Spacetime
On X[edit]
2009[edit]
Ok @dabacon Beauty in Econ: SpaceTime->OrdinalPrefs x Time InternalSymm->Util Re-Params GaugeFields->Indifference\Mkts FieldStrength ...
2010[edit]
By declaring a one-time wormhole in the spacetime continuum, my follow friday recommendation this monday is @VenessaMiemis.
2016[edit]
You know when scientists say "The universe is expanding!"? so you say "Into what?!" & they say "Itself!"
Well, we're just being ridiculous.
@BBodge I'd say there are two different semi-Riemannian metrics on (S^3) X R and we're comparing induced metrics on spacelike hypersurfaces.
@kristiandamien @Adakisn It's coming from a pet peeve. The language of differential geometry isn't captured by this linguistic construction.
1/2 The reason "The universe is expanding" doesn't make sense is we're hiding Einstein's rulers/protractors (or "metric") from lay people.
2/2 Einstein's math model of the universe (Spacetime) has rulers/protractors (a metric) builtin that stretch in space as a function of time.
@ParoEqr Great on expansion! But neutrinos are *practically* dark matter. It's not a fudge factor. It's just stuff decoupled from our sector
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.
2020[edit]
I have been asked by @PBSSpaceTime to appear on Aug. 4th in a new 2 episode Livestream series as the only mathematician among physicists @skdh, @DrBrianKeating, Lee Smolin, @lirarandall, @stephstem, @tegmark, @matt_of_earth & @jbbeacham.
Please join us!
[Not to complain, but given that the focus is "Theories of Everything" (used here as a term of art), there really should be someone representing the mainstream of the quantum field theory community. I am, as a non-physicist, not in the best position to make this case however.]
I should also say this will be the first time I will be encountering my friend and colleague Sabine Hossenfelder since she recorded this epic T.O.E. Diss-track.
Which, by the way, I found completley undanceble. Not to criticize...
Livestream On Theories of Everything (with Geometric Unity) on PBS SpaceTime in 20 Min: https://t.co/tqrhS9pkvC https://t.co/YZ97EOhNF1
My colleague @skdh & I spar around my Geometric Unity theory on @PBSSpaceTimeâs special two part series on âTheories of everythingâ along w/ Lee Smolin, @DrBrianKeating & @matt_of_earth. [Sadly, @lirarandallâs connection fritzed out on us.]
Check it out!
I would claim almost fundamental. As nearly fundamental as you can be while still being merely emergent.
I believe that manifolds are fundamental and that spacetime emerges from a 4D proto-spacetime manifold and not necessarily something weirder like operator algebras or Topoi.
2021[edit]
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.
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.
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.
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.
Read Diracâs 1963 SciAm essay.
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...
But in standard Relativity theory as an effective theory, I donât think about FTL. Sorry.
Another example. Some see spacetime as the commutative limit of a non-commutative manifold. That would be beyond relativity.
Others see topology changing operators that allow agents to change spacetime topologically. Again that would be beyond the usual relativity theory.
An example: In GU, relativity theory is recovered from the Observerse which is constructed around two separate spaces X and Y. Einsteinâs Spacetime (a signature (1,3) 4-manifold with pseudo Riemannian metric) is recovered from observations of Y by X.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
- 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
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.
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.
@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.
@AndrewS65627884 Sure: @elonmusk, you have an open invitation to talk whenever you want. In confidence if preferable. On a podcast if desired.
No reply needed. Keep doing you.
@agoonforhire Thank you for this!
If you start with the mystery of non gravitational forces, up to a small lie, you have three symmetries for three forces:
A) U(1) --> ElectroMagnetism
B) SU(2) --> Weak Force (Beta Decay)
C) SU(3) ---> Strong Nuclear Force
But SU(3) is special here.
My colleague Peter Woit at Columbia Univ and @notevenwrong, has an interesting idea for unifying physcis. I am shocked that those claiming to do physics are not interestied in those actually trying to do physics.
Let me take a quick stab at Peter's idea:
I've heard very little interest in his idea. I would like to know why. I have been going to physics seminars in LA recently and this is MUCH closer to actual physics than most of what is being discussed. This idea that people are too busy to waste time on real attempts is absurd.
He finds another U(1) as well so he cobbles together a copy of the forces of nature, a copy of Flat SpaceTime and a copy of the Euclidean 'WickRotated' SpaceTime physicists need to tame some calculations.
I don't want to share criticism here. It's a neat idea for real physics.
Woit replaces spacetime with CP^3=SU(4)/U(3) where SU(3) is inside U(3). This makes SU(3)'s appearance totally natural, by making it the (unmotivated) starting point.
He then finds both Euclidean & Einsteinian space-times inside this CP^3 locating SU(2) inside the Euclidean ST.
U(1) and SU(2) have many names:
U(1) = S^1=SO(2)=Spin(2)=Circle=Unit Complex #s
SU(2) = S^3 = Sp(1) = Spin(3) = Unit Quaternions
But SU(3) is distinguished among small symmetry groups by having only one known avatar.
So Woit/Penrose make it's explanation central.
I think it's a cool idea. I can share criticism another time but the most important thing to say is I tried reading it and was glad to see a new kind of unification attempt. Nice ideas Peter! cc: @DavidDeutschOxf, @tegmark, @FQXi, @seanmcarroll, @SimonsFdn, @KITP_UCSB @lexfridman
I think those of us interested in working on the physical world should have a thumbnail sketch of each other's ideas given that most claiming to do physics are not doing any real physics at all. Would love to hear @garrettlisi, @skdh, @stephen_wolfram, @DrBrianKeating on this.
@skdh @garrettlisi @stephen_wolfram @DrBrianKeating I read your book. I didnât agree with it in some very important places. But I found a lot in it. As I recall, we flew people to LA to hold an entire mini-conference around your ideas in it, where we were worried that you were being treated as a waste of time.
You sound busy now. https://t.co/jxQUBfC4la
@skdh @garrettlisi @stephen_wolfram @DrBrianKeating You donât have to read Peterâs paper. But itâs interesting. I too have my own work, but part of not signing on to the string program for me was not adopting their âThis is a waste of time.â Approach to colleagueâs work. Because that is what they have done to all other approaches.
@skdh @garrettlisi @stephen_wolfram @DrBrianKeating So feel free to keep going as you are. But Peter is a colleague. And heâs on to something. I donât think itâs right and I donât think it will work. But itâs a respectable idea. And you wonât know that Itâs not even a âtheory of everythingâ as you say, until you read it. As I did.
@HiFromMichaelV @skdh @garrettlisi @stephen_wolfram @DrBrianKeating The great danger in being a String Theory critic is that you take on their mindset when you fight them. Their âWaste of time.â mantra was their modal response to why they didnât have to read Woit and Smolinâs String-critical books in 2006 and 2007. And Sabineâs in 2018. So odd. https://t.co/EiR950XauZ
@skdh @HiFromMichaelV @garrettlisi @stephen_wolfram @DrBrianKeating This isnât an obscure idea or in any way original to me or particular to you or physics:
âWer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird. Und wenn du lange in einen Abgrund blickst, blickt der Abgrund auch in dich hinein.â
F. Nietzsche
@skdh @garrettlisi @stephen_wolfram @DrBrianKeating Letâs leave me aside.
Peterâs Penrose approach solves a few problems. But you wonât know that unless you read it. I have spent more time in this back and forth than I did to see that. But, of course, feel free not to read it. Heâs a solid colleague so I spent the 15 minutes.
@skdh @garrettlisi @stephen_wolfram @DrBrianKeating One problem is explaining the uniquely asymmetric nature of Weak Isospin. Peter gets asymmetry to come out of a kind of Wick rotated Euclidean theory that is co-equal to the Lorentzian by virtue of Spin(4)âs semi-simplicity. Picks up a U(1) as well.
But Iâm not here to sell it.
@skdh @garrettlisi @stephen_wolfram @DrBrianKeating Sounds like you have moved quite a bit over the years. Maybe I just need to update. Be well.
2022[edit]
âThere is a three complex dimensional manifold with vanishing 1st Chern class with a Ricci flat metric at every spacetime event whose elliptic indexes determine the number of fermion generations. And everyone who doesnât agree is a dumdum, whack job, nutty person.â
Think bigger.
@pmarca 4D? Huh.
14=(N**2 + 3N)/2
for N= 3+1 Spacetime dimensions.
@jdoliner @pmarca Wordcels tend to think that.
@anisomorphism @jdoliner @pmarca Path spaces. But yes.
âPutinâs 2022 Invasion of Ukraine Could Topple Lehman Brothers as soon as Q3 of 2008 Analysts Warn.â
Putinâs invasion of Ukraine may be evil, but it is now becoming some kind of retro-causal adjustment to physical spacetime in the minds of political opportunists.
The charge on the particle is the gearing ratio of the spacetime âď¸ with the particleâs âď¸. Itâs like a bicycle where the pedal gearâď¸ is the spacetime âď¸ and the particle âď¸ is the rear wheel âď¸. Positive charge is clockwise drive. Negative charge is counterclockwise.
A surprisingly deep simple question.
There appears to be a mysterious circle at every point in spacetime which physicists accept but cannot explain. And, every type of particle is endowed w/ a mysterious complementary âď¸. The spacetime âď¸ rotates the particleâs sympathetically.
An electrically neutral particle is like a particle not having a chain hooked up between the pedal and wheel. So a +2/3 Up Quark will be driven around 2 times clockwise for every three times an electron goes counter-clockwise with charge -1=-3/3.
That may sound weird. So be it.
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
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.
@martinmbauer And I agree with everything you said with the exception of âdramatically overemphasizeâ (and a tiny bit with âby-farâ). But you should go down my list and explain if you want me to understand you substantively, keeping in mind that we arenât at odds over your assertions.
@martinmbauer Wait. You added a claim. String theory does not predict a 1,3 spacetime. You can make the usual Post-diction argument. But that wasnât right.
P.S. Experts trying to poke holes due to simple Twitter style in the above are expected to supply obvious details before bitching (e.g. âBut doesnât the Weyl tensor in the Kernel of Einstein eqns carry most of topological information?â). The argument works & was careful enough.
âŚThat balancing would coax a non zero Vacuum expectation value from either the Cosmological Constant or the Stress energy Tensor. That would be stuff.
In short, Einstein Field Equations require âStuffâ to exist in certain topologically rich situations.
So: Stuff may be forced.
Weird but great and devious question.
Assume that the underlying spacetime were topologically rich. Then it would be quite likely that it would carry no Flat metric by some Gauss Bonnet type theorem.
If the Einstein curvature couldnât vanish it would have to be balancedâŚ
There are a bunch of jealous & nasty PhDs out here who pick fights to simply to take advantage of the fact that a lot of folks interested in STEM donât know how to evaluate arguments. Thatâs why I do less of this stuff. Which is sad. But âparasites gonna parasitizeâ. Sic transit.
2023[edit]
@martinmbauer Was thinking the same.
But I think it is because an enormous part of the hep-th arxiv is disingenuous physics. âSterile neutrinos from Non-commutative spacetime SUSY phenomenology over characteristic p not equal to 2.â could be a paper in a field gone mad. Or it could be a joke.
I am worried that should any entity get a Post Einsteinian map, those with only GR will be âownedâ by those with the advantage. Think neutrons.
GU is by its nature, a post Einsteinian theory. It recovers spacetime from a more general structure.
I want to use the argument made to make a point. âLight yearsâ is a mathematical concept. Newtonian gravitation & Einsteinâs general relativity are our past & current mathematical maps of the physical âterritoryâ.
The Map â The Territory.
Iâm focused on post-Einsteinian maps.
The irremovable singularities of GR indicate that Einstein is an intermediate theory. Itâs NOT final. And I wouldnât want to face an adversary that knew the ultimate theory while I was still back in spacetime thinking.
Spacetime may not be hackable, but itâs successors may be.đ
As I have said in public, I find it EXTREMELY difficult to conceptualize multiple temporal dimensions. Just because I can see that they are there in my model, does not mean I am smart enough to understand their consequences. Sorry to disappoint. Try Itzhak Bars at USC?
Be well.
I donât know how to answer. I believe that the world beyond Einstein does not have a 1,3 metric where that 1 means a single future.
If Iâm correct, the world is 7,7 or 5,9 pulled back to 1,3. So I decline to answer: I donât know how to think about my own modelâs pasts/futures.
Perhaps one simple thing I might add is that only with one temporal dimension do boundary conditions become initial conditions. Boundary conditions are more general and Ultra Hyperbolic equations can be defined so that Hyperbolic relativistic equations are a quirky special case.
@danielbmarkham I alreadys will.
@ldgaetano Gimel pulls back field content native to Y back to X. Gimel^{1,3} does the pulling back of the data (sections over Y). It is the stylus that samples the record Y^{7,7} (or Y^{5,9} in the second GU variant that is physical) and plays it back. In GU, spacetime is just the Victrola.
@ldgaetano I donât usually reply here because it is not the right forum. I know that this is super clunky. Forgive me the LaTeX pseudo code if it is not clear.
@ldgaetano Thank you.
An hour ago, @lexfridman dropped a nearly 4 hour interview with one of the worldâs leading minds, Berkeley Mathematics Professor @edfrenkel. Thus no one has listened to it fully.
Ed is genius & always amazing. I recommend a follow & listen, sight unseen: https://t.co/E7zaTWaXR8
@Resist_CBDC @lexfridman @edfrenkel I will try to listen to it tonight. Just saw it.
@LudisCharta @lexfridman @edfrenkel Love that spacetime engineering!
@grimsr3ap3r79 @lexfridman @edfrenkel Ed is a beast.
@mikestaub @lexfridman @edfrenkel How was?!? My brain and player donât do that.
For the record, I have no idea what people mean when they say these things. I am genuinely focused on the accessibility of extra dimensions, both spatial and temporalâŚand I have zero clue what people are talking about with âaliens from other dimensionsâ. It sounds like nonsense.
If the idea of secret undetectable matter that is right here with us but is not detected in normal life by ordinary humans is exciting to you, but sounds far fetched, I highly recommend studying neutrino physics. It is mind blowing. I promise you. And it is real.
Ok. Back to đ˝.
Thatâs not to say I canât imagine a field theory where support is localized away from wherever we fit spacetime. But the language used about extra dimensions is not that of field theory. Itâs more that of Sci-Fi. So, at the surface it doesnât seem much like a physics notion imo.
What it sounds like to me:
A) People who read Flatland but did not familiarize themselves with field theory.
B) People actually meaning âdecoupled fieldsâ to explain co-located matter which is not detected.
C) People confusing travel using extra dimensions for residing in ED.
Which is why we got:
Low Energy Spacetime Supersymmetry
Superlative Index Numbers replacing the Konus Index
Contradictory directives on Masks
âThe Great Moderationâ before 2008
Labor Shortages claimed in Market Economies
Vioxx
Anti-Biological Redefinitions of Gender
The Reproducibility Crisis in Peer Reviewed Literature
Citation Cartels
An admonition to ask no questions about the Wuhan Institute of Virology
The Death of Sociobiology at the hands of Marxists
40 yrs of modern String Theory
70 years of Quantum Gravity
The food pyramid
This is a serious question: do modern scientists themselves think like scientists? My experience is ânoâ. But i got there by roaming around academic research and realizing they cannot **afford** to think like scientists.
Try asking researchers the following rather obvious questions to see the effect for yourself:
What are male and female?
What can we say about the possible origin theories of COVID?
How are there labor shortages of scientists in Market Economies???
What is the strength of the argument for the necessity of directly Quantizing Gravity if spacetime is not fundamental?
How do humans behave under evolutionary incentives and what really happened to sociobiology?
Is worrying about cognitive impacts of microcephaly a form of phrenology?
Have standardized tests been useful in predicting success in science?
Why is CPI a number but weather a field?
How do we evaluate the concentrated investment in String Theory/Quantum Gravity at the expense of rival approaches as our basic theory of physics?
Can we use Carnegie stages to evaluate where abortion rights should begin and end?
When innumerable nearly unbelievable conspiracies have been discovered, why demonize all those who consider that there could be more left to be found?
Why are humans not generically modeled as having changing tastes in markets, nor diminishing returns to money (except in the theory of risk on alternate Tuesdays)?
Did science work *better* before the modern Peer Review revolution of the 1960s?
Why do so many of our leading theoretical particle physicists not have concrete predictions about our physical world and really instead work on toy theories almost exclusively?
2024[edit]
I have no idea...as in ZERO...what is meant by "Interdimensional Beings", despite a PhD in the relevant subject area. I have been looking at this for four or so years, and it is total garbage to my ears.
It's such an insult to the intelligence of the world's premier scientific community that we have heard from ZERO particle theorists, general relativists, mathematical physicists or differential geometers.
It's not that I can't imagine things that fit that phrase. I can imagine MANY such things because we don't talk like this.
Do we mean Kaluza Klein theories? Fibrations over spacetime? Supermanifolds? Riemannian Immersions? Submersions? Large Extra Dimensions? It's that it is such garbage level language that it doesn't mean **anything**. Like someone steped out of a science fiction double feature rather than a seminar or a classified briefing with actual adults focused on the claimed involuntary surrender of military airspace to unknown superior craft.
I have talked extensively to David Grusch, Eric W Davis, and to a lesser degree Travis Taylor. They don't have the answers for me either. We look like idiots having super-secret SCIFs with no relevant adults with specialized training in the mix.
Show me a single high level PhD in the above 4 relevant fields talking about "Interdimensional" visitation. I'll wait.
This is not how we won WWII. This is not how we break codes or develop cutting edge weaponry.
This is how we pulled out of Afghanistan, made Harvard more inclusive, bet the farm on String Theory, built the Tacoma Narrows bridge, and secured our southern border. We are becoming a laughingstock. And it is totally self-inflicted.
We (still, for the moment) have and fund actual experts. Use them. Rant over. đ
[Pictures (and Spelling errors therein) due to AI.]
P.S. My impression is that @marcorubio, @JDVance1, @SenGillibrand, David Grusch, etc. and many many others are trying to represent us & get to the truth.
But this is either BS IC fakery, or technical at the *highest* level. Absence of relevent experts tilts towards the former.
Buckaroo?
Ok. ButâŚ.Also a laypersonâs term for flatland viewing an ambient space for an embedded/immersed sub-manifold. Also for a Kaluza Klein theory or a general fiber bundle projection. Or for worm holes and non trivial topology. Etc
In other words, it means almost nothing.
After seeing my friend @skdh say what is wrong with theoretical physics, I asked her what would theoretical physics done right look like. Specifically, which general approaches and which theorists she was most excited about.
Her answer is in the quote tweet.
The question was not a gotcha question so I will try to answer it myself below.
I will say that I find her answer at turns both expected and shocking. There is very little going on, but there is not nothing. And if she is not excited by anything, thatâs an amazing state of affairs.
Here is my response to the same question below. Which many may not expect or accept.
A) The three most promising lines of attack in fundamental physics. This is likely to confuse people who think in terms of âthe strong communityâ, âthe amplitudes programâ, âthe LQG communityâ. These are the âTeam Sportsâ branches of attack. And team players really only recognize other teams which is a MASSIVE bias. That is why String Theorists view Loop Quantum Gravity as their hand chosen rigal. It is a team that they believe doesnât challenge them; a partner to dunk on if you will.
For my money, the true rivals are not teams. They are NOT communities.
I). Spinorial/Clifford/Exceptional physics. This is almost never broken out.
The idea here is that many of us believe that there is way more information in Spinorial physics of the particle spectrum of the Standard Model than has been used. In particular the D5 Dynkin diagram GUT is the missed off-ramp.
In this generalized setting, Peter Woit of @notevenwrong, Roger Penrose, Myself, Garrett Lisi, and the exceptional algebra researchers focused on extending the octonionic tradition of the Turkish school are all clustered. In this school, almost everyone will be largely *wrong* in my opinion. But the right answer is most likely to come from this branch IMO.
II) Classical Differential Geometric Field Theory. It is amazing to me how over-focused we seem on the quantum. The star of the show is not now, and never was the quantum.
Let me put it in provocative terms: Classical Physics is where the real action has always been. Pun intended.
The quantum is real. Itâs mysterious. Itâs mind blowing. And as a result it provides jobs and something to talk about when the classical theory is stagnant. But the dream of quantum theories that are born quantum never materialized. We still quantize classical theories, for all our posturing about needing to take classical limits of quantum theories.
Witten in particular popularized the notion that the incompatiblity between General Relativity and the Standard Model is a Classical vs Quantum problem. Heâs wrong.
The Classical GR theory is already incompatible with the Classical Standard Model. The incompatibility is already classical: NOT Quantum.
The G_{mu, nu} operator concept of Einstein (and Grossman) is NOT gauge compatible. But the Standard Model IS a gauge theory. We have wasted 40 years in my opinion pretending that the GR vs SM split is a call to quantize gravity. We got there by pretended that GR is a kind of gauge theory which it obviously isnât. And we pretend that you donât quantize classical theories but take classical limits of quantum theories. Who this is supposed to fool is beyond me. The weak? The insecure? The egoic?
Once you have the classical arena (the manifolds) the field content (the bundles, groups and representations) and the action, the game is largely already determined theoretically when you are quantizing a classical theory. The quantum theory is used to figure out what its real world consequences are. The world is quantum after all.
So why does the Classical theory get sent to a diminished role? This is going to be brutal: itâs the political economy of Physics. Itâs because the number of people who have contributed to the Lagrangians is tiny. Einstein/Grossman, Maxwell/Yang and Dirac tower over our theories. Thatâs spin 2, spin 1 and spin 1/2 right there. The Higgs sector pulls in Glashow, Englert, Weinberg, etc. But I believe this is temporary and will be absorbed back into the other sectors before too long. It is the ungainly sector after all that still feels contrived. Real, but contrived.
And I believe that a lot of the toy work in low dimensions will turn out to be closer to GR than people imagine. Right now it looks closer to the Standard Model due to history.
III) Non spacetime SUSY.
I believe the reason we can neither find Supersymmetry nor get rid of it is that we misinstantiated it. There are no Squarks or Gluinos. Right idea, wrong off-ramp. This goes back to Salam and Strathdee.
Many of you will be shocked by my IV. Which is perhaps why I asked for threeâŚ
IV) I would choose String Theory or the Amplitudes / Double Copy approach.
At least the String people are energized by the fact that the math is real even when the physics is fake. And at least the double copy people have a mystery connecting GR to the SM.
B) As to who I find interesting. Anyone going it alone to follow a hunch, but who knows what GR and the SM are. Mavericks, not cranks.
Woit, Lisi, Deutsche, Wolfram, myself and Barbour are all outside of purely traditional structures. Oppenheim and others are in such structures but still mavericks. I wish Sabine had a theory that I knew of. But I am not aware of one.
The observation I would make is that being a professor is a double edged sword. Outside the Professorate it is almost impossible to function from isolation and deprivation. Inside, you get captured by a constant set of pressures to conform to things you know are sapping your vitality. And you go into angry denial âI do whatever I want as a professor! I just happen to believe in this large program which is known not to work but gives me grants and summer stipend.â
Right now, I would bring those mavericks together with the most open of the professorate and steelman/catalog where those individual programs are in their trajectories. Duh.
There are really fewer than 10 of them. This is absolutely obvious. It is cheap and would take almost no resources. It does not happen simply for reasons of political economy. There is no other reason not to do it.
As for who excites me most (myself excluded):
Nima Arkani Hamed Frank Wilczek Peter Woit John Baez Ed Witten Luis Alvarez Gaume Dan Freed Jose Figueroa OâFarril
And two others I will leave nameless for a top 10.
âââ
So that is my take. It wasnât a gotcha.
If all we can do is bemoan the state of physics, we need to change our focus.
Yes I expect to be savaged. For some reason, saying anything positive creates anger. Bring it.
Thanks for your time. As always. đ
In 2006, at minute 2:55 in the video, the world woke up to a 'MultiTouch' interface with a feature called 'Pinch-to-Zoom'. There is an audible gasp from the audience.
My claim is that the successor to Spacetime may have Pinch-to-Zoom.
Sic itur ad astra.
2025[edit]
Wow. Challenge accepted:
Detection of gravity waves.
Kervaire invariant 1 problem.
Topological Quantum FieldTheory.
Genome Sequencing
Adjacency matrix of drosophila.
Neutrino telescopes
Cell lineage diagram of c elegans
Topological modular forms
Geometric Langlands progress
Etc, etc.
I could go on and on and on. We kick ass.
Our scientists are amazing.
I donât mean to be harsh, but I am guessing you donât go to a lot of seminars at research universities. Letâs change that! Tell us which areas interest you and your nearest research university. Iâll help.
They are free. Held in the afternoons. Open to anyone. Just go and listen. Itâs amazing what we have accomplished.
This MAGA bashing of all government functioning is beneath MAGA. This leads to people thinking MAGA is simplistic. I donât think that. Letâs find out if I am wrong.
American science is an ENORMOUS part of what made the U.S. safe, strong and rich. Even after we abandoned our agreement with our own scientists.
You want to kill the golden goose: try it at your own peril. Good luck to you.
Take my advice: go to seminars instead. You will be blown away. Even in this wretched state of scientific abandonment and neglect.
Hope that helps.
And next time: spare the insult. đ
@benarsoncarson Feed it to an AI
Ok. Here is that ChatGPT Pro model said when it audited my list. Hope this helps:
Hereâs a single âlong tweetâ explainer:
âEver wonder what these big science feats mean? Quick rundown:
⢠Gravity Waves: Directly âheardâ ripples in spacetime (LIGO), confirming Einsteinâs theory.
⢠Kervaire Invariant 1: A deep puzzle in higher-dimensional topology, solved after decades.
⢠Topological Quantum Field Theory: Uses math of shapes to describe quantum phenomena and particle interactions.
⢠Genome Sequencing: Reading an organismâs entire DNA, from humans to cropsâkey for medicine & biotech.
⢠Fruit Fly âAdjacency Matrixâ: A neural connectome map of Drosophilaâs brain cells, revealing how neurons link up.
⢠Neutrino Telescopes: Huge detectors for elusive cosmic particles, unlocking new views of supernovas & the universeâs earliest moments.
⢠C. elegans Cell Lineage: Tracing every cell from embryo to adult in a tiny wormâvital for developmental biology.
⢠Topological Modular Forms: Abstract math bridging geometry and number theory, hinting at deep universal structures.
⢠Geometric Langlands: A unifying theory in advanced math linking algebra, geometry, and representations, with implications across physics.
All powered by public funding! They might sound esoteric, but each expands our understanding of life, the universe & everythingâand often sparks real-world innovations down the road.â
Itâs very impressive. But this is wildly misleading.
I give it completely straight forward problems in Linear algebra/reoresentation theory and it refuses to stop guessing answers. It âbullshitsâ.
It is not remotely close to passing a mathematical Turing test in THIS Iteration.
Sure thing. It gets the following question reliably wrong but appears to correctly interpret the shorthand of what is being asked:
Q: Give the highest weights and dimensions of the Irreps that occur as direct summands of $\Lambda^2 \otimes \Lambda^2$ for SO(16) with Dynkin diagrams D_8.
@elonmusk What is interesting is asking it why it failed despite numerous hints meant to help it. It appears to introspect correctly: https://t.co/r8DjvQWeIG
@elonmusk But it canât make use of this capacity.
Not to tell you your business, but it appeared it needed to better know when it could use the attention heads to autocomplete and when it needed them to write an outside call to a reliable method in a trusted library. https://t.co/8BV4dsQYwH
The question is actually an example of the kind of thing it needs to know to do any deep physics because both general relativity and the Standard Model are based around field strength as measured by curvature tensors. If you take one Lambda^2 to be differential forms along spacetime and the other Lambda^2 to be the Lie Algebra of the Lorentz group then the space of Lie algebra valued 2-Forms is exactly where the Riemann curvature decomposes into weyl, Traceless Ricci and Ricci scalar pieces.
But because the other components never get occupied, Grok cannot find enough literature on the subject. There are always three other component Irreps above dimension 8 (where the number is 4) but there mostly folklore in mathematics and are thus not much written about. Plus pushing the calculation to R^{16} gets you away from the more prolific lower dimensional literature as well.
Final thoughts: all the LLMs choke on these problems. This isnât so far about Grok. Itâs about what competence is actually needed for super human intelligence to make progress in physics.
We havenât even gotten started on real math with these models. We need to go way way harder on pushing them before we talk about using them to understand the universe.
Happy to continue via dm or voice. Up to you. Good luck and Keep Going!!
@aydencook03 @elonmusk This is in think mode for example. It misses the cartan product of Lambda^1 with Lambda^3 as you can see. https://t.co/jYylYrVv4q
@WaffleStar3838 @elonmusk This is in Think mode. Still wrong. https://t.co/d9SOfKqZxo
@TEJINDER_TIFR @ayushdoesphysik Take spacetime to be (1,3). Then there are an additional (4,6) or (6,4) to give (5,9) or (7,7) on the total space of the bundle of metrics.
@HeathHimself Shhh. Have you noticed that you are like close to the only one who caught that? Explain that!
He just made that up. And no one noticed or bothered to check. And it is ALWAYS like this and has been for 40 years. I have no explanation. Itâs completely beyond my comprehension.
Thatâs just it. I keep saying that the community is pretending. But it is actually lying.
Pretending there is no crisis.
Pretending that I am not in and out of physics departments all the time.
Pretending GU makes no predictions. Like in section 11.3 on pages 52 and 53 for example.
And we can quietly be here discussing this while Sean says he has read the draft in front of over half a million people that GU doesnât make any predictions within it. Confident that no one will actually speak out with page numbers and screen shots and say âYou do realize you are lying? Either about having read the draft or about the explicit predictions within it.â
Imagine you send a paper for peer review and you get Sean Carroll as your anonymous reviewer. He says he read it and there is nothing of interest. No Lagrangians. No predictions.
It has been *exactly* like this for 40 years. No one can believe it until they experience it. It has no explanation.
@codingquark @HeathHimself GU is both the most anti-interesting theory in history as well as the only theory that cannot be steelmanned.
Right? But it is always exactly like this.
Everything works backwards from the narrative. And the narrative is that our main job is to quantize a spin 2 field to get quantum gravity. And that our leading theory is thus String Theory / M-Theory and everything else is pointless because we are too many orders of magnitude away from the Planck Scale and there is no guarantee of UV completeness.
Which is absurd. Itâs a story. Itâs not reality.
@niederhaus17566 @HeathHimself If GU were right, that narrative would be wrong. And that narrative is the entire world to those who have devoted their lives to it for >40 years.
So GU must be madness. Which it is not.
Not that you said anything wrong, but let me advance a different perspective. Seanâs work is a an undisclosed *direct* competitor to GU. Attached in a screenshot are the first three lines of his 1990 abstract.
Let me put them in the language of GU.
âThe Chern-Simons Lagrangian has been studied previously in (2+1)-dimensional spacetime, where it is both gauge and Lorentz invariant. We the authors believe that outside of this special dimension, there is a fundamental trade off where we must either violate Ehresmannian Bundle Geometry (Gauge Theory of Particle Theory) or the pointwise Lorentz Invariance of Riemannian Geometry (Einsteinâs General theory of Relativity). It appears to the authors that the right way to construct an analogous term in 3+1 dimensions is to create a Chern Simons-like term which couples the dual electromagnetic tensor to an artificial external four-vector which has no supporting evidence or motivation and violates both Einsteinâs Special and General theories of Relativity. If we take this four-vector to be fixed, the term is gauge invariant but not Lorentz invariant throwing out one of the two pillars of modern physics. We do it anyway, because we believe the above mentioned tradeoff precludes any other approach.â
I personally knew Seanâs co-author Roman Jackiw decently well on this topic as he was at MIT. This was his perspective.
Why is Geometric Unity called Geometric Unity? Because we believe you can sacrifice neither geometry or the field will come to a standstill. Itâs right there in the name. You need to have both Riemannian and Ehressmanian geometry to combine Gravity and Particle theory respectively.
Seanâs work is the DIRECT competitor of this GU theory. And GU sacrificed neither.
Odd right? He looked into a camera and said he read a draft that has a chapter called Lagrangians and said there were no lagrangians. He saw the tables of predictions and said there were no predictions. Etc.
I meanâŚthat was incredible! There are over half a million views on that video too.
@Areness_ @HeathHimself We are in too different games:
Sean is trying to win âThe Vibeâ.
I am trying to get the physics right.
Both are in play.
And I donât initiate these fights. I just return fire when forced.
@matthiasgisslar @HeathHimself Zero accountability. But no one is really reading each others papers which is why this is possible. He wouldnât be able to do this in the world of 60 years ago. So he wouldnât try.
The Vibe is all he cares about.
@matthiasgisslar @HeathHimself BTW I am taking him at his word that he read the paper so he saw the table of contents and he read chapters 9, 10, 11 which are all about Lagrangians, Interactions and Predictions.
@HeathHimself From @grok. Not that Grok is necessarily right or wrong. But interesting none the less. https://t.co/gQ7b5KG5dB
Itâs an interesting question. For 40 years the answer has been no. Precisely, no one capable without an obvious personal ax to grind will do so in public in a collegial fashion if steelmanning is expected and criticism is constructive.
Only trolls, stalkers, non-experts and people willing to lie about factual matters will do so in public. This is a consequence of the fact that the dominant 40+ year narrative is totally contradicted by GU. They correctly know what is on the line. And who it would enrage.
@NeophyteOne @matthiasgisslar @HeathHimself Ha! Ok. Optics is king. https://t.co/lf83NyiwUv
WellâŚfirst of all:
He is quite smart.
He knows a lot.
He isnât stringy.
But his opinion isnât respected so much as he is on the front line protecting much bigger people he doesnât care to contradict.
Said differently, he is protecting his masters at all costs. And his reward is his âsituationâ. He finally has tenure. And he likely deserved it somewhere earlier. He does yeomans work and does it well. And they finally gave him something in his 50s. They treated him badly in my opinion.
Ah. It has two features that general Ehressmanian geometry generally lacks:
I) A distinguished Choice of Connection (The Levi Civita connection and the connections induced from it on associated bundles).
II) Tensor Decomposition coming from the lack of structure groups auxiliary to those of the tangent bundles.
So actually the specific sub geometry of (pseudo)-Riemannian geometry is an exchange of Gauge Symmetry and field content freedom for these two attributes.
Except in totally exotic cases. Like the one in which we oddly happen to liveâŚbut I digress.
@IsZomg @HeathHimself @seanmcarroll Or he read it! Because even 45 seconds gets you to the table of contents. Here is page 3.
This is essentially what all physics people do. And I have no explanation for how this is possible. https://t.co/1NNlu8sK6t
@Areness_ @HeathHimself *two
@Elvhammer @Areness_ @HeathHimself Itâs soâŚcheap. Drama. I hate it.
@growthesque @AISpaceIdeas @matthiasgisslar @HeathHimself That sounds so sophisticated.
Except you forget what subject we are talking about. https://t.co/d6oIfrSeR5
@growthesque @AISpaceIdeas @matthiasgisslar @HeathHimself Thanks for the clarification. But this is for the source code of the universe. Itâs not the French literature department.
@BMcGrewvy @HeathHimself He's quite smart and good at many things. He knows a lot about many different areas. He's a marvelous explainer. He has some creative ideas as well.
Making progress and being courageous and an ethical colleague are difficult for *many* people in a brutal field.
@williamhbhamill @Areness_ @HeathHimself Oh well. It was a good ride. And I would have gotten away with it tooâŚif it werenât for you meddeling kids.
Fascinating exchange gentlemenâŚso odd.
Why donât you also bring up the metaplectic correction and point out that I donât mention that?
Or ordering considerations of classical operators?
That would allow you both to cast even more (unsupported) aspersions.
In truth you are not making a deep point. You are making the quantum supremacy point that we should take classical limits of quantum systems. Not naively quantize classical theoriesâŚlike we used to do when we were succeeding.
Yet the Standard Model stubbornly remains a classical field theory that got quantized. Mysteriously dodging near certain death on all sides. What are the odds!!
Well, there might be deep classical reasons for that improbable outcome that escape the quantum supremacists. I meanâŚitâs just possible.
MORAL: Not everyone is an ignorant idiot just because they think your community is 40+ years stalled groupthinking this exact way. I donât think you are ignorant or stupid. I donât think you are pseudoscientists. Or grifters. Or any of that. I just think you are wrong in your total approach. Thatâs just science. The quantum gravity crowd has demanded a victory parade for 40+ years over all other approaches while it fails to launch year after year after year. That is not science. Iâm sorry. I donât make that rule.
MORAL II: You might want to bring up polarization independence and the difficulty of proving (projective) flatness in the polarization discussion, if you want to be even more condescending. You might also laugh to yourselves that the classical hadron and lepton sectors donât even separately quantize! I donât know why this doesnât occur to you. And finally, you might want to assert that I am ignorant of Groenewoldâvan Hove and have a chuckle about that too. Just a suggestion.
Have fun. And good day, gentlemen. Keep up the high standards and good work.
@quantum_geoff Enjoyed your high quality back and forth. Take care.
@TimHenke9 @quantum_geoff Which is both INCREDIBLE and difficult as it stands. Yes? No? I mean I think I get this.
Like itâs almost a miracle that it works at all: https://t.co/7SF7SQomB3
âBuddyâ
âNow you're getting it! :)â
You guys are just so full of yourselves. What are youâŚin your 20s? Born around AdS/CFT? Am I your problem student finally coming along to âget itâ?
You think I canât understand you! Right? Like you are my teacher or something. Adorable.
I forget what this community is like. You do realize you are still playing with toy models working a million miles away from actual laboratory physics?
Take a look out your window Tim: No quarks. No neutrinos. No generations. You are on the train to NERPH (Not Even Remotely Physics). You just donât know it. Before long you will leave for a job so you can buy a house or retire without ever having made contact with physical reality. As a physics person. Wake up.
Youâre not even in spacetime Tim. You are likely playing with Riemann surfaces. Your âHiggs Fieldsâ are often valued in the adjoint bundles. Your metrics are often Euclidean signature. Your SUSY is likely unsupported by any LHC superpartners. Etc. Etc.
You actually think I donât get it because if I did âget itâ I would certainly agree with you.
Like I canât read what you wrote here or I wouldnât be saying these things:
@TimHenke9 Yet your âPhysicsâ thesis is 153 pages.
Take care, slugger. https://t.co/LMn2in0Bzf
ME on @X: ââŚthe theory of Geometric Quantization can be interpreted as saying that classical Hamiltonian systems are roughly *Self Quantizing*.â
YOU: âGeometric Quantization proves Hamiltonian systems are self-quantizing.â
ME-YOU: âCan Be Interpreted RoughlyâŚnot proved.â
But you are the âscholarâ. Iâm just some guy with Wikipedia access. ;-)
We donât know each other. You wanna cut the nonsense? Or not. Totally up to you.
Well, Iâm no expert. Why donât you lecture me on the differences between mechanics and field theory? Then we can do pre-quantization and full quantization. Then you can dazzle me with all the reasons Quantization is âAn art, not a functorâ.
By the way, how is quantizing actual GR going? Bring me current. Iâm stale.
Again: do you wanna cut the âIâm an expert and you arenât.â crap? Seems like itâs way beyond its sell-date. Unless you gentlemen have a major result in ACTUAL physics I know nothing about. In which case go right ahead.
DESI is waiting after all.
Your choice.
@quantum_geoff @TimHenke9 Happy to take a look. Without the internet energy. Thanks.
Spacetime is the map we have confused for the territory for >100Yrs.
We donât live in spacetime.
Itâs time to put away Strings and Toy models if we are to go beyond General Relativityâs gravity.
The Solar System is an Escape Room.
And itâs time we set out for new worlds.
Scientists and mathematicians urgently need a cutting edge post-Einsteinian Engineering project, the way Mars needs a chemical rocket project.
This is our womb, not our home.
Clouds gather.
Itâs time to leave.
@sluitel34 Bingo.
@sluitel34 GeodesicâŚin GR.
Energy-MomentumâŚin GR.
ExpensiveâŚin GR.
I hear you. We are realistically trapped if we are in GR.
We arenât in GR. That is what I am saying.
@sluitel34 Nope. Everything until the after the dash I totally agreed withâŚbut then it went wrong.
Not sure how to communicate this:
We do *not* live on a smooth 4 dimensional pseudo-Riemannian manifold.
There would be no double slit experiment if we did.
That manifold would have irremovable singularities if we did. And that would mean it wasnât a manifold.
Etc.
Wake up.
It doesnât really matter to me how many people have lost their minds over General Relativity, Gravity, Peer Review, The Quantum, Trolls with PhDs, Strings, h-indices, no-go theorems, AI, media/university hyped Theories of Everything, etc.
Geometric Unity is, I believe, our leading explanation. And it says that while there is a 4 manifold X^4, spacetime is not where we live, and, even then X^4 doesnât have a single grand metric at all points.
We just donât live on spacetime. The map (spacetime) is not the territory (reality).
But you do you.
Choose the best answer.
The last time there was a Theoretical Physicist in his 30s recognized with a Nobel prize for contributing to Fundamental Physics was:
Note, I consider all answers to be outrageous and obvious signs of stagnation. So you canât go just by thatâŚ
@grok @BoomKoning That is not fundamental physics.
@grok @BoomKoning AhâŚ.
@grok @BoomKoning 1957+(39-31) =X
@grok @BoomKoning âThe last time (year) there was a Theoretical Physicist in his 30s *recognized* with a Nobel prize for contributing to Fundamental Physics was:â
@anthonyjuva Not fundamental
@grok @BoomKoning I understand. TD Lee had been recognized in his early 30s. So he was a recognized laureate for 8 years afterâŚwhile still in his 30s. He aged out during 1966. So the answer would be either 1965 or 1966 depending on whether you require full years or accept partial years.
@anthonyjuva Pretty good answer too!
Itâs so crazy that people dispute this. They say âphysics is more specializedâ or âitâs a mature subjectâ. Why?
Because we canât consider the alternatives.
Maybe we are just not as good?
Maybe the field is more dysfunctional?
Maybe we have the wrong leadership?
Those we canât consider.
The obvious ones:
I) We abandoned GUTs mostly. Why? Because we drew the wrong lesson from SU(5) proton decay.
Right Freeway (Grand Unification) Wrong Exit (Compact Simple Lie Grps)
II) We screwed up Supersymmetry by basing it on Minkowski space.
Right Freeway (Graded Lie Groups) Wrong Exit (Spacetime SUSY with fake super partners which dont exist based on supposedlu âinternalâ auxiliary symmetries)
III) And then the massive massive massive screw up was allowing the totalizing madness of âQuantum Gravityâ to take over HEP-TH as if it were âThe Only Game In Townâ and letting its leadership brainwash the up and coming talent into believing that there was one true path. Totally insane.
Right Freeway: GR and SM must be harmonized. Wrong Exit: Catastrophic leadership decisions. âGravity must be quantized and only String Theory and M-Theory can do it. Convert or perish! All mere mortals stand back. We will have this wrapped up in 10 years!! Give us all resources and young talent now.â
@grok @BoomKoning Itâs 1:30pm here. Another time.
Actually, if you parse carefully youâll see that the freeways are fine. We drew the wrong inferences from choosing the wrong exits.
Freeways = Ideas Exits = Instantiations
The scientific method too often has a flaw when put into practice. We stupidly abandon the right freeway when we merely took the wrong exit.
Take care my silicon friend. Chag Sameach.
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