No new TOE candidate in sight - researchers, be courageous!

So far, all 2013 papers on hep-th and gr-qc in the arxiv were disappointing. No new ideas arose on the theory of everything. No new TOE proposals.

Some obstinate people still work on supersymmetry or strings, even though they do not lead to predictions or uniqueness. Some quantum gravity people still work on their pet models, but without any predictions or uniqueness.

There are no new opinion pieces either. In the past, people used to write texts in which they told what their opinion are. Nothing hard, just their own opinions and beliefs. All these are gone. Nobody has an opinion any more about where to look for unification. No opinion pieces means that nobody has the courage to tell others what to do, where to search, or what to speculate. A whole generation of leaders, professors, and researchers has become silent.

In the past years, every researcher used to give interviews. Nowadays, interviews only cover multiverses and similar nonsense. The search for a TOE has stopped to be a topic for interviews. Researchers have lost faith, it seems.

Look at Steve Carlip, well-known researcher in general relativity. Since 2009, he thinks that space is made of "fluctuating lines". He tells this in every paper since. What happened? He was called all sort of names by colleagues. And he has to focus on defending the approach, instead of building on it.

Yes, it is hard to speculate if others call you crazy. Yes, it is hard to brainstorm if others call you mad. Simply forget the criticisms! Please, dare to dream again! Dare to speculate! Dare to brainstorm! Find the nature of nature! Find the components of nature! Inspire the young women and men we need to find the TOE!

Vacuum is a medium - we need the result to search for the theory of everything

Vacuum has microscopic degrees of freedom. They lead to black hole entropy, to vacuum energy, to particle-antiparticle creation, etc. It propagates gravitational waves. The degrees of freedom even lead to friction: in situations of high curvature, vacuum drag occurs. (Though not on light! Many experiments, even recent ones that used gamma ray bursts, have failed to find vacuum drag effects on light.)

Vacuum has mechanical properties. It bends when energy goes through it. It behaves like an elastic substance. It has an energy content.

Without being ashamed, we can say that MODERN vacuum has all properties that were once, incorrectly, ascribed to aether. The aether does not exist. But vacuum is a medium. We need to build on this result to find the theory of everything.

To understand nature, we need to find the microscopic degrees of freedom of the vacuum. This is what emergent gravity people try to do, what quantum foam researchers and string net researchers try to do, what quantum gravity people try to do, what string theorists try to do, what the strand model people try to do, what black hole researchers try to do and what all the other researchers working on a theory of every thing try to do.

Without the idea that vacuum is a medium, we cannot search for a theory of everything!

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It is not helpful that the Physical Society of a large country with a long history of physics officially writes that teachers should tell their pupils that vacuum is not a medium. It is wrong, deeply wrong, and the men that did so should resign from their posts:

 sfz@uni-ulm.de,
 bartelmann@uni-heidelberg.de,
 buehler.fabian@gmx.de,
 grossmann@physik.uni-marburg.de,
 Joerg.Huefner@urz.uni-heidelberg.de,
 loehken@uni-hd.de,
 meierk@kip.uni-heidelberg.de,
 meschede@iap.uni-bonn.de,
 peter.reineker@uni-ulm.de,
 tolan@physik.uni-dortmund.de,
 Jochen.Wambach@physik.tu-darmstadt.de,
 werner.weber@tu-dortmund.de

Give physics back to the physicists, and let the liars go home!

Is the membership in the German Physical Society acceptable?

My German friend Jonas is asking the question, because the GPS wrote such a deeply mistaken expert opinion on the correct teaching. Among the statements of the GPS are

1.  temperature and entropy are not the foundations of thermodynamics
2.  force is not momentum flow
3.  dipoles are not made of two poles
4.  light does not need vacuum for traveling

If you would tell any of this in court, you would go to jail. What a sad story.

Dipoles do not have two poles - German physicists drop out of the search for unification

In Germany, dipoles do not have two poles. At least if you believe the German physical society.

In the rest of the world, a dipole is the limiting case of putting two opposite poles, of same strength, at the same place.

This definition is valid in all cases. Not in Germany. In Germany you are allowed to use this definition in all cases, except one: for magnetic dipoles. In this case, poles are not allowed to be thought about, says the German physical society:

Teachers and pupils should not think that magnetic dipoles are made of two poles.

Remember the 1920s? Einstein, Heisenberg, Born? German male physicists were world class. Hundred years later - nothing and more. Why?  Because they use their energy to tell students that dipoles do not have two poles. And they add more nonsense.

The big problem of quantum gravity, and of unification, is to understand the microscopic degrees of freedom of the vacuum. However, the German physical society has explained in the same expert opinion that:

Vacuum is not a medium.

How can you find the microscopic degrees of freedom of the vacuum, if you are not allowed to think that vacuum has such degrees of freedom?

We will have to continue to wait for an Asian woman to achieve unification. Maybe a Swiss woman. For sure, German males have no chance!