Just bought Peter’s book June 3, 2006
Posted by dorigo in Blogroll, books, internet, news, physics, science.trackback
Peter Woit, a theoretician at Columbia University, and the owner of a very interesting blog called "Not Even Wrong", where he discusses the status of particle physics theory and voices objections to string theory as "the" theory at the roots of fundamental interactions, published a book recently:
"Not even wrong: the failure of string theory and the continuing challenge to unify the laws of physics"
You can read people discussing the book in Peter's blog: http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=400
I just placed an order via Amazon UK. You can do the same by following this link: http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0224076051/026-8522426-7864424
Happy reading!
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A Quantum Diaries Survivor 
It is high time an experimentalist spoke out on theory. I have not succeeded in drawing you out in the past on what you “guess” might be the right answer, but i cannot believe that you never speculate. I propose a book wherein various experimentlists posit their pet theories and hare-brained ideas, either in name, or if they prefer, anonomously. i would certainly be interseted in such a read.
Hi riqie,
I do speculate, but with two pence at a time it is hard to make a fortune.
You want a small list of “twopence” items ? Here is it.
– the fact that the top Yukawa coupling is being measured to be compatible with the top mass (ratio of the two =1.00) is very intriguing. We are already at the level of 1% agreement. I will buy any theory that predicted that.
– I don’t buy any of the present theories, which make no predictions as to what is the mass of known and as of yet unknown particles yet to be discovered. I agree that supersymmetry is very nice, but Occam’s razor comes slashing every time I fancy it too much.
– To me it is very important to understand why on earth the vacuum breaks electroweak symmetry, and how does it do that. Answering this question might be a giant step forwards in fundamental physics.
– I think the LHC will discover ONE higgs boson, and that will be it. No SUSY, no techni-crapons, no Zprimes or Zsevenths. Will that be a failure ? I doubt it. It will force us to rethink quite a few things, both theoretically and on the planning of future experiments. I don’t consider that a tragedy…
Cheers,
T.
I like the way that you think, but I’d like to know what you think about the following statement by Fermilab theorist, Cris Hill:
“A single Higgs is just dumb, it doesn’t explain anything.”
“In particular it doesn’t work toward a simpler theory. It doesn’t explain for instance,how the four forces we observe in nature(gravity, electromagnetism, strong nuclear and weak nuclear) might somehow be componentsof a single force. And current data show that the four forces do look more and more alike at very high energies. “When you see something like that, there’susually a reason for it,” says Fermilab theorist Joe Lykken. But this so-called “unification” does not come easily, and requires more than just a single Higgs”
I beg to differ.
Hmmm what I think ?
I think the Higgs boson is there by force of experimental evidence.
I’ve seen nothing measured at recent colliders (LEP, LEP II, HERA, Tevatron) against the bare Standard Model. And the measurements at LEP by themselves already _need_ a Higgs boson, or they would be really inconsistent with our understanding of radiative corrections.
In other words, I think Chris Hill might be right, but still, nature always has it its own way. If one single Higgs boson is dumb, that is ok, it does not make Nature dumb. Rather, we might be just not understanding what it’s telling us. I think Chris’ statement does not make a theory with five higgses more appealing to me.
Cheers,
Tommaso
I agree, and the fact that nobody really knows what form the Higgs takes certainly leaves the door open for any number of viable possibilities that don’t include numerous higgs.
For example, if the vacuum has mass but in a less dense form than matter… breaks electroweak symmetry, and the idea of supersymmetry becomes an artifact of particle potential that can’t be realized until you condense this energy down over a finite enough region of space attain the matter density… which causes expansion by increasing negative pressure via the further rarefaction of the vacuum. In this case, superpartners aren’t observed because they simply do not really exist, except as the less-dense potential for real matter.
See, while I am not enough well-learned to fully follow your line of reasoning above, I feel that is one example that there are many interesting ideas out there that are somewhat marginalized by the big players – SUSY, string theory, and the like.
SUSY has appealing properties, and the firework-like signatures one may hope to observe make it so attractive it is hard not to marry it if you are an experimentalist… And yet I think things will be _more_ interesting, and not less so, if the LHC should not find anything but a single, well-behaved Higgs boson…
Cheers,
T.
See, while I am not enough well-learned to fully follow your line of reasoning above, I feel that is one example that there are many interesting ideas out there that are somewhat marginalized by the big players…
You can say that again, and it’s more than just a little bit disappointing, since the idea falls from the fact that Einstein didn’t know about the particle potential of the quantum vacuum. The reason that I say this is because matter generation in his finite model *causes* expansion because you have to compress or condense Einstein’s vacuum energy density down over a finite enough region of space to attain the matter density, before this “depature” from the normal background density can be made into a real pair.
The effect of this is two-fold, because the increase in the matter density and positive gavitational curvature is immediately offset by the increase in negative pressure that vacuum rarefaction causes, so this expanding universe cannot runaway, because it is *held* flat and stable by the offset increase between gravity and “antigravity”.
This can be simply illustrated in a sealed jar, or proven by way of the pseudo-negative pressure density that is produced by the Casimir effect.
These two short articles to the research group sum it up, but from what I’ve been able to discern, it’s still 1917 until somebody does the math to prove that Einstein was wrong, because this affects interpretations of Dirac’s Hole Theory and the ensuing QFT reinterpretation of the vacuum state, as well:
http://www.lns.cornell.edu/spr/2006-02/msg0073320.html
http://www.lns.cornell.edu/spr/2006-03/msg0073465.html
Hey Island, your web site is demanding a lot of attention from my neurons… I am VERY interested in the anthropic principle, and it will take me a while to absorb the information… But thank you for your comment. I will also look at the links above.
Cheers,
T.
I’m glad that you’re that interested, (although, motivations for that vary sharply, and usually not in a good way, if you ask me), and you should also look at my weblog, as it is a little easier to digest in pieces, and is also more to the point in some respects.
The bottom line is that our high-energy contribution to the thermodynamic process is relatively impressive in the model that I’ve been referring to, so there is good reason for intelligent life to be specially required players in the thermodynamic game that should naturally arise from the need for it, in many ‘places like ours’, “at this time in the history of the *Entropic* Anthropic/Biocentric Universe”… so that we can do our job, period.
Wow, Island… Either you are too cryptic or I am getting dumb. Or, probably, both.
I just read for the third times the last sentence above, and am now quite sure I understand only about 50 percent of it.
Do you mean to say that the presence of intelligent life studying HEP can be considered a valuable input to the model ? I am really confused.
Cheers,
T.
Hi Tommasso, are you still reading this?
Hi Island,
yes of course. I get notified of thread additions…
T.
Do you mean to say that the presence of intelligent life studying HEP can be considered a valuable input to the model ? I am really confused.
Well, I mean that the same mechanism that constrains human evolution to higher orders, also constrains the forces of the universe for the exact same reason… “entropic efficiency”.
So the asymmetry that prevents a big bang from producing an absolute “flat” symmetrically balanced structure, is perperpetually inherent to the energy, and the next universe will be just a little more “flat” than this one is, per the natural tendency toward absolute symmetry that *necessarily* results from an inherent imbalance in the energy.
In Einstein’s model, above, particle creation from vacuum energy drives this process that results in a grand-scale evolutionary leap, per the link between the human evolutionary process and the evolutionary process of the universe, if given a strong anthropic connection to the forces, as this is observationally evidenced by the fact that humans gained the ability to use fire and cars and even high-energy particle accelerators as a result of our evolutionary “leap”.
We both leap to higher orders of entropic efficiency for the exact same reason, and Dirac’s negative energy soloutions in the above model make for a whole nother theory of quantum gravity via a valid application of the Dirac Equation to GR and QM… that doesn’t look much like the current “attempts, but it does NOT conflict with relativity AND it is renormalizable!
Why would people think that the AP means that we would be brought into existence for the benefit of us? Doesn’t it make more sense that we might arise to the benefit the most predominantly apparent natural physical process in the universe?
How arrogant is it to assume that we are environmentally enabled by the forces of the universe to our benefit, rather than to its benefit?
It should be noted that people *automatically* take the extreme anti-centrist approach to this, rather than to even consider what should be the most obvious alternative in a universe that is observationally “less-than-copernican”.
I hope that helps.
The asymmetry that prevents a big bang from producing an absolute “flat” symmetrically balanced structure, is perperpetually inherent to the energy…
… so a future big bang is most-naturally called for by observationally evident first principles!
…per the natural tendency toward absolute symmetry that *necessarily* results from an inherent imbalance in the energy.
Doesn’t this define perpetually repetitive causality, via self-evident thermodynamic first principles?!?
I know that I know how to do physics, so I don’t buy the “hype” since, like… 1917.
Do you feel like bucking the sytem in a major way, Dorigo?
Wow, Island, this is way above my head.
I read Barrow and Tipler’s book a few years ago (and lost the book on a plane). I followed a few courses in QM, HEP, QFT. I work with root ntuples and eps figures. I am a soldier, not a general.
In other words, while I have my own brain and I read with interest your web page, I think you are asking me for too much.
However, one thing you did manage. To stimulate me into understanding a bit more the latest developments of the speculations that have sprung from the original enunciation of the Anthropic Principle.
Of course, this space is yours to use for any more suggestions and inspiration.
Cheers,
Tommaso
PS. Let me state here what I think about the AP. Just my two pence, as always…
1) Life is an accident., not a necessity
2) That accident is quite common in the universe, unlike what Barrow and Tipler have evaluated 30 years ago. The recent evidence for earth-like planets in neighboring stars is just one of the few things that hint at their gross underestimate of the number of environments that could host intelligent life in the universe.
3) The fact that we observe the universe, and can measure things, does mean this universe allows us to measure these things. In the sense that those constants could not have a different value, since otherwise we would not be able to measure them. Their value is not special, but we are.
4) The fact that we are observers, means that this universe allows observers. It does not mean we are necessary. In fact, I do believe we are accidental.
5) Our existence, because of what I said above, tells us little about our universe, more than what we already know: that the constants have the value they have, that the lifetime of our universe is sufficient for our existence, and so on.
6) Anything else is, for me, just philosophy.
However, I keep an open minded approach to this very complex issue, and I am happy to enlarge my knowledge on it.
Cheers,
T.
1 and 2 might be connected to the error that I see in number 2, because the way that the forces are “set” the universe only produces life along a fine layer of galaxies that evolved along the same plane of development, time and “location”-wise.
It does indeed extend to become a biocentric principle, but the physics of a flat yet expanding univere requires that this only applies to a very specific region of space where galaxies evolved under very similar conditions as our own, age and location wise:
http://zebu.uoregon.edu/~imamura/209/mar31/anthropic.html
Number 1 implies that you accept the commonly projected assumption that the universe is “winding down” in a meaningless manner, rather than “winding up” for the next leap, and this conflicts with the phsyics that I’ve provided, so it’s obvious that I’m not reaching you, and so I also can’t explain how this fixes Dirac’s Large Numbers Hypothesis, which defines the physical mechanism for the AP, where Robert Dicke got his cosmic coincidence from.
What it boils down to is that Dirac was right about everything that he first thought about the vacuum, but it was applied to the wrong vacuum, is all.
Fixing this problem resolve the issue of this statement by him:
It’s a number provided by nature and we should expect that a theory will someday provide a reason for it.
http://www.fdavidpeat.com/interviews/dirac.htm
… but I cannot dispell your misconceptions if I can’t convey this completely, and I personally can’t prove the most important part, outright, so I seek help.
Someone besides me needs to write down the basis of wave functions in this background, including an expansion of the field in corresponding creation and annihilation operators – compute the stress-energy tensor in that background – quantitatively describe the vacua – and then work out the matrix elements of the stress-energy tensor between the vacuum and the one-particle states.