9 December 2017

A new spaghetti sauce

An email convinced me to read the text on the spaghetti model again, in its newest version. Yep, Schiller has changed quite a few things in the last two years. His "strand model" is still crazy. In its latest edition, he has no knots any more, just tangles. That simplifies the correspondence with particle interactions.

But some of the tangle-particle assignments are still doubtful: the tangles for the last two neutrinos, for the up quark and also for the W might need revision.

Undaunted, Schiller has a new calculation for the fine structure constant from his model. His simple approximation produces a result within 10%. Amusing. I tend to be skeptical about calculations of the fine structure constant, and I am not sure that Schiller takes his calculation seriously either. But who knows? The model has explained more than any other conjecture that I have read about.

Even though the model is produced by a man, I like it: it is so different from anything else. And it predicts no new physics. That looks like real courage to me.  The spaghetti model is a slap in the face of all those pompous theoreticians that claim that their own theory is the only game in town. I do not whether to laugh or to cry. Let's see wether this sauce is more sucessful.

3 December 2017

Witten - It from Qubit

Witten and many others repeat it like a mantra: "it from qubit". This rallying cry of depressed theoreticians has never led to any tangible result. That is what all my friends and acquaintances told me since I can remember.

But isn't the spaghetti model a realization of the mantra? I hate to put such a loose idea as 'it from qubit' - and such a looser's idea, to be honest - in the neighborhood of the spaghetti model. But the analogy is striking. Is the basic principle of the spaghetti model a qubit?

Is Witten advertizing the spaghetti model?