work as a stand alone path by gobbling up mind share, students, resources and (to be fair) most of the most brilliant brains. So much that no one dares say the full extent of the disaster.
During that time String Theory diverted the entire field into a magical never-land of âtoy physicsâ. Models that arenât in any way real. You now have âparticle physicistsâ at the end of their careers who have never worked with anything like a particle and canât remember them.
So, hereâs my analysis. In a world where David Gross, Ed Witten, Lenny Susskind, Cumrun Vafa, Michio Kaku had a public Come To Jesus moment where they admitted the disaster in front of the community faithful, Iâd be up for having ST as a major theory. But without that Iâm unsure.
The damage to the culture of High Energy Physics is more severe than the damage done by Geoffery Chew in a different era. And here I support @skdh, Peter Woit, Lee Smolin etc. These are brave people who paid with abuse to communicate that physics was diverting into pure fantasy.
So to sum up:
String Theory deserves to be a major branch. But it has already mostly given up on the â80s promises/lies it told us to gobble up all the resources of the community (brains, mind share, $$$). That was a crime which may prove fatal to our being able to do physics.
But it is also so thoroughly investigated and badly behaved relative to scientific norms that it deserved to be shrunk. And that happened to a large extent already. The most important thing to realize is that physics is still about the physical world. Not Calabi Yau. Not AdS/CFT.
And we need our brilliant failed string theorists to admit the disaster within a scientific paradigm.
Science is a culture. Perhaps the most fragile one. It wonât survive this suspension of collegiality, decency and self-critical behavior. We need to go back to real physics. đ
@martinmbauer String theory was a giant percentage of a tiny priesthood. That was the same tiny priesthood that brought us Thermo Nuclear devices. And if you want to pay for me to research the numbers Iâm willing to hire somebody to put together the data after 1984. Itâs not usually contested.
@DontsitDJ @martinmbauer I wasnât aware of it like that. I think he disagrees with me and has a bit of an edge. But maybe I missed a tweet or two. I havenât seen much interaction and he has written some things I liked.
@DontsitDJ @martinmbauer I love a good critique. Itâs hard to find. Most people out here develop a side hustle in interpersonal drama. I try not to.
@martinmbauer I donât know which version of âThe Fieldâ you mean.
Physics in total? Is a large field.
Beyond the standard model theory? Is a small field. Tiny. But hugely consequential. And the percentage and effect wasnât small. Do you really dispute this??? Look at the IAS professors.
@martinmbauer Seiberg/Witten/Dijkgraaf/Maldacena
All string folks.
Maybe get a string theorist to admit this to you. Brian Greene likely wouldnât disagree with me.
Physics in 1980: âIâm trying to grasp why nature has 3 generations of chiral fermions with SU(3)xSU(2)xU(1) internal symmetry.â
Physics Today: âRemind me again what the internal quantum numbers are? I do quantum gravity so itâs not something Iâve worked with since my QFT class.â
What has string theory done to become the poster child of failed physics? It hasnât even failed.
A) High energy physics of real particles became the no-energy physics of toy models.
B) Quantizing Gravity was substituted for unification or extension of the Standard model.
C) Other research programs were obliterated because ST claimed it had it all rapped up.
D) Hype won.
E) Focus shifted to mathematical structure of abstract field/String/M theory. Not our particular worldâs choice of thy.
F) Standards of scientific progress were rewritten to disguise failure.
G) Differential application of standards became the norm.
It ended physics culture
String Theory isnât the problem. String culture is poisonous to science.
String theory, like love, means never having to say your sorry. Or mistaken.
Itâs the January 6 problemâŚbut in science. But where the physics versions of Mike Pence often got fired for not going along. đ
*youâre
P.S. âIt hasnât even failedâ because it canât fail. So far as I can see, it can never fail. In the minds of the faithful, Itâs unable to fail because it *has* to be the way forward. Itâs hard to explain whatâs wrong with that to the enlightened who see its infinite power & glory.
What has string theory done to become the poster child of failed physics? It hasnât even failed.
@DrBrianKeating I am not aware that the standard model and GR âwork fineâ: CKM, PNMS, Strong CP, Mass Hierarchy issues, CC origin, origins of internal symmetry, initial singularity and black hole singularity, Miniboone, etc. all require explanation.
If thatâs what she means, I say itâs wrong.
One of the questions about UFOs that needs to be asked, and that I donât hear much about, is: âHas the US government built fake UFOs?â
UFO people are so focused on whether there are real UFOs that they donât push hard enough on this question.
Allow me to share a thought or two.
When I first realized I was totally wrong about UFO/UAP, I was shocked by how many folks have very similar stories about recovered crashes of very similar advanced vehicles.
It was mind blowing in 2 ways.
A) We have real crashed vehicles. And/Or B) We built fake alien vehicles.
At this point Iâm reasonably sure there are things that look like cool alien vehicle in some hangers. But I also grew up near Hollywood and remember super cool looking fake space cars visible off the Hollywood freeway.
So: does anyone have stories of building fake UFOs for USG?
As you likely guessed, all the photos in this thread are fake military equipment. The airbase is totally fake. The dummy tanks are often inflated on the battlefield. The fake tank pieces are bolted on to real cars.
Q: Did we build fake UFOs in places like Wright-Patterson AFB?
After studying this issue for 2yrs, Iâm pretty convinced that there ARE wild looking vehicles in secret high security locations. But I also find NO SIGN OF OUR TOP PHYSICISTS. That is a huge red flag. If you had fake UFOs, you would have a puzzle for physics: What is the science?
A true recovered interstellar craft would be like LHC or LIGO data: potential scientific data for physics beyond the Standard Model and General Relativity.
But if the crafts are fake, you would be crazy to let the A-team physicists near them. It would blow up in your face.
So my ignorant question is this: are there stories of building fake UFOs for sites in Nevada? Ohio? Are there fake retrieval teams? To what extent does faking military equipment spill into faking a UFOgasm for decades?
Because there are too many very similar craft stories.
So, at this point, the stories of craft kept at secret locations is most likely to be true in my opinion. But it is also true that all the top physics talent that was working only semi-covertly on suspicious gravity projects left by the early 1970s. So any craft may be faked.
Either way, itâs a big deal. Everything changed in the early 70s. Itâs impossible to say how much. The moment the Mansfield amendment came in, physics began to stagnate. And âQuantum Gravityâ destroyed our culture of science. We donât even whisper about its âAnti-Gravityâ origin.
Note Added: many readers are making wild inferences about me talking about flying fakes. I was very clear that this was about apparent crafts on the ground and in Hangars in Nevada, Ohio & elsewhere.
Wild or bad inference patterns will get you blocked. I donât have time. Thx.
2023[edit]
Now I feel completely alone.
I want our wanting out of this story. I have a huge dog in this fight. I spend every day fighting my own human desire for GU to be proven correct.
I believe this is how String Theorists stopped being scientists.
I just want our data & the physics.
If biological aliens were here from others star systems in crafts that defy the current physics of the standard model and, more importantly, general relativity, I would be one of the few people who would have a guess on day one as to how they must have gotten here. Itâs tempting.
I donât think biological interstellar alien visitors using GR and the SM make much sense. So I try to have a war *inside* my own mind as to what is true. I have a genuine âNeed to Knowâ as to whether this is BS NatSec space opera disinformation theater. Because to me, it is data.
What just happened isnât data. Itâs that a sober individual just pushed one of the many longstanding highly conserved NHI narratives collected from *many* diverse sober NatSec informants over the sworn testimony line. And it gets a LOT crazier from here. But itâs not science yet.
As Iâve been saying, there is so much deliberate NatSec BS out here that our own scientists are being propagandized. Weâre drilling holes in our own scientistsâ lifeboat. Last time we saw this it was virologists/immunologists/epidemiologists being gaslit. Now itâs physicists.
Let me be very careful in what I am about to say. We have at least the appearance and optics of scientific self-sabotage. And wanting things to be true is how science dies.
I fight like hell to promote my theory. But Iâd sign on to another to know the truth if I was wrong.
We may be looking at the birth of a new UFO religion. Or a moment of contact. Or a long running Disinformation campaign. Etc.
To go beyond GR, letâs be scientists & get NatSec out of our data first. Where is our data pruned of space opera disinformation and cultic religiosity?
What I want to know:
Why was the Mansfield Amendment passed?
Why did NSF fake a labor shortage in our MARKET economy destroying American STEM labor markets?
What stopped the Golden Age Of General Relativity?
Why was the SSC really cancelled?
StringTheory & STAGNATION: WTF?
What the hell was the 1957 Behnson funded UNC Chapel Hill conference actually about?
Why are we not stopping to QUESTION quantum gravity after 70 years of public *FAILURE* inspired by Babson-Behnson patronage of RIAS, the Institute of Field Physics and the precursor to Lockheed?
This is the 50th year of stagnation in the Standard Model Lagrangian. It is AS IF we are deliberately trying to forget how to do actual physics. Everyone who has succeeded in Particle Theory in standard terms is now over 70. This is insane. In 25 years there will be no one left.
Why are we not admitting that quantum gravity is killing physics and is the public respectable face of 1950s anti-gravity mania that lives on to murder all new theories in their cradle?
Quantum Gravity is fake and works to stop actual physics.
There. I said it. Now letâs talk.
If you want to know whether there are biological interstellar visitors here observing us, the short answer is âAlmost *certainly* not if they are using our current stagnant non-progressing theories of physics.â
Letâs finally get serious about this whacky subject? Thanks. đ
I swear I didn't write my tweet to make you feel alone and I'm genuinely sorry if that was the result. That said, I think it's better to acknowledge one's hopes and desires than to pretend they don't exist and thereby overestimate one's own rationality.
@skdh I acknowledge my desires as you see from what I wrote. But a stagnant community always wants outcomes. It wants SUSY. Or Strings. Or some g-2 muon anomaly. Etc.
I want too. But what I want is mostly just a desire to get the BS out of physics so we can get back to succeeding.
2024[edit]
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.
This is what is blocking progress in my opinion for physics to go beyond Einstein and General Relativity.
40 years ago, the leaders of physics started claiming that gravity had to be quantized to be compatible with the Standard Model.
But the incompatibility is *not* Quantum vs Classical field theory. The *classical* field theory of the Standard Model is already not compatible with classical General Relativity.
General Relativity, at least as it is now, simply cannot be gauged so as to make it a true gauge theory, because Gauge transformation does *not* commute with the Ricci Contractions used in the field equations, and within the Einstein Hilbert action.
I wish I deserved the heretic moniker, but isnât asking whether spacetime is quantum or classical just common sense? After all, general relativity (GR) - our theory of gravity and spacetime - is special. It isnât a gauge theory, and gravity isnât a force. 1/
For some reasons that have never been explained or justified leaders in physics started making the claim that GR *was* also a gauge theory. This was done by claiming that general coordinate invariance in the form of the diffeomorphism group is a kind of Gauge Transformation. Which it clearly is not.
This is absurd. Gauge transformations move the fibers and are defined not to move space time where as diffeomorphisms move space time directly.
So: why claim that GR is a kind of gauge theory? The only payoff I see is that this allows us to pretend that the SM vs GR incompatibility is classical vs quantum where it is staring us in the face that it is instead contraction-based (GR) vs Gauge Transformed (SM).
The only reason this is at all controversial is that the people saying it were thought to be the leaders 40 years ago.
That didnât work out. We have 40 years lost as a result.
But the truth is anyone can see the incompatibility between gravity and gauge theory if they are not being told that gravity is a special kind of gauge theory. Which it absolutely is not as formulated by Grossman, Einstein and Hilbert.
Moral: The problem holding us back from a Theory of everything is **Classical**, and not Quantum. The quantum comes as desert after classical compatibility. Itâs not the main issue. A red hearing that throws us off following the scent. Itâs a distraction that should have fooled almost no one who was thinking for his or her self.
2025[edit]
There is a tell when listening to physics folks as to whether theyâre captured by the 1984 Quantum Gravity virus.
They either say:
A) âGeneral Relativity has to be reconciled with the Standard Model.â
or
B) âGeneral Relativity has to be reconciled with Quantum Theory.â
So, what is the difference?
In the latter case of B), the diagnosis has already been definitively made. The problem is thus at the level of frameworks, not the level of theoretical models of the actual world. The issue has been made into â*THE* problem is that the classical theory of Gravity must be quantized.â That is, the classical framework of gravity must be dragged into our general quantum framework as the top priority. Seen this way, it is more of a technical math problem rather than something hyperspecific about our two theories of our physical world.
OPINION: There is absolutely no basis for this B) being an absolute whatsoever. This is a madness which started appearing as a String Theory mantra around 1984 and has led to a crisis.
In the case of A) that definitive diagnosis has *not* been made. The case is still Open. The issue is thus that âWe have two specific physical theories that donât quite fit together for multiple reasons. We need to figure out a physical framework to accommodate them both. That may be a third framework that harmonizes them rather than forcing one into the framework of the other. We need to consider all clues before reaching a definitive diagnosis.â
OPINION: It made absolutely no sense to have closed the case in 1984âŚand after 40 years of continuous failure, the issue is the leadership of the field. Opening the case and saying âGR and the SM have multiple issues. Not just quantization. Why are we not considering that the strong leadership forced THE WRONG DIAGNOSIS on the entire community??â
This is like saying âMaybe COVID came from NIAID/NIH/DTRA/EcoHealth/Daszak/Fauci/Collins/BaricâŚcan we consider that??â
And the answer is âNoâ.
But that is why we are stuck in my opinion. We are stuck because we canât question physics leadership without being thrown out of the community.
The dogmatic zealous leadership of physics totally failed. That is what happened. That cost us 41 years.
We canât get to COVID origins for the same reason we canât get to String Theory origins as âthe only game in town.â
The imposed absolutist central narrative is simply a lie.
One manâs opinion.
I don't see the difference. Seems to me one could interpret B the same way you are interpreting A.
âThe top priority is that the Standard Model has Internal Symmetry while General Relativity does not.â
âThe top priority is that the Standard Model is a full Gauge Theory while General Relativity has no gauge invariance.â
âThe top priority is that GR allows contraction across the tensor product of bundles while the Standard Model does not.â
âThe top priority is that GR has well defined Contorsion tensors while the Standard Model does not.â
Those are all possibile research programs within A. Not within B.
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.