11 July 2013

Fun with supersymmetry nonsense

Have a look at the preprint http://arxiv.org/abs/1307.2578 . It is written by three typical string theorists, two middle aged men and one old man. The paper is quite long and starts:
BPS surface defects in N= 2 four-dimensional gauge theories are an interesting theoretical subject which ties together many subjects in mathematical physics.
Translate:
"We know that our work doesn't concern high energy particle physics, but we do not care. There is not a word about nature in our whole paper. But we like doing this."
Read the other papers by these men. The translation just given is valid for virtually their whole life's work. Incredible. In which private world do they live in?

These men are smart. But they lost their true north. Such men know: publish or perish. Publish even if it is meaningless. They have sold their soul to a lost cause. Wake up, guys!


8 comments:

  1. They are not typical string theorists,but some of the best there are (I am NOT a string theorist).
    They live in their own (mathematical)world and do not really need (intellectually speaking)to make contact with "nature",namely with physical reality.However,because of public pressure to justify the ST seemingly unending saga,they try to find in ST "4d low energy dynamics"effects, mentioned in their paper, which supposedly and hopefully are equivalent with the "4d highest energy dynamics" in our familiar world (e.g. LHC).So,looking in this way,this paper does concern high energy particle physics.They really like doing this,but please notice that they are talking about an interesting subject in mathematical physics,which actually is physical mathematics,which essentially is MATHEMATICS.So in a sense you are saying that doing mathematics cannot be enjoyable and is a waste of time...You probably did not mean that... You also may(you do not have to) ask them to stop calling themselves physicists,but mathematicians,or physical mathematicians,or even mathematical physicists and let them leave physics to full time physicists (even if they are not as smart as ST people---Einstein's IQ was a mere 130...)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anonymous,

      math is great. And no mathematicians writes or tells falsities. And no mathematician claims that he is doing physics. Go and listen to these three men instead. They will tell you that string theory is the only way to unification. These men are just pompous little charlatans.



      Delete
    2. Clara...please...
      They REALLY enjoy it
      They do not know and do not do anything else
      They have to do something for a living
      They consider Black Hole entropy calculation to be their best success,equivalent to nothing less than real experimental corroboration of ST...
      Please have mercy...

      Delete
    3. Enjoyment is ok. Telling falsities is not...

      Delete
  2. Clara, I think they are talking about a new technique they have found to do certain tricky calculations.

    Here is a trick I know.

    You know when you have a logic statement: it could be lots of ANDs all joined up in a big long OR, or it could be lots of ORs all joined up in a big long AND. Well you can convert one to the other (as you no doubt know).

    Here is the trick to make it easy. Write down the truth table of the expression, then in the answer column, everywhere there is a one, change it to a zero, and everywhere there is a zero, change it to a one. Then reverse the order (swap the answer in the first row with the one in the last row, the answer in the second row with the one in the last row but one, and so on for all the rows). Then read off the expression from the truth table, but everywhere you would have written AND, write OR, and everywhere you would have written OR, write AND.

    To me that sounds clever, but to the authors of that paper, it probably sounds like someone proudly telling how they can add up using their fingers. How can I tell if what they are doing is worthwhile or not?

    ReplyDelete
  3. Replies
    1. Clara, sorry about that -- a bit irrelevant.

      About the particles masses, I had a total rethink.

      Energy has mass. But take kinetic energy, say, you can make it whatever you want just by changing your frame of reference. What if rest mass is just the energy you cannot attribute to your frame of reference?

      Well it's called Motion Mountain, isn't it, so what if rest mass is just angular motion, i.e. angular kinetic energy?

      E=1/2 I w^2

      OK, so I is the moment of inertia in kg m^2 (and w is the angular velocity). Instead of mass, you could just have strand density in that small volume -- zero if there is no strand there, one if there is, a fraction if some of the volume contains strand. So then you just calculate the moment of inertia for each particle tangle (but using strand density instead of kg). Since mass is proportional to energy and angular kinetic energy is proportional to moment of inertia, maybe that's all you would need to calculate.

      How big a volume do you use to calculate the moment of inertia? I thought you could stop at the radius at which there is no more curvature in the tails of the tangle.

      Maybe it would give a better answer than rope length (but probably not).

      Delete