A few short items:\t<\/p>\n
Guth started his physics career in this sunny scientific world. Now sixty-four years old and a professor at MIT, he was in his early thirties when he proposed a major revision to the Big Bang theory, something called inflation…<\/p>\n
He wears aviator-style eyeglasses, keeps his hair long, and chain-drinks Diet Cokes. \u201cThe reason I went into theoretical physics,\u201d Guth tells me, \u201cis that I liked the idea that we could understand everything\u2014i.e., the universe\u2014in terms of mathematics and logic.\u201d He gives a bitter laugh. We have been talking about the multiverse…<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had a lot more confidence in our intuition before the discovery of dark energy and the multiverse idea,\u201d says Guth. \u201cThere will still be a lot for us to understand, but we will miss out on the fun of figuring everything out from first principles.\u201d<\/p>\n
One wonders whether a young Alan Guth, considering a career in science today, would choose theoretical physics.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
The only hint anywhere in article that some physicists might feel that there is something wrong with this picture is the passing remark that some [unnamed] physicists “remain skeptical of the anthropic principle and the reliance on multiple universes to explain the values of the fundamental parameters of physics.”<\/li>\n
The FY2012 DOE budget has now been finally agreed upon (see here<\/a>), remarkably not even that far into FY2012. HEP does pretty well, at $791.7 million, versus $795.4 million for FY2011, a small decrease, considering that the Tevatron was running all of FY2011, is off now. More from Fermilab director Oddone here<\/a>, who describes the budget as “very good news”.<\/li>\n The recent evidence for the Higgs particle found at the LHC kicks up a notch the question of who might get a Nobel prize for this discovery. Whether there’s something there at 125 GeV won’t be confirmed until too late in 2012 for a 2012 experimental prize, maybe that will be on the agenda for 2013, with the main question being who would get the prize. ATLAS and CMS are looking at very similar data, with similar analyses, releasing results in a coordinated fashion, so they should both get the prize, but there’s no obvious particular scientists to give it to.\n A theoretical Higgs prize would likely take much longer, since it will take a while to be sure that whatever is found behaves the way a Higgs should. Guralnik continues his campaign for the prize here<\/a>.<\/li>\n
Erik Verlinde’s claims<\/a> made nearly two years ago that gravity is an entropic force have gotten a lot of attention. He doesn’t seem to have written up any elaboration of these ideas, but he comments very recently on Twitter<\/a>:
\nFor those who wonder: the fact that the Higgs has (perhaps) been found has no influence on my ideas on gravity. These ideas remain correct.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/li>\n
Some people send me books that I enjoy in one way or another, but don’t have the time or energy to write about here. Maybe you should consider them as last-minute holiday gifts:\n A First Course in Loop Quantum Gravity<\/a>, by Rodolfo Gambini and Jorge Pullin. This book explains the ideas behind loop quantum gravity at an introductory level, suitable for undergraduates, or anyone wanting as non-technical as possible of an introduction to the subject. Maybe it can be sold in a package with Barton Zwiebach’s A First Course in String Theory<\/a>.<\/ul>\n
\nFascinating Mathematical People<\/a> edited by Albers and Alexanderson. This contains a wonderful interview with my colleague Dusa McDuff. There’s also this exchange in the interview with Ahlfors:<\/p>\n
Mathematical People<\/strong>: How about physicists?
\nAhlfors<\/strong>: Well, I don’t believe in physics!
\nMathematical People<\/strong>: You don’t believe in physics? Why not?
\nAhlfors<\/strong>: Physicists are so close to physics, but they don’t know mathematics.
\nMathematical People<\/strong>: … There’s also a great deal of mathematics used by string theorists.
\nAhlfors<\/strong>: But it’s the wrong theory. I like the knot theory aspects, especially the knot theory applied to string theory. The strings are knots now, and there are these ready-made knot theorems that can be applied. That appeals to me.
\nProbably physicists are important for mathematics, but they cannot be important for me in any sense. I don’t think that mathematicians should take their inspiration from physics.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/ul>\nMagical Mathematics: The Mathematical Ideas That Animate Great Magic<\/a>, by Ron Graham and Persi Diaconis.
Comes with its own deck of playing cards<\/strike>[Oops, I guess only the promotional copies<\/em>]. Diaconis is a magician as well as a mathematician, so this is written by experts.<\/ul>\nDivision Algebras, Lattices, Physics, Windmill Tilting<\/a>, by Geoffrey Dixon. Dixon tells his personal story about pursuing research in particle physics, trying to connect it to the mathematics of the division algebras over the reals. I’m sympathetic to the idea that this kind of algebra has something to do with the patterns we see in the SM symmetries and quantum numbers. Unfortunately I still think no one yet knows the right way to understand this.<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n
Update<\/strong>: One more. See here<\/a> for an explanation of why string theory is useful:<\/p>\n
Dr. Kaku explains that time machines do not violate Einstein’s laws of physics, and that \u2013 difficult though it might be \u2013 future humans would be wise to build one and slip through a wormhole to one of the alternate dimensions proposed by string theory before the cooling universe extinguishes all known life. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Update<\/strong>: The Times has an article and series of letters about the Higgs\/Nobel issue, see here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A few short items: The Multiverse propaganda campaign continues this month, with a piece by Alan Lightman in Harpers entitled The Accidental Universe: Science’s Crisis of Faith. The content is pretty much the usual: string theory implies an untestable multiverse, … Continue reading