How can we test a Theory of Everything? - The answer of scientists vs that of sect members

How can we test a Theory of Everything? We take the theory at hand and calculate all the fundamental constants of nature, especially

• the fine structure constant (137.03), 
• the mass of all particles, as fraction of the Planck mass, 
• the other constants of the standard model,
• the constants that describe deviations from the standard model,
• the cosmological constant, 
• the constants that describe deviations from general relativity. 

Then we compare the results of our calculation with experiment. 

The answer is clear: that is how any Theory of Everything must be tested. Yes, the fine structure constant comes first. The answer is old. Sommerfeld gave this answer. Eddington gave it. Pauli gave it. Dirac gave it. Feynman gave it. There is no doubt about this answer. Any theory about fundamental physics is tested by its explanation of the fine structure constant and all the other constants.

That is the scientist's path. Of course, as usual in this world, certain researchers disagree. In particular, various theoretical physicists avoid the test with data. And they avoid the test of the fundamental constants. These researchers disagree because something funny is going on in their mind: they want to avoid negative test results.

In many researchers, the avoidance of negative results is so pervasive and so intense that they even start to question the validity of the answer just given. When researchers reach this level, they have chosen another path: they have joined a sect.

The most common sect's name is "We didn't find the TOE ourselves and we will now make it as hard as possible for you, young woman, young man, to find it either: We will confuse your ideas on the way to proceed, confuse your ideas on the aims of the TOE, confuse your ideas on how to test a TOE, lead you astray, discourage you in every step towards a TOE, and ask you permanently to join our sect." Researchers regularly leave science to join this sect. The sect offers many advantages: it provides you with many friends and ensure that you are well paid.

There are many such sects. Several ones have longer credos, more detailed and more specific. The advantages are the same.

The world is funny. But remember: this is satire.

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P.S. Let us work for a common goal: no woman should lead such a sect. Ever.

No madness

Sabine complains about the madness of theoreticians working in fundamental physics. Sabine is so sad. Sometimes she is bitter. She did her best, did not want to lie, worked hard, but did not succeed - yet.

Above all, she is disappointed about modern theory papers in fundamental physics. But some modern theories do not continue the madness and stagnation she is describing. The spaghetti model claims to reproduce both general relativity and the standard model, with no additional particles, no new forces, and also without any quantum gravity effects. Maybe a similar proposal will bring the end of stagnation, a proposal by her or by another woman. Sabine, go on! Take young women along with you.

More Spaghetti

My friend Olga told me that the spaghetti model has now appeared in print in a Russian physics journal, at https://link.springer.com/article/10.1134/S1063779619030055 ; the cheaper preprint is at Schiller's site http://www.motionmountain.net/research.html. Oh, and there are some more preprints as well.

I've not followed the spaghetti model for some time. It seems that the main ideas are still the same. Just some tangles have changed. Schiller's style is still more intuitive than exact. But even after all this time, spaghetti still taste well. It reminds me about my younger years. I still like those crazy ideas.

The central idea is still hat nature is a pot of boiling spaghetti. Particles are tangles of spaghetti. The noodles are special, though: they have no ends, cannot tear and they are really thin: their radius is the Planck length. It's more a spaghettini model, less a spaghetti model. In the preprints, I like the recurring sentence after the many predictions that are made: "If a deviation is observed, the strand conjecture is falsified."

Wikipedia, physics and men

One of my best friends, a German physics teacher, wanted to improve the wikipedia article (in German) about movement in physics. His improvements were reverted, because the German wikipedia physics editors - all are male - told him that "light does not move". This is not a joke. This did not happen in the year 800 BC, but in 2019 AD.

Then my friend provided the text of Einstein's 1905 paper on relativity, where the second principle states "Light always moves .... with velocity V". He also told them that Maxwell's equations are equations of motion of the electromagnetic field. He told them how moving light produces shadows.

That was not enough to convince the German wikipedia editors. They wrote: "Light does not move." And "You have not proven that it does."

The real world is better than any satire.

Finally, Motl gets trouble

Finally, Motl gets what he deserves: a letter from the lawyer. As much as I enjoy his physics comments, it is time that he gets a lesson on the law - and on the way to behave.

Sabine, you are great! People like him, so verbally abusive, do not belong into the public space. 

He now plays the victim - like all violent people do.

Sabine, go on!

Lying particle physicists against caring mothers

As mothers, we care about children. We do not like politicians spending billions for missiles and bombers. We also do not like liars. We do not want our children to grow up to be liars.

There are many particle physicists who think that they are the smartest people, and that they are the only people worth existing. I have seen people with PhDs writing that other physicists should be gassed, that other physicists should stop research, that whoever does not not believe them should go drown in the toilet, or that whoever says the truth is bad.

And the people writing these things got their PhDs for false statements. You will not believe it, but there are several domains of physics where you can get a PhD for writing about supersymmetry, about string theory, about axions, or about many other fairy tale concepts that are in contrast with data and with all experiments performed so far.

Where has theoretical particle physics gone? How can it be that you get degrees and, worse, that you make a career with work that is wrong?

These people are liars. They are not nasty, of course, and they also lie to themselves. They really believe what they say. They do not do much harm. But they destroy their lives, and poison their environment. Some of them are aggressive towards critics, and they fight angrily for money that their lies "deserve".

Sabine Hossenfelder, in contrast, is a caring mother. She believes that physicists should not lie. Not to the public, and not to anybody else, including themselves. Other bloggers, who have never cared for anything else than their own ego, are attacking her. And they are many. Do they think about what they are doing to their children?

In the end, truth and love will win. Mothers are stronger than angry boys.

Older women against CERN

Should CERN ask for money for the future circular collider FCC or not? If you like particle physics, read the internal CERN yellow report https://cds.cern.ch/record/2270978 . It is a (partial) list of things that could be done with the machine.

Have a look at the section "beyond the standard model". It is much shorter and really depressing. There is no real reason to build the FCC given in it.

My colleague Sabine Hossenfelder also says so in http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2018/12/cern-produces-marketing-video-for-new.html where she writes: "After the discovery of the Higgs-boson, there is also no good reason for why there should be something else to find, neither at the LHC nor at higher energies, not up until 15 orders of magnitude higher than what we can reach now. "

But when she says so, she is abused by all sorts of people. When CERN writes the same in its own report, nobody says anything.

CERN is shooting in its own foot. Real life is better than any satire.

Why is there no theory of everything yet? It is our - women's - fault!

Physicists are special people. Many are careful, delicate, dreamers, smart, introverts, hard-working and much more. Why did we not find our theory of everything yet? After all, there are so many of us.
Are they looking in the wrong places? Yes. Are they using the wrong models? Yes. Are they afraid to think in different direction? Yes. Are they afraid not to get grants? Yes. But why do they continue like this?

Here is the answer: it is because of us women. We all know that men try to perform to impress us. This is also true for theoretical physicists. So we have all these young male physicists around who try to maximise the impression they make on us. And of course, they think that we want a husband with a safe job. They think that a woman prefers a string theorist that is well paid to a lonely researcher that is right in his theory but has no job. And of course, these men are right.

Worse, some of us, like Sabine Hossenfelder, now start making fun of all men working on the theory of everything.  How can a young researcher entering theoretical physics think productively if women, especially older women like Sabine and me, make fun of him? He will never find out anything, I promise you.

Yes, all this is a conspiracy of women to ensure that no man finds the theory of everything. We want men to continue searching in dead ends. We want a woman to get the prize!

Researchers need encouragement, not hypocrites

Go to arxiv.org and search for "theory of everything". You get 82 results. 82 preprints in 24 years. That is really low. After all, researchers are all looking for  theory of everything, aren't they? Two preprints are by Nobel prize winners, but both are nonsense. The other 80 preprints are equally nonsense. The truth is this: 0 real papers about the topic.

Imagine that a manager heading an organisation with 5 000 employees that work for 24 years to find a law of nature. He pays them a salary and promises money and fame to the finder. Of the 5 000, in over 24 years, nobody succeeds. The manager did something wrong. So did the 5 000 employees.

But the story gets even better. A few commenters state loudly that something is wrong. But when asked, they refuse to give hints where to search, they refuse to give advice, and they refuse to encourage others. These hypocrites are a disaster: they discourage their peers more than the lack of results does.

When you search, you need encouragement, not hypocrites. Shut the hypocrites up - or change them into encouraging fellows.

Get an attic to find the TOE

Peter Shor offers this advice to those searching for a TOE:

So the only advice I have is that more physicists need to not worry about grants, and go hide in their attics and work on new and crazy theories, the way Andrew Wiles worked on Fermat's Last Theorem. 

But there is a little issue: most researchers have no Attics any more - by which I mean a topic dear to their heart on which they will work in special time. So far, I have only met a handful of researchers that had one.

Interestingly, the majority of them were women. There is hope. I think women will reach there first.