6 January 2018

The spaghetti model of nature - really a theory of everything?

Schiller has posted a pdf with 16 slides: "From Strand Model Unification to the Fine Structure Constant" on his site www.motionmountain.net/research.html . It is a concise summary of his ideas and saves reading his much longer book.

He defines his model, explains his calculation of black hole entropy with strands, and then gives his model for Dirac particles as tangles. He presents his specific particle models and continues with his strand model of interactions as deformations and summarizes his U(1), SU(2) and SU(3) deduction from strands. He also lists quite a number of experimental predictions. All this in just 11 slides. Then he uses just 4 more slides to deduce an approximation for the fine structure constant. He gives an integral expression. There is a summary on the last slide.

As a reader, I was a bit overwhelmed at first. He has the whole of cosmology in a quarter of a slide. OK, it is not the focus of his talk, but its is a daring feat. On slide 11, the end of his introduction of the strand model, he basically says: "sorry folks, there is nothing beyond the standard model - but now we can calculate its parameters." That is quite a claim.

He then only talks about the fine structure constant. I want to check his formula in the coming days. I do not like his approximation yet. And I have several issues with the whole argument. More soon.