This week there’s a Nobel Laureate Meeting in Lindau, devoted to physics. Many of the talks can be viewed on-line. From 3-5pm today (Lindau time) there will be a session devoted to a panel discussion of expectations for the LHC. Besides the Lindau web-site, a webcast will also be available here.
Blogging (in German) is going on here, including accounts of the late night activities there, featuring pictures of physicists dancing to the tune “Sex Bomb”.
Update: The panel discussion included two questions from the audience about the multiverse. At first Gross refused to address them leaving cosmologist Smoot to try and say something. Finally ‘t Hooft broke in to say that there were a lot of misconceptions being spread about the multiverse, but that the truth was that the LHC will never have anything to say about either the multiverse or string theory, and Gross did not disagree with him. ‘t Hooft explained that while in principle there could be indirect evidence for a multiverse (from direct evidence for aspects of a theory that implied multiple universes), at the moment the idea was completely untestable and the LHC would have nothing to say about it. Gross agreed, describing multiverse models and research as “very ill-defined”.
At the end, an argument between Veltman and others broke out over the selling of particle physics using astrophysics. He described claims that the LHC will “recreate the Big Bang” as “idiotic”, and as “crap”. He said that this is “not science”, but “blather”, and that the field would come to regret this, arguing that if you start selling the LHC with pseudo-science, you will end up paying for it. Gross and Smoot politely disagreed.
Update: See here for Gross’s talk on expectations of what will be seen at the LHC. He predicts definite observation of a Higgs particle, and says he has taken bets that supersymmetry will be seen, at 50-50 odds. Nothing about string theory at the LHC.
I watched part of it, thanks to this post, and I am still amazed by Veltman’s opinion on astroparticle physics. I am not talking about this Big Bang advertising you are reporting, but about the other part of the argument: it was quite clear that for him astrophysicists and particle physicists did not belong together. What is wrong with trying to join efforts in our understanding of Nature? I naively thought everyone agreed that both domains are intimately connected and that more communication is not only useful, but crucial. He also mumbled that astrophysicists had ‘invented’ the dark matter and dark energy problems, that this was the astrophysicist’s way: inventing things when they did not understand the data. For this, I agree, they are puzzled by data and try to explain it. Isn’t it the essence of science after all?
MIM,
I think part of this is that Veltman enjoys taking extreme positions….
While he goes too far, I think he does have a point that some of the claims being made about the intersection of particle physics and astrophysics are misleading and nonsensical. No, the LHC is not recreating the big bang.
MIM, See Veltman’s talk at the 2001 space-time odyssey symposium. the talk is
online , but I can’t find the link now and I think it was discussed on Peter’s blog
her earlier. If I understand right Veltman believes that teh dark problem is a failure
of gravity.
Interestingly, only yesterday I was replying to a comment over at our blog that referred to the ‘big bang recreation’ advertisement. It is very misleading indeed, and I am not actually sure where it comes from. I have heard as a motivation for heavy ion collisions that one will recreate conditions ‘closer’ to the big bang than ever before. That I can at least relate to, but ‘closer than ever before’ is far off ‘recreation of’. Besides, I don’t see what pp collisions are supposed to recreate in this regard.
I totally agree with Veltman, one should be way more careful how one ‘sells’ science. All this advertising isn’t something that should play any role in research, not even when it comes to ‘selling’ it to the public. Scientists have above everything else a responsibility to be careful and accurate. That is our job, and if we neglect it we will have to pay for it with losing trust that is very hard, if not impossible, to reestablish.
I agree that the LHC should not be advertised as a ‘Big Bang machine’. Even the claims about heavy ion collisions, which seem more justified than the LHC ones, are laughed at by some heavy ion physicists. Some were telling me recently how this claim was always made to get fundings but how they had no idea, and no program, to link their analysis with early times. This is a problem in the long term, as people will eventually ask: well, what have you learned about the early universe from LHC? About Veltman’s position on astroparticle physics though, I am still puzzled. If dark energy can most probably be explained in the GR framework, what about gravity and dark matter? Has any MOND ever explained the acoustic peaks in the CMB anisotropies? One obviously can’t rule out the particle hypothesis but then, if Veltman is only amusing himself by taking extreme positions…
MIM,
I would say that the answer to your questions about acoustic peaks is yes.
See http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0505519
Peter,
Thanks for this informative link!
What is your take on the fact that an important meeting of this caliber is held in Germany and not in US? Does this simply mean that US has lost its role as leader in many fields of scientific endeavor ? (it may unfortunately be a rhetoric question…)
Regards,
Observer
Observer: The Lindau meetings are always in Lindau. See the website.
“What is your take on the fact that an important meeting of this caliber is held in Germany and not in US? Does this simply mean that US has lost its role as leader in many fields of scientific endeavor”
Uhm.. Lindau meetings are over 50 years old and were established when one could say US influence on particle physics was at its highest. I think you have to look at teaching, funding and excellent research to see how healthy the US scientific endeavor is – not comparisons to others. I sure as heck hope that others are at least the equal of the US in “scientific endeavor”! Speaking as an American the stronger science is in the world the better for science everywhere. It is not a zero sum thing.
I don’t know about the sciences, but in mathematics I do have the impression that most small high caliber conferences, especially those in the summer, take place in Europe. I offer two possible reasons:
a) There are a lot more venues specifically designed for these conferences available in Europe. Moreover, if one wants to attend more than one within a short period, it is easy to travel between the different locations.
b) A lot of American mathematicians, given the choice, would prefer spending the summer traveling around Europe over the US.
Completely out of context (apologies). Just found out that Indian string theorist Sunil Mukhi (TIFR) has a blog.
just listened to David Gross’ on the web. Really great talk! I like the way he emphasized the ‘fermionic dimensions’ aspect of susy, which is often not mentioned. In fact, listening to this talk has inspired me to relearn the superspace formalism, which I forgot long ago…
Thanks for that super link Peter.
I just sat through David Gross’s talk in its entirety, absolutely excelent talk. I particularly enjoyed his ‘big three’ reasons for SUSY, and his explanation of difficulties in detection at LHC…I wonder who his bet was taken with.
Hi MIM
Even the claims about heavy ion collisions, which seem more justified than the LHC ones, are laughed at by some heavy ion physicists. Some were telling me recently how this claim was always made to get fundings but how they had no idea, and no program, to link their analysis with early times. This is a problem in the long term, as people will eventually ask: well, what have you learned about the early universe from LHC?
Indeed. I’ve been sitting among heavy ion physicists for quite a while and the ‘big bang’ motivation appears always and everywhere where it goes to a non-specialist audience (that includes grant proposals), despite the fact that the actual relation is weak. This isn’t a problem though that is special to heavy ion physics or physics. It’s a far more general trend, the constant dumbing down of information and the idea that one has to ‘sell’ and ‘advertise’ and so on. It’s a trend that should have no effect on science, but sadly it has.
Seems I say that a lot – that sociological trends reflect in the scientific community and have a very negative influence. Best,
B.
a bit off-topic, off course, one could remark, since the link was given, that at least on the blog-level the Lindau-meeting helped to elucidate some facts which are, apart from producing Nobel-laureates, still part of the german culture: producing prejudice and condescendence towards the ‘lesser developed’ cultures. While this in not a exclusively german phenomenon, I am glad that for instance this interview was not translated into english, were one introduces a PhD-student from Cameroon as someone who ‘is allowed to take part’, there are similar examples of near-to-racism occuring in this blog. I should apologize that I introduce these themes at this point, since their relation to heavy-ion-collisions and the big-bang is not-so-obvious, nevertheless it exemplifies what the word ‘dialectic’ means for the relation between science and humanities.
Still enjoying the talks at that link, thanks again Peter..
That siad, I was underwhelmed by George Smoot’s talk. Entitled ‘ The beginning and development of the Universe’, it promised a lot more than it delivered. This was what I call a type II lecture – everything was probably there somewhere, but not in any order one could make much sense of.
Smoot mentions the acceleration of the universe early on, without any discussion of the universe expansion. or Hubble’s law. Similarly, he launches into a description of measurements of the cosmic microwave background without giving any explanation of its importance as a snapshot of the early universe. Finally, while there was plenty of talk of both the COBE and WMAP satellite experiments, there is no mention of the ‘why’ – i.e. the advantages of satellite measurements over ground-based observation.
In summary, this talk was strangely reminiscent of a talk given by Smoot’s co-laureate John Mather at Trinity College Dublin last year. There should be a law for experimentalists – if you’re going to give a talk about your area (cosmology), you need to spend a few minutes on the basics – univ. expansion, nucleosynthesis, backgound radiation and inflation models etc
I’m fairly sure any members of the audience not familiar with BB theory left that lecture no wiser than before…
Regarding the ‘Recreation of the Big Bang’, we have written a brief post that hopefully explains the major differences between the LHC and the beginning of the universe: Recreating the Big Bang?
Peter, I’d be interested to hear the LHC discussion session you mention, but the link you give doesn’t seem to go anywhere, nor does the webcast seem to be listed on the CERN webcast site. Do you have another link to it?
Cormac
Cormac,
That link was for the live webcast, I haven’t seen a recorded version. If someone knows of one, let me know.