https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/...ists-are-misled-by-outdated-notions-of-beauty

This has been going on for about 40 years. In these 40 years, aesthetic arguments have flourished into research programmes—such as supersymmetry, the multiverse and grand unification—that now occupy thousands of scientists. In these 40 years, society spent billions of dollars on experiments that found no evidence to support the beautiful ideas. And in these 40 years, there has not been a major breakthrough in the foundations of physics.

My colleagues argue that criteria of beauty are experience-based. The most fundamental theories we currently have—the standard model of particle physics and Albert Einstein’s general relativity—are beautiful in specific ways. I agree it was worth a try to assume that more fundamental theories are beautiful in similar ways. But, well, we tried, and it didn’t work. Nevertheless, physicists continue to select theories based on the same three criteria of beauty: simplicity, naturalness, and elegance.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/starts...r-best-living-minds-on-nonsense/#16f0667d7566

 

I cringe a bit every time I hear this idea brought up, that fundamental physicists are primarily guided by some aesthetic sense of beauty. There's nothing elegant or aesthetically beautiful about the standard model or general relativity -- quite the contrary, they are nasty, beastly looking theories. Unpack the pretty one-line tensor form of Einstein's field equations for GR and you find a horrid mess of tightly-coupled nonlinear partial differential equations that makes the Navier-Stokes equation of fluid dynamics look like a serene landscape portrait in comparison. Same with the standard model, whose full Lagrangian expression looks like a cat has slowly and deliberately walked all over the keyboard.

The big 20th century paradigm shift in fundamental physics that Einstein started was based on symmetry, but not the kind that we associate with aesthetic beauty. Unlike physical symmetry (as with beautiful snowflakes), the symmetry of modern physics is purely mathematical, and finds its expression in the language of mathematical group theory. Specifically, whenever a linear transformation on a vector space leaves some aspect of that space invariant (unchanged), we call that invariance a symmetry of the transformation. The essential structure of such symmetries can be codified in the irreducible representations of certain groups (e.g., Lie groups in QFTs, the Poincare group in SR, diffeomorphisms in GR), which abstract away all the irrelevant details and fix the necessary constraints of the system. In this way symmetry provides a strikingly easy way to determine, out of all possible configurations, what belongs in a theory and what does not.

Einstein didn't formally know any of this in 1905, though he had a strong intuition that the universe was fundamentally constrained to be the way it is. He started with two simple, but necessary postulates: that the laws of motion are frame-invariant, and that light is speed-invariant in vacuum. Break the former and you lose Galilean relativity, a bedrock of physics; break the latter and you lose another bedrock, Maxwell's equations. These symmetries fix the constraints and hence the allowable physics, from which it was a straightforward path for Einstein to work out the remaining details, revolutionizing physics in the process.

This methodology of physics-from-symmetry was repeated many times in the 20th century, with stupendous success. This alone would be sufficient to explain why fundamental physicists continue to rely on it, but it becomes a no-brainer when we consider the current scope of such physics, where we've already picked all of the low-hanging fruit. Experiments in fundamental physics are extraordinarily expensive! In HEP physics, the LHC costs a billion dollars a year to run and will never reach the energies required to explore the UV-regime of field interactions. In cosmology, the Hubble cost $1.5 billion to build; the new James Webb telescope is a $10 billion project. Even "cheap" satellite-based CMB projects like WMAP and COBE cost some $150 million each.

The present reality is that the old model of {first experiment, then theorize} is no longer cost-effective in fundamental physics. The model for the past 60 or 70 years has been theoretical physicists doing the math, using the power of symmetry to reduce the enormous solution space, publishing as they go. When something seems particularly promising, then the experimental physicists (hopefully) find the funding to pursue it. I'm not sure how Sabine Hossenfelder expects this should be changed; she certainly doesn't offer an actionable alternative in her article.

 

I cringe a bit every time I hear this idea brought up, that fundamental physicists are primarily guided by some aesthetic sense of beauty. There's nothing elegant or aesthetically beautiful about the standard model or general relativity -- quite the contrary, they are nasty, beastly looking theories. Unpack the pretty one-line tensor form of Einstein's field equations for GR and you find a horrid mess of tightly-coupled nonlinear partial differential equations that makes the Navier-Stokes equation of fluid dynamics look like a serene landscape portrait in comparison. Same with the standard model, whose full Lagrangian expression looks like a cat has slowly and deliberately walked all over the keyboard.

The big 20th century paradigm shift in fundamental physics that Einstein started was based on symmetry, but not the kind that we associate with aesthetic beauty. Unlike physical symmetry (as with beautiful snowflakes), the symmetry of modern physics is purely mathematical, and finds its expression in the language of mathematical group theory. Specifically, whenever a linear transformation on a vector space leaves some aspect of that space invariant (unchanged), we call that invariance a symmetry of the transformation. The essential structure of such symmetries can be codified in the irreducible representations of certain groups (e.g., Lie groups in QFTs, the Poincare group in SR, diffeomorphisms in GR), which abstract away all the irrelevant details and fix the necessary constraints of the system. In this way symmetry provides a strikingly easy way to determine, out of all possible configurations, what belongs in a theory and what does not.

Einstein didn't formally know any of this in 1905, though he had a strong intuition that the universe was fundamentally constrained to be the way it is. He started with two simple, but necessary postulates: that the laws of motion are frame-invariant, and that light is speed-invariant in vacuum. Break the former and you lose Galilean relativity, a bedrock of physics; break the latter and you lose another bedrock, Maxwell's equations. These symmetries fix the constraints and hence the allowable physics, from which it was a straightforward path for Einstein to work out the remaining details, revolutionizing physics in the process.

This methodology of physics-from-symmetry was repeated many times in the 20th century, with stupendous success. This alone would be sufficient to explain why fundamental physicists continue to rely on it, but it becomes a no-brainer when we consider the current scope of such physics, where we've already picked all of the low-hanging fruit. Experiments in fundamental physics are extraordinarily expensive! In HEP physics, the LHC costs a billion dollars a year to run and will never reach the energies required to explore the UV-regime of field interactions. In cosmology, the Hubble cost $1.5 billion to build; the new James Webb telescope is a $10 billion project. Even "cheap" satellite-based CMB projects like WMAP and COBE cost some $150 million each.

The present reality is that the old model of {first experiment, then theorize} is no longer cost-effective in fundamental physics. The model for the past 60 or 70 years has been theoretical physicists doing the math, using the power of symmetry to reduce the enormous solution space, publishing as they go. When something seems particularly promising, then the experimental physicists (hopefully) find the funding to pursue it. I'm not sure how Sabine Hossenfelder expects this should be changed; she certainly doesn't offer an actionable alternative in her article.

And, yet, the answer remains "42".

 

Well....I think it was the English language......but her words and meaning are very nonsensical to me.

It was like listening to the evening news. They use English words, but in some secret unknown context.

Where right and wrong or perhaps true and lies, depend on the day of week or who is talking. Is it really the position of the tongue?

It must be some new type of quantum reasoning or logic.........maybe it's that new AI thing they're talking about.

They will have to talk very slowly along with the present real-time up-to-date definitions for me.

It's like talking about sex and gender now a days. I never knew how confusing sex and gender was.

This was a very normal academic article. A synthetic intellect. Educated hubris....not science.

Another TOWER...in all it's glory. A common language with no understanding. It has happened before.

 

Well....I think it was the English language......but her words and meaning are very nonsensical to me.

It was like listening to the evening news. They use English words, but in some secret unknown context.

Where right and wrong or perhaps true and lies, depend on the day of week or who is talking. Is it really the position of the tongue?

It must be some new type of quantum reasoning or logic.........maybe it's that new AI thing they're talking about.

They will have to talk very slowly along with the present real-time up-to-date definitions for me.

It's like talking about sex and gender now a days. I never knew how confusing sex and gender was.

This was a very normal academic article. A synthetic intellect. Educated hubris....not science.

Another TOWER...in all it's glory. A common language with no understanding. It has happened before.

Sorry, you'll have to write your own academic essay.

 

I don't know what the alternative to falsifiability is but hopefully, it won't be the current trend of mathematically faith based metaphysics instead of testable science.

https://aeon.co/essays/has-the-quest-for-top-down-unification-of-physics-stalled

All these challenges arise because of physics’ adherence to reductive unification. Admittedly, the method has a distinguished pedigree. During my PhD and early career in the 1990s, it was all the rage among theorists, and the fiendishly complex mathematics of string theory was its apogee. But none of our top-down efforts seem to be yielding fruit. One of the difficulties of trying to get at underlying principles is that it requires us to make a lot of theoretical presuppositions, any one of which could end up being wrong. We were hoping by this stage to have measured the mass of some superpartners, which would have given us some data on which to pin our assumptions. But we haven’t found anything to measure.

Instead, many of us have switched from the old top-down style of working to a more humble, bottom-up approach. Instead of trying to drill down to the bedrock by coming up with a grand theory and testing it, now we’re just looking for any hints in the experimental data, and working bit by bit from there. If some measurement disagrees with the Standard Model’s predictions, we add an interacting particle with the right properties to explain it. Then we look at whether it’s consistent with all the other data. Finally, we ask how the particle and its interactions can be observed in the future, and how experiments should sieve the data in order to be able to test it.

The bottom-up method is much less ambitious than the top-down kind, but it has two advantages: it makes fewer assumptions about theory, and it’s tightly tethered to data. This doesn’t mean we need to give up on the old unification paradigm, it just suggests that we shouldn’t be so arrogant as to think we can unify physics right now, in a single step. It means incrementalism is to be preferred to absolutism – and that we should use empirical data to check and steer us at each instance, rather than making grand claims that come crashing down when they’re finally confronted with experiment.

https://arxiv.org/pdf/1806.07289.pdf

 

I don't know what the alternative to falsifiability is but hopefully, it won't be the current trend of mathematically faith based metaphysics instead of testable science.

What trend? The vast majority of physicists are not theoretical physicists doing string theory. Theoretical physicists are a tiny group (string theorists tinier still), and their numbers are dwindling because all the real funding is in experimental physics. Condensed matter has been the dominant subfield for a long time now, which is not surprising given that: (1) there is immense and immediate practical application, so lots of funding; (2) research groups tend to be small, a handful of people, which makes it much easier for an individual to distinguish herself (cf. to the thousands of researchers in a typical high-energy particle physics group); (3) the publication cycle is shorter, and publishing meaningful results is how careers are advanced.

Theoretical physicists have more cultural panache -- they tend to get the big press, evoking iconic images of Einstein and Feynman -- and so that's what we picture when someone says the word physicist. But pure theoreticians, like string theorists, are a tiny subset. Professional physics is dominated by experimentalists testing falsifiable hypotheses and publishing their results with zero public fanfare.

Physics has settled into a stable research balance: the vast majority of physicists are working on tractable and important (though culturally underwhelming) problems, while a few theoreticians spend their efforts on the really huge, perhaps insolvable problems. It seems like a good spread of resources to me.

 

What trend? The vast majority of physicists are not theoretical physicists doing string theory. Theoretical physicists are a tiny group (string theorists tinier still), and their numbers are dwindling because all the real funding is in experimental physics.

I think their number is dwindling because of a 20 year dry spread on the current crop of mathematical theories like the string hypothesis being laid waste by experimental physical theory, not by funding because a chair and room are cheap. In response to the fact that string theory has not yet risen to the level of a scientific theory, this tiny but very influential (from media and public interest) group wants to redefine what fundamental "science" is. Should the internal consistency of a theory or the absence of credible alternatives make it science?

https://www.nature.com/news/scientific-method-defend-the-integrity-of-physics-1.16535

Chief among the 'elegance will suffice' advocates are some string theorists. Because string theory is supposedly the 'only game in town' capable of unifying the four fundamental forces, they believe that it must contain a grain of truth even though it relies on extra dimensions that we can never observe. Some cosmologists, too, are seeking to abandon experimental verification of grand hypotheses that invoke imperceptible domains such as the kaleidoscopic multiverse (comprising myriad universes), the 'many worlds' version of quantum reality (in which observations spawn parallel branches of reality) and pre-Big Bang concepts.

These unprovable hypotheses are quite different from those that relate directly to the real world and that are testable through observations — such as the standard model of particle physics and the existence of dark matter and dark energy. As we see it, theoretical physics risks becoming a no-man's-land between mathematics, physics and philosophy that does not truly meet the requirements of any.

"post-empirical science is an oxymoron"
http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2014/07/post-empirical-science-is-oxymoron.html

I've seen this happen in other areas too. Does a 'high' confidence assessment of a person, place or thing by a government agency make it a fact? Groups can build 10 foot tall monsters or angels from a toe print. It's very informed speculation but it's not fact because there are tons of after action reports that read like its from a different universe of the same person, place or thing.

 

I still don't understand your point. Is it to banish pure theoretical physics research, or just string theory in particular? Is loop quantum gravity ok?

If you're proposing that physics research meet some kind of "falsifiability threshold", consider that a lot of valuable research was put forth before it could be reasonably called falsifiable. Without all the work that went into Yang-Mills theory (1950s) and the Higgs mechanism (1960s), we don't have the standard model. At the time they were announced, these theories were 60 years (and billions of dollars) away from being experimentally falsifiable. It'll very likely take longer for string theory, but nonetheless it is in principle falsifiable.

And what about research that will never be falsifiable, such as Big Bang cosmology or quantum foundations (interpretations). If a physicist wants to do the research and can convince an academic institution to give him a desk and a chair, why should anyone have a problem with that? Personally, I'm happy that smart people are willing to spend their careers on such lofty quests; humanity is better for it, even if it's not "hard science".

 

I still don't understand your point. Is it to banish pure theoretical physics research, or just string theory in particular? Is loop quantum gravity ok?

If you're proposing that physics research meet some kind of "falsifiability threshold", consider that a lot of valuable research was put forth before it could be reasonably called falsifiable. Without all the work that went into Yang-Mills theory (1950s) and the Higgs mechanism (1960s), we don't have the standard model. At the time they were announced, these theories were 60 years (and billions of dollars) away from being experimentally falsifiable. It'll very likely take longer for string theory, but nonetheless it is in principle falsifiable.

And what about research that will never be falsifiable, such as Big Bang cosmology or quantum foundations (interpretations). If a physicist wants to do the research and can convince an academic institution to give him a desk and a chair, why should anyone have a problem with that? Personally, I'm happy that smart people are willing to spend their careers on such lofty quests; humanity is better for it, even if it's not "hard science".

Hi,

I think that you are experiencing NSA's distaste for string theory here.
We'll give string theory three more days to be proven as a completely valid theory or else we will reject it entirely
After all, we are the Keepers Of The Time Frame for all things to be completed by the time we say they should be.
So time is almost up, and we have not found a white raven yet

 

I'm in very good company if distaste for string (as a physical) theory is the set. Only time will tell what ultimately will be proved wrong, or what will be viewed as finding the true path. I see no reason for a 'theory of everything' based on emergent phenomena in condensed matter.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/elegant/view-glashow.html

 

1. Charge is not a property of mass. ALL physical properties come from charge.

2. Mass is an adjustable property of charge. It is electric and magnetic FIELD density. That's all mass is.....it's not stuff. The "stuff" is the charge.

3. Light, as all EM, is the dissolution of mass. It is mass dissolving. Dissolving field density. Accelerating into thinness. A density acceleration. Density decreases.

4. Light is a constant velocity, AREA acceleration. Area increases. The reason that it is constant.....is because it has TWO perpendicular equal accelerations, resulting and giving you a constant common direction of propagation.

5. This velocity comes from the expanding perpendicular...........not the velocity of emission source.

6. This is why c has constant speed. Perpendicular expansion. Perpendicular acceleration.

7. When you cut an angular field.....the two halves become repulsive. This repulsiveness....is what accelerates the wave. NOT the emitter. The wave accelerates against itself.

8. 14 B years of dissolving mass. The space around us is very polluted. It's not virtual, it full of waste.

9. Charge is a rotating, repulsive electric field, confined by a perpendicular, rotating magnetic field. ALL OTHER physical properties are caused by this structure except one......gravity.

10. Gravity is NOT fundamental. It only appears with charge bonding.

11. Space is eternal nothingness. It was always here. A meter does not change length. And a second always has the same duration. No matter the velocity or acceleration.

12. The constant velocity of a marble and the constant velocity of light are very different things. The marble does not lose mass.......light does. Light mass dissolves with propagation.

13. Light........a perpendicular acceleration.

 

Light is a constant velocity

A meter does not change length. And a second always has the same duration.

There is a contradiction here.

 

Where?

 

Where?

One can not have all three of: a constant meter, a constant second, and a constant speed of light.

As is well known, a constant speed of light precludes both a constant meter and a constant second.

 

One can not have all three of: a constant meter, a constant second, and a constant speed of light.

As is well known, a constant speed of light precludes both a constant meter and a constant second.

In our known universe this is true but not in multiverse theory of infinite possibilities in physical laws. Infinity is great in mathematics but it's something we don't see in the physical world.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2015/02/20/infinity-ruining-physics/#.W1dsTK2aSXI

 

In our known universe this is true but not in multiverse theory of infinite possibilities in physical laws. Infinity is great in mathematics but it's something we don't see in the physical world.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2015/02/20/infinity-ruining-physics/#.W1dsTK2aSXI

As multiverse theories can never be falsified experimentally, I'd like to dump those as well as infinity.

 

Besides, even in a multiverse scenario, something must be fundamental to everything. Otherwise, nothing can be certain about anything.

I'll go out on a limb and suggest that that something is c.

 

In our known universe this is true but not in multiverse theory of infinite possibilities in physical laws. Infinity is great in mathematics but it's something we don't see in the physical world.

This is not true in the most prominent multiverse theory (Everettian MWI). In MWI there is only one universe, evolving unitarily in time according to the Schrodinger equation. That each branch is taken to represent a different "reality" is definitely weird, but there is no branch in which the laws of physics can be broken. The invariant speed of light is always c, regardless of which branch we might find ourselves in.

As for infinity, I think the vast majority of physicists treat it as an occasionally useful fiction. (It's hard to imagine a professional physicist actually believing in infinite energy or infinite volume.) Personally, I'm starting to come around to the notion that there is no continuum, that spacetime is finite and ultimately discrete.

Crusty old Kronecker may have been right: \(\small{\mathbb{R}}\) is the work of man.

 

I always thought that beauty was in the eye of the beer-holder.