Another year has passed, and no final theory has surfaced.
But numerous papers still appeared about the multiverse, about supersymmetry, about string theory, about the aether, about matrix models, and about additional fairytales that are in contrast to experiment.
One day, we will laugh about these papers. We will laugh about the misguided intensity of the authors, about these men who are so "dead serious", so hundred per cent "certain", and feel so "important".
It was a year of pompous research.
22 December 2012
19 December 2012
Motl is not sick any more!
Some time ago, Motl, the violent blogger, wrote that he might have a deadly disease. During that time, his posts were human: he did not offend people any more, wrote constructively, and generally showed all signs of being a person that can be kind to others.
But his doctors must have told him that he has no disease at all. He started offending people again in his posts, is again ill-tempered, and lost his marbles again. He has forgotten that, like everybody, he must die anyway.
We are happy that he is healthy again, but we are also sad that his bad manners are coming back. He has forgot what he should remember.
String theory is as wrong as aether theory, and it does not help offending people who correctly state that string theory, like aether theory, has no relation to reality and no relation to experiment.
But his doctors must have told him that he has no disease at all. He started offending people again in his posts, is again ill-tempered, and lost his marbles again. He has forgotten that, like everybody, he must die anyway.
We are happy that he is healthy again, but we are also sad that his bad manners are coming back. He has forgot what he should remember.
String theory is as wrong as aether theory, and it does not help offending people who correctly state that string theory, like aether theory, has no relation to reality and no relation to experiment.
15 December 2012
Einstein did not sell Mickey Mouse stories
A press release from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology states that experiments have shown that all fermions are known; all matter particles are known. No new ones are expected.
But real theoreticians do not care about experiments. Real theoreticians are those of the IAS in Princeton, where all dream to do as well as Einstein. A well-known emulator is Arkani-Hamed. In his latest talk, he talks about many new fermions. For example, he knows all about "gluinos", his favorite fermions.
There is a good thing about giving a dream a name: it starts existing. Gluinos are as real as Mickey Mouse. Neither exists; but you can make a living with both.
This is what many Einstein emulators are doing: selling Mickey Mouse stories. What a difference to Einstein himself.
But real theoreticians do not care about experiments. Real theoreticians are those of the IAS in Princeton, where all dream to do as well as Einstein. A well-known emulator is Arkani-Hamed. In his latest talk, he talks about many new fermions. For example, he knows all about "gluinos", his favorite fermions.
There is a good thing about giving a dream a name: it starts existing. Gluinos are as real as Mickey Mouse. Neither exists; but you can make a living with both.
This is what many Einstein emulators are doing: selling Mickey Mouse stories. What a difference to Einstein himself.
6 December 2012
Who is really working on a theory of everything?
String theory is wrong. Loop quantum gravity is not a theory of everything. Garrett Lisi is wrong. Who then is working on a theory of everything? In the arxiv there are no proposals.
Let me summarize. Imagine that you are a young physicist. You dream about working on the theory of everything. You study physics and start putting your nose into research. What do you experience?
Hostility.
If somebody explores an option for the theory of everything, the first experience is what happens to string theorists. Caught between the obligation to follow Witten and his aggressive followers or to agree with the aggressive critics.
And both camps agree on one thing: if a young physicist does some research, even outside string theory, he is an idiot or crazy. Everybody in the field knows: whatever the young researcher does, he gets hostile criticism. Of course, the same happens to old physicists. The consequence? Nobody actually works on the theory of everything. Of the two or three-thousand researchers in high energy physics, "nobody" is actually working of the theory of everything.
Aggression is the reason that the theory of everything is still lacking. Homo homini lupus. If you have a story to tell, you are welcome to write me.
Let me summarize. Imagine that you are a young physicist. You dream about working on the theory of everything. You study physics and start putting your nose into research. What do you experience?
Hostility.
If somebody explores an option for the theory of everything, the first experience is what happens to string theorists. Caught between the obligation to follow Witten and his aggressive followers or to agree with the aggressive critics.
And both camps agree on one thing: if a young physicist does some research, even outside string theory, he is an idiot or crazy. Everybody in the field knows: whatever the young researcher does, he gets hostile criticism. Of course, the same happens to old physicists. The consequence? Nobody actually works on the theory of everything. Of the two or three-thousand researchers in high energy physics, "nobody" is actually working of the theory of everything.
Aggression is the reason that the theory of everything is still lacking. Homo homini lupus. If you have a story to tell, you are welcome to write me.
2 December 2012
What are interactions?
To me this is the most important question in physics. Of course, interactions are exchanges of gauge bosons. But what is happening? How do the exchanges take place?
In the past weeks, I read everything I could find about this topic. A sobering experience that I can summarize thus: white, English-speaking men know nothing about the answer. And they are even afraid of speculating about it. Other humans do not write anything about it.
Wikipedia's article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_interaction is funny: "fundamental interactions are the ways that elementary particles interact with one another". One has to be drunk to write such a definition.
Most researchers only say that interactions are "particle exchanges described by a gauge group". They speculate about various gauge groups, or about supersymmetry, or about BRST. But no one speculates about how interactions appear in the first place.
Established researchers do not explore the question. But why? They do not even speculate about it. Are they afraid? I only found the spaghetti model as candidate proposal. What a poor harvest. And of course, it is written by a white, English-speaking man. What about black women speaking Swahili? Or South-American women speaking Quechua? And what shall we do before they come along?
One friend told me about a possible background. She said that white men are so nasty among each other that anybody daring to speculate is not invited any more to talks, to committees or to conferences. "Speculators" are discarded from the academic community. They know it and they fear it. They behave among themselves in the same way that they behave towards students in examinations.
Men have organized modern physics in a way that speculation has become impossible. Progress is impossible in modern theoretical physics. Dear sisters, please come along!
In the past weeks, I read everything I could find about this topic. A sobering experience that I can summarize thus: white, English-speaking men know nothing about the answer. And they are even afraid of speculating about it. Other humans do not write anything about it.
Wikipedia's article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_interaction is funny: "fundamental interactions are the ways that elementary particles interact with one another". One has to be drunk to write such a definition.
Most researchers only say that interactions are "particle exchanges described by a gauge group". They speculate about various gauge groups, or about supersymmetry, or about BRST. But no one speculates about how interactions appear in the first place.
Established researchers do not explore the question. But why? They do not even speculate about it. Are they afraid? I only found the spaghetti model as candidate proposal. What a poor harvest. And of course, it is written by a white, English-speaking man. What about black women speaking Swahili? Or South-American women speaking Quechua? And what shall we do before they come along?
One friend told me about a possible background. She said that white men are so nasty among each other that anybody daring to speculate is not invited any more to talks, to committees or to conferences. "Speculators" are discarded from the academic community. They know it and they fear it. They behave among themselves in the same way that they behave towards students in examinations.
Men have organized modern physics in a way that speculation has become impossible. Progress is impossible in modern theoretical physics. Dear sisters, please come along!
27 November 2012
Supersymmetry: what happens if you wish death to others
If you read this blog, you know that Lubos Motl has written offensive comments and wished my death in the comment section of this blog. If you known him, you also know that he wished death to most people who oppose his views, such as all those who say - in accordance with experiment - that supersymmetry is wrong. Like so many violent religious people, he sends death threats to everybody who tells the truth.
What happened then? Lubos Motl might have gotten a "deadly disease", as he writes in his blog. We can learn from his story that sending death threats to others works backwards. Possibly he will get the message from nature; he might become more tolerant to those who tell the truth.
By the way, Motl, string theory is also wrong.
What happened then? Lubos Motl might have gotten a "deadly disease", as he writes in his blog. We can learn from his story that sending death threats to others works backwards. Possibly he will get the message from nature; he might become more tolerant to those who tell the truth.
By the way, Motl, string theory is also wrong.
17 November 2012
Scandal at CERN - no Higgs confirmation
Tout pour la gloire. All for glory. This is what CERN did in July of this year, when it announced the Higgs discovery. But now that the confirmation was expected at the HCP conference, they did not provide it.
The data on the gamma-gamma channel is contradictory, it is rumored. Even though CERN has twice as much data at its disposal as in July, the corresponding results were not shown.
The problem with glory is that it must be based on facts. CERN has now let the whole world know that for them facts do not count, just the glory counts.
CERN was unable to confirm the existence of the Higgs measurements of July 2012. This is a scandalous situation. CERN has implicitly admitted that the July 2012 data was not reliable! If CERN does not act quickly, we will not believe anything of what they say anymore.
The data on the gamma-gamma channel is contradictory, it is rumored. Even though CERN has twice as much data at its disposal as in July, the corresponding results were not shown.
The problem with glory is that it must be based on facts. CERN has now let the whole world know that for them facts do not count, just the glory counts.
CERN was unable to confirm the existence of the Higgs measurements of July 2012. This is a scandalous situation. CERN has implicitly admitted that the July 2012 data was not reliable! If CERN does not act quickly, we will not believe anything of what they say anymore.
4 November 2012
6 billion dollars of R&D - more than for the iPhone
Look at http://arxiv.org/year/hep-th/11 and similar pages for other years. Then look at http://arxiv.org/year/hep-ph/11 and similar pages. There are now 8000 preprints on high energy particle physics per year.
My friend, a businesswoman working in a technology company, told me that a paper can be taken to mean 1/3 of a person year of effort, on average. Which makes a total of 2700 person-years. Let me correct this downwards to 2000 and multiply by 30. That makes 60 000 person-years of effort in the past 30 years. 60 000 person-years of effort and no result at all on unification. Could a statistics be more damning about the collective failure of particle physicists?
My business friend says that one person-year of research is worth more than 100 000 $. That makes the effort of the last 30 years worth more than $ 200 million a year, or $ 6 billion! (My friend says that interests would need to be included, which would triple the amount.)
6 billions wasted. My head is spinning. These physicists have wasted 6 billions and still did not succeed! My friend tells me that the worst R&D disaster she knew was the failed development of the Airbus 350 (first generation), which cost 2 billion and led to nothing.
3 times as bad as Airbus. That is damning. But wait, she said, there is another comparison: Not even the iPhone has this much of R&D effort inside it. And there are differences: the iPhone works. Unification does not. Plus: the iPhone satisfies a need and is useful to people, whereas unification ...
Help! What is going on here? We are feeding thousands of physicists who do not succeed? Since decades? They really give particle physics a bad name. Each of them. Unbelievable, isn't it?
My friend, a businesswoman working in a technology company, told me that a paper can be taken to mean 1/3 of a person year of effort, on average. Which makes a total of 2700 person-years. Let me correct this downwards to 2000 and multiply by 30. That makes 60 000 person-years of effort in the past 30 years. 60 000 person-years of effort and no result at all on unification. Could a statistics be more damning about the collective failure of particle physicists?
My business friend says that one person-year of research is worth more than 100 000 $. That makes the effort of the last 30 years worth more than $ 200 million a year, or $ 6 billion! (My friend says that interests would need to be included, which would triple the amount.)
6 billions wasted. My head is spinning. These physicists have wasted 6 billions and still did not succeed! My friend tells me that the worst R&D disaster she knew was the failed development of the Airbus 350 (first generation), which cost 2 billion and led to nothing.
3 times as bad as Airbus. That is damning. But wait, she said, there is another comparison: Not even the iPhone has this much of R&D effort inside it. And there are differences: the iPhone works. Unification does not. Plus: the iPhone satisfies a need and is useful to people, whereas unification ...
Help! What is going on here? We are feeding thousands of physicists who do not succeed? Since decades? They really give particle physics a bad name. Each of them. Unbelievable, isn't it?
1 November 2012
Women at CERN
Also CERN can write satire. In her latest entry on women at CERN, Pauline Gagnon writes:
"I strongly believe we will have achieved equality the day an incompetent woman will be elected to a high position."
This is a nice quip. But the trouble is that this is the case already, at least at CERN! There are several hundred female CERN scientists. Being at CERN is a high position in many countries. And the poorer the country, the higher the position is.
Now the data: the poorest countries send the highest percentage of women to CERN.
Yes. The poor countries have the most incompetent women...
P.S. There is one exception, also at CERN. In June 2012, when rumors about the discovery of the Higgs started circulating, Fabiola Gianotti, the spokeswoman of ATLAS, one of the CERN experiments, gave an interview. She said that the rumors should not be believed. A few days later, on July 4th, in a seminar watched world-wide, she confirmed that the rumors were correct. Gianotti is really as incompetent as Pauline Gagnon defined.
"I strongly believe we will have achieved equality the day an incompetent woman will be elected to a high position."
This is a nice quip. But the trouble is that this is the case already, at least at CERN! There are several hundred female CERN scientists. Being at CERN is a high position in many countries. And the poorer the country, the higher the position is.
Now the data: the poorest countries send the highest percentage of women to CERN.
Yes. The poor countries have the most incompetent women...
P.S. There is one exception, also at CERN. In June 2012, when rumors about the discovery of the Higgs started circulating, Fabiola Gianotti, the spokeswoman of ATLAS, one of the CERN experiments, gave an interview. She said that the rumors should not be believed. A few days later, on July 4th, in a seminar watched world-wide, she confirmed that the rumors were correct. Gianotti is really as incompetent as Pauline Gagnon defined.
30 October 2012
Truth, Sex and CERN
As is well known, both experiments at CERN, ATLAS and CMS, found a similar mass for the Higgs particle. In the beginning, we were told that this happened without each experiment knowing the results of the other.
Slowly, the truth is surfacing:"Half of ATLAS is sleeping with half of CMS", explains one of the researchers.
Ok, now we know how the agreement between the two experiments occurred. Calling the LHC the "Tunnel of Babylon" is apt.
But what are the real results on the Higgs?
Slowly, the truth is surfacing:"Half of ATLAS is sleeping with half of CMS", explains one of the researchers.
Ok, now we know how the agreement between the two experiments occurred. Calling the LHC the "Tunnel of Babylon" is apt.
But what are the real results on the Higgs?
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