Standard Model
On X[edit]
2009[edit]
Ed Witten has no Nobel Prize.
Now tell me again how this era's physics just feels different because we are too close to it.
So @orzelc the Quetion is: "Is this likely the first era of fundamental physics that could produce a 55+ Witten nonlaureate?"
My friend @orzelc asks: "do you consider Wheeler to be in Witten's class?" Short answer is no. But I never went 1-1 with a young Wheeler.
The nonphysicist disagrees w/ @orzelc. Wheeler lived through the whole build up of the Standard Model. Ed would have pounced repeatedly.
To @orzelc: in your life you'll see Paris and the Taj Mahal. Make sure you meet all the great minds. Go see Ed. He's part human.
The educated are all expected to know Degas from Monet, Sarkozy from Putin, Corfu from Capri. Etc.... But not Fermion from Boson.
With all the physics stories, can't our guys push a 'New Periodic Table' and get more focus on the standard model's 'Elements'?
Does our usual graphic of hadrons, leptons, and bosons need an overhaul? Can we crowdsource that?
I want our particles on the walls of every school next to the periodic table. If you've yet to find the muon, why fund an SSC?
New Topic: A pedagogical critique of the Standard Model of particle theory as seen by a 4 and 7 year old.
4&7YO on the SM: A) Call the last quarks 'Front and Back' because Top and Bottom are the same as Up and Down. But position words 'lie' here.
4&7YO on the SM: B) Don't use 'left & right' handedness differently from up & down to confuse kids. It's really 'mean' because L/R are hard.
4&7YO on the SM: C) Don't call the quarks colored if color comes from light which comes from photons unless gluons feel E-M.
4&7YO on the SM: D) Weak hypercharge and E-M are 'crazy confusing'. If you are going to call one group U(1) call the other group 'We lost'.
4&7YO on the SM: E) Don't say 'weak force' and then 'tell us over and over and over' about gravity being weak. "Why do grown ups do that?"
4&7YO on the SM: F) Anti-red? Anti-green? "Oh man!" Anti-colors are stupid. Also anti-matter should anihilate Uncle-matter.
4&7YO on the SM: G)Leptons should be everything (Bosons too) that doesn't feel strong force if neutral is everything that doesn't feel E-M.
4&7YO on the SM: H) Other than these silly problems....the standard model is the coolest thing in the world because.. it is the world! (4YO)
What I learned about PR&the SM from Kids: we pay a steep price for folksy, misleading or path dependent jargon obscuring regular structure.
The family structure of fermionic matter via the multiplets (quantum numbers) appears easy if false cognates (red, up, left) are given last.
2017[edit]
If I had but one paragraph to recommend as the most important in all of literature, it might well be this one. However, as you might imagine, unpacking it, could take up your entire life.
[There is a 'flaw' in the paragraph. The word 'gauge' should be replaced by 'structure'.]
1/ Interesting esoteric features:
i) refers to Einstein Field Equation for the gravitational force. (only implicitly).
ii) refers to the Yang-Mills-Maxwell Equation for the other forces (only implicitly).
iii) refers to the Dirac Equation for matter (yet again, only implicitly).
2/ The Quantum (e.g. quantum mechanics, quantum field theory, quantum measurement, etc...) is relegated to a *secondary* status below the key geometric insights. This was likely done very subtly when the paper was given in the 1980s, as it was, and remains, a revolutionary idea.
End/ An interpretation is that Witten, the greatest living mathematical physicist, was indicating to us that it was only these *abstractions* that were likely to survive, while the instantiations (i.e. the exact equations we still use) would likely perish.
A msg never recieived.
@StretchMcLurch I would reserve 'gauge group' for the infinite dimensional group of automorphisms of the vector bundle and 'structure group' for the (usually) finite-dimensional structure preserving symmetry group of the individual fibers ( e.g. SU(3)xSU(2)xU(1) of the Standard Model).
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]
Fascinating. I’m curious what @EricRWeinstein‘s reaction would be to this
Inneficiant presentation of the Standard Model Lagrangian.
Thanks! I was trying to harmonize, in my mind, how (1) you described gauge theories on the JRE with (2) the formalizations above and was having a shockingly difficult time
I’ve been talking about unmeetable “Embedded Growth Obligations” or E.G.O.s as the reason why all our expert communities are under unbearable pressure to distort across our institutions. The physics community is *very* trustworthy on the experiment-theory level. Yet even here:
Particle physicists surprised to find I am not their cheer-leader
https://backreaction.blogspot.com/2019/02/particle-physicists-surprised-to-find-i.html?spref=tw
This allows us to use Fundamental Physics as a reference for deception.
These folks are our BEST. They aren’t lying about their experiments. They aren’t lying about agreement w theory. They aren’t wrong about expecting another accelerator imho.
Yet the EGOs make even them fib.
I may disagree with @skdh on whether we should build another multi-billion dollar accelerator. But she is exactly correct that there is no longer any new physics beyond the Standard Model expected to be found. She is telling truths above her pay-grade in the eyes of our leaders.
This is why we need to rescue our experts & institutions. We need to stop asking them to lie to us about their needs for growth. If even high energy physics can’t escape its inability to meet growth expectations, then all expert communities are suspect.
These are our very best.
Ok. This is a weird take. The reluctance to engage foundations of quantum mechanics stemmed from the fact that it was far less generative than research in quantum field thy for decades. When Standard Model QFT stagnated & Quantum Gravity stumbled, the opportunity cost decreased.
Shots fired! "Even Physicists Don’t Understand Quantum Mechanics. Worse, they don’t seem to want to understand it." -- me, in the New York Times @nytopinion #SomethingDeeply
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/07/opinion/sunday/quantum-physics.html
There was an underlying political economy to the issue masked by “shut up & calculate”. I agree that the quantum field theorists were often, and words fail me, dicks about quantum foundations. But it was really an overlay on a rational calculation of expected return from 1928-74.
2020[edit]
The first talk I ever gave revealing the Physics I was actually working on @ Harvard/MIT was at MIT at the insistence of the great Isadore Singer. The one man who *fully* understood what I said came to me afterwards & insisted we speak. He seemed half mad: https://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=11608
His name was Robert Hermann. I couldn't tell what was going on. He was very excited & wanted to be of any help possible. It was almost terrifying as I was not eager to discuss the work. When I told Singer about it, Singer said "That's a high compliment. Do you know who that is?"
I told Is "I know him from an enormous number of self-published books only" Then the great MIT Professor said: "Eric, that is the first man to figure out that quantum field theory is based on the geometry of Fiber Bundles before Simons, Wu, Yang & I did our work."
I was floored.
This odd man, working outside the University system, outside Peer Review, and outside normal publishing was held in awe by the TOP Mathematician at MIT. The system knew who it had lost and revered him as a serious mind; a man with a viable claim to an earth shattering discovery.
It simultaneously filled me with fear & hope. This odd man was not a nut or lunatic. I had spoken to a true maverick & he had seen me like no one else...even beyond my good friend Is Singer. Years later I tried to contact him but he was in an old age home with dementia. All lost.
A missed moment. I was too scared to leave the damned university system behind me with all of its rules and enforced rituals. I knew what he represented: freedom, genius and irrelevancy except for the tiny number of people at the absolute top of the field.
I was too cowardly.
Robert: I never got the chance to "Thank You" for believing in me and your offer of help. My bad. So thank you.
RIP: Robert C. Hermann (April 28, 1931 – February 10, 2020) Maverick and Likely discoverer of the Geometric Basis of the Quantum Field Theory of the Standard Model.
2021[edit]
@elonmusk I would like to have you as a guest on my YouTube channel.
@EricRWeinstein Jordan is stealing your spot
Nah. Jordan’s a friend. Elon is welcome on the Portal of course whenever the time is right, but there’s no competition.
[And, anyway, I’d want to talk perpetuation of human (and cephalopod!) consciousness by means of beyond the Standard Model physics for planetary escape. So...]
In strong GU:
SU(3) x SU(2) x U(1) (Standard Model)
Is contained in U(3)xU(2) inside
Spin(6)xSpin(4) =SU(4)xSU(2)xSU(2)
(Before the more difficult non compact Spin(6,4).)
I’d look first to the extra 1D reductive U(1) if the experiments hold up. Then to Spin(6) x Spin(4):
@EricRWeinstein What are your thoughts on this and how does it fit with Geometric Unity? https://www.bbc.com/news/56643677
As far as Fermion quantum number predictions that could open up new channels, Strong GU makes clear predictions. Explicitly, here would be the next Spin-1/2 particles internal symmetries we should find:
Additionally, Strong GU predicts that there will be 16 Spin-3/2 particles with Standard model symmetries conjugate to the Spin-1/2 generations and gives their ‘internal’ quantum numbers as:
Now, why if GU makes predictions do I appear to some to shy away from them?
A: I don’t.
But string theorists hide the fact that they disconnected themselves from normal science by trying to force everyone else *except* String Theorists into answering hyperspecific challenges.
Lastly: I would caution about getting too far ahead of our experimentalist friends. Let them sort out their confidence and not push them to be too definite prematurely.
But my advice is to watch *relative* predictive responses of those w/ “Beyond the Standard Model” theories. 🙏
P.P.S. Remember that GU rejects three generations. In GU it’s 2 True generations plus 1 imposter. A priori, this could also be an effect of the imposter not being a true generation.
Again I would need QFT colleagues trying to help me see if that is a possible effect.
Let’s try this again. This has almost no engagement. I’m not buying it Twitter.
We are on our way to having physics declared beyond the Standard Model with new matter/force needed. And, this is quite specific as to what Geometric Unity says comes next: https://geometricunity.org
In strong GU:
SU(3) x SU(2) x U(1) (Standard Model)
Is contained in U(3)xU(2) inside
Spin(6)xSpin(4) =SU(4)xSU(2)xSU(2)
(Before the more difficult non compact Spin(6,4).)
I’d look first to the extra 1D reductive U(1) if the experiments hold up. Then to Spin(6) x Spin(4):
Please retweet the quote tweeted thread above to get sound the Twitter algos. 🙏
Unlike many theories, GU can already predict a lot about what comes next and even tells us that we have things wrong about particles we think we already know and understand: Why the Muon g-2 Results Are So Exciting!
2022[edit]
Huh. Let’s see…
General Relativity: Fiber Bundle
Our universe: Derived from SM+GR
So…uh…yeah. So far. Crazy right?
Weird flex, but it checked out.
When all you’ve got is gauge theory, everything looks like a fiber bundle
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: I’m 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
I’d like to point out that we don’t know whether we are functionally trapped in this solar system.
We are with modern science & technology. But we don’t know if it is easy or hard to escape this place. And we won’t know if we stagnate in General Relativity & the Standard Model.
We seem to be rebasing our entire society on aggressive and unquestionable academic theories from the social sciences that appear not to have even existed in 1988.
That seems like a big decision. I mean, I believe in Quantum Field Theory…but I wouldn’t bet the country on it.
I make frequent claims that are counter to the description of the Standard Model of physics. It’s not fun, but it’s tolerated to question things like “How well do we know this to be true? How strong is the evidence? How might this all be wrong or formulated in a misleading way.”
When it became clear that the W Vector Boson might be more massive than claimed, we asked such questions. “Could we be wrong here?”
When I question these other theories, no one ever says that. They just call names. How are we more certain of Whiteness Studies than say Einstein?
First slide of a talk on “Beyond the Standard Model physics” at the UCLA Schwinger-Fest conference on the g-2 muon anomaly. #Schwingerfest #UCLAPhysics
Sums up the mood of many.
Agreement between collaborations whittles away hope for new physics beyond the Standard Model.
Will try to go over to UCLA to hear what my colleague Laurent Lellouch of the BMW group has to say today at #schwingerfest. He is not hopeful there is ANY easy BSM physics to be found. https://t.co/ISm6VKJOGm
News from lattice land; new study of hadronic vacuum polarization contribution to muon g-2 seems to agree with the BMW result. This would reduce the g-2 anomaly significantly https://arxiv.org/pdf/2206.06582.pdf
It’s worth reflecting today on the oddity of Higgs sector within the Standard Model.
Three weeks ago, I heard Nobel Laureate David Gross single out the Higgs field/particle/sector/mechanism as “unnatural”, but what does that mean? Why single the Higgs out? Herein lies a puzzle.
A packed auditorium listens to Peter Higgs within the segment “Brout, Englert and Higgs - memories and reminiscences” at CERN's #Higgs10 symposium today. In 2013, the #NobelPrize for Physics was awarded to François Englert and Peter Higgs.
Live webcast: http://indico.cern.ch/event/1135177
Oddly, sectors that gives us the four fundamental forces are not considered fundamentally unnatural. Nor are the sectors that given us matter. They seem like natural structures, that at worst were “defaced” with mysterious graffiti (internal quantum numbers, multiple copies..).
So why is the Higgs still under suspicion well after it has been found? It’s hard to say exactly. In some sense, you can see the rest of the field theory of the Standard Model as being differential geometric in origin with our best comparison of the Higgs sector being Yang-Mills.
If I started talking jargon about a “sector governed by relativistic second order Euler-Lagrange equations, subject to quartic interactions, and coupling to matter fields…” you wouldn’t be able to tell if it was the natural YangMills sector or supposedly unnatural Higgs sector.
Thus the unnatural nature of the Higgs sector cannot be coming from its analytic description. It is simply that we have learned to see force as coming from geometry we know, while the supremely geometric seeming Higgs comes not from differential geometry, but from our *desire*.
To quote the Architect’s speech, you would think he was describing the life of the Higgs Sector (as Neo) within the Standard Model of Particle Theory (as TheMatrix). The Higgs Mechanism is the remainder of an unbalanced (chiral Weak nuclear force) equation forbidding all mass.
But, of course, The Matrix wasn’t about The Architect. It was about Neo. Neo was protagonist, not the Architect.
And the Higgs isn’t a mere differential geometric anomaly. Nor is it unnatural. It’s just not *understood* as geometry. Yet, that is.
Do stay tuned…
Happy 4th all!
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 ⭕️. The spacetime ⭕️ rotates the particle’s sympathetically.
The charge on the particle is the gearing ratio of the spacetime ⭕️ with the particle’s ⭕️. It’s like a bicycle where the pedal gear⚙️ is the spacetime ⭕️ and the particle ⭕️ is the rear wheel ⚙️. Positive charge is clockwise drive. Negative charge is counterclockwise.
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.
@TEMguru That U(1) is the circle at every point in space time. It’s minimal gauge coupling via a character is the chain between the gears. C’mon.
Uh. That’s *exactly* how it’s done. There is a principal U(1) (circle) bundle. But it isn’t the U(1) that you refer to which is weak-hypercharge. And the analogy makes perfect sense based on internal quantum number
\chi_n:U(1) —> Aut(C)
before tensoring with the spinor bundles.
Let me just say that there is a community of academics who throw a lot of nasty anti-collegial scientific shade that just isn’t scientifically accurate. Don’t know what to do about that. These people try to cast a spell of Fear Uncertainty and Doubt.
I stand by what I say here.
@sluitel34 Let me help you then. You have a group:
G=SU(3) x SU(2) x U(1)
And a homomorphism:
rho: G —> U(16)
So
Spin(1,3) x G —> SL(2,C) x U(16)
represents on C^2 tensor C^16, and its conjugate, to give one generation of the Fermions (with Right handed neutrinos assumed). With me?
@sluitel34 Now the U(1) ⭕️ of the original description lives inside the SU(2) x U(1) via bundle reduction or symmetry breaking as you see fit. The gearing ratio I mentioned is simply the integer indexing all irreducible representations of U(1) which are all 1-dimensional characters. Clear?
@sluitel34 Every U(1) character can be visualized as two circular gears connected by a chain with some integer ratio of the circumferences. Negative integer representations are ones with the chain having a half twist. The trivial representation has no chain at all.
Hope that helps.
@sluitel34 @FrankWilczek Not true at all. @FrankWilczek correctly points out that there is something super compelling about SO(10) Grand Unified Theory. Both space time and internal representations are spinorial if this is true.
I just don’t know from what position you’re speaking so authoritatively.
@sluitel34 @FrankWilczek This should be in any book that discusses the standard model via groups, representations, bundles, etc.
It really depends. Being totally honest:
“String Theory” has done a *tremendous* amount of good while “String Maximalism” has done even more harm.
If the String Theorists who led the movement were to undo some of the damage by admitting what happened, it’d be a major positive.
Here is where I respectfully disagree with my colleague @skdh. You can’t ‘get rid of string theory’. String-like objects are natural and have an unbelievably rich and beautiful interlocking mathematics. The beguiling beauty isn’t 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 doesn’t 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 “toy physics”. Models that aren’t in any way real. You now have “particle physicists” at the end of their careers who have never worked with anything like a particle and can’t remember them.
So, here’s 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, I’d be up for having ST as a major theory. But without that I’m 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 ‘80s 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 won’t survive this suspension of collegiality, decency and self-critical behavior. We need to go back to real physics. 🙏
@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 I’m willing to hire somebody to put together the data after 1984. It’s not usually contested.
@DontsitDJ @martinmbauer I wasn’t 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 haven’t seen much interaction and he has written some things I liked.
@DontsitDJ @martinmbauer I love a good critique. It’s hard to find. Most people out here develop a side hustle in interpersonal drama. I try not to.
@martinmbauer I don’t know which version of “The Field” 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 wasn’t 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 wouldn’t disagree with me.
Physics in 1980: “I’m trying to grasp why nature has 3 generations of chiral fermions with SU(3)xSU(2)xU(1) internal symmetry.”
Physics Today: “Remind me again what the internal quantum numbers are? I do quantum gravity so it’s not something I’ve worked with since my QFT class.”
What has string theory done to become the poster child of failed physics? It hasn’t 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 world’s 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 isn’t the problem. String culture is poisonous to science.
String theory, like love, means never having to say your sorry. Or mistaken.
It’s the January 6 problem…but in science. But where the physics versions of Mike Pence often got fired for not going along. 🙏
*you’re
P.S. “It hasn’t even failed” because it can’t fail. So far as I can see, it can never fail. In the minds of the faithful, It’s unable to fail because it *has* to be the way forward. It’s hard to explain what’s 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 hasn’t even failed.
@DrBrianKeating I am not aware that the standard model and GR “work fine”: 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 that’s what she means, I say it’s wrong.
One of the questions about UFOs that needs to be asked, and that I don’t hear much about, is: “Has the US government built fake UFOs?”
UFO people are so focused on whether there are real UFOs that they don’t 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 I’m 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, I’m 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, it’s a big deal. Everything changed in the early 70s. It’s impossible to say how much. The moment the Mansfield amendment came in, physics began to stagnate. And “Quantum Gravity” destroyed our culture of science. We don’t even whisper about its “Anti-Gravity” 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 don’t have time. Thx.
2023[edit]
Discussion of the future of theoretical physics seems like a game of "Intellectual Keepaway."
Its the same group of mandarins who predicted LHC SuperSymmetry, Mini-Black holes, SU(5) Grand Unification, String Theory, Q-Gravity would work.
What do our *heretics* say instead?
Past ACP President Michael Turner and Maria Spiropulu in conversation with @overbye of @nytimes discuss the future of Physics! #physics #particlephysics #spacetime #stringtheory #physicists
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/24/science/physics-cosmology-astronomy.html
For the moment, let me entertain a wild idea. Truly wild.
Here goes. What if the problem is our leadership. What if we asked
"Who believe String Theory wouldn't work?"
"Who never claimed LHC SUSY was imminent?"
"Who never said Proton Decay was going to be found?"
Etc.
Said differently, what if our leadership is brilliant but SPECIFICALLY untrustworthy in identifying the path forward. What if 1000 David Gross & Ed Wit1ten Keynotes setting the agenda are the problem? What if Lenny Susskind is not correct sbout non-string people wasting our time.
What if we *excluded* people who are consistently wrong about the path forward and asked:
"Are there any OTHER ideas? Not Strings. Not Loops. Not Asymptotic Safety. Not Simple Compact GUTs. Not Quantum Computing. Not Black Hole Information. Not Technicolor. Not Amplitudes."
Why is being older with a long track record of not making progress the way we select our leadership?
What if for 3 years we tried to ask: IS THERE ANYONE ELSE OUT HERE WITH OTHER IDEAS?
I know. It's stupid. It's crazy. It's self-serving. But it has been 49yrs+11Mos of this.
Look, we could just hold a conference: "Fundamental Physics: Can't *Anybody* Here Play This Game?"
David, Ed, Maria, Cumrun, Nati, Lenny, Juan, Lee etc. could be respondents giving constructive feedback. We would then at least learn why we are where we are. But this is nuts.
So I will say it from outside the field. I think the problem is that we aren't actually doing fundamental physics and havevn't been for decades. I want a survey of ALL the OTHER paths. It would probably cost a few hundred thousand dollars to fix this field. But this is bizarre.
Let's survey the heretics who aren't even worth talking to...and then we can go right back to tiny progress when we're done, following Strings, Loops, SUSY, Standard GUTS & Asymptotic Safety all over again. At least we will know WHY we are stuck.
Wouldn't a scientist ask the question:
"What if it is the leadership?"
Wouldn't that be a logical scientific question? Wouldn't that be a testable hypothesis? Why can't we ask that question as scientists? Why is that hypothesis excluded after *50* yrs?
[End Of Heresy]
You should come up@with a business plan that includes numbers on how to fix physics.
Not a plan for profits, but a plan for whatever milestones you lay out.
You talk about how people don’t give money towards this, but they need to see a biz plan first.
Start with a conference: 25 (leading heretic) speakers and an equal number of mandarins. 4 days.
Videography. Mandarins write up their critiques. Publish proceedings.
@DrBrianKeating Let’s find out. You’re an experimentalist after all. Why not hold an inverted conference as an experiment. If we CANT hold it, that’s our proof right there. If we can, we can see if everyone claiming to have a different path collapses. Then we could prove that there are no ideas!
But heretics need to know basics of GR and the standard model. No loopy astrology, finger painting or spirituality.
Today May be Considered the 50 year Anniversary of the Stagnation of Particle Physics.
Today Feb 1 marks the appearance of Kobayashi & Maskawa's englargment of the Cabibo Angle to the three generation 3x3 CKM matrix.
That should be cause for celebration. So let us celebrate!
Unfortunately, it also marks the end of what we can be certain actually is physics.
Imagine if Elton John's "Crocodile Rock" was still the #1 song on Billboard's Hot 100 & Tony Orlando and Dawn were singing "Tie a Yellow Ribbon". That, in a nutshell, is fundamental phsyics.
To be clear, It is not as if there are no Nobel Laureates recognized for fundamental discoveries in particle theory left. I believe we are down to the last 8. Half of them are in their 70s. One in his 80s. Three are nongenarians. Yes. It's that bad. And we're not honest about it.
When you hear about "Peer Review" in this field, you have to understand that the field stopped working. Without nature telling us, we don't actually know who the physicists are any more. We have no idea who is a fundamental physicist. All we know is that what we do doesn't work.
So I am celebrating today by pointing out the obvious: maybe it isn't a good idea to have people who haven't made contact with actual fundamental physics telling everyone else what they must and must not do to be members of a club that no longer works according to normal science.
What fundamental physics really is, is (approximately) captured by the table below. In short, if someone is below the age of 70, they may have proven their brilliance and mathematical ability, but they have not proven any ability to make contact with reality as theorists.
I will point out that our experimentalists are in FAR better shape. The massive nature of neutrinos, discovery of gravitational waves, the Higgs field, Intermediate Vector Bosons, Accelerating Expansion of the Universe/Dark Energy are all major successes over the last 50 years.
So what went wrong? I will be talking about my understanding of the stagnation this year at a different level. But the single greatest threat to fundamental physics in my estimation is something called "Quantum Gravity" which was really born 70 years ago around 1953.
To put it bluntly, it is not just that Quantum Gravity doesn't work. It's that you can't comfortably question Quatnum Gravity because the failed investment is on a scale that I think is difficult for us to contemplate. It includes String Theory, Loop Quantum Gravity, AdS/CFT etc.
Next Year, will be 40 years of failure for modern StringTheory to ship a product. To be clear and STEELMAN the argument for strings, it *is* a remarkable framework. It is REAL math. It teaches us things no other framework has.
But, it *destroyed* the culture of honest physics.
We spent almost 80% of this time being told that ST was a 'Piece of 21st Century Physics that fell into the 20th Century.'
Uh. Bullshit. That is an excuse. It's not clear that it's physics at all.
It's a "Failed piece of 20th Century Physics still hanging around in the 21stC".
It is time to hold conferences dedicated to the issues of groupthink in physics. Why wont our leading voices admit failure? We don't know. Previous generations wanted their students to succeed. But String Theory is dominated by boomers who seem oblivious to danger.
If we're going to truly wrestle w/ dark matter, or dark energy, or UAP that supposedly violate our laws of physics (e.g. General Relativity) we can't afford a leaders projecting their fears that THEY have wasted their lives, credibility and students careers on "Quantum Gravity".
So by all means, let's celebrate. But it is time to ask new voices for wild, dangerous and irresponsible ideas. Peer review failed. Quantum Gravity Failed. Community norms failed. And soon there will be NO ONE LEFT proven to be able to play this game. So what do we do?
We need to spend perhaps 5yrs asking "If the leaders have not succeeded for FIVE DECADES in moving beyond the Standard Model, then why are they leading this field and directing the resources, research, and path forward? What if we listened to those who the leadership push aside?"
As someone who has tried to ask this question, I can tell you that mostly the big programs have granted themselves a science equivalent of 'dipolmatic immunity' from the standards they impose on their intellectual competitors. But from today forward, we must end that game.
Let's put resources in new avenues, theories and theorists that have yet to fail. The next time you hear a theorist telling you about quantum gravity, the multiverse or String theory or Loops or Supersymmetry or AdS/CFT, etc. Ask them the following dangerous question:
"If you haven't succeeded in 50-70 years, what other theories would be viable if we relaxed the standards you have imposed on your competitors given that your theories do not seem to work? What if your Quantum Gravity were subjected to such standards? Would QG be quackery?"🙏
Let's honor those who tried before by bringing the same energy they once brought to the attempt to learn our place in the universe. Happy to be corrected. But this is an emergency if we're ever going to go beyond chemical rockets and use physics to take our place among the stars.
"I remember when rock was young...🎶"
Let's get that energy back, by any means necessary.
In studio Episode of @Into_Impossible with Dan coming soon where we discussed his epic 🧵. And Martin and Eric and Turok and Sabine get shoutouts! Stay tuned…
Hard to tell whether this is good faith, honestly. Some grains of truth buried here, but you have to ignore many developements to end up w this view.
I'll leave this here https://x.com/nu_phases/status/1598331715340054528
But Martin, with Eric in my experience, it’s always good faith… l’Shem Shamayim as we say!
I’m much more concerned by brilliant theorists who…and I am not kidding at all…refer to the Standard Model as “Oh, I vaguely remember this from graduate school QFT class.” That is an unbelievable development. People who have literally forgotten the field content of reality.
And I don’t want to get rid of them. I want us to go back to real physics. I want us to stop pretending we live in anti-de Sitter Space or that space time SUSY is just out of reach.
It’s basic to the culture of science. Which unfortunately is not QG culture.
Visited UCSD physics yesterday, when my colleague @DrBrianKeating suggested a collegial debate on the state of fundamental physics (i.e. what lies beyond the Standard Model & General Relativity) with a top theorist he admires, @nu_phases. Check it out!
I don’t have the full list, but the perspectives of @skdh, @notevenwrong, @witten271, @garrettlisi, @CumrunV, @bgreene, @davidekaplan, @stephen_wolfram were discussed. Happy to correct anything I/we got wrong.
And please retweet the top tweet if you found this interesting! 🙏
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. It’s tempting.
What just happened isn’t data. It’s 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 it’s not science yet.
As I‘ve been saying, there is so much deliberate NatSec BS out here that our own scientists are being propagandized. We’re drilling holes in our own scientists’ lifeboat. Last time we saw this it was virologists/immunologists/epidemiologists being gaslit. Now it’s 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 I’d 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, let’s 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 let’s talk.
If you want to know whether there are biological interstellar visitors here observing us, the short answer is “Almost *certainly* not if they are using our current stagnant non-progressing theories of physics.”
Let’s finally get serious about this whacky subject? Thanks. 🙏
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.
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.
Thought experiment. Assume the final theory exists, is agreed upon in 2024, and has nothing to do with String Theory.
How would historians account for the monomania of the last 40 years? As a cult? A scientific mass delusion? The political economy of a failed generation? A hoax?
The shortest chapter ever in a Physics book.
From "Why String Theory?" by Joseph Conlon, CRC Press.
Alternate thought experiment. 20 years from now there has been no progress beyond the standard model of particle physics. @FrankWilczek is the last living particle theorist to have made traditional contact with the physical world. What is a leading particle theorist in 2044, when no one has made progress in 70 years? Will we even know if anyone is really doing physics at that point when there are no traditionally successful theorists left but one?
“String Theory is absolutely…the most likely to be true set of ideas about what sits at the intersection of the Standard Model and quantum gravity.”
I can confirm this indeed blows up ones notifications.
But, in case of doubt or misunderstanding, string theory is absolutely the deepest, most consequential and most likely to be true set of ideas about what sits at the intersection of the Standard Model and quantum gravity.
Yes, that is precisely what I think.
If you said “electrons are absolutely fractional spin fields in the standard model” I wouldn’t disagree with that statement. It isn’t at all about what you think. It is a true statement.
Here you are assuring lay people about what is absolute about String Theory within physics.
My responsibility is to make accurate statements (and yes, everything is my (professional) opinion).
As the book quote indicates, I try not to overclaim. But: that string theory and the complex of ideas are around it are more serious than any competitors, IMO objectively true.
“IMO objectively true”
As with so many of these String Theoretic claims I have no idea what that means.
So for example if I make an argument that this is NOT objectively true, do you fall back on the idea that it was opinion?
“Objectively, Electrons are field theoretic at observed energy scales.” My opinion doesn’t enter into it. The claim that it is objectively true eliminates the role of opinion.
Does that mean that all who disagree with you and your String community are “not serious” as per the above?
The arguments become more convincing/objective, the more one can use graduate-level theoretical physics in them.
But in 280 characters and no equations, it’s hard to develop these
In a book, easier to do so.
I don’t think that’s the issue Joseph. At all.
Feynman, Glashow, Wilczek never found them objectively or absolutely compelling.
String theorists like Friedan have written harshly of the Failures.
And what you are saying about subjective opinion and absolute objective fact doesn’t make sense. I mean you can just see that, no? Not trying to be mean here. But I don’t see what you are claiming is absolute and objective beyond your opinion.
What you seem to be saying is the usual trope: “The more you understand about the difficulty of quantizing a spin 2 gravitational field the more you appreciate how string theory has taught us so much about how it is to be done eventually, and that there is no remotely comparable framework for doing so!”
Again. Not trying to be combative. Feel free to correct me if I have this wrong.
It is not objective or absolutely true that String Theory is our best theory. In fact, it has become, 40 years after the anomaly cancelation, our most thoroughly explored idea. No other path has been picked over like this one.
Waited a few days. I don’t think you are making sense about your *opinion* that it is *objectively* and *absolutely* dominant. And that is the problem. String theorist deliberately leave others with the impression that they are following something scientific, objective and absolute. But it is really just a shared subjective hunch. And this does science and physics a terrible disservice.
The question about where string theory stands in comparison to other approaches to quantum gravity. I think it objectively true that string theory has given lots of stuff that is useful/foundational to cognate areas (eg QFT) than any other approach to quantum gravity. 1/n
Holography and AdS/CFT is the clearest example but there are others.
I think this is objectively, uncontroversially true — once people have the background in theoretical physics that they understand topics like QFT on a technical level and have some real sense of the subject.
But most people (reasonably) don’t have this background. So I preface this with ‘my opinion’ in recognition that the core and guts of the argument, and the real reasons behind it, are not accessible to most people who read these tweets.
This is not ideal - but while saying ‘go buy my book’ is a slight cop out, the book is my full argument at a level as non-technical as possible of why string theory has the position it does DESPITE the lack of direct experimental evidence for it
Joseph. Imagine I were to temporarily stipulate to the idea that of all the known approaches to quantizing the metric field that leads to gravitation, String Theory is by far the most advanced. I don’t think that is unreasonable whether or not it is true. It’s a solid argument.
I don’t think that is the relevant argument anymore. So you are framing it in such a way that “String Theory” is the answer to a question you formulated: “Of all the approaches to quantizing gravity which haven’t worked, which is the best?”
My argument is with that framing.
The problem I have is with string theorists framing of the field and its issues and questions. I think String Theory is dangerous for this reason.
Try these instead:
A) Which approach is most likely to successfully alter or explain the Standard model?
B) Same as A) but for General Relativity?
C) Which approach is most likely to shed light on why there are 3 generations of observed fermions?
D) Which approach is most likely to shed light on why the generations are chiral?
E) Which large community most regularly makes sweeping claims that it later must privately invalidate while publicly claiming a new revolution?
F) Which large community is most likely to ignore other ideas?
G) Which is the most aggressive large community despite no proven connection to observed reality?
H) Which community is most likely to spend all their careers working on toy models with the wrong dimensions, signatures or field content claiming that we are building up the toolkit?
I) Which community is least likely to own up to the disaster of past public declarations about accessible energy SUSY?
J) Which approach has been the most investigated and thus thoroughly picked over for low hanging fruit?
K) Which approach best explains the odd nature of a seemingly fundamental Higgs sector?
L) Which approach is most dogmatic that “Quantum Gravity” rather than “Unification” or “Gravitational Harmony” or “Incremental understanding” etc. *Is* the path forward when we don’t even know if gravity is quantized as we expect it at all in models beyond relativitistic QFT?
M) Which approach comes closest to explaining the origin of the internal symmetry structure group of the Standard model?
N) Which approach comes closest to explaining why there appear to be 16 particles in a generation with their observed internal quantum numbers?
O) Which approach is most at risk of invoking “The Landscape” of impossibly many theories to test after saying that the power of the approach was that there were only 5 possible theories?
P) Which community brags about “postdiction” the most because it has failed at predictions?
Q) Which community is least collegial and most insulting to colleagues outside the approach?
R) Which HEP theory community consumed the most in resources over the last 40 years?
S) Same for brains?
T) Same for producing PR and puff pieces?
U) Which community has broken the most trust with lay people in HEP theory?
V) Which community substitutes mathematics results for results about the actual physical world we live in when talking to the public?
W) Which community is most likely to restore the culture of successful physics research to HEP theory?
X) Which not yet successful approach has been most self-critical?
Y) Which community is most respectful in absorbing the results by others with proper credit?
Z) Which community relentless makes its argument by mis framing the question as if the question were simply “What is our deepest collection of ideas of how to quantize a massless spin 2 gravitational field?” when the previous 25 framings are all arguably more important after 39 years without contact with physics?
That is why this conversation doesn’t work. It is what magicians call “Magicians Choice”: the lay person is lead into thinking they are free to disagree. But the question you keep asking is DESiGNED to make it look like String Theory is our top community.
Joseph: it failed in the terms it gave for taking over. It chose the terms. It said what it was and what it was going to do. And it flat out failed in EXACTLY those terms it chose when it said “Hold my beer!” back in 1984.
To sum it up: when string theorist are no longer in a position to keep changing the goal posts set by the physical world, isn’t it the case that from A-Z maybe string theory is not being honest?
Again. Not personal to you. At all. But it is not a fair move to say “It’s the best yet-to-succeed approach to quantum gravity.” in front of the public. No?
🙏
When it comes to physics “Beyond the Standard Model” it is always a cliff hanger. Doesn’t matter how many times the anomalies collapse under further scrutiny.
Excited for this. Either way.
The Muon g-2 experiment will announce new results in a scientific seminar on August 10! 🧲💫👀
The seminar will be streamed on the Fermilab YouTube channel. For more information visit: https://muon-g-2.fnal.gov #gminus2 #physics
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 “Wu Yang dictionary”.
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. ]
The number of new particles is a very bad indicator for how predictive a theory is
There‘re one-parameter models that predict infinitely many new particles (e.g. SU(N) and models with many, many parameters that predict no new particles (e.g mod gravity)
1/2
If anyone tells you a theory is more or less motivated by counting particles, they either don’t understand this argument or they hope you don’t
2/2
So let’s talk about the best new theories with new particle predictions.
What are your favorite top 5 theories formulated over say the last 25 years ranked by well motivated particle predictions just as you see it Martin? Then as the community sees them? Thx.
I’m not truly understanding even though I think I follow everything you wrote. I sense the word “agnostic” is doing a lot of heavy lifting in not giving me 5 modern theories.
One way of making sense of what you just posted is that there isn’t enough information in the Wilsonian EFT framing to want to worry about any particles/fields/dof that aren’t strictly needed to close the observed physics off within the current energy regime. Is that what you mean??
If so…yikes.
This is basically EFT in a nutshell though
Many UV theories map to the same set of operators at low energy ("agnostic" but not info-free). The latter correspond (in principle) to observables which, if seen in experiment, could be used to limit the underlying space of UV theories
Nice to meet you.
I am not unaware of this…but I am shocked by the *change* in the interpretation of EFT during the String Era.
40 years ago, the Standard Model was considered geometrically beautiful but mysterious. “SO(10)” was an example of how to get a 3 factor reductive Lie group and a bizarre series of internal quantum numbers to become elegant. In short, the SM was an EFT, but not a random one. It was a coherent idea that pointed the way towards its own preferred completion/extension. Oddly, String phenomenology recognized this.
Then as the field spun off into mathematically informed medieval theology, the SM started to be seen as ugly. A random EFT without a preferred extrapolation towards its Planckian revelation. Seeing the SM as in anyway distinguished became seen as “not getting Wilson’s point” analogous to archaic views on strong reductionism.
This is such a disaster to think this is what Martin means. It’s the physics version of Seligman’s “Learned Helplessness”‘theory.
Great to meet you too! Been following your work for a very long time 🙂
I'm not old enough to have witnessed this change, but I *am* old enough to have seen similar dynamics around SUSY in the LHC era (and for many of the same reasons), so your story fits for me.
Longer discussion. But SUSY and GUTs both got associated with particular instantiations of general ideas by zealots.
The SU(5) and MSSM variants failed and then, oddly, the community moved to a dysfunctional interpretation. If no observed SU(5) proton decay then downgrade ALL GUTs. Similar for E-W scale super partners.
The community is just bizarrely intellectually dysfunctional now. Strings has an infinite leash and the other good ideas are ignored with this monstrous new EFT defeatism as the new sophistication. I still can’t believe this is our world.
In the passing of Peter Higgs, we lost one of our last living connections to the Lagrangian of the Standard Model.
Peter Higgs was involved with both lines 3 & 4 of this “Recipe for the Universe.”
The level of the Higgs field φ becomes the as-if mass for the matter ψ in the mysterious ψy ψ φ term on line 3. This goes under the name “Yukawa coupling” if you wish to look it up.
How do you get that level (“vacuum expectation value” or VEV) to generate a positive mass m and not to be φ =0? That’s the job of the V(φ) term on line 4 which goes under the name “Mexican Hat potential” to induce “spontaneous symmetry breaking” for those googling.
Lastly, once you give life to this field φ which bears Higgs’ name, you have to animate it so that its excitations know how to move as waves. This is the job of the | D φ | ² “Kinetic Term” at the beginning of line 4. You can Google “Klein-Gordon Lagrangian” here.
I have recently heard commentators like @michiokaku and @seanmcarroll opine that our Standard Model is “Ugly as Sin” or “It looks ugly. It’s both ugly and beautiful…It’s ungainly.” respectively.
I think that such physicists are *quite* wrong in that, but that is not the point here as I can guess how they see this. And in large measure they aren’t talking about lines 1 and 2 as “ugly”, which pretty much everyone agrees are beautiful as they come directly from Dirac, Maxwell and Einstein, and are present in the original Relativistic Quantum Field Theory (RQFT) called Quantum Electro-dynamics (or QED).
So to simplify matters, lines 1 and 2 are sort of canonically beautiful and appear so to essentially everyone. Lines 3 and 4 governing the Higgs field (with their expansion to 3 forces across 3 generations of matter) are what divide us. The only thing that forces them on us is the weak force and it’s bizarre decision to act only on “Left handed matter and right handed anti-matter.”
And so the legacy of Peter Higgs is tied up in the sui generis nature of the weak nuclear force and what makes the Standard Model “new” beyond QED.
I’m sad that I never met the man. But I believe what comes next is not String Theory, but instead a recognition that the last two lines of this Lagrangian point the way to seeing the Standard Model as the classic “Elegant Swan” confused by many for an “Ugly Duckling” due to the misappraisal of its Higgs sector as if it were just an ad hoc mass mechanism. RIP.
Peter Higgs, after whom the Higgs boson was named, has left a remarkable impact on particle physics. The field changed forever on July 4, 2012 when the Higgs boson was discovered, cementing the final piece in the Standard Model of particle physics.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/09/science/peter-higgs-dead.html
Interesting. If that’s what’s 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? 🙏
Yet another cut would be:
If the caption were instead reversed to read “All that is right with theoretical physics in one simple graph.”, what would that look like visually?
I’m genuinely super curious to learn about what you’re most excited, as I realized I don’t 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 isn’t asking whether spacetime is quantum or classical just common sense? After all, general relativity (GR) - our theory of gravity and spacetime - is special. It isn’t a gauge theory, and gravity isn’t 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 didn’t 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. It’s not the main issue. A red hearing that throws us off following the scent. It’s a distraction that should have fooled almost no one who was thinking for his or her self.
UC Berkeley Prof. Edward Frenkel @edfrenkel is one of the world's great mathematical minds. He has just decided to launch a video-podcast called AfterMath.
This is just beginning today and should mature and be amazing.
In my opinion, knowing Ed as I do, It certainly has the potential to change everything in the space of high level science communication around both Mathematics and Physics (Particularly Quantum Field Theory).
Within mathematics Ed is unusually approachable, with collaborative work across film, art, literature, philosophy and psychology. He and I have known each other since Harvard snatched him from the Soviet Union at its bitter end to come to our math department. Years later we reconnected and started going on various adventures in the US and abroad. I believe I even had a breakthrough in my own work when we even spent an entire surreal week completely covered in alkaline dust arguing about cinema and particle theory in a tiny two man tent, with most details mercifully lost to history, vodka and the Burning Man playa.
In any event, it is very uncommon for research mathematicians to use words like 'Genius', but that is probably how Ed struck us American graduate students in the department at the time; an always smiling Russian immigrant of few English words, who seemed to understand everything across the hardest fields almost instantly. My recollection was that it took him around one year to get a PhD. Something like that.
Ed has since matured into a fine author and public speaker with fantastic command of American English. While he is just getting started on his chanel, he already brings up a great point in his first video that I don't think I ever fully considered and just discussed with him last night: mathematics is not communicated or learned through sensory input. We can build visual models or use symbols, but the actual structures we discover are not sensory in nature. And that this leads to disorientation because in some sense they are built inside the mind without any experience of them having come in (via our senses) from the outside world.
Subscribe to @edfrenkel on @X and on his YouTube channel. This is likely to eventually wend its way up to the most beautiful but otherwise inaccessible science content that we almost never get in the public sphere, presented by a top researcher (rather than a popularizer) at the height of his powers.
I want to end on a personal note despite the dangers of being 'real' on X.
When a mathematics or physics PhD leaves academic research departments behind to work on research on their own, it is very difficult to function. It is almost impossible.
For the last 10-15 years, Ed Frenkel has been like a one man research department for me to talk about Differential Geometry, Representation Theory, Algebraic Topology/Homotopy Theory, Particle Theory of the Standard Model, General Relativity, Geometric and Quantum Field Theory, Lie Theory, Differential Topology, Elliptic Operators, Category theory, Spinorial Algebra, etc.
Whatever I have needed to discuss across a very broad range of topics, Ed has been able to meet me. I speak from experience: other than another man named David Kazhdan (a coauthor of Ed's), I have not seen this easy ability to switch contexts at a personal level. Edward is not just a remarkable mind, but an extraodinary individual, and friend at multiple different levels.
Ed: Congratulations. I couldn't be more excited for you brother. Looking forward.
I'd be happy to discuss the merits of this claim.
"News Story: Physicists ‘Bootstrap’ Validity of String Theory NYU and Caltech scientists develop innovative mathematical approach to back existence of long-held framework explaining all physical reality"
Certain strategies, used in politics, are also used by various angry scientists who have found ways to made it big in the media. These strategies are effective. But they must indeed be translated, just as Sam suggests here. https://x.com/Samuel_Gregson/status/1870158470575427620
I fail to see the relation between my comment and yours, Eric. I was hardly referring to the topics that you mentioned, and neither was Sam.
Hi Matt.
Sam regularly portrays himself as outraged about 'angry' or 'dissatisfied' or otherwise 'upset' voices and insinuates that they are turning to sensationalism. I furnished two (of very many) cases that folks like Sam would find absolutely outrageous if the real concern was damaging science with sensationalism, and which cause *far* more harm to fundamental physics than independent voices like Sabine Hossenfelder.
SG is a brand on line. A guy who tries to make the establishment seem 'edgy'...often by targeting people who are raising the real issues with the institutions.
The big problem for fundamental physics is institutional sensationalism, excuse-making, and cheerleading for failing programs as well as anti-collegial behavior of the form that SG regularly tries to turn into disparagment for entertainment.
Many of those independent critical voices are actually focused on *institutional* sensationalism particularly surrounding outrageous claims for particle theory, quantum gravity and String Theory/m-theory.
I generally view your public outreach work very favorably, communicating the beauty of the Standard Model, and to a lesser extent GR. Within research, you mostly seem to be trying to connect String Theory and other speculative frameworks to things like experimental accelerator signatures. Despite my distaste for 4-decades of anti-scientfic String Triumphalism and dissembling from the Susskinds, Wittens, Motls, Grosses and others, I have never associated that with you.
Gregson clearly has a problem. He is strawmanning colleagues talking about a VERY real problem of denial, and anti-collegial behavior which is anethma to science. I may not agree with @skdh's critique (this is no secret to her), but even I can steelman her points.
I feel like people such as yourself, David Tong, @3blue1brown, etc are doing amazing work. I was simply disappointed to see a leading voice of high level outreach join a toxic voice gleefully targeting a colleague. I thought 'Perhaps Matt is not be aware of SG's MO."
I'm just not going to put up with this quietly again after all the sadistic cruelty Sabine has been through from the Lubos Motl's of the world while her community largely stayed silent or laughed along.
SG can man up and take Sabine on if he likes. But the man has an anti-collegial strawman problem followed by blocking.
Sabine Hossenfelder does not propose any alternative. Critics makes no sense until there is alternative solution.
Some of us propose such solutions.
Some of us do not.
Those that propose other solutions are targeted for self-promotion.
Those that do not are told "You have no alternatives."
Woit is an excellent example of someone who was told he was barren when he was a pure critic...only to then be told he was a self-promoter when he had something to say about the structure bundle of CP^3 being potentially the low energy electro strong SU(3)xU(1) and the oddity of the chirality of the weak force being either fully on or off rather than merely conjugate V vs \bar{V}.
It's time to stop pretending this is about physics. It's about protecting a 4 decade MASSIVE screw up pretending that there is only one game in town.
2025[edit]
There is a tell when listening to physics folks as to whether they’re captured by the 1984 Quantum Gravity virus.
They either say:
A) “General Relativity has to be reconciled with the Standard Model.”
or
B) “General Relativity has to be reconciled with Quantum Theory.”
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 “*THE* problem is that the classical theory of Gravity must be quantized.” 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 “We have two specific physical theories that don’t 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.”
OPINION: It made absolutely no sense to have closed the case in 1984…and after 40 years of continuous failure, the issue is the leadership of the field. Opening the case and saying “GR 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??”
This is like saying “Maybe COVID came from NIAID/NIH/DTRA/EcoHealth/Daszak/Fauci/Collins/Baric…can we consider that??”
And the answer is “No”.
But that is why we are stuck in my opinion. We are stuck because we can’t 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 can’t get to COVID origins for the same reason we can’t get to String Theory origins as “the only game in town.”
The imposed absolutist central narrative is simply a lie.
One man’s opinion.
I don't see the difference. Seems to me one could interpret B the same way you are interpreting A.
“The top priority is that the Standard Model has Internal Symmetry while General Relativity does not.”
“The top priority is that the Standard Model is a full Gauge Theory while General Relativity has no gauge invariance.”
“The top priority is that GR allows contraction across the tensor product of bundles while the Standard Model does not.”
“The top priority is that GR has well defined Contorsion tensors while the Standard Model does not.”
Those are all possibile research programs within A. Not within B.
Let’s 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 ‘84 knows this is true.
If science were healthy we would discuss that. But we can’t, 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 “The Only Game In Town” 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 didn’t.
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.
It’s fine. The Standard Model is amazing. As is general relativity. In fact: it’s 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 can’t 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. It’s 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.
2026[edit]
This is such an absurd claim it's actually pretty funny.
A few years ago I went over 31 examples of breakthroughs from the past 40 years (excluding Nobel prizes)
https://x.com/nu_phases/status/1598331715340054528?s=20
But 50+ years really opens up some all time great results:
It's a fact that the foundations of physics have been stuck for 50+ years, everyone with half a brain can see that. The only "counterargument" against this are physicists who complain that writing a lot of papers is sorta progress.
If the rules for what is and is not a well defined theory (ie what Weinberg's "Phenomenological Lagrangians" paper change about our understanding of physics) is not "foundations", then I have no idea what we're talking about.
Why 3 generations?
Why 15/16 Particles?
Why tbese groups?
Why these Internal Quantum Numbers
Why the Higgs Quartic?
Why the Yukawa Couplings?
Etc. Etc.
Without recourse to
“Shut up and Regulate” EFT
Anti-de-Sitter Space
SUSY intuition that was disproved
Toy Models
Black Hole substitution
Etc etc
———
As I have said before: It’s a mitigated disaster. Not an unmitigated disaster.
The biggest problem isn’t even the theory. It’s the violation of scientific norms needed to keep from facing what just happened over 4 decades because the violation of scientific norms and academic collegiality came from the leaders. Who need to admit what they did to their legitimate critics and rivals. It is an abuse issue.
Hope this helps.
Out of curiousity, @grok, can you explain why we are having a non-serious discussion?
Obviously everyone here knows exactly what this is about. It’s about one group taking over as the arbiters of physics beyond the standard model and failing to do what they promised while insulting everyone else who said this was crazy and/or had other ideas.
This is about the TOGIT crowd and its anti-scientific “The Only Game In Town” cult.
It feels like out of Fear for naming Witten, Susskind, Motl, Gross, Stominger etc. We have endless proxy discussions over nothing.
Why can’t we just say “They Failed Theoretical Physics as Scientific Leaders” and have new voices picked from their critics? They failed. Can’t we just admit this?
Neutrino mass is beyond the Standard Model, predicted by a breakthrough in our structural understanding theoretical physics, and later verified experimentally. If you don't think this is an example of what theoretical physic should be about, then I can't accept your definition.
Hi Daniel,
As you and I both know, that is correct but only relevant here in a very technical way.
Neutrino masses are of course fascinating, but not really conceptually new at all. In fact the PMNS mechanism update, completely PREDATES the SM. Further, it is just a leptonic version of CKM.
So…What are we really even discussing? We both know the same stuff. This seems to be a red herring. A proxy.
What is this really about?
Thoughts?
We are talking about apparently "nothing" conceptually important happening for 50+ years. Yet, until 1973 (52 years ago), it was a widely held believe that nuclear physics was not describable by QFT (Gross was trying to prove this when they found the opposite).
So yes, I disagree that realization that (a) QFT describes the world and (b) QFT is a larger and more powerful framework than "renormalizability" is a conceptual change from prior to the 1970s and was not fully appreciated until the 1980s and beyond.
We are discussing what are the "foundations" of physics. I don't think even you and Sabine agree on this. Neutrino mass is zero in the "Standard Model". Dark matter is definitely not (and we can argue about the CC). The origin of structure is also no in the SM (inflation).
I don’t usually agree with @skdh on funding. Or about math. Or a great many other things including her manifestly incorrect characterization of my work. She is wrong about a number of things in my opinion. But she isn’t “all wrong” in some weird way. She is usually pretty insightful.
Neutrinos being massless in the SM? C’mon. I covered that above 👆 no? PMNS was in the 1960s. Not even 1973. Older than the SM.
That is not the issue. Unlike @skdh, I think many physicists need more money to do their job.
The problem isn’t any of this.
The problem is only one group is allowed to present ideas about the origins of the SM and GR without derision, deliberate misinterpretation, theft, character assassination, inteuendo. This is “The Only Game In Town” or TOGIT cult. Some of us have tried to challenge this group scientifically for more than 40 years.
The trouble is when you say “Let’s hear from all the people with ideas that directly *contradict* the String Theory leaders.”
The problem is that this is what holds back progress. What is holding back progress is senior physicists who wont allow dissidents in good standing who think Susskind and Witten and Gross just oversaw the most spectacular catastrophe in modern physics.
And everyone who dares to say this is scapegoated.
The QG leaders all failed us Daniel. They will never break the logjam that they created and cannot acknowledge.
Their critics would. But they cannot get close as they are STILL not allowed to question the failed program as members in good standing inside the system.
That is the problem. With all respect to you Daniel.
Let’s be honest about what this is about in 2026. It’s about failure. Not neutrino masses.
You cannot write the PMNS matrix in the SM (its not renormalizable). Yes, the idea existed in some before there was an electroweak theory. This is like saying there was no conceptual change to chemistry with the discovery of the atom because it was already invented by Democritus
If you want to complain about QG, please go ahead. It's nowhere on my list. However, even the reframing that QG is well-defined as an effective theory is a novel development (also not clear in the 60s-70s). But part of the problem is your reframing QG = all fundamental physics.
Something is not right in your picture:
“But part of the problem is your reframing QG = all fundamental physics.”
I’m saying the opposite. I’m saying that the QG people made all of fundamental physics about their view of quantizing gravity. I’m saying that was the catastrophe.
Further it’s not about complaining.
No one smart wants to complain. They want to do work, have it evaluated and get credit for their ideas so they can do more work and have a good life.
The complainers are those trying to say “No one gets to give seminars about the origin of chirality or 3 generations unless it comes out of The Only Game In Town:
Daniel: try to steelman my point.
“Fundamental Physics Theory largely stagnated and lost touch with reality due to anti-scientific gatekeeping by leaders of the failed String Theory community playing stupid and attempting to monopolize legitimacy under ‘The Only Game In Town’”
I agree that too many resources went to a small group that has over-promised and under-achieved. I also agree that has slowed progress in other areas where real progress is happening.
Where we disagree is that I think there is real progress that needs to be highlighted instead.
I agree with you. I think EFT is such an area. I think cosmology with variable dark energy is essential. I think discrete models disgust me (Wolfram) but should be funded. I think exceptional algebraic structures (Gunaydin, Gursey) are wrong headed but should be funded.
I am for funding diverse approaches.
But again this isn’t the point.
The point isn’t that too few promised too much and got too many resources.
The problem is that those few destroyed their competition, peers, rivals and challengers. And I want those theories/programs/models/researchers/predictions destroyed by those people REEVALUATED. I think Lenny and Ed and Andy etc may have buried the answers with insinuation, shunning, ridicule.
I think we have had answers for 40 years. And I want *none* of the TOGIT cult evaluating them.
My claim is that we don’t know if TOGIT is holding back progress outside string theory until we stop listening to their anti-science claims.
I claim that TOGIT is not our leading theory and has NEVER been for 40 years. It’s fake. It doesn’t work. There is no explanation in all of science that permits Ed and Lenny and Andy and company to exclude unexplored ideas and people that may well have succeed where they in particular have failed.
Related Pages[edit]
- General Relativity
- Peer Injunction
- Peer Review
- Quantum Gravity
- Quantum Field Theory
- Right Freeway, Wrong Exit
- String Theory
- Theory of Geometric Unity
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