{"id":7841,"date":"2015-06-22T10:39:32","date_gmt":"2015-06-22T14:39:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=7841"},"modified":"2015-07-15T14:57:10","modified_gmt":"2015-07-15T18:57:10","slug":"convergence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=7841","title":{"rendered":"Convergence"},"content":{"rendered":"

Another conference that starts today is the Convergence<\/a> conference at the Perimeter Institute. The concept is explained by Neil Turok here<\/a>. His point of view is one I’m very much in sympathy with:<\/p>\n

Turok explains that the \u201clarge bandwagon\u201d of the last 30 years has not found experimental support. The bandwagon in question is the Standard Model of particle physics established in the 1970s, which, he says, people have been elaborating ever since. \u201cGrand unified theories, supersymmetry, string theory, M-theory, multiverse theory,\u201d he lists. \u201cEach is not particularly radical, but is becoming ever more complex and arbitrary.\u201d<\/p>\n

To illustrate the lack of experimental support for these ideas, Turok describes how many people were hoping string theory would represent a radical development; but since string theory \u2013 as currently interpreted \u2013 leads to the multiverse, Turok describes it as the \u201cleast predictive theory ever\u201d.<\/p>\n

Indeed, experimental support has not been found for other extensions of the Standard Model either. \u201cWe have discovered the Higgs and nothing else,\u201d says Turok, \u201cyet the vast majority of theorists had been confidently predicting WIMPS (weakly interacting massive particles) and supersymmetric particles\u2026Theorists are walking around in a bit of a stunned silence.\u201d He adds that it could turn out to be right that all sorts of other particles are needed along with the Higgs \u2013 but that thought seems to be misguided.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy view is that this has been a kind of catastrophe \u2013 we\u2019ve lost our way,\u201d he says. \u201cWhat we need are ideas as simple and radical as in the start of the 20th century with quantum mechanics.\u201d<\/p>\n

So what might these ideas look like? Turok explains how observations have shown that the universe is simpler than we ever expected \u2013 in contrast to our theories, which are becoming ever more complex.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s great to see this, very encouraging to think that a more reality-based point of view on fundamental physical theory may finally be emerging. My only criticism is that the program doesn’t seem to include any mathematics or mathematicians (except perhaps in the context of history and Emmy Noether). If you have a structure you don’t understand, which is unusually simple, with surprising explanatory power, you might want to ask mathematicians about it…<\/p>\n

The schedule is here<\/a>, there’s a blog here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Update<\/strong>: You can follow a lot of what is going on at this conference on Twitter, here<\/a>. For example, I was glad to hear about this comment from Dimopoulos<\/a><\/p>\n

There is no difference that we know right now … between the story of divine intervention and the multiverse.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s great to see a conference on fundamental physics where the multiverse is coming in for some appropriate skepticism.<\/p>\n

Update<\/strong>: One thing to say about the multiverse, it does provide an excuse for an endless number of popular articles mulling it over. Just today, there’s Caleb Scharf<\/a> and George Johnson<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Another conference that starts today is the Convergence conference at the Perimeter Institute. The concept is explained by Neil Turok here. His point of view is one I’m very much in sympathy with: Turok explains that the \u201clarge bandwagon\u201d of … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7841","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7841","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7841"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7841\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7850,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7841\/revisions\/7850"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7841"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7841"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7841"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}