Follow-Ups

Follow-Ups to two recent postings:

Michael Duff has written a letter to New Scientist complaining about their recent editorial Physics’ greatest endeavour is grinding to a halt. Duff begins by claiming:

History has shown that rapid confirmation by experiment is a poor guide to the eventual value of a physical theory

but backs this up in a rather bizarre way. You might think he would list some physical theories whose experimental confirmation took awhile, instead he lists various theoretical ideas that have been around for a long time, still haven’t been experimentally confirmed, although lots of people are still working on them. Evidently for Duff the value of a physical theory is how many people are working on it (he also points out that about 500 people go to Strings 200X), not whether there is any experimental evidence for it. The examples he gives range from cases where there is zero experimental evidence, and probably never will be any (extra dimensions, supersymmetry) to ones that it is very plausible we will soon see evidence of (Higgs boson, gravitational waves) to ones that arguably we already have some evidence for (cosmological constant).

He notes that gravitational waves were predicted in 1916 and have yet to be confirmed, that string theory is more ambitious than GR so it should take longer to confirm, and that one should only really start counting in 1995, when M-theory came along. So I guess his prediction is that by 2074, we still won’t yet be anywhere near confirming string theory. Like many string theorists, he make highly tendentious claims about the relation of the standard model to experiment, writing:

decades [were] required to knock the standard model into a shape that could be confirmed by experiment

I assume he’s not talking about the QCD part of the standard model, which was born in 1973, already making verifiable predictions, and within ten years had accumulated a huge amount of evidence in its favor. The electroweak theory was first written down by Weinberg and Salam in 1967, and by ten years later the evidence for it was overwhelming. I suppose you could try and argue that the history of attempts to put together the standard model go back to Glashow in 1960 or Yang-Mills in 1954. Even using 1954, it was 19 years later that the full standard model was in place with a lot of experimental evidence already there and more pouring in. And that period would quite likely have been shorter if most of the theory community hadn’t given up on QFT and been working on the bootstrap, dual models or string theory during that time. In the case of string theory, taking Veneziano in 1968 as a starting point, nearly 4 decades later there is not a glimmer of a piece of experimental evidence for string theory. Comparing the history of the standard model to the history of string theory is just absurd.

On another recent topic, the New York Times finally today carried an obituary for Raoul Bott.

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54 Responses to Follow-Ups

  1. Wolfgang says:

    Peter,

    the example of gravitational waves is not so bad in my opinion.
    If experiments are difficult for classical gravitation it is no surprise that
    quantum gravity is even more difficult.

    But I would make a different point: We may already have some evidence for new physics, e.g. the Pioneer anomaly or perhaps in a few years deviations from Newton’s potential at small distances.
    The problem is that string theory currently makes no concrete statements about such effects.

  2. JK says:

    The slow down in orbital period of binary pulsars constitutes good evidence for gravitational waves (Taylor et al. 1978). I would put gravitational waves in the same category as the cosmological constant, “arguably we already have some evidence”.

  3. woit says:

    Wolfgang,

    Yes, the problem is that after almost 40 years, string theory predicts nothing. This is very different than the case of GR, where precise predictions about gravitational waves were there from the beginning (and, as JK points out, we already have indirect evidence).

    Sure, true quantum gravitational effects may always be beyond the reach of observation, but string theory is supposed to include all other interactions too. The fact that it can’t actually predict a single thing about those after almost 40 years is what conclusively shows it is on the wrong track.

  4. dan says:

    “Yes, the problem is that after almost 40 years, string theory predicts nothing. ”

    String theory does predict SUSY, which may turn up at LHC ca 2010

  5. A.J. says:

    String theory does predict SUSY, which may turn up at LHC ca 2010

    It’s probably more accurate to say that string theory _assumes_ or perhaps _requires_ supersymmetry. It’s a necessary part of the theory rather than a consequence of it.

    Now with that said, the discovery of supersymmetry among the elementary particles would constitute indirect evidence that our universe can be described by a string theory. Coupling a supersymmetric gauge theory to gravity more or less requires us to consider supergravity, and supergravity theories basically all arise as low energy limits of string theories.

    The reasoning above isn’t iron-clad, so take it with a grain of salt. For one thing, it might well be that susy appears in particle physics, but only as an approximate symmetry, indicating further substructure. (Something like this actually happens in nuclear physics.)

  6. Peter says:

    Dan,

    The problem is that supersymmetry is broken and string theory doesn’t tell you how or even at what energy scale. If it’s broken at very high scale (which landscapeologists seem to prefer), it’s indistinguishable from a non-supersymmetric theory at any energy scale we can ever hope to access, and you certainly won’t see anything at the LHC. I don’t see many string theorists these days willing to stand behind the idea that string theory implies supersymmetry at the LHC scale.

  7. Anonymous says:

    A.J. says:

    It’s probably more accurate to say that string theory _assumes_ or perhaps _requires_ supersymmetry.

    To what extent is this clear? The type 0 theories, for instance, have worldsheet SUSY but not spacetime SUSY. True, they have a tachyon, but in at least some cases it’s pretty clear that the tachyon condenses and doesn’t really cause problems. Example: whatever the dual of pure Yang-Mills theory is 😉

    Of course, these things probably can’t describe a realistic universe with gravity and all of the other fields we know about, but I’m not sure there’s an airtight case that realistic string theory backgrounds require SUSY….

  8. Peter, I think you would not complain against string theorists if they were a small community and made more humble claims about what their theory has achieved so far and about how promising it is. Duff is right when he says that “rapid experimental confirmation” is not a good guide : what is a good guide is the own prejudice of gifted researchers about the way nature works. Well it’s a good guide only 1 percent of the time so what we need is a diversity of ideas. The academic institution should encourage such a diversity as long as no theory has won the competition… and as long as no theory destroys the rules of the competition, that is scientific method.
    I develop a little bit more here .

  9. Chris Oakley says:

    Mike Duff is just digging his own (and his fellow Superstringers’) grave by making these comments. To adapt the kamikaze motto: The requirement to understand the physical world is as heavy as a mountain, but individual theories as light as a feather.

    If you had invested in a company that failed to make a profit after 40 years of trading, would you put up with being told by one of the directors that all of this is your fault for not being patient enough? I think not.

  10. “If you had invested in a company that failed to make a profit after 40 years of trading, would you put up with being told by one of the directors that all of this is your fault for not being patient enough? I think not. ”

    Do you really think science should be “managed” like a company ?

  11. anon says:

    Physics already is managed like a company. It is big business: compare the costs of particle accelerators to other business costs.

    Outsiders passionate about science are written off automatically as amateurs. The professionals are those who make money out of it.

  12. Chris Oakley says:

    Do you really think science should be “managed” like a company?

    They need our money to operate, so why should they not be accountable?

    There is in any case nothing wrong with operating like a company. In my experience research in companies is better managed than academic research. More emphasis on results, less on personalities, and much more willingness to give up on things that are leading nowhere.

  13. Quantafyzyx says:

    Wanting definite experimental predictions from a theory is so twenty-first century! Knowledge itself has a quantum behavior, like electrons and photons. Without 24th century mathematics, it is hard to explain but a rough analogy can be provided. Please remember, these are analogies only.

    A definite theory with predictions that can be compared to experiment is roughly analogous to a quantum system with close-to-classical behavior (see Schrodinger’s cat). Low Energy Physics is classical – there is a definite theory and definite experiments. However for physics of 1000 TeV and above, theory is in a quantum state. This analogy is rough, too, but the theory of physics is (in your language) a wavefunction over the space of string theory landscapes. Without knowledge that you all don’t have right now, the best LHC can do for you is collapse the theory wavefunction onto one of two branches of the landscape – roughly those with low-energy SUSY and those without. Even a rough estimate of amplitudes is currently beyond you.

    Now, knowledge of physics itself being quantum is extremely inconvenient and virtually intractable. Therefore the effort is to make it as “classical” as possible (the so-called incoherent regime where theories do not interfere with each other). Rough analogy again- there are two ways of collapsing the theory wavefunction – the first is by suitable experiment, and the second is by suitable theoretician. The cost of education, salary and retirement benefits for a theoretician is four-to-five magnitudes cheaper than any conceivable experiment, and therefore, we must produce more theoreticians. All this is dealt with in the Theory of Incoherence, though the upper bound on reduction of the landscape per theoretician is still undetermined upto a multiplicative constant. One of the important open questions, this is.

    On the practical side, The Harvard Breeding Program of 2316 has been instituted to optimize production of theoreticians.

    Clearly, more string theorists the more rapidly we approach the Incoherence regime, and Peter, your blog has been identified as a key blocker to production of such.

    Please consider this a polite request from the 24th century to cease and desist.

  14. Chris W. says:

    Actually, business itself is considerably messier and hard to manage than investor newspeak* would lead one to believe, especially when technology is involved. The analogy is forced only because nobody would invest in high energy physics as a pure business proposition. If one tried to turn it into a business one would end up selling snake oil to dupes.

    (* intentional reference to 1984)

  15. dan says:

    I recall Lubos expecting to see SUSY @ LHC. I agree with you that if no SUSY is found, it would not falsify string theory as it now understood, but if SUSY is found, then the question is not where it breaks (obviously at TEV scale) but how. it would provide strong experimental support to string theory i think.

    ” I don’t see many string theorists these days willing to stand behind the idea that string theory implies supersymmetry at the LHC scale.”

  16. “I recall Lubos expecting to see SUSY @ LHC. I agree with you that if no SUSY is found, it would not falsify string theory as it now understood, but if SUSY is found, then the question is not where it breaks (obviously at TEV scale) but how. it would provide strong experimental support to string theory i think.”

    So it’s a game where you can’t lose. Cool !

    If you can’t kill a theory isn’t it a strong indication that this theory is not alive ?

  17. Chris Oakley says:

    Hi Quantafyzyx,

    You are probably right, but for the majority of the contributors to this blog, bringing ourselves round to your point of view would just cause too much distress.

    Is there any chance of you developing and marketing brain implants that would enable us to to see the beauty of the Landscape without painful electric shock treatment?

  18. Chris W. says:

    The dialogue with experiment, Multiverse/Landscape edition:

    “The answer is yes. What was the question?”

    (This is an exaggeration, but not as much as one would hope.)

  19. AJ says:

    Hi Anonymous,

    As you say, it’s not entirely clear that string theory really requires supersymmetry for its formulation. But I think this supports my claim, that strings don’t really predict SUSY, except in so far as one includes SUSY from the start.

    Out of curiosity, is there really any evidence that pure YM theory has a gravity dual?

  20. Urs says:

    But I think this supports my claim, that strings don’t really predict SUSY, except in so far as one includes SUSY from the start.

    But if you don’t include SUSY from the start, you get something which seems to be incompatible with observation, namely the bosonic string. One is tempted to say that the bosonic string is ruled out by experimental data, namely by the observed existence of fermions.

    So from the available string models only those with SUSY are not immediately excluded by observation. In this sense (high energy) SUSY is a prediction.

    Of course it might still be that the endpoint of closed string tachyon condensation is nothing but the superstring. I suppose nobody can yet decide this one way or another.

    If true, we’d have an even more robust implication of supersymmetry from the assumption of strings.

    But certainly, as noted by others, worldsheet SUSY and hence SUSY of 10D flat space does not imply much about the SUSY we might hope to actually observe…

  21. anon says:

    SUSY is required for a hypothetical unification at an energy beyond that which can ever be measured. The 1-1 boson:fermion superpartners are no more scientific a prediction than predicting aliens, because no specific energy is predicted, there is no detailed dynamics, no numbers to be tested.

    If you don’t want precise calculations and numerical predictions that are testable scientifically, you find that religion can be interpreted as making many “testable predictions” about the afterlife, heaven, the day of judgement, etc.

    As Lunsford would say, it’s not science, it’s horseshit even before you start looking at the landscape of 10^500 universes in ST.

  22. Pingback: gr.yet.anotherblog.net » Blog Archive » Αποστομωτικό

  23. Marty Tysanner says:

    So from the available string models only those with SUSY are not immediately excluded by observation. In this sense (high energy) SUSY is a prediction.

    I don’t think I will easily understand this reasoning, unless the word “prediction” is redefined in just the right way. If I understand your comment correctly, you have a set of possibilities (the space of all string models) that can be grouped into two subsets: one depending on something that gives you the bosonic string, and another that includes SUSY. So far, there is no prediction. Then you add experimental input (i.e., that the first subset is incompatible with observation), and claim that what now remains is a prediction. A naive counting indicates that the ratio of outputs to inputs is less than or equal to one.

    That doesn’t look like a prediction to me.

  24. woit says:

    Marty,

    Urs is just giving you an argument that unification inherently requires the superstring, not the bosonic string, which is a not unreasonable argument. There are lots of reasons to rule out the bosonic string. The problem is that even if you just look at the superstring, in the simplest version it has unbroken space-time supersymmetry. So it predicts exact supersymmetry, which is a very bad prediction, since we don’t see that in nature. You can break this supersymmetry in various ways, but the problem is that the theory doesn’t tell you what the energy scale of the supersymmetry is. Urs is being slippery when he says “(high energy) SUSY is a prediction”, because “high energy” can be any thing: 1 Tev, an intermediate scale, the GUT scale, the Planck scale. For all I know maybe it can even be way above the Planck scale.

    So what is bogus is saying that “SUSY is a prediction” when you know (from experiment) that it is broken, but string theory has nothing at all to say about how it is broken, not even at which scale.

  25. A.J. says:

    Hi Urs,

    But if you don’t include SUSY from the start, you get something which seems to be incompatible with observation, namely the bosonic string.

    Right. Experimental results rule out the non-supersymmetric string theory. That’s not quite the same thing as saying that supersymmetric string theory predicts supersymmetry.

  26. dan says:

    Peter,
    Do you think though that with enough researchers and enough intelligence and studies thrown at the problem, that string theory could come with a mechanism of how it is broken, and at what scale? or do you think that the problem is insurmountable, even for string theorists?

    So what is bogus is saying that “SUSY is a prediction” when you know (from experiment) that it is broken, but string theory has nothing at all to say about how it is broken, not even at which scale.

  27. Tony Smith says:

    Urs said “… if you don’t include SUSY from the start, you get something which seems to be incompatible with observation, namely the bosonic string. One is tempted to say that the bosonic string is ruled out by experimental data, namely by the observed existence of fermions. …”.

    However, Englert, Houart, and Taormina said, in hep-th/0106235:
    “… supersymmetric and nonsupersymmetric ten-dimensional fermionic closed string theories stem from the compactified closed bosonic string theory. … Space-time fermions … arise from bosonic degrees of freedom … Compactification must generate an internal group SOint(s) admitting spinor representations … the spinor representations of SOint(s) describe fermionic states … the highest available space-time dimension accommodating fermions is … s + 2 = 10 … the truncation … to SOint(8) + ghosts transfers modular invariance from the 26-dimensional bosonic string to ten-dimensional fermionic strings …
    a manageable non-perturbative approach to the bosonic string is mandatory. An attempt towards formulating such an approach in a classical limit has been recently proposed … G.T. Horowitz and L. Susskind, Bosonic M Theory , hep-th/0012037 … and the present analysis suggests that such efforts should be further pursued. …”.

    In hep-th/0012037, Horowitz and Susskind said:
    “… We … try to interpret bosonic string theory as a compactification of a 27 dimensional theory. We will refer to this theory as bosonic M theory. …”.

    In hep-th/0104050, Lee Smolin said:
    “… “A new matrix model is described, based on the exceptional Jordan algebra, J3(O). … There are 27 matrix degrees of freedom, which under Spin(8) transform as the vector, spinor and conjugate spinor, plus three singlets, which represent the two longitudinal coordinates plus an eleventh coordinate. Supersymmetry appears to be related to triality of the representations of Spin(8).”.

    In hep-th/0110106, Yuhi Ohwashi said:
    “… … Smolin’s matrix model [is] based on the groups of type F4. … the actual world requires complex fermions without doubt. … In accordance with this complexification, the groups of type F4 are upgraded to the groups of type E6. … we consider a new matrix model based on the simply connected compact exceptional Lie group E6 …”.

    The result, which has much in common with my E6 model described on the CERN preprint server at http://cdsweb.cern.ch/ as EXT-2004-031, is that bosonic string theory CAN be interpreted in a way that is consistent with experimental observations.
    As Smolin suggests, Spin(8) triality produces fermion-boson relationships that are a subtle form of supersymmetry in which the familiar fermions of the standard model are the subtle-supersymmetric partners of the familiar bosons.

    In short, the bosonic string is NOT “ruled out by experimental data”, because fermions emerge naturally in bosonic string theory.
    Maybe that is what Urs had in mind by saying “… it might still be that the endpoint of closed string tachyon condensation is nothing but the superstring …” and that Urs supposes “… nobody can yet decide this one way or another …”. I think that the above line of work can decide this in favor of realistic fermion emergence from bosonic string theory.

    Tony Smith
    http://www.valdostamuseum.org/hamsmith/

  28. Thomas Larsson says:

    I recall Lubos expecting to see SUSY @ LHC.

    According to himself, Lubos has bet several thousand dollars on the experimental discovery of SUSY by 2006. Unfortunately, I am not among the ones who accepted his bet, but I wonder whether the deadline was January 1 or December 31…

    Actually, the deadline might be quite appropriate. When the Tevatron has collected 2 fb^-1 of data, which should happen this summer, it might be able to rule out a light Higgs, and thus indirectly SUSY, at the 95% CL.

    But this prediction is of course not watertight. We could be dealing with split (or supersplit) SUSY, which has been intelligently designed to avoid confrontation with experiments forever.

  29. Urs says:

    Tony,

    thanks for listing all these references. I know people are trying to see if the closed bosonic string is related to the superstring. One idea has always been that, since it contains a tachyon and is hence instable, it will reduce to the 10D superstring when closed tachyon condensation is over.

    I am no expert at all on the state of the art of studying this. The impression I got from hearsay is that it is not really understood yet. But very likely much more is understood than I am aware of.

    As a gut feeling, I would expect the bosonic string to be related to the fermionic one.

  30. Urs says:

    Some elements on how a theory gives rise to predictions:

    Say we have an assumption A about the world. Say we can show that A implies either B or C.

    A => (B v C)

    Say we find from measurements that in our world B is violated

    not B

    Then we combine our assumption above the world with our knowledge of the world and deduce

    (A /\ not B ) => C .

    Hence we conclude:

    “Given available data, our assumption predicts C”.

    An example:

    Let A be the assumption that the universe on large scales is described well by an FRW model in Einstein GR. As you know, this implies

    (C v D v E)

    where C is a universe of positive, D one of vanishing and E one of negative curvature.

    Now you make measurements. These rule out two of these possibilities.

    not C and not E .

    (This example might be a little outdated. Modify as you deem appropriate according to current experimental data.)

    Hence combining our assumption (FRW universe) with the experimental data allows us to make the prediction

    ( A /\ not C /\ not E ) => D .

    And that is in fact a prediction, as everybody knows. The successful standard model of cosmology follows from

    – assuming a theory (FRW model of GR)

    – excluding solutions which do not match observation at all

    – predicting that the only remaining solution is the one observed in nature, which then again implies predictions for further observations (like CMB fluctuations, etc).

    Critics of the fact that string theory seems to admit more than one solution should note in this example how one observation about the world reduces the number of candidate solutions which in turn allows to predict outcomes of more observations.

    Similarly, one might hope that if there are only a few (or even just a single) string vacuum matching basic properties of the standard model (like gauge group, number of generations, etc), then this would imply predictions on outcomes of other observations, like for instance the existence and configuration of compactified dimensions at high enough energies.

    Since string theory is incompletely understood one might feel that this is unlikely to happen, but it is not by itself a procudure alien to science at all.

    Finally, to apply the above to the prediction of high energy supersymmetry that we talked about, we have the following:

    The assumption A is that strings with the CFT dynamics considered currently in string theory do exist.

    This assumption implies B or C

    A => B or C,

    where B is the bosonic string and C is the superstring.

    Say B were ruled out by observation (we have discussed caveats to that).

    Since

    (A and not B) => C

    we get the prediction C of worldsheet supersymmetry. Finally, since

    C => D

    where D is (generically broken) target space SUSY, we get the prediction of (broken) target space SUSY from the assumption that strings exist at all and that fermions are being observed.

  31. Tony Smith says:

    Urs said: “… As a gut feeling, I would expect the bosonic string to be related to the fermionic one. …”.

    I agree, and I think that a possibility that is often overlooked when people say things like “SUSY has never been observed” is that, while the superpartners of naive 1-1 fermion-boson supersymmetry have indeed never been observed,
    it may be that supersymmetry is more subtle, and related to Spin(8) triality (as Lee Smolin suggests in hep-th/0104050) in such a way that the “ordinary” fermions of the standard model are in fact (subtle) supersymmetric partners of the standard model gauge bosons.

    If that is the case, bosonic strings might be “fundamental parents” of a fully realistic model with fermions, and SUSY might be of the subtle-triality type rather than a naive 1-1 correspondence,
    and
    one might expect that the LHC would see Higgs, more details about the T-quark, etc, but no “new” superpartner particles,
    and
    that failure by LHC to observe any “new” superpartner particles would not rule out string theory models such as those described by Smolin and others and cited in my previous comment 27. on this blog entry.

    Tony Smith
    http://www.valdostamuseum.org/hamsmith/

  32. woit says:

    Urs,

    You’re still completely evading the main point: Saying that you have a “prediction of (broken) target space SUSY” is completely vacuous unless you can say something about how SUSY is broken. This isn’t even in any sense a prediction of SUSY since SUSY with breaking scale pushed off to infinity = no-SUSY.

    Dan,

    I think the supersymmetry breaking problem is the fundamental problem for supersymmetry, both just in QFT, and in string theory. The fact that no one has come up with a way to break supersymmetry which agrees with experiment and doesn’t just about completely ruin the ability of the theory to predict anything indicates to me that there is a serious problem with the whole idea as it stands. My own guess is that there is something to supersymmetry, but it will require some major new idea and a serious revamping of how we think about supersymmetry to come up with something that actually works.

  33. Juan R. says:

    Michael Duff said,

    History has shown that rapid confirmation by experiment is a poor guide to the eventual value of a physical theory.

    This may be a joke!

    Consider the following theoretical ideas that have yet to be empirically confirmed: gravitational waves (1916); the cosmological constant (1917); extra dimensions (1926); the Higgs boson (1964); supersymmetry (1971).
    All were dismissed in their time by impatient naysayers as theories going nowhere.

    Were those ‘naysayers’ wrong? There is theoretical evidence that gravitational waves are not real (this is focused to the problem of localization of energy in GR). There are experimental discrepancies (order 2%) in last binary pulse tests suggesting longitudinal components cannot be explained via GR-waves and this has open the doors to reevaluation of energy problem of GR again.

    There exist serious theoretical evidence that cosmological constant is not one. In some recent works, even the cosmological constant is a geometrical effect with no vacuum interpretation.

    There are studies against existence of addittional dimensions, etc.

    Precisely, the existence of alternative points of view and theories is the REASON for experimental checks selecting the correct theory or view. There are huge collections of beatiful scientific ideas that experiments ruled out from science. String theorists know a lot of that. String theory NEWER worked. For example, Robert B. Laughlin, 1998 Nobel Prize-winning physicist says

    People have been changing string theory in wild ways because it has never worked.

    Do you remember string theory fiasco on strong force? They was substituted by QCD.

    In SCIENCE, any interesting idea is not true before experimentally verified. But string theorists have introduced the non-scientific idea of a ‘beatiful’ idea is true even if there is no more basic experimental evidence for it. They believe are Good…

    String/M-theory is much more ambitious and far-reaching than any of the above ideas. It is a bold attempt to fuse gravity with quantum mechanics and explain all physical phenomena.

    Yes! and FAILED. String M-theory does not unify QM and gravity (in fact is even unable to obtain GR equations without appeal to fixed backgrounds) and, of course, being a reduccionist approach string M-theory is UNABLE to explain emergent phenomena. As said P.W. Anderson “More is different”.

    I already explained that string theory is not a TOE in sci.physics.string. In fact, it is not even a 1% of a realistic TOE.

    The debate is not between those who believe that string/M-theory should be judged by its agreement with experiment and those who do not. The debate is between those who demand instant gratification and those who recognise that a theory of everything does not happen overnight.

    No! The debate is between those (scientists) who study the world as it is and those (stringers) who want that universe was as they want. Stringers want that universe was 10-11D, supersimmetric, quantum, reduccionist, and formed by dozens and dozens of unobserved ‘particles’: 0-branes, 1-branes(strings), 2-branes, … 5-branes, … (and some even claim that may be background dependent and that GR may be ignored!)

    They claim all of above (and more) even if SCIENTIFIC disciplines experimental data, and theories claim and prove the contrary.

    For example, there is well studied cases in complexity theory and published in specialized journals that prove that reduccionism does not work in complex systems as biological societies due to nonlinear features. It has been proven in very recent articles published in the journal Foundations of chemistry that chemistry has been not reduced to microphysics and that discipline is emergent one, with own concepts and theories cannot be reduced to ontological objects of lower class, e.g. atomic physics.

    People who has worked in complexity problems (e.g. Anderson, Laughling, Gell-Mann in Santa Fe institute) has expressed the point that string theory is NOT a theory of everything even if was correct.

    Stringers simply ignore data and proofs and continue to call to a ‘theory’ of microscopic strings a theory of everything…

    That is not a scientific attitude and remember to me classical physicists searching for a TOE whereas ignored the new QM.

    Many pioneers of the incredibly successful standard model of particle physics, including Nobel laureates Murray Gell-Mann, Abdus Salam, Steven Weinberg and David Gross, turned their attention to superstring theory and continued to pursue its ramifications notwithstanding its lack of empirical support.

    And by each one of those scientist we can cite another smart scientist (including lot of Nobel laureates) rejecting string theory.

    Do you remember Feynman evaluations of string theory? Yes he used the word nonsense.

    Moreover the scientists supporting string theory did some mistakes in the past. Take the example of Gell-Mann or Weinberg. Weinberg has done several wonrg stuff on gravitation, and unification. He openly claimed that QM and Coulomb forces is “all one requires for chemistry” and he failed. Today, we have electroweak quantum chemistry. If the ‘father’ of eletroweak theory was unable to understand all details theory he did. How can we are sure of his evaluation of string theory.

    Take Gell-Mann case, ignore the errors he did in the past and focus in his evaluation of string theory. I have an early work where he clearly explain why heterotic superstring is the only serious candidate to unified theory of elementary particles and others string versions being incorrect. In one of his last works, he now carefully talk about the action of M-theory since now he know that all string theories are related via dualities.

    If Gell-Mann failed then to understand string theory how do you know that now he is understanding M-theory?

    They no doubt recalled the decades required to knock the standard model into a shape that could be confirmed by experiment – for example the 25-year time lag between the prediction and discovery of non-Abelian gauge bosons upon which the standard model is based.

    How many alternative theories were rejected in those 25 years? Yes a huge number…

    M-theory solves, among other things, the 1974 puzzle posed by Hawking concerning the microscopic origin of black-hole entropy.

    No! There is a mathematical conjeture in brane theory, not a verified scientific explanation.

    Nor is M-theory incompatible with an accelerating universe as your article implied.

    Of course, since M-theory is a misnomer because M-theory is not formulated!

    Nobody know it but stringers use the term ‘theory’ how if really exited a theory. In fact, nobody has proven even that the theory exist. We use the term “M-theory conjeture” for refering to those conjetures extracted from non perturbative studies of string theory suggesting existence of a full theory for different values of parameter g.

    Some candidates to M-theory as Matrix model violate previous asumptions of string theory. For example, Banks formulation is based in pointlike particles, when during decades all stringers attempted to convice us as stupid the concept of pointlike partiles of the standard model was. Anyone in the street has heard about small unidimensional object (the famous string) but practically nobody heard of 0-branes.

    This is hardly deserving of your description as a theory in “a sorry state”. The annual international string theory conference continues to attract an increasing number of participants, now about 500.

    Perhaps do you misunderstand between state of theory and state of the community? The community is rather well, the theory is in a sorry state with lot of no-go theorems and zero advance in fundamental issues in the last two decades.

    Juan R.

    Center for CANONICAL |SCIENCE)

  34. Urs says:

    Peter,

    I don’t think I am trying to evade any point. I am trying to state the obvious elementary facts in a hope to increase the productivity of the discussion.

    If your point is that the prediction of SUSY by strings is vacuous for almost all conceivable practical purposes then I fully agree.

    I just went through this little exercise in order to show that susy is not really put in by hand in string theory, but follows from assumption A (when stated with all due qualifications).

    This is true, albeit not very useful. That happens…

  35. Urs says:

    One more thing: When talking about ‘breaking of SUSY in string theory’ one is mostly thinking of spontaneous breaking in the effective 4D theory obtained by compactifying 10D on M^4 x CY6.

    But, as far as I know, there is no known mechanism that would favor compactification on CY. I’d expect the generic string vacuum ‘breaks’ susy by not being of the form M^4 x CY6.

    What remains true, however, is that flat 10D space will look supersymmetric. So in as far as on small enough scales (i.e. above the compactification scale) spacetime looks locally flat, perturbative string theory would seem to predicts it to look supersymmetric. If it still applied there, that is…

    But I am obviously not anywhere near being an expert on this.

  36. Urs says:

    Tony,

    this sounds all very interesting. I wish I would better understand the ideas on algebraic patterns that you have (and be able to safely distinguish them from your more voodoo-like ideas, if you know what I mean).

  37. Tony Smith says:

    Urs, about your comment 36. on this blog, here is an effort to describe in voodoo-free terms some aspects of my view of SUSY:

    Start with Smolin’s hep-th/0104050 statement: “… Supersymmetry appears to be related to triality of the representations of Spin(8). …”.

    Spin(8) has three 8-dim representations:
    two mirror-image half-spinor representations; and
    one vector representation.

    Half-spinor representations naturally correspond to fermions, so it is natural for one 8-dim half-spinor rep to correspond to fermion particles and for its mirror image 8-dim half-spinor rep to correspond to fermion antiparticles.

    Vector representations naturally correspond to vectors.

    Triality shows that each half-spinor representation is isomorphic to the vector representation.

    So, for Spin(8), triality gives a 1-1 correspondence between half-spinor fermion particles and vectors.

    Since gauge bosons come from bivectors, or antisymmetric pairs of vectors, and since there are 8/\8 = 8×7/2 = 28 bivector gauge bosons for Spin(8),
    the triality SUSY for Spin(8) is NOT a 1-1 fermion-boson correspondence, but is rather a correspondence between 8 fermion particles and 28 gauge bosons, which is a 2 to 7 ratio, NOT a simple 1 to 1 ratio.

    Since I like voodoo, and Spin(8) is natural for voodoo, if I were to advocate my voodoo stuff here I would say in detail how those fermions and gauge bosons look realistic and how the dimensionality of factors in the Lagrangian density in 8-dim spacetime works out to be nice, and how a quaternionic calibration breaks the 8-dim spacetime into 4-dim spacetime plus 4-dim internal symmetry space, etc.
    However,
    I promised here to stay away from voodoo, so I will do so as follows:

    Many people in string theory like to use gauge groups with Lie algebras such as Spin(10), E6, Spin(16), E8, and products thereof, so please note that each and every one of those Lie algebras contain a nice Spin(8) subalgebra with triality, and (calculation details vary with whichever algebra is your favorite) roughly you can find a subtle-supersymmetric correspondence in each case such that the fermions are related to gauge bosons by using the triality of the embedded Spin(8), which means that:

    The natural SUSY of such string theory models is NOT naive 1-1 requiring unobserved stuff like selectrons and gluinos.

    The natural SUSY of such string theory models is not only more subtle, but, very importantly, THE WELL-KNOWN STANDARD MODEL FERMIONS CAN ACT AS THE SUBTLE-SUPERSYMMETRIC PARTNERS OF THE GAUGE BOSONS,
    so that
    A FAILURE OF THE LHC TO FIND SELECTRONS, GLUINOS, ETC WOULD BE IRRELEVANT WITH RESPECT TO (actually, supportive of) THE VALIDITY OF SUCH STRING THEORY MODELS.

    This may be the “new idea and … serious revamping of how we think about supersymmetry” that Peter mentioned in his comment 32.

    I thank you for the opportunity to say this here, because I used to wish that some group somewhere would let me participate in a seminar or workshop etc about such stuff, but I guess my status (being blacklisted by the Cornell arXiv) made me an outlaw-persona-non-grata to be shunned by all decent physicists, and I guess as of now I just have to live with that.

    Although I do like the voodoo = Clifford algebra / generalized hyperfinite II1 von Neumann factor / Wyler geometry / strings-as-world-lines model that I use (and I do hope that someday others might come to like the voodoo stuff),

    I also hope that it is clear from the above that some parts of it might be very useful in non-voodoo string theory models, and that I am quite happy to discuss such parts in non-voodoo contexts.

    Tony Smith
    http://www.valdostamuseum.org/hamsmith/

  38. Just a note: any revamping of supersymmetry should contemplate the hierarchy problem, just as usual susy does; cancellation of fermionic and bosonic loops and all that.

    Of course the simplicity of the 3-familiy standard model is amazing, 12 spin 1/2 particles (and another 12 antiparticles thus) and 12 spin 1 particles seem to be claiming for some special symmetry or a cancellation mechanism, or perhaps even a Galoisian justification. But here comes just the same thing we are critiquising in this thread: to build an structure needing these particles is not the same
    that to predict the existence of these particles; exactly as to build a metatheory needing susy is not the same that to predict susy.

  39. Urs says:

    Tony,

    thanks for the response.

    It is certainly true that triality of SO(8) has a lot to do with supersymmetry.

    The fact that the superstring has to live in 10 dimensions (to cancel the Weyl anomaly) is closely related to this. Precisely in 10 dimensions does a string (a 2D worldsheet) have precisely 8 transverse directions and its fermionic and bosonic transverse oscillations a chance to be related, thnaks to SO(8) triality.

    This is particularly manifest in the procedure which relates the Green-Schwarz formulation of the superstring (the one which is bosonic on the worldsheet and manifestly susy in target space) with the Ramond-Neveu-Schwarz formulation (which is manifestly susy on the worldsheet but not manifestly so in target space).

    In order to show that these two formulations are in fact equivalent one rewrites the worldsheet spinors of RNS as worldsheet bosons (“bosonizing” them) and checks that the result is the GS string. This procedure only works due to triality and hence only in 2+8 dimensions.

    Similarly the 11 dimensions of “M-theory” arise as 3-dimensions of the worldvolume of a supermembrane plus 8 transverse ones.

    So in this sense there is a relation between triality and supersymmetry which is well-established.

    But it seems that you are arguing for a different relation.

    I am not sure yet if I follow the details, though. Let me see: are you arguing that any system with a spin(8) symmetry has bose/fermi symmetry?

    Certainly this is not true without further qualifications. The point of triality above is rather along the lines that in 8 dimensions Weyl spinors have the same number of components as vectors. But the spin(8)-representation still acts inside the spinor space or the vector space seperately.

    Maybe I am missing the obvious. Could you maybe sketch the form of one of these Lagrangians that you seem to have in mind which contains 2x fermions and 7x bosons such that it is invariant under a symmetry operation which mixes these 7x-bosons and the 2x-fermions?

  40. Urs says:

    voodoo = Clifford algebra / generalized hyperfinite II1 von Neumann factor / Wyler geometry / strings-as-world-lines model

    I should clarify what I meant by “voodoo” in a previous message. I don’t consider Clifford algebra and von Neumann algebra theory as voodoo at all.

    I assume what you have to say on your website concerning algebras etc. is correct and often interesting. What looks like voodoo to me are some of your more liberal free associations of structures with physics. It might be that there is deep truth hidden there, but then it is not easy to see.

    Hoping that you don’t mind me being honest, I have to say that much of what you present (and certainly the style in which you present it) looks like an extremely sophisticated version of numerology.

    Maybe it’s not. But I bet the reason why you are encountering problems with the arXiv is due to that.

  41. Urs says:

    strings-as-world-lines model

    If you had said “worldsheets as planar Feynman-diagrams” I would agree that there is something very deep about it.

  42. Santo D'Agostino says:

    Hi Urs,

    You said about predictions:

    “… Hence combining our assumption (FRW universe) with the experimental data allows us to make the prediction

    ( A /\ not C /\ not E ) => D .

    And that is in fact a prediction, as everybody knows. The successful standard model of cosmology follows from

    – assuming a theory (FRW model of GR)

    – excluding solutions which do not match observation at all

    – predicting that the only remaining solution is the one observed in nature, which then again implies predictions for further observations (like CMB fluctuations, etc). …”

    This is, to me, an unusual use of the word “prediction.” Sticking with the context of GR, consider the prediction of the perihilion shift of the orbit of Mercury, or the prediction of the bending of distant starlight by the sun. In these two cases, one can derive formulas from GR, then one substitutes experimental values for independently-measured constants (such as the gravitational constant), and the formulas then produce definite, numerical values for the desired quantities. These definite numerical values can then be compared to the corresponding observed values. To my mind, this is what is meant by prediction.

    Contrast these predictions with the curvature of spacetime in the FRW models, as you discuss. The curvature of spacetime cannot be calculated by GR, and so does not qualify as a prediction of the theory. True, any experimentally measured value of the curvature is consistent with GR, but that does not make any particular measured value a prediction of the theory.

    Using such a traditional interpretation of the word “prediction,” are there any predictions of string theory?

    Best wishes,
    Santo

  43. Urs says:

    Santo D’Agostino,

    the example you describe is indeed a special case of what I
    sketched in

    http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=323#comment-7364

    (There seems to be something wrong with hyperlinks here, at least in the comment preview.)

    In your example “A” is the assumption that Einstein GR describes gravity.

    Your statement that “one can derive formulas from GR” is the implication

    A => (B1 or B2 or B3 or …)

    where the Bi for all i in some set I are all the solutions of these equations.

    Your statement “then one substitutes experimental values” is precisely the important point which I tried to emphasize in my post. It eliminates classes of the Bi, those that do not fit these experimental values, so that we have

    for all j in a subjet J of I : not Bj .

    Given sufficient experimental input (large enough set J) we obtain a small enough set

    K = I without J

    of candidate solutions and
    then your statement is true that “the formulas then produce definite, numerical values”.

    In my notation this was the logical deduction

    (A and not Bj for all J in J)
    =>
    Bk_1 or Bk_2 or … for k_i in K

    Please read again carefully through what I wrote to see this.

    So the point is this: We make an assumption about the world. This usually is compatible with more than one state of the world. Hence we look at only those consequences of that assumption which do not contradict known facts about the world. Then we check what our assumption implies on the remaining set of solutions.

    It’s a very simple fact. I stated it because in the heat of string-theory-bashing some simple facts tend to be forgotten. 🙂

    String theory is based on an assumption A which says that perturbative scattering amplitudes are given by evaluating certain 2D CFTs over Riemann-surface diagrams.

    You can work out consequences of this assumption and go through the above procedure sketched above.

    So in particular, you can take experimental input (like the gauge group of the standard model or the number of generations) and use this to exclude certain a priori possible consequences of assumption “A”, i.e. certain “string vacua”

    Unfortunately, the set K of remaining candidate solutions is thus far still too large to say almost anything definite about it.

    Another problem is that assumption “A” itself may not be sufficiently well understood yet.

    So, that’s how it goes in science. Assumptions are made, checked, reworked, etc. The problem with string theory that Peter is fond of pointing out is not that assumption “A” is by itself an assumption without any chance of being useful. If we perfectly understood the consequences of “A” (say at the level at which we understand the consequences of the assumption that GR describes gravity) we’d be all much happier.

    It makes sense to complain about the progress that has been achieved in understanding “A” and to urge people to look at other viable assumptions “A1”, “A2”,…

  44. Santo D'Agostino says:

    Hi Urs,

    Although the traditionally standard use of the word “prediction” may indeed logically be a special case of the process you describe (and also call by the name “prediction”), the two processes are sufficiently different in character that they ought to be labelled by different names to prevent confusion.

    To clarify the difference in character between the two concepts, consider this passage from your previous message:

    “In your example “A” is the assumption that Einstein GR describes gravity.

    Your statement that “one can derive formulas from GR” is the implication

    A => (B1 or B2 or B3 or …)

    where the Bi for all i in some set I are all the solutions of these equations.

    Your statement “then one substitutes experimental values” is precisely the important point which I tried to emphasize in my post. It eliminates classes of the Bi, those that do not fit these experimental values, so that we have

    for all j in a subjet J of I : not Bj .”

    Suppose that the Bi are possible values for the perihelion shift of Mercury. Then by substituting experimental values INDEPENDENT of the perhilion shift, one eliminates possible values of Bi and obtains a single value, called the predicted value of the perihelion shift, which then one can compare to the observed value.

    Contrast this with the situation of curvature. That is, suppose that the Bi represent possible values of the curvature of spacetime. If one had a formula for the curvature of spacetime, and substituted experimental values into the formula that were INDEPENDENT of the curvature, then once again one could say that the theory predicts the curvature. However, using observed values of the curvature itself to select values of Bi, which are also values of the curvature, is a process that you refer to as prediction, but which I would not call as such.

    With your usage of the word “prediction,” it seems that one could say that GR predicts the curvature of spacetime no matter what its observed value is. This represents a departure from the traditional use of the term, and it would be better to coin a new term for the process you describe.

    Best wishes,
    Santo

  45. Urs says:

    With your usage of the word “prediction,” it seems that one could say that GR predicts the curvature of spacetime no matter what its observed value is.

    No. Please read what I wrote. In the example of cosmology the observed curvature of space on large scales is experimental input. Only given that input can we select out of all available FRW models the one which we then use to make further predictions.

    The whole point is that the assumption GR+FRW model does not predict the curvature of space. There is a “landscape of solutions” to GR+FRW which contains precisely three solutions. We pick the one not excluded by experiment and use it to predict further observations.

  46. Santo D'Agostino says:

    Hi Urs,

    I’m relieved to read that you agree that experimental input cannot be considered a prediction of a theory. But your usage of the word prediction in an earlier post is still unjustified if we stick to the traditional meaning of “prediction.”

    Quoting you:

    “Let A be the assumption that the universe on large scales is described well by an FRW model in Einstein GR. As you know, this implies

    (C v D v E)

    where C is a universe of positive, D one of vanishing and E one of negative curvature.

    Now you make measurements. These rule out two of these possibilities.

    not C and not E .

    (This example might be a little outdated. Modify as you deem appropriate according to current experimental data.)

    Hence combining our assumption (FRW universe) with the experimental data allows us to make the prediction

    ( A /\ not C /\ not E ) => D .

    And that is in fact a prediction, as everybody knows.”

    I am not arguing with the validity of the methodology you describe. I am only saying that D should not be referred to as a prediction of the theory, since D is observational input, as you seemed to agree with in your immediately previous post. In other words, I am disputing your sentence, “And that is in fact a prediction, as everybody knows.”

    A prediction of a theory is a definite thing, and is not contingent on experimental or observational data. What if in the future, more acceptable measurements rule out D and E, but not C. Would you then say that the theory now predicts C?

    Santo

  47. Urs says:

    Ah, now I see what you mean. That was sloppily formulated. The point is, once you have fixed D this implies other things

    D => D1 and D2 and …

    (like details of nucleosynthesis, CMP spectra, etc.) and this are the predictions.

  48. Santo D'Agostino says:

    Hi Urs,

    Agreed.

    All the best wishes,
    Santo

  49. Urs, Tony’s model uses E6 much like the E6 GUT one gets from the E8xE8 heterotic string. I think for both Tony and the heterotic string the two half-spinors of D4 relate to E6 orbifolding. The difference may be in the use of the D4 vector part of the Triality. If you think of D5 in between D4 and E6 or the SO(10) GUT in between the SU(5) GUT and the E6 GUT. That SO(10) as John Baez mentions in his recent paper is a nice way to see a 10-dim spacetime. That 10 is a D5 vector and is a nice way to see why Tony uses the 8-dim vector of the D4 Triality as spacetime. The two extra dimensions Tony has for an SO(10) spacetime makes the spacetime complex. D5/D4xU(1) has 16-dims or the 10-dim has 2-dim added to the 4 big dimensions to get a 6-dim CP3 twistor. So Tony has spacetime as a substructure of the String. That Gross comment about space and time needing to go away (as the superstructure of the string) seems related to this. Gross asks what then replaces spacetime. For Tony it’s the Clifford algebra. Kind of makes sense to think of Lie Algebras as a substructure of Clifford algebras. It kind of bothers me that so many people seem to have trouble with the general idea of Tony’s model, it’s not that complicated. If you were looking at something like Tony’s Lagrangian after dimensional reduction I could see where a discussion is needed, there are tons of places I just take Tony’s word for it, he seems rather good at math. As for Tony giving credit to ancient civilizations for finding Clifford Algebra and Lie Algebra patterns, lots of the patterns like D-series root vectors are rather simple and it is not so hard to imagine ancient people noticing them. I personally believe like Tony that some ancient people were quite good at noticing patterns that aren’t all that easy to see.

  50. Tony Smith says:

    Urs asked (in comment 39.) “… are you arguing that any system with a spin(8) symmetry has bose/fermi symmetry? … Could you maybe sketch the form of one of these Lagrangians that you seem to have in mind which contains 2x fermions and 7x bosons … ? ..”.

    No, I am not arguing that ANY system with a spin(8) symmetry has bose/fermi symmetry, but I am arguing that some interesting systems do have what I call subtle supersymmetry due to the spin(8) triality.

    The 7/2 boson/fermion ratio stuff is peculiar to my voodoo stuff, so I don’t want to say much about it here, but ( since yesterday (10 Jan 06) was National Voodoo day in Benin – see the BBC article at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/4599392.stm ) I will mention that the key is that in a Lagrangian density over 8-dim spacetime, the dimension of fermion/spinor PSI is 7/2 (as opposed to dimension 3/2 over 4-dim spacetime), and 8 fermion particles x 7/2 dimension = 28 = 28 gauge bosons x 1 dimension.

    For a non-voodoo point of view, I will quote from Lee Smolin’s hep-th/0104050:
    “… the local structure of a 9+1 dimensional spacetime may be expressed in terms of J(O,2), which is the Jordan algebra of 2×2 hermitian matrices of octonions
    z1 O0
    J(O,2) =
    O0 z2
    … Similarly, the relevant Spin(9,1) spinors may be parameterized as 2 component octonionic spinors, which we may write as,
    O2
    PSI =
    O1
    … The main idea of supersymmetry, in the context of a theory of spacetime, is that there should be some fundamental unification of the spacetime geometry with the fermionic degrees of freedom which live in the spinor representations of the local invariance group.
    …to unify the coordinates of the tangent space of a 9 + 1 dimensional spacetime with its spinor degrees of freedom, in a way that naturally includes an eleventh spatial coordinate z3 … incorporate all of them in the algebra of 3×3 hermitian matrices of octonions, which is called the exceptional Jordan algebra. This is given by
    z1 O0 O2*
    J = O0* z2 O1
    O2 O1* z0
    … sixteen of the dimensions of bosonic string theory are transmuted from bosonic to fermionic by a dynamical mechanism that involves the decay of the tachyonic degree of freedom … the exceptional Jordan algebra is exactly the unique mathematical structure we seek. … The automorphism group of J is known to be F4. This group has several Spin(8) subgroups, one of which acts on the components of J in the following way: the za are scalars,
    O0,O1,O2 are, respectively, the 8 dimensional vector, spinor and conjugate spinors. …
    One way to … make an action … is to construct a cubic action … which we will call the exceptional cubic matrix model … Spin(8) acts differently on each of the three slots of the cubic product. … The three particular Spin(8) subalgebras that act on each slot are related to each other by triality …
    It is interesting to conjecture that the supersymmetries … can be understood as arising from the components of F4 that live in the 8 dimensional spinor and conjugate spinor representations S and Sc. These act bosonically on the degrees of freedom in J however it is possible that after the compactifications that turn the …[ O1 and O2 ]… into fermions they may imply a fermionic symmetry of the reduced action …”.

    I hope that the quote is extensive enough to give Lee Smolin’s basic idea, and not too extensive as to be burdensomely long in a blog comment.

    As you can see from language like “conjecture”, full calculations were not done at the time of hep-th/0104050, and, as far as I know, they have yet to be done.

    I am sort of puzzled (and disappointed) that both Lee Smolin and Lenny Susskind, authors of papers about such stuff (hep-th/0104050 and hep-th/0012037) seem to spend most of their energy nowadays on other matters, even though they both doubtless have grad students / postdocs /etc who could be assigned some of the calculation work that remains to be done.

    Lee’s Jordan algebra approach lends itself to LQG / spin foams with the exceptional Jordan algebra at the spin foam nodes,
    while
    Lenny’s matrix model lends itself to string theory models with Lie algebras that are related to that exceptional Jordan algebra,
    and
    it would be nice (in my opinion) to work on both approaches, and maybe it would result in showing that the two approaches are equivalent (sort of like Heisenberg and Schroedinger quantum models were shown to be equivalent). Maybe they might even also be equivalent to my voodoo model.
    Therefore,
    I am somewhat saddened that Lee seems to mostly run around talking about relatively general topics such as background independence and Lenny seems to be running around Lost in his Landscape. Such topics are easy to use as PR hype for the public and funding agencies, but in my opinion they are nowhere near as useful as the hard work of doing some detailed calculations about triality and subtle supersymmetry.

    Tony Smith
    http://www.valdostamuseum.org/hamsmith/

    PS – Urs, I am quite OK with your honest expression of opinion (in comment 40.) that “… much of what …[ I ]… present (and certainly the style in which …[ I ]… present it) looks like an extremely sophisticated version of numerology. …”.

    As to style, if you are referring to my web site, it is not intended to look like a standard-format physics paper, and it is true that it contains a lot of associations (IFA divination = Clifford algebra, etc) that some people might find unusual.
    However,
    my pure-physics papers that were put on the XXX archives before Cornell blacklisted me might look a bit less unconventional. For example: hep-th/9302030 deals with Jordan algebras and force strengths and hep-ph/9501252 is a model overview. Although those older papers contain some ideas that I have changed/corrected as of nowadays, they were written in conventional LaTeX format, and I tried to make them look conventional in style. If you find them to also look strange, then I can only apologize for my limited expository ability.
    As to some of the associations that I make seeming strange or unusual, that is one of the topics that I discuss in therapy with my psychiatrist. So far, his diagnosis seems to be that the unusual associations are not problematic, although depression is a problem for which I am undergoing therapy.

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