No particles?

"Particles must be abolished!" said a friend. She continued: "If particles were fundamental, we cannot understand where they come from. So they cannot be fundamental. So we have to abolish them!"

But how?

Betting against supersymmetry

I am ready to bet with anybody a reasonable sum against supersymmetry. But there is a difficulty. Supersymmetry is akin to fairies: it is hard to prove that fairies do not exist...

Forget the facts

Every week, the LHC teams produce new results that confirm: supersymmetry does not exist. The latest results are really strong, as explained here and here: there is almost no option left for supersymmetry. These are the facts.

What is the reaction of theorists? "Forget the facts." Not surprising. They are saying this since 35 years. The belief in supersymmetry is similar to that in angels. It comforts - but it does not help.

Why are there no predictions?

We all notice that the number of papers in the hep-th section of arxiv is decreasing. We all notice that for years, no paper in hep-th has made predictions on the experiments at the LHC. No predictions by thousands of people. Obviously, they do not want to make false predictions just before the LHC is starting up again.

This is strange. Anybody who makes the correct prediction will become well-known, and make a big step in her or his career. And anybody who makes a false prediction will be forgotten. So there is no danger in making a false prediction, but a lot to gain in making a correct one. Still, nobody is making predictions.

The conclusion is evident: all the people who are silent now have no faith in their own work. Making predictions is the way of science. Silence is a sign that tells a lot! And who is silent? String theorists are silent. Loop quantum gravity people are. Supersymmetry people are. Little Higgs people are. Higgsless people are. Almost nobody is left!

This widespread silence shows: most people in fundamental physics do not believe their own theory! Slowly, the strange dark world, unrelated to reality, in which they live is coming to light. What a depressing view.

Maximum force - and men

A few physicists - Mazza, Kostro, Gibbons, Schiller - state that there is a maximum force:

• c^4/G or about 10^44 N.

I did something simple. I told this to a researcher in the field. Then I asked another. And another. All got enraged. Really enraged. Why? They say it is wrong. So I emailed a few of the proponents to ask; they wrote back saying that the limit exists and is correct (up to a factor 1/4).

So I started asking. Can anybody show a system in nature with a higher value? No. Can anybody imagine a system with a higher value? In Schiller's book on relativity I found a discussion of all sort of attempts to exceed the value, and all are in vain. As I was told, this is related to the hoop conjecture by Thorne; when energy gets too compressed, it turns into a black hole.

Wow. A maximum force in nature? This sounds like the best statement on general relativity since decades. I did a literature search. Nobody else talks about it! This seems like the greatest missed marketing opportunity for general relativity since its discovery. I cannot believe it! When will they give a Christmas lecture about it?

But now the other side. Do people get upset because they hear religious overtones? Do they see their religion in danger? Or are they upset because they missed the discovery? Is it envy?

There are two lessons form this story:

• Testing who is stronger is a typical male occupation; and fights about maximum force seem about the most nasty ones.
• Many physicists make truth into a taboo subject.

Maximum force confirms the theme of this blog: truth and fundamental physics research are usually separate. O tempora, o mores!




Update: two references.

http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0210109  GW Gibbons, The Maximum Tension Principle in General Relativity

http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0607090 C Schiller, General relativity and cosmology derived from principle of maximum power or force

Please lie about electrodynamics - and about supersymmetry

On a recent entry in a now defunct blog, I received an angry comment that classical electrodynamics was exact, and that I should endorse this view. Every blogger receives comments from crackpots, but this one was particularly funny. Two issues were requested: I should denounce people that claim quantum effects and those that claim gravitational effects of electrodynamics - no joke. I never had been asked so clearly to refute the whole of modern physics, and to go back to the 19th century. I would like to point to a website explaining such views, but unfortunately, there is none.

Another harsh commenter claimed that supersymmetry cannot be refuted, because it is correct, though yet unconfirmed. A few days later, the LHC released data showing that the latest search for superparticles - gluinos in this case - was unsuccessful.

Some people will not be convinced by any data whatsoever.

Arkani-Hamed prefers spaghetti to supersymmetry

I am kidding - but only a bit. In his suit-wearing talk in Princeton of which I have written before, there is one moment where Arkani-Hamed seems to hesitate. He says that fundamental physicists need to throw space-time out of the window. Then he adds that usually, before doing that, they introduce many complications into space-time, such as higher dimensions and fermionic coordinates. But if you watch that moment again, you get the impression that he is hesitating.


Schiller's spaghetti model realizes what Arkani-Hamed was hesitating about in his talk: it changes directly from a situation with space-time to a situation without. If I understand it well, the spaghetti model describes continuity as thermal average, and this average is not possible at high energy. So space-time is thrown out of the window directly, without making it complicated beforehand.

In conclusion, Arkani-Hamed should prefer the spaghetti model to supersymmetry.

Nature vs. physics propaganda

The difference between nature and physics research becomes most apparent in the topic of "higher dimensions". Higher dimensions are an example of propaganda: a false statement that you must believe in order to be part of the system.

Additional dimensions are in contrast with every experiment known to man. So it is somewhat natural, but still sad, that an important proponent of the idea is a woman: Lisa Randall. And a woman writing about this nonsense is more cited than almost all Nobel prize winners on particle physics! It shows that the higher dimension propaganda has been really effective.

In a few years, people in fundamental physics will have a bad awakening. They will wake up one day, and say: why have we believed all this nonsense for so long? And then some soul-searching will take place.

The best solution is to stay away from the propaganda.

Nature: with or without time? Men: with or without women?

The time interval (Gh/c^5)^(1/2), the Planck time of about 10^(-44) s, is the smallest measurement of time that has any meaning.

At least, that is what most physicists say. But philosophers disagree, usually with deep conviction: "Without continuous time, we cannot think! Without continuous time, nothing makes sense. Time must be continuous - there is no other option!" And many physicists agree.

It is like the old saying: a man cannot live happily with a woman; and a man cannot live happily without one.

You can find both sides discussing fiercely all over the literature (both about time and about women). And all arguments are usually convincing. Therefore, in this discussion, both sides must be right - and both must be wrong. But how?

Reconciling the two sides is the main problem of quantum gravity. It must be done carefully.

• Without continuous time, classical physics, quantum theory and general relativity make no sense. Energy conservation makes no sense. Symmetries make no sense.

• With continuous time, there is no way to resolve the contradictions between quantum theory and general relativity. General relativity does not allow point masses. Short times and distances blow up quantum field theory.

This problem resembles the contradictions between the continuum and atomic descriptions of matter. So, are time and space like a solid, a liquid, or a gas? Solid is impossible: isotropy would be lost. Gas? Is isotropic, but space cannot be made of particles; how would they differ from the usual particles? Liquid? Gives the same problems as gas. Ouch - there is no simple solution.

Now come the crazy men. They have proposals en masse:

• Supersymmetry says: space-time has fermionic coordinates (no joke).
• String theorists say: space-time is continuous but 10 or 11 dimensional and fermionic (no joke).
• Non-commutative people say: space-time is non-commutative (no joke).
• Relativity researchers say: space-time has really only 1+1 dimensions (no joke).

One thing is sure: all these proposals talk about things that cannot be checked by experiment. (This is easier with the women-men issue.) All these proposals are complete nonsense: untested, and untestable. This is not physics; this is daydreaming.

So modern fundamental physics has become a world in which daydreamers are normal; they are respected, and worse, they are taken as examples to follow.

Try this out: tell one of these men that his ideas cannot be tested. He will jump at you. Try it. An enraged lion is easier to handle.

Cooking spaghetti to make elementary particles

Here is something that kept me scratching my head for a few days. I have read many crazy theories of everything, but this tops them all: the strand model. Basically, the idea of Christopher Schiller is that nature is made of cooked spaghetti. Yep, cooked spaghetti.

Well, he claims that vacuum is made of fluctuating "strands", and that particles are made of knotted "strands". He then claims that quantum theory follows from this; and claims that general relativity follows; and claims that the standard model follows. He claims that quarks, CP violation, P violation, asymptotic freedom and so forth all follow. Yes, he is serious.

This is positively the most crazy thing I ever read. But this is not your average crackpot. The guy knows particle physics, field theory and general relativity. Like me, he claims that supersymmetry does not hold, and that higher dimensions do not exist. I cannot hide my pleasure to have found somebody who shares my opinions on these matters. But spaghetti?