Randall has given up

This news hurts me a lot. One of the few women in particle research, Lisa Randall, has given up, as this recent interview shows:

Doesn't every physicist dream of one neat theory of everything?
There are lots of physicists! I don't think about a theory of everything when I do my research. And even if we knew the ultimate underlying theory, how are you going to explain the fact that we're sitting here? Solving string theory won't tell us how humanity was born.

So is a theory of everything a myth?
It's not that it's a fallacy. It's one objective that will inspire progress. I just think the idea that we will ever get there is a little bit challenging.

But isn't beautiful mathematics supposed to lead us to the truth?
You have to be careful when you use beauty as a guide. There are many theories people didn't think were beautiful at the time, but did find beautiful later - and vice versa. I think simplicity is a good guide: the more economical a theory, the better.

Is it a problem, then, that our best theories of particle physics and cosmology are so messy?
We're trying to describe the universe from 10²⁷ metres down to 10^-35 metres, so it's not surprising there are lots of ingredients. The idea that the stuff we're made of should be everything seems quite preposterous. Dark matter and dark energy - these are not crazy ingredients we're adding.

Did the discovery of the Higgs boson - the "missing ingredient" of particle physics - take you by surprise last July?
I was surprised that the Large Hadron Collider experiments reached that landmark. I thought the teams would say something very affirming but the announcement of the discovery was amazing. It was a feat of engineering that they got the collision rate up to what it had to be, and the experiments did a better job at analysing the data.

Are you worried that the Higgs is the only discovery so far at the LHC?
I'm not worried that nothing else exists. But I am worried that the LHC might have too low an energy. Had the Superconducting Super Collider been built in Texas, it would have had almost three times the energy. There is a distinct possibility we'll discover things when the LHC's energy is nearly doubled next year. But it's too early to see signs of warped extra dimensions - they will take longer to find.

What would an extra dimension look like?
The best signature of the warped extra dimensions would be seeing a so-called Kaluza-Klein particle. These are partners of the particles that we know about but they get their momentum from extra dimensions. They would look to us like heavy particles with properties similar to the ones we know, but with bigger masses.

What if we don't see one? Some argue that seeing nothing else at the LHC would be best, as it would motivate new ideas.
I don't know what dream world they are living in. It would be very hard to make the argument to build a higher energy machine based on the fact that you didn't see something.

What a depressing interview. A TOE is not important, maybe it does not exists, but additional dimensions do. Recall that additional dimensions are inspired by TOE attempts and by nothing else. Recall also that no experiment has any evidence for additional dimensions.

Yes, unfortunately, Randall has left reality for her own dream world.

Religion and noodles as a TOE

Many Indians claim that quantum theory was part of religion in India. Now it turns out that the same happened to the spaghetti model. The spaghetti model as a theory of everything has not been invented by physics research. Long before that, a religion proposed it.

Wikipedia provides a summary of the religion claiming that spaghetti are at the basis of the universe. This religion, pastafarianism, proves and precedes the spaghetti model. Pastafarianism is firmly based in 3 dimensions. Thus it also proves that string theory is wrong and shows that the spaghetti model is correct.

Of course, like all religions it has its flaws. Nobody in China or Italy eats noodles with meatballs. This fundamental mistake shows that the religion is an invention of American missionaries. Still, pastafarianism is clearly more exact, moral and serious than other American religions such as scientology, intelligent design or christians for assault rifles in private homes.

Nicolai leaves the search for a TOE

In his newest summary paper, Nicolai favors a particle "desert", favors the idea of no physics beyond the standard model, favors asymptotic safety, and favors a discrete structure of space-time. Is he a secret fan of the spaghetti model, which is one of the few models making the same claims? No.

Nicolai makes a bizarre move. Even though he shows in his paper that there is no experimental evidence for supersymmetry and string theory, in his conclusion he calls them the "leading contenders".

In politics we describe people doing the opposite of what all arguments and facts imply with a simple epithet: we call them "corrupt". Nicolai is a typical modern theoretical researcher: he bows to money and power, not to truth. As long as he keeps this attitude, Nicolai will not achieve anything in his research.

Bekenstein makes a fool of himself - again

Bekenstein has joined the list of physicists who claim that a specific laboratory experiment can measure quantum gravity effects. He is now member of the club of the "fantasy quantum gravity researchers" who have left reality. The club is growing, and includes more and more researchers.

The club is another popular dead end, similar to supersymmetry. But Bekenstein had already left reality with his MOND work.

Since years, Bekenstein, a gifted researcher with exceptional intuition, intelligence and courage, is not working on anything that is related to the real world. What a sad story.

John Baez, noodles and experiment

John Baez is a well-known blogger on mathematical physics. I always like reading Baez because he is gentle and kind - a rare specimen among men in theoretical physics.

I just found a short comment in his name (thus possibly written by him) on the strand/spaghetti model. He calls the model "flaky". As a European woman, understanding the male Californian use of "flaky" is not really possible. Does it really mean "unreliable", as wiktionary says? Let me assume it does.

What is an "unreliable" model? A husband can be unreliable. (Not mine though.) But a theory of everything? It can be either wrong or right, it seems to me. I guess that Baez means "wrong". But why should he think that?

Neither "prediction of gauge groups" nor "prediction of the gauge groups" (with quotes) gives any hits in Google. Zero. Or type "prediction gauge groups" (without quotes) into the arxiv search. There are over 500 results, but the spaghetti model is the only explicit paper on the topic. The spaghetti model still is the only model that predicts the three gauge groups and agrees with experiment. If I take these results, the spaghetti model has no competition at all.

So a model based on noodles and with little math describes experiment better than all the competitors that are based on complicated calculations. Eat more noodles, researchers! It might help you finding an even better theory of everything.

Cycling and supersymmetry

Once it became evident that Lance Armstrong doped from the time he was a teenager up to the present, it became clear that his whole professional life was built on a lie. So was that of many riders that competed with him. But for years he was protected by the UCI, US and French presidents, businessmen etc.

Once it became clear that supersymmetry is wrong, it became clear that it was a lie from its beginning.  So was the professional life of all competing supersymmetry researchers. But for years, supersymmetry researchers were protected by governments, CERN, physics societies, universities, businessmen, etc.

Armstrong is a liar and a bully and made a career only because he was both.

Seiberg and many other supersymmetry researchers are liars and bullies, and made a career only because they were both. (You can find blog entries were some of these people state that lying and bullying is ok.)

A wise man once said: "Lance Armstrong deserves to be forgotten."

We should take the same stance and say: "Supersymmetry researchers deserve to be forgotten."

Planning nonsense

Read this, please. It is a description of how accelerator people envisage the future of high energy physics. The idea seems ok. But there is a little issue. Every mentioned "benchmark model" of theoretical research is nonsense. Every single one.

These smart people are planning the next particle accelerator and want to compare its results to nonsense. They could also compare it to flying pigs. They are actually planning to compare the results to nonsense. Thus their whole plan is nonsense as well.

Several of my friends work in companies. They told me that in business, they would get fired if they made or proposed plans based on questionable assumptions. How many of these high energy physicists would get fired?

The standard model and the perpetuum mobile

The standard model does not explain its 20 parameters and does not contain gravity. The standard model is incomplete. Does the incompleteness of the standard model imply that experimental effects exist that contradict the standard model?

No.

Not at all. The simplest scenario is that some yet unknown theory explains the standard model and its 20 parameters, that the explanation is valid up to an energy region close to the Planck scale, and that is all there is.

Is this scenario real? We do not know. Could the scenario be real? Yes, it could. This simplest scenario has been raised in discussions by various researchers. They always reject it. But all the arguments given by Strassler, Ellis, Arkani-Hamed, and all the other researchers boil down to wishes. They wish that the standard model is not correct. The arguments they give are all of the type "It is impossible that we already know everything."

Wrong, guys. It is well possible. We do have a theory that describes all of particle physics: the standard model. For reasons we do not know, it seems to be correct. Full stop.

It might well be that the search for effects beyond the standard model is similar to the search for the perpetuum mobile. The wish exists. But there is no way to realize it.

SM and TOE Fantasies by Moderates

Matt Strassler is a moderate. Nevertheless, he thinks, like most of his colleagues, that the standard model is wrong. He gives the following reasons (I cite from his slides):

1 – Gravity not included   (though can be included at semiclassical level)
2 – Neutrino masses not zero   (though higher dimension operators)
3 – Dark matter not predicted   (though primordial black holes?)
4 – Strong CP problem not addressed
5 – Cosmological constant (“dark `energy’”) not predicted/explained
6 – Specific choices of particles and interactions
7 – Mass ratios and mixings, strengths of forces all put in by hand

The problem: all seven arguments are correct statements, but none of them implies that the standard model is wrong!

This shows: even moderate physicists are brainwashed. They cannot distinguish between reality and wishes. The reality is that the standard model works without a glitch. The wish is that it is wrong. This might well be one reason why all the researchers searching for a theory of everything (TOE) are not successful. They are led too much by their wishes, and not by reality.

Black hole entropy in 2013

Did you ever look at the calculation of black hole entropy with the spaghetti model?  It is on the pages 256 to 258 of the pdf on the strand/spaghetti model.  Schiller starts with a drawing of a horizon and the definition of entropy from spaghetti.  The first approximation of black hole entropy he gets is one bit per Planck area.  Then he improves the calculation, until the final approximation yields the usual formula, with the correct factor 1/4.  The calculation is simple and can can be understood by anybody who knows the definition of the number e=2.71828... No hard math is needed.  All other calculations are either complicated, like those from string theory, or need fudge factors, like those from loop quantum gravity.  So I asked a few experts for an assessment.

Male expert 1: "The assumed microscopic degrees of freedom are wrong - I tell you. I do not know the correct ones, but these are wrong.  I do not like them."

Female expert 2 and male expert 3: "The calculation is much too simple to be true. It is nonsense."

Male expert 4: "The calculation does not work for more than 3+1 dimensions,  thus it is wrong."

Expert 1 says that in quantum gravity, male authority counts more than results. Experts 2 and 3 say that personal wishes decide about true or false.  And expert 4 says that personal fantasy can be used to criticize reality.

And such reactions are typical.  Quantum gravity, a field without experiments, has become the playing ground for people that pretend to do research but in fact run in circles, without any results.  A friend told me once that quantum gravity is a field with only one important issue: "What are the microscopic degrees of freedom of space-time"?  Triggered by her remark I went through the past five years of research in arxiv/gr-qc.  I found four papers adressing the issue.  Over 99% of all researchers avoid it.

In a previous post I mentioned that almost nobody in high energy physics is actually working on a theory of everything.  Something similar holds for quantum gravity: researchers are avoiding the most important issue.  They are a group of people searching for a solution, all pointing to a specific spot, and whispering to each other: "Do not look there!  Look elsewhere!"

So, if somebody claims to have searched the forbidden spot, despite all the whispering, instead of shouting "Wrong!", we should look carefully. The question is this: "Are spaghetti the microscopic degrees of freedom of space or not?"  If they are, the calculation of black hole entropy follows.

Space made of spaghetti?  How can this crazy idea be tested?  Schiller claims that it implies the entropy of black holes, and thus indirectly, also general relativity.  He even says that quantum gravity effects cannot be detected.  This is dangerous: there are no possible gravitational tests for the spaghetti claim!

So spaghetti are similar to strings: both predict gravity (curved space) and both do not allow any gravitational tests.  Gravity experiments cannot be used to check whether space is made of strings or of spaghetti. And this holds for any other proposal of microscopic degrees of freedom. That is why quantum gravity is an ideal field for theoreticians: tests are next to impossible! But not completely: experiments in particle physics can be used to check whether any proposed microscopic degrees of freedom are correct or not. What will 2013 bring us?