Garrett Lisi has a new paper, “An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything.” Many people seem to think that I should have an opinion about it, but I don’t. It’s received a good deal of publicity, in part because of Lisi’s personal story — if you can write an story with lines like “A. Garrett Lisi, a physicist who divides his time between surfing in Maui and teaching snowboarding in Lake Tahoe, has come up with what may be the Grand Unified Theory,” you do it.
The paper seems to involve a novel mix-up between internal symmetries and spacetime symmetries, including adding particles of different spin. This runs against the spirit, if not precisely the letter, of the Coleman-Mandula theorem. Okay, maybe there is a miraculous new way of using loopholes in that theorem to do fun things. But I would be much more likely to invest time trying to understand a paper that was devoted to how we can use such loopholes to mix up bosons and fermions in an unexpected way, and explained clearly why this was possible even though you might initially be skeptical, than in a paper that purports to be a theory of everything and mixes up bosons and fermions so casually.
So I’m sufficiently pessimistic about the prospects for this idea that I’m going to spend my time reading other papers. I could certainly be guessing wrong. But you can’t read every paper, and my own judgment is all I have to go on. Someone who understands this stuff much better than I do will dig into it and report back, and it will all shake out in the end. Science! It works, bitches.
For a discussion that manages to include some physics content, see Bee’s post and the comments at Backreaction.
Hi Sean,
Thanks for the link. I’m semi-happy with the sentence the quote in the NewSci article. At least it’s a sentence I said. Though the context (”argues that Lisi’s idea could be complementary to string theory, rather than a radical alternative”) is a very fanciful interpretation of my wording (”I find it possible that a relation between these approaches can be established.”) Best,
B.
sean, I’d say you’re wise to stay clear of that one. Wow.
B, that’s about as close to accurate as New Scientist gets. And, may I say, you are a gentleman and a scholar, for hosting such a…let’s say “energetic”…discussion. Interesting in many ways.
Hi Tylor,
Thanks for the kind words. I am currently on the phone with my husband… he’s kind of irritated about me being a gentleman ;-).
Besides, I forgot to mention that the term ‘these relations’ in the sentence I actually said, did not refer to string theory only, but included LQG - a part that was completely left out. Best,
B.
B, I am very sorry for my gender-ist assumption. Truly. As a pro-feminist person, I am ashamed of myself.
I have worked as a professional forum moderator, way back in the distant past, and admire your technique.
re: NS, you’re just lucky they didn’t quote you as saying “due to Lisi’s brilliant paper I now have the E8 diagram tattooed on my back, and did I mention it also proved that cannabis is harmless and medicinally useful?”
(not a dig at Lisi, his work, or medicinal cannabis for that matter, I am just a bit tired of New Scientist’s ever-reliable unreliability and obsessions with certain clickthrough-generating subjects)
Hi Tyler, No problem. I like the idea with the E8 tatoo
Also, Tegmark should be very happy that the root diagram fits nicely on a T-shirt. -B.
OK, the hype (and my inbox) has gotten totally out of control. This is, after all, about an untested theory that may or may not turn out to be true. But, on the other hand… it’s pretty damn amusing.
Mostly, all this media attention just makes me want to go hide for fifteen minutes, and I hope to come back to see physicists pondering this E8 theory, despite the hype.
Garrett, It seems to me as a non physicist who has browsed through your new paper, that maybe you’re the one person for which the delay in the LHC coming on line is an advantage. It gives you time to work up as much as you can the properties of the twenty proposed new particles and publish before they get the beast working at high energies.
In which case, if you are right, you may have predicted the new particles they find with the LHC just a few months before they are discovered, much better than a a retrodiction a few months after.
Well, at least people is hearing about exceptional groups. Never liked E8 myself, too many particles. But E8xE8 is more excessive, or course. And the chain up of Dynkin diagrams, adding a point each step, has always been kind of motivating.
There has been an slashdot effect in all the physics blogs even if only indirectly linked, at least I am under this impression after looking my own statistics (not a factor 3, but a noticeable peak).
Well as my little contribution to people who want to know more about E8, I typed up a Java applet last night that lets you choose the horizontal and vertical projection axes and rotate the roots using Garrett’s notation. It comes up with random choices.
When I was in grad school (at UC Irvine), there was a professor who was into E8. I can’t remember his name, but he was the guy who had 10,000 rhinoceroses in his office. Anyone who attended the school in the early 80s will know who I mean.
Cool applet! It looks like a lattice.
No comment on the above article per se. I’d simply like to point out a mistake in foxnews http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,311952,00.html article about Lisi as linked to above. The proper headline should read “Fallen-over-backwards Surfer Dudee May Be Physic’s next blackhole”. Indeed, Lisi-alike stuff serves but one purpose, to suck in all superfluous and irrelevant brain power that otherwise would be in the way of serious research. It remains to be seen in what form Dudee blackhole’s digestive output will reappear. One thing we know for sure, it will definitely not be as the TOE.
The foxnews story is incredibly bad. The one by CBC.ca is several orders of magnitude better.
Hi B., your quotes in the CBC story are, how shall I say it, fabulous…I had a few minutes yesterday to consider what to say about that story, and could not come up with something that reflects my opinion yet escapes the prescribed role of the “establishment” in the “maverick against establishment” storyline. I’m relieved they found someone to say something sensible.
Cosmic Variance readers like the straight, inside story; so this seems a good opportunity to tell mine. Ten years ago, I got my PhD and looked at my options. I love differential geometry, general relativity, and particle physics. But the only options available then for a postdoc in those combined areas were in string theory, and I thought string theory was overly speculative. There are many really impressive aspects of strings — anomaly cancelation in particular — but there are other things that just seem wild and physically unsubstantiated. I had gotten lucky by investing my graduate stipend in a little company many thought was going out of business (AAPL), so I decided to go to Maui, learn to windsurf, and work on physics on my own. I was pretty happy that way, spending most of my time on physics, and posting a paper on the arxiv only if I thought I’d discovered something interesting. But even though I spend money like a grad student, after several years I was broke, and things were looking grim.
Then, two years ago, the FQXi foundation started up and sent out their RFP. At the same time, the college on Maui, where I had been teaching a physics class, offered me a full-time, tenure track teaching position. This was a very nice offer, but I knew if I took it I’d have no time for my physics research. It was a very difficult choice, but I turned it down. I gambled on FQXi. I packed up the best physics I had done over the previous eight years, and sent it off as a grant proposal. And I got it. With this support, I felt the timing was right (and that I was somewhat obligated) to talk with others about my work. I flew down to the LQG conference in Morelia and presented a twenty minute talk. The LQG community is fantastic — their research is branching out in all directions to solve quantum gravity, and they’re all really nice people. Once they saw what I had been up to, Sabine and Lee invited me to visit Perimeter — which I accepted, of course, as this had been a daydream of mine since the institute was founded.
A month later, I was in Iceland at the FQXi conference, eating the best lobster I’ve ever had, across the table from Mark (Hi Mark!) and the science editor for New Scientist. During this dinner, she must have made note of me, because two months later there was an email from a reporter asking for an interview.
I was in the middle of writing up the paper when I visited PI, a fantastic nerd heaven. I talked with people there about this new E8 theory, and it went very well. I returned to Tahoe, where I’m living in a friend’s house, and finished the paper. I also exchanged twenty detailed emails with the reporter, which ended up as… well, it’s not a terrible article, and some of my conservative statements did filter in. I posted the paper to the arxiv, Sabine made an excellent and reasonable review, and the New Scientist published their article. Apparently, this was the beginning of the perfect media storm. The story spread, fast. I attempted to write accurate responses to the growing queue of inquiries from newspaper reporters. And I got a phone call from a friend who runs an ISP and hosts my web pages: “Umm, Garrett, I have the internet bandwidth of the gods, but you’re simultaneously on the front page of Digg, Reddit, and Slashdot… and you just capped it out.” It was right around then that my inbox exploded.
I am answering reporters’ questions, and trying to make it clear that I do think I’ve come up with an exciting and beautiful new theory, but that it’s grounded in a long history involving the work of many others, and that as with any new theory, it may turn out to be wrong. I’ve spent much more time answering questions on blogs, because I want other physicists to understand the content of the paper, which is mathematically sound but presents many new ideas at once. I’ve refused several requests for brief television and radio interviews, because I think they would only serve the media and amplify the spectacle, instead of increasing interest in physics and how physicists think about the world. At the same time, other aspects of the media frenzy have been very cool (Hey, I’m going to be featured in Surfer magazine!) and completely overwhelming.
The media attention will blow over. While I’m in the spotlight, I’ll try to present a message that’s good for physics. It’s not my intent to tear down academia — heck, I’d be thrilled if some academic opportunities arose from this. (Though it’s baffling to me how academics manage to juggle all the responsibilities and research at once.) It’s not even my intent to tear down string theory. I don’t happen to like it, but I think people should be able to work on what they want.
One way or another, this stuff will all work out. I believe what Sean said — science works — even if sometimes things get a little crazy.
-Garrett
Thanks, Garrett. It also baffles me how academics manage to juggle all the responsibilities and research at once.
[…] A couple of bloggers give their comments on Lisi’s paper and the surrounding hoopla: here is Sean at Cosmic Variance as to why he would rather be reading something else: The paper seems to involve a novel mix-up between internal symmetries and spacetime symmetries, […]
My memory kicked in and the professor at UCI who liked E8 back in 1984 was Gordon Shaw. He died in 2005.
Life is short and there really isn’t enough time to do research and all the duties that academia requires.
[…] E8 is not something a doctor is working on then he will declare Lisi’s paper to be bad junk and dismiss it as worthless speculation that has no place in his reading […]
Crackpot Carl comments: A theory of everything should at least explain the following points:
1. Why does anything exist at all?
2. Why does the laws of nature look like math?
3. Why is the universe so “fine tuned”?
1. We cannot use anything that exists to explain why something exits. So what exists comes from nothing. How is that possible? “When” nothing exists there are no hinders, no conservation laws, no need for causation that could stop something from starting to exist.
2. Only self-consistent “things” (universes) can start to exist, else their existence will conflict with their existence. The mathematics we see in our laws of nature (although not fully know at this time) is the way this universe is kept consistent.
3. Apart from what already exists, there is nothing (by logic). So Nothing keeps on spewing out self-consistent universes regardless of what exists. No wonder some of them have properties such as ours. Unfortunately the only link between these universes is Nothing. So there is no link, sadly.
Carl
Thanks for the nice story, Garrett. I’m a bit jealous of you though…I had always hoped that I’d be the first physicist in the “People Who Surf” column!
I’ll bite on running the “alternative science respectability” checklist. We have:
1) “Acquire basic competency in whatever field of science your discovery belongs to.”
Author received a Ph.D. in physics from UCSD, which by itself doesn’t mean much, but it does demonstrate some minimal level of competence. Check.
2) “Understand, and make a good-faith effort to confront, the fundamental objections to your claims within established science.”
The most common “fundamental objection” that seems to get raised is the Coleman-Mandula theorem. From a skim of the paper and conversation on Backreaction, it seems that the way this is dealt with is not new, though not without controversy. I’m not competent to make a technical assessment, but the standard here is “good-faith effort to confront”, rather than “definitively prove to the satisfaction of every working scientist”, which to me seems to be clearly met. The author also seems happy to dialogue about other issues. Check.
3) “Present your discovery in a way that is complete, transparent, and unambiguous.”
The parts of the paper which I have sufficient background to read sound fine. Again, I don’t have sufficient background to make a technical assessment of the rest, but the question here is whether the “discovery” is uninterpretable on its face, or can be evaluated. To me, it seems evaluatable, even if I can’t evaluate it. Nor do the critiques that I’ve seen suggest that it’s incomprehensible, only that it’s wrong. I’m therefore going to give this a check as well.
None of this means that this paper is interesting or correct, much less worth spending time on. It’s only a question of whether this contribution can be dismissed as “alternative” science (ie crackpottery), or if it’s boring old regular science from a boring old regular scientist with a slightly nontraditional career path. I think it’s the latter, and to suggest otherwise is a disservice.
Disclaimer: I went to grad school with Garrett. (Hi Garrett!)
Speaking of bad news coverage, I could not resist the temptation and I am making a quick translation for you of the article that appeared in the online science section of La Repubblica, the first italian newspaper. If you can read italian, the link is here.
I’m doing a literal translation, so some sentences that sound weird might be due to me, but some make no sense even in italian, trust me. I find that the style is amusingly similar to the one of the piece in The Onion linked here some time ago.
“E8: such is the Universe. A surfer’s word.
by Tiziano Toniutti
Garrett Lisi, 39 years-old, with a degree in Physics (but he doesn’t work for the University), lives in Hawaii where he does everything he can not to look like a science guru: sleeps in the jungle, spends hours on the surf board, builds bridges. He spends winter in Nevada where he practices snowboard. A 40-year-old boy like many others, but for the fact that he likes to unveil the secrets of the Universe.
Lisi has sketched a theoretical model of the Universe that he has called E8 and, according to the theories of particle physics, his computations make sense: that’s the reason why, for instance, Professor Lee Smolin from Perimeter Institute in Canada, gets to the point of affirming that Garrett’s intuition is “wonderful, one of the best models of unification that I have ever seen in many, many years”. Professor David Ritz Finkelstein of Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta adds that “some fascinating theoretical opportunities spring out of Lisi’s theoy, and Garrett could have grasped something really deep”.
Lisi’s study does not require more that one time dimension and three space dimensions, so it is mathematically quite simple. It will be possible to test its effectiveness when the LHC, a structure for atomic verification which is ideal for the practical applications of the theory, will be ready in 2008.
The scientific world is thrilled by this unexpected theory of a Hawaii surfer that sometimes sleeps in the jungle. But that also is a scholar and that traces his roots back to the study of E8, a mathematical scheme of 248 points discovered in 1887 that implements an object that embeds the symmetries of a geometry with 57 dimensions and is a 248 dimension thing itself. Words that are incomprehensible for someone who is not a physicist, but it looks like Mother Nature has incorporated the meaning of E8 in the foundation of many physics rules, so much that Lisi gets to the point of saying that the Universe might have a precise graphical shape.
Lisi’s theory could replace string theory, that many see as not fully convincing and even not applicable. What is sure so far is that the experimentation is just at the beginning and we could all be surprised by the discovery of a guy that one day, instead of hitting the waves, decided to stay home writing on a notebook some formulas that most of us cannot understand.”
I think I like in particular “the LHC, a structure for atomic verification”. Or maybe the breathtaking description of E8.
PS did he say that Garrett sleeps in the jungle?
As I understand it, using the E8 lattice and inserting “imaginary” particals at vertices representing gravity, this lattice shows how all four “forces” inter-relate. I have a different supposition - it is the particles that exert the weak-nuclear, strong-nuclear and electro-magnetic forces, through their relationship described BY the E8 lattice, that produce the effect of a gravitational “force”. There are NO gravitons, etc. to be found, because the particals containing the other 3 forces combine to create the 4th “force” of gravity.
This explains why gravity is so weak, unless there is a great mass of the other particals present, and how gravity can work over large distances, and seem to propagate its effects faster than light.
. But I would be much more likely to invest time trying to understand a paper that was devoted to how we can use such loopholes to mix up bosons and fermions in an unexpected way, and explained clearly why this was possible even though you might initially be skeptical, than in a paper that purports to be a theory of everything and mixes up bosons and fermions so casually.
If I were in physics, I too would think that a new workable (loophole in /workaround of) Coleman-Mandula (or should we say Haag-Lopuszanski-Sohnius) is far more important and potentially revolutionary than a E8 TOE.
huh? I thought that information could never be seen propagating faster than light in any inertial reference frame… could somebody explain Jason’s comment?
Well, I can’t explain the comment, as it doesn’t make sense to me, but there are situations in which a particle can “propagate its effects faster than light.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_entanglement
I’m not certain if anyone has covered this elsewhere, but I was wondering if this theory explains the relationship between inertial and gravitational mass in any way?
Recently I’ve come to see this relationship as something that must be the litmus test of any TOE. While it may not be absolutely required for a theory to be accurate, it would suggest that any such theory is incomplete if it didn’t address the question in any way.
Similarly, just how front loaded does the theory have to be to produce predicted masses for the standard model particles? I couldn’t find that information in the paper.
Finally, to what extent is this model actually new physics, and to what extent is it simply a new mathematical description of properties of particles, without nescisarilly saying anything new (or indeed anything) about the physics relating those properties? From what I have seen, it would seem possible that the same mathematical structure could be kept even if the physicality of the system is not as it is assumed in the paper. But that could just be the echo chamber getting too loud in String country.
Thomas,
Yes, quantum entanglement does recognize faster than light cause-effect relationships, which is mentioned in the linked article by Halton Arp:
http://www.haltonarp.com/articles/the_observational_impetus_for_le_sage_gravity
Of course, I can’t find the articles from his webpage now, but Halton Arp had posted cosmic observations that pointed to gravitational cause-effect relationships that appeared to occur at speeds of 5, 20 and 300 times the speed of light. Halton believes this is evidence of extremely long wavelength graviton particles that travel faster than light, but given gravity’s position along imaginary vectors of the E8 lattice, I suspect gravity is an apparent “force” resulting from the interactions of the other forces / particles, which would explain “faster than light” cause-effect observations.
It is similar to someone whipping a flashlight beam across the sky, in which the reflected spot appears to be traveling faster than light at great distances, but it is only an illusion (not a great analogy, but sufficient).
How can there be a ToE without directly addressing what 95% of the “missing” universe really is? Just my 2 cents.
I give the medcine for modern theory of gravity:
Gravity is the spacetime background of other interactions.
Einstein was to consider gravity as background. On the other hand, He wanted to unify gravity with others and tried to tranform the theory into field theory. Therefore, curvature is considered to be real matter while reference frames (real background) are no longer the choice of Einstein. General relativity loses connection to real matter.
String and other mainstream relativity do not dare to challenge Einstein and, therefore, dance on the stage of imaginary matter!
Patrick:
I think the most probable explanation for why Lisi’s E8 theory doesn’t explain what dark matter and dark energy are is that they don’t actually exist.
Patrick,
I think there are 18, or so, “roots” of E8 that do not match up to known particles. Some or all of these may be dark matter candidates. I think that a cosmological constant is built in somehow - I have heard the term “DeSitter space” mentioned in describing some aspect of Lisi’s model. I know very little about the theory. I’ve just looked at a few diagrams and heard a few wisps of conversations.
Thanks for the reply Brian, Andy. I didn’t mean to criticise the theory itself because I understand way to less of it, to do that (I’m not even a ‘biker-dude’, even though I love riding my bicycle. Also I don’t have any academical degree, it’s ridiculous to point that even out, because I’m no stereotypical nerd whatsoever *uhh, irony*). I don’t admire Garret’s media-attention for his (maybe) brilliant paper, I even feel sorry for him. That kind of pressure may well be hard to handle. I found his little story here quite nice, especially the parts, in which he didn’t sound he’d have to justify himself. Fame will come, if deserved.
The first thing I did after i read the intro and outro was looking for the phrase “dark” in his theory. Since that is not in there, i searched for any hint of an explanation. Earlier, my point was, that any ToE should at least include solutions for the DM/DE ‘problem’ and not leave room for speculation there. Even it that means, that we’re far from a ToE. But maybe that’s not how theories in phyiscs work. I guess that Einstein wasn’t to eager about explaining every consequence of his theory neither. But for that, there are genious people like Sean, who happen to explain that kind of stuff for a broader but interested audience in a very nice way. Ups, I g2g! Greetings from Germany everyone
Andy,
I agree, I also suspect that the motions we currently see are the result of known matter that simply relates in ways not yet understood, which may be found in the E8 lattice relationship. In the same way, I don’t believe gravitons exist, and the observed “force” of gravity is just the result of known matter relating in ways we don’t yet understand.
In a sense, I see gravity as a pushing force caused by existing particles / forces that we now know. To me, there is only ONE true unifying force:
entropy
Every other particle / force bows before it.
Quantum entanglement does not involve a faster-than-light causal effect, for the simple reason that there is no operational way of testing this statement. The effect of entanglement is seen in communication protocols (unconditionally secure cryptography) and information processing (quantum computing), and can be acurately described as a correlation between quantum systems that is stronger than any classical correlation. The no-cloning theorem in quantum mechanics ensures that quantum entanglement canot be used to signal faster than light. In particular, simultaneity is still a relative concept (that is, relative to the observer’s intertial frame).
“I got my PhD and looked at my options. I love differential geometry, general relativity, and particle physics. But the only options available then for a postdoc in those combined areas were in string theory, and I thought string theory was overly speculative.”
Before blaming string theory for your lack of opportunities, consider whether your publication record (1 publication, in J.Phys.A) would have made you competitive for postdocs in the absence of string dominance.
String theorists must be loving what they see unfolding here. How will the usual critics ever be able to accuse them of overblown hype and misleading advertising again, given their role in (Smolin&co), or silence during (Woit), the current spectacle.
“String theorists must be loving what they see unfolding here. How will the usual critics ever be able to accuse them of overblown hype and misleading advertising again, given their role in (Smolin&co), or silence during (Woit), the current spectacle.”
Not really. It is simply sad to see how manipulative blog campaigns are semi-successful to switch the public opinion around. First, to discredit string theory and now, to support lousy research. I wonder whether they pay similar attention to the fact that this “theory” has been shown to be wrong.
hi notsoamused,
I should be even less amused than you about this, being on the anti-string (or more precisely, the `let’s curb string theory excesses and give others a fair shot’) side. I’ve always interpreted Peter W.’s blog as being more about provoking a critical debate about ST rather than discrediting it, but he does seem to have made an error of judgement in this case. There are mitigating circumstances though, since a senior professor at PI came out and described the Lisi work as “fabulous” and “one of the most compelling unification models I’ve seen in many, many years”, which signals a green light to physics bloggers and journalists alike to cover it.
I’ve always suspected that Smolin, in his unrestrained drive to make reality conform to his ideological ideas of how things should be, would end up doing much more damage to the “anti-string” cause than Motl’s rantings would ever do to the pro-string side.
Amused, I am not sure what you found so very different in this episode, to my mind everyone behaved exactly as they had numerous times before. Luckily, this includes Jacques, who once again stayed on topic and took the time to provide a thorough analysis of the group theory involved, including where things go wrong. See
http://golem.ph.utexas.edu/~distler/blog/archives/001505.html
Surely it is only hours before we witness lots of retractions…
Moshe, the specifics of this case are way different from anything that has gone before: Smolin&co promoting an unknown person claiming to have a ToE… It is uncharted territory, so I’m not sure if one can say that the people involved are behaving as they had done many times in the past. Depends on the interpretation perhaps… But yes, I agree that Jacques deserves everyone’s thanks for putting the matter to rest.
Please note that Jacques Distler has not pointed out any problems that are not already discussed in the paper. I fully admit that this theory has a problem with the higher two generations that needs work, and have never claimed otherwise. On the contrary, I state and explain this explicitly in the paper.
The simplest theory of everything will be an account that will explain everything in the natural world that cannot be explained as or just as effects caused by the forces.
So that, in particular, this is a cause and effect explnation of how matter as atoms. molecules and liviing organisns can exist despite the forces acting within and upon it. And hence this theory finds that the universe can be and remain the way that it is only because of the universal and constant action of nonlocal and extra-dimensional material form conserving cause.
amused,
This is not a topic I was “silent” on, it’s one I wrote a posting about explaining exactly what I thought, as well as engaging in discussion on the subject in the comment section. That much of the press coverage has been misleading and badly overhyped is something that even Garrett I think agrees with.
But I also think the hysteria over this from some string theorists is unwarranted. The media regularly carries overhyped stories about highly speculative physics papers (do you read New Scientist?), and mostly I think the best policy is to ignore them, because no one in the physics community other than the authors of the papers themselves is paying any attention. The reason I’ve regularly been critical of overhyped articles about string theory is that physicists are paying attention to them. The question of whether string theory has failed as a unification theory is a highly contentious one among people in the field, and ongoing attempts to claim “predictions” of string theory and other successes in the media are part of this story, and something I intend to keep writing about. I also expect to keep mostly ignoring the large amount of nonsense in the media that is not about string theory, unless it shows some sign of actually influencing physics research
Peter,
I see your point, but am worried that next time you (rightly) decry the latest “test of string theory” hype you will get string theorists writing in asking you where was your outrage during the Lisi spectacle when the hype propagated by Smolin&Co was at least as bad. They will point out that, thanks to Smolin’s credentials and status as a senior prof. at PI, this hype had considerable influence on getting the public and quite a few physicists to pay attention.
If you hadn’t covered the Lisi paper in the first place you could deflect this by saying that it is outside the scope of your blog. But since you did cover the paper, it’s less straightforward…
amused,
Remember that string theory fails at every criterion:
(1) It’s not even ad hoc theoretical physics because doesn’t model anything already known successfully (the unobservable values for the moduli of compactified extra spatial dimensions in string theory give that theory a landscape of 10^500 or more models, and it’s not even mathematically possible today to even identify which - if any - of those models encompass Standard Model type physics).
(2) Because there are 100 unknown moduli required in the theory (the parameters of the unobservable Calabi-Yau manifold dimensions), the theory can’t make falfifiable predictions. (Even if it did make falsifiable predictions, so what? Lots of speculative theories make predictions, and nobody gives a damn until they are tested and found correct. Why the premature celebration of string?)
(3) String theory leads to pseudoscientific defenses of the subject by its practitioners, who seek to chuck away the carefully checked scientific method just out of egotism. E.g., they claim that because the theory seems to allow spin-2 gravitons and is (allegedly) self-consistent, it is a theory of quantum gravity, and this make’s it a physical theory.
If string people act this way when there is no physical evidence for their speculations, how will they act if data comes in that is ambiguous, or which isn’t compatible with string? Will they just add some epicycles to the theory and claim to be doing science, like Ptolemy did when the epicycle model of the Earth-centred-universe failed to make accurate predictions?
At what point (if ever) will Professor Witten openly confess that string is just a model for speculations like unobservable Planck scale unification and unobserved spin-2 gravitons, and hasn’t any claim to say anything useful about the Standard Model or gravity? Smolin and Lisi at least are skeptical in case they are wrong. String theory by contrast can’t ever be shown to be wrong.
Professor Richard Dawkin’s should entitle his next book “The String Delusion” (or, at least, he should include a chapter about string theory worship in the next edition of “The God Delusion”).
amused,
It’s not that Gattett’s paper is outside the scope of my blog, just that overhyped descriptions of speculative ideas about physics in the media aren’t all worth paying attention to. This is a very unusual one though in the amount of attention it has gotten (I just noticed that it even made it into the Economist), and unfortunately one reason for that is the overly enthusiastic quotes from Lee Smolin.
In this case I unusually find myself in agreement with Clifford Johnson, see his recent comment on his blog:
http://asymptotia.com/2007/03/19/e8/#comment-90563
Just for reference, here is the Economist article. I particularly like how they manage to bring in the recent computation of the KL polynomials of the split real form.
Here’s the final paragraph:
I’m sure this all the fault of string theorists somehow.
Yeah, any idea should stand or fall on its own, the repeated references to string theory are tacky, and also a pretty good warning sign…
To amused (and others), I am still not sure what one can do in this situation. Suppose you are contacted by a media outlet for your opinion about this story. It was clear from the beginning that there is no TOE there, but there may or may not be an interesting observation somewhere in there. If you are overly harsh you will almost certainly packaged as defending your turf against the new genius, and besides Garrett seems like a nice guy… So, what would you say? (in 10 words or less, of course).
Hi Moshe, I recommend just saying the truth. Actually, what you wrote sounds completely fine:
“It was clear from the beginning that there is no TOE there, but there may or may not be an interesting observation somewhere in there.”
Just say that. They might package you in the way you said, but this media stuff is just a silly game and I don’t think you should degrade yourself by trying to play it and saying something other than the truth.
One unfortunate thing at the moment is that the “establishment” viewpoint is being represented by Lubos; specifically, by his blog posting on the topic. Probably because that’s all that journalists find when they search the internet looking for the “establishment response”. And it plays right into the image of nasty arrogant string theorists trying to squash the new genius who’s set to overthrow their evil empire… So it would be good if you and others talked to the press when you can so that the caricature image has a chance of being replaced with the image of serious scientists expressing their dispassionate opinion. You could also suggest non-string people with expertese in this kind of stuff who journalists can talk to for a “neutral opinion”. (Neuberger is one person who comes to mind, no doubt there are quite a few others.)
For what it’s worth, I am sickened by the things that are being written, e.g. in the quote from the Economist article above. It’s so naive and ridiculous.
Best wishes,
David
the problem are not overly enthusiastic statements. the problem is that people pay attention to them instead caring for the facts. this whole story shows so awfully nicely what the internet does to our opinion making processes. there is one first article (in this case the telegraph) which contains almost no information, and shortly later a longer follow up (NewScientist, which was actually well written and balanced). The whole thing is new, it’s hot, and gets copied and mirrored and echoed by a hundred of other sites with declining degree of content and increasing degree of polarization (Stuff string theory!). Almost none of these add anything, or has something new to say. Even if they wanted to, there is no time for that, who cares about Garrett Lisi in two weeks? (Maybe the Germans, I am surprised they haven’t yet picked it up.) What’s journalism coming to? It’s a nonlinear feedback effect, and it will only become worse the more important people think links and traffic to their website is. The actual content of an article just becomes less and less important, it’s not relevant that people actually read it! It’s completely sufficient if the click on the advertisement banner next to the title. Isn’t it obvious that this kind of financing is a complete disaster?
Moshe wrote: It was clear from the beginning that there is no TOE there,…
Bee wrote: …the problem are not overly enthusiastic statements. the problem is that people pay attention to them instead caring for the facts.
amused wrote: I recommend just saying the truth.
The truth in my eyes is that the very first offense here was the overly enthusiastic title: “An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything”. It is clearly a misrepresentation of the contents of the paper.
See, Bee, people take the overly enthusiastic statements to be the facts. Perhaps none of you scientists types has been paying attention, but **that is the way** the world works. At least people are a little jaded when it comes to advertisers, politicians, government officials, religionists and so on. Yet, they swallowed the kool-aid on such varied things as subprime mortgages and on why invade Iraq.
Now particle physicists will also be classified among the purveyors of snake-oil. I do not count this as a good thing.
And IMO, superstring hype helped on this downwards slide, whenever anyone talked about it in public without the qualifier “We do not yet know this to be true**”.
The whole purpose of academic freedom, tenure, etc., was that there would be this set of people in society with no obligation to anything but the strict facts. They would be one set of people who could be counted on to point out nonsense as such.
If among the most exact of the experimental sciences - particle physics - can fall prey to overly enthusiastic statements, then why should anyone believe that any of the less exact, dealing with more complexity - e.g., climate science - is not driven by something other than fact?
What this is to say is that the scientist needs to be painfully precise in statements made to the public, in papers and in talks. It is a professional obligation.
(true** as in “relevant to/descriptive of our universe”.).
Actually, I would lump particle physicists in with snake oil salesmen, for one very simple fact - you all claim to KNOW your current laws of gravity to be fact, but then find they don’t seem to work on the galactic scale, which you never bother to mention to the general public. You then start adding terms to your equations, and lable them dark matter and dark energy, without one moment’s consideration that your law may be simply wrong.
Your cloistered “scientists” are merely the cardinals of a new religion that you are zealously trying to protect, lest your daily bread be taken from you.
Re #52:
It seems like you’re the one who mistakenly thinks he knows everything. There has been a ton of press about dark matter and dark energy, so the public knows all about this problem. And just because one works under the assumption that the otherwise wildly successful theory of relativity is basically correct and just needs some tweaking(addition of dark matter, etc.), doesn’t mean physicists are brainwashed cultists who can’t envision other possibilities. The fact is that dark matter has been indirectly observed in the Bullet cluster as Sean has so nicely written on in the past, so relativity works very well at the galactic scales. On cosmological scales where dark energy is invoked, there may be something else going on; no good physicist will claim to really understand it in full.
And what do you think would happen if relativity is wrong and some new mechanism takes effect? Relativity clearly works in many situations (there are a number of precision tests in solar system and terrestrial physics) so whatever the solution is, it still just amounts to adding terms to the known equations and labeling them something.
Get off your soapbox and learn a thing or two about what you’re spouting off about. The internet is ignorant enough as it is.
“the problem are not overly enthusiastic statements. the problem is that people pay attention to them instead caring for the facts.”
Bee, the journalists who have written about this don’t have any expertese in this area, and have had to rely on physicists and Lisi himself to provide them with the facts. And in most cases their stories have been pretty much based on the “facts” they’ve been presented with, without (much) distortion, but at the same time without knowing that these “facts” are not the real facts. It’s hard to blame them for not knowing that, how should they have known?
As a case study, let’s consider the Sunday Times article. From the article:
“Could Lisi have cracked a problem that has defied some of the finest minds in history? While it has in no way embraced this lofty claim, the scientific community has given it a surprising amount of respect. Lee Smolin, founder of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Canada, is full of praise: “It is one of the most compelling unification models I’ve seen in many, many years.” ”
The journalist assumes that the views of someone of Smolin’s stature surely signify respect from the scientific community at large — a completely understandable and excusable mistake. (Normally the views of someone in Smolin’s position would signify that, and the journalist can’t be expected to know that there is an anomaly in this case.)
“Some have rejected the proposal out of hand: one physicist describes Lisi as a “crank” and his ideas as “baloney”.”
So the journalist went to the trouble of asking the opinion of a real live physicist — that’s pretty good! (It can’t just be from Lubos’ blog since “baloney” is an English expression which he doesn’t use.)
“But most see the possibility, albeit far from proven, of genuine insight”
Which is a likely impression a journalist would get from reading certain physics blogs (e.g. yours, Bee). In fact most serious physicists won’t have even bothered to look at the paper, for exactly the reason that Sean gives in his post. But we can’t really blame the journalist for not knowing that the views that have been expressed about the paper, either by Smolin&co or in the physics blogsphere, are far from representative of the silent majority view of serious physicists.
“Lisi is unimpressed by string theory. For a man who is motivated by mathematical beauty, it is just too clumsy to be compelling and he quit university after completing his PhD rather than be forced to pursue it.”
This is the story Lisi likes to tell journalists and everyone else (including the readers of this blog — see his comment above). The journalist can hardly be blamed for not knowing that Lisi’s meagre publication record wouldn’t have been enough for him to continue as a university postdoc in any case, regardless of whether string theory was the only option or not. Lisi “forgets” to mention this, and instead presents himself as a victim of string dominance.
“He may not have to wait long to see if his theory is right. […] Within 12 months of the Large Hadron Collider bursting into life in the Swiss countryside next year, the giant particle accelerator experiment should deliver its verdict, revealing whether or not the new fundamental particles that Lisi’s theory predicts should exist are actually there. The whole idea will stand of fall on this crucial test.”
Again, this is the story Lisi has been telling journalists (and also writing on his FQXi blog). Can we blame them for believing it? Lisi lets them think that he has a theory in sufficient working order to begin calculating predictions for the LHC.
But in actual fact he has no such thing, as he was forced to admit on Jacques Distler’s blog:
“…Addressing this inadequacy in the theory is what I will be working on over the coming months, and if I or someone else can’t figure out a good way to solve this problem, the theory won’t work.”
Funny how he felt no inclination to point out to the journalists that his theory suffers from a potentially fatal “inadequacy”…
In summary, I don’t see how the journalist who wrote this story can be blamed for the hype or misleading/incorrect statements. He/she was just basing it on the “facts” presented, together with a few completely reasonable assumptions.
And the situation is more or less the same with the other stories I’ve seen.
whoops, screwed up the link. it should have been this
If anyone cares to see what I actually said to journalists, my responses to questions are available here:
theory FAQ
personal AQ
And before slamming me for liking my own work, please note that I have managed to persuade every single journalist I have spoken with to report that this theory is speculative, still in development, and untested.
The current inadequacies of this theory are discussed at length in the paper, and I have attempted to convey them to all who have been interested. Jacques did not “disprove” the theory, but just described the inadequacy which I described in the paper as the most important problem that needs fixing. He did find a small error — that the group here is the split real form of E8 and not E IX — but in my opinion this correction only makes this theory more interesting.
As a result of all the press, I have received many hundreds of emails from the general public (to which I have been responding, one by one). The general theme of these emails is “Good luck with your theory, I hope it works.” People understand this is a developing theory, and that it might be wrong.
#54 amused:
In summary, I don’t see how the journalist who wrote this story can be blamed for the hype or misleading/incorrect statements. He/she was just basing it on the “facts” presented, together with a few completely reasonable assumptions.
Even though I agree with you and Arun that scientists should be careful with what they say to journalists, it is pretty clear that many of those who echoed and copied the initial articles didn’t even care to even pretend they tried to understand anything about it. And yes, this is what I expect of journalists: that they try to find out how useful and reliable the statements are that they print. That’s their job! The problem is that everybody gladly jumps on a statement like Lee’s without caring for the details, because it’s easy it’s cheap, it gets attention, on the price of accuracy.
The journalist assumes that the views of someone of Smolin’s stature surely signify respect from the scientific community at large — a completely understandable and excusable mistake.
I have no idea how you have managed to downgrade your expectations on good journalism so much that you can ‘excuse’ such a deliberately unbalanced and vacuous reporting as a ‘mistake’. If somebody insists on writing a very premature article about a paper that had been just published days before, in a field where it can take years to understand the promise of an idea, then I expect he or she takes his or her responsibility seriously, and does not happily jump on a single sentence which is quotable because that guy has written some books and people will recognize his name. If a magazine or newspaper doesn’t have anybody who is qualified as a science journalist, then they should stay out of the matter.
#51 Arun: Yes, the title was inappropriate (that’s why I mingled it up in my blog post). Yes, people take overly enthusiastic statements as fact, and yes, scientists should know this and be accordingly careful. Yes, that’s the way the world works, whether I like it or not. But whether we like it or not, not all scientists will be appropriately unenthusiastic, and I am glad about it. I find the trend that science journalism becomes more and more a fictitious story writing very worrisome. Much more worrisome than enthusiastic scientists.
The events unfolding in this opera are worrying. It seems that in the years after Sokal and the Bogdanovs it is increasingly difficult for people to tell physics from “alternative physics” - to the extent that nowadays even respected professionals “jump on the train”. For me, the only important implication of “E8 theory” is that in a few years time a fake quantum gravity theory will be finally proclaimed, by media and majority opinion, a true “Theory of Everything”. This would be a victory of the fake over the authentic, and of postmodernism over science. A sad outlook.
I enjoyed the double meaning of the title.
The theory will be judged based on its agreement with experiment.
Whether the theory is accepted or disproven, I offer my congratulations to Mr. Lisi. I also wish that I could snowboard as well as he does!
#52, Josh,
These cosmological observations that “uphold” dark matter and dark energy terms in your equations weren’t predicted, but observable flaws in previous theories that needed band-aids, for which you created these superflorous terms. Instead of admitting your previous theories were wrong, you just came up with new theories about intangible / untestable entities, as if nothing happened.
#54, amused,
“Funny how he felt no inclination to point out to the journalists that his theory suffers from a potentially fatal “inadequacy”… ”
Why is that funny? Relativity and string theorists have been doing that for years, masking their shortcomings with even more theories of “dark matter” and “dark energy”, which is just backfilling in terms when observations prove previous theories wrong.
#56, Garrett,
Good luck man! You have the right attitude that you sense some real fundamental relationships by applying E8 to particle physics, and offer some suppositions for others to challenge / pursue, and are open to criticism / failure, which is more than I can say for the string theorists trying to protect their bread and butter.
Too funny, string theorists will keep adding more and more terms, without ever getting down to the basic understanding of what is going on. I recommend that they start with the one true force - entropy, and build from there.
Bee,
“If somebody insists on writing a very premature article about a paper that had been just published days before, in a field where it can take years to understand the promise of an idea, then I expect he or she takes his or her responsibility seriously, and does not happily jump on a single sentence which is quotable because that guy has written some books and people will recognize his name.”
I find it absolutely hilarious that you are directing your outrage against the poor ignorant journalist rather than the expert physicist who fed him/her the baloney.
And it’s not as if Smolin was saying that stuff in a vacuum; there were similar noises from others, e.g. Rovelli, as well as a general buzz eminating from PI as indicated in your blogpost:
“during my time at PI it [Lisi’s seminar] was the best attended Quantum Gravity seminar I’ve been at.”
And it’s not as if Smolin&co don’t have any experience in dealing with journalists and couldn’t predict the likely outcome of saying what they said.
Sorry, but I can’t take this discussion seriously anymore.
Hi amused:
Glad to amuse you
The number of attendees doesn’t say anything about their opinion after the talk. I am much too tired to be outraged about anything, but you’re misunderstanding me if you think I blame the journalists. I was just expressing that I am not willing to excuse everything because the poor guys don’t know what quantization is (well, I’d have expected a science journalist should know as much as having heard of the problem of quantizing gravity and asking the question how it’s solved?).
What I was actually trying to say is as so often, I find myself criticizing a general trend in our society that I thoroughly dislike. Scientists shouldn’t be affected by the media, but I am afraid they are because attention potentially brings money in. (Let’s face it, that’s what people get upset about. When funding goes to X, it won’t be there for Y). Journalists shouldn’t write to please their readership but to convey information, but it’s entertainment that brings money in (Let’s face it, what matters in the end is whether it sells.) We all shouldn’t sit around and watch how our society produces more and more virtual bubbles of nothing, because capitalism obviously has its limitations and we’ve already exceeded them. Ironically we don’t have time to do anything about it because it doesn’t help our careers.
What worries me is simply how cheerful the media picks around on the ‘ivory tower’. There is a good reason why the opinion making process in science should take place independent from external influence, that includes media hypes as well as financial pressure. Isn’t it completely obvious that unbalanced reporting and fear of loosing grants affects opinions and the choice of research topics? What worries me is not so much the actual reporting, but that people in our community increasingly (have to) pay attention to it.
Best,
B.
None of these blogs seem to have mentioned something obvious. Surely FQXi has been a factor in publicising and promoting this work. After all their website has articles about their other grant winners too, and it is only natural for them to want the research to be noticed, especially since some of these grant winners might make important breakthroughs.
Have I got this right? Just curious about why the FQXi publicity factor hasn’t really been mentioned.
Curious:
I’m happy to comment on this, as follows:
(a) We at FQXi are proud that FQXi support has enabled Garrett to do some research that by all accounts would not have been done without the FQXi grant. We hope that the research proves fruitful! It may, of course, take some time to discover whether this is the case. From our perspective, the way that this will happen is that if/when Garrett applies for another grant from FQXi, his application — like everyone else’s — will be sent to experts in the field for careful review of the accomplishment and promise of his research program, and funded — or not — based on those reviews. In the meantime, we wish him the best of fortune in negotiating some tricky waters (both scientifically and otherwise.)
(b) While we at FQXi are of course happy when researchers FQXi funds do well, and enjoy basking in their successful glow, FQXi focuses its publicity efforts (such as they are…) on FQXi itself rather than on promoting any of its particular researchers. In Garrett’s case, the ‘promotion’ has been entirely limited to what you see on the the FQXi community site. Although Garrett has been very gracious about thanking FQXi for support, we have, curiously, had essentially no queries (to my knowledge) from the media about our role.
As an interested layman I have been following the various blogs and internet news on Garrett Lisi’s discovery, announcement or what ever.
Some things that I find dishearting are the tone of a lot those that don’t agree with the premise.
Some challenge the idea, which is why it was presented. It needs to stand the test but why the hubris?
I find Lisi seems to have taken the high road, perhaps we all should.
Perhaps in my naive view of the beter man, I would have thought new ideas would be challenged and either supported or denied based on the math and not the man!
This seems all so tiresome when in a short time it will stand or fall as it should.
John
Hi Bee,
Thanks for your thoughtful reply. I share very much your concern about the adverse effects of irresponsible science journalism and hype. But while there has been some of that in the present spectacle (the fox news story in particular comes to mind) I think it would be a bit harsh to tar all the journalists who have written about this with that brush. No doubt the entertainment value of the story was part of their motivation, but some of them do seem to have made a genuine effort to find out what was going on (as can be seen, e.g., from their discussions with Garrett on his FQXi blog). Perhaps it’s naive but I have the impression they were reasonably conscientious journalists who cared about getting the story right, including the assessment of its newsworthiness. What they didn’t realize, because they don’t know how the physics community works, is that most serious physicists just keep silent and ignore work when they don’t think there is anything to it. Not knowing this, the journalists assumed that the positive noises they were hearing were a lot more representative of the physics community reaction than they actually were.
Well, ideally science stories should only be covered by science journalists who know something about science and the way scientific communities operate. But unfortunately that’s not the reality we find ourselves in, and journalists with little or no background in physics are going to end up writing physics-related stories from time to time when they find something interesting. I don’t think that has to be a terrible thing though, provided the journalists have some reasonable level of integrity and care about getting the story right. But for it not to be a bad thing it is essential that the physicists themselves are very careful and responsible in what they say to the press. It’s maybe unfair to expect too much from the actual authors of the research work — they will of course be positive about their work and it’s understandable if they end up describing it in an unrealistically positive way. But any responsible journalist is not just going to rely on the authors’ assessments; they will surely also seek out the assessment of senior physicists at prestigious institutions who are not connected with the work. What they hear from these will be hugely influential in the journalists’ judgement of the newsworthiness of the story. This places a huge responsibility on the senior physicists that the journalists consult. They really need to be sure and correct in their judgement, and realize that they are putting their reputations on the line, before making comments that signal a green light to journalists to run with the story. And it is them that should bear the brunt of the outrage if they fail in this responsibility and spectacles like the present one occur. They should be slammed mercilessly imo, so that they and others will be more careful in the future.
The physics community can’t really control or decide the level of scientific knowledge of journalists who decide to cover physics stories, but we can control ourselves, and that should be enough, at least when the journalists we deal with have sufficient integrity when judging the newsworthiness of a story and sufficient desire to get it right (which I think many of the journalists covering the present story probably did).
Best,
“amused”
Hi amused,
Yes, I agree that the scientists carry a responsibility for what they say, and to a large degree journalists have to rely on them to be careful and precise. I’ve written down my thoughts in yesterday’s post ‘Fact or Fiction’, in case you’re interested.
One other thing that I’d like to mention though is that journalists cherry pick sentences from interviews which might not give a very clear picture of what the person actually said in toto. That seems to me is often unavoidable, but it can contribute to the polarization of opinions, even if unintentionally, and especially if others repeat such sentences without asking for the context or an explanation. I mean, I said above I am reasonably happy with the way my quote in NewScientist appears, but the one sentence I was quoted with obviously wasn’t the only thing I said. Among other stuff I said “the action does not appear naturally within this approach, but it is just chosen such that it does reproduce the standard model + general relativity. If you want, the assumption is the requirement to be compatible with what we already know, with observations that we have made, and theories we have established. This is without doubt reasonable, but given that the aim is to find a TOE, to me it is not a particularly attractive procedure. One would hope to find a less ad-hoc formulation, which might very well be possible with further investigations.”
Besides this, following up on my ealier comments, I would like to mention that the NewScientist person I’ve been in contact with happened to read this thread and asked me why I criticised the paragraph that my quote appeared in. Mentioning that I hadn’t specifically been talking about string theory, but it comes off as such, she said the problem is otherwise it would have been necessary to explain also what LQG is because not all readers would know. It’s a reason I can relate to.
They should be slammed mercilessly imo, so that they and others will be more careful in the future.
I’ll leave the slamming to you, you’re doing a good job
Best,
B.
#66, amused,
“journalists with little or no background in physics are going to end up writing physics-related stories from time to time …”
Wow, that sounds a lot like the position of the Catholic church before the Protestant Reformation - “only priests should read / interpret the Bible”. I wish you could see yourselves from the outside looking in. Catholic clergy had the same motivations too - protecting their “way of life” (read - standard of living through indulgences, etc.).
I think it is more important to give Lisi’s approach broad exposure, even if premature, so that many eyes are examining it, because it appears to be the first approach based on something other than observation and backfilling with terms.
Amused, thanks for your thoughts above. I am convinced you are right, and more of us should talk to journalists when we have a chance, and try to provide them with some more sensible feedback. I’m usually not a cynical sort, so I am assuming that by and large they are interested in that, even though what we have to say is much less colorful than the Motl/Smolin quotes.
(As for people paying with their reputations, that’s the way the scientific community works. I’m afraid the public sphere is more complicated, “slamming” tends to backfire even when perfectly justified).
[…] blogs scientifiques là et là, que j’ai découvert aujourd’hui, en parlent aussi, j’y comprends rien non […]
Hi Bee,
You are right about the potential problem with journalists cherry-picking quotes and maybe putting them in the wrong context. Not sure what can be done about that, if anything. I guess we just have to hope that if the journalists have integrity and desire to get the story right then the overall result won’t be too bad.
P.S. I read your nice post on this topic on you blog. See you over there in the comments section at some point…
Moshe, yes you are right about that.
)
(Note to self: must resist urge to call for public denunciations — except perhaps when it’s Lubos
#68, Jason,
I have more of an outsider’s perspective than you probably expect. You won’t believe it, but the reactions from physicists you have been seeing here and elsewhere are based on their honest judgements rather than a desire to protect their “way of life”.
Lent of Physics Blogging…
For a while, we had a blog carnival of physics writing, Philosophia Naturalis. However, it looks rather moribund today: the last installment to date was on 4 October (at Dynamics of Cats), and the “next available hosting opportunity” was …
#71, amused,
I don’t doubt the honesty / sincerity of the physicists - no doubt they are part of the indoctrinated faith that as long as you have ANY equation to explain a set of observations, then you KNOW / COMMAND that thing. They are faithful in their piety, and CANNOT see their religion from the inside.
Relativity itself was a dodge of finding fundamental truth in nature, and sought to “simplify” the problem / question, by reducing the conditions around observations to a small enough subset that simple questions could be answered. Photons traveling between bodies moving at speeds relative to one another …. blah, blah, blah …..
What “sets” the speed of light? That should give a clue about the universal reference frame, and not objects relative to one another, etc. Scribing endless equations without a fundamental theory of what sets the conditions / relationships for / of all objects in the universe is a waste of time. You can plug any data set into MATLAB and get an equation.
[…] Wikipedia. Bron: Op vele blogs wordt Lisi’s eenvoudige TOE besproken, o.a. op Astropixie, Cosmic Variance en Backreaction. In de wetenschapsbijlage van NRC-handelsblad van 1 december stond ook een stukje […]
If E8 was expanded to the size of the universe, would you get a vector that represents gravity at that scale? And to get this vector, would the (paths) be curved i.e. the curvature of space caused by mass? The mass at the points of E8?
Sandra,
E8 is a symmetry group, a mathematical structure. Expanding E8 to the size of the universe is a statement that makes no sense. The statement that a “theory of everything” is described by the E8 symmetry group is a statement that the most fundamental constituents of the universe are invariant under rotations in the E8 symmetry group.
A way of visualizing this is if you imagine that the fundamental constituents of the universe are fully described by a series of numbers (I couldn’t tell you how many, I’m not familiar with the particulars of E8), then the obedience of E8 symmetry means that changing those numbers in a specific way (an E8 rotation) does not change the physics: the particle behaves the same whether we describe it with the numbers before the rotation or after the rotation.
For a more down to Earth example of how such symmetries work, we can take spatial symmetry. If you want to describe the motion of a ball rolling on a table, you can do so using a variety of possible choices of axes. You can place the origin at the center of the table, or at any of the four corners, or anywhere else you like. You can also label the numbers with inches, or centimeters, or meters, or anything else. No matter how you label the table with numbers, though, the ball behaves the same.
This can be decomposed into a discrete set of symmetries. Some of them are simple translations: if you move your coordinate axis left or right, forward or back, and the equations that describe how the ball moves remain identical (because the table is flat). This simple fact ensures that momentum is conserved. If you instead rotate the table, you find that once again the equations that describe its motion remain unchanged. This symmetry ensures that angular momentum is conserved. Then you can show that as time moves forward, the equations that describe the motion of that same ball still remain unchanged, and this ensures conservation of energy.
The E8 symmetry is a similar statement: if we make an E8 transformation to the numbers that describe a particle, if the equations of motion obey E8 symmetry, then the equations of motion will not change after the transformation. What would be conserved in this situation would be a set of charges, much like the electric, weak, and strong charges which are described by known physics.
Hopefully this wasn’t too cryptic.
Mr. Garett’s work is a sort of geometric mysticism in its current state indeed, but it still doesn’t mean, it CANNOT have robust physical meaning. The most important point (which wasn’t mentioned till now) is, the Lie group is not just void geometrical structure. It’s root system is describing the tightest structure of kissing hyperspheres, where the kissing points are sitting at the centers of another hyperspheres, recursively. The Aether Wave Theory proposes at least two dual ways, how to interpret such structure.
The cosmological one is maybe easier to realize: it considers, the current Universe generation is formed by interior of giant dense collapsar, which behaves like black hole from outer perspective. This collapse was followed by phase transition, which proceeded like crystallization from over-saturated solution by avalanche-like mechanism. During this, the approximately spherical zones of condensing false vacuum have intersect mutually, and from these places the another vacuum condensation has started (a sort of nucleation effect). We can observe the residuum of these zones as a dark matter streaks. The dodecahedron structure of these zones should corresponds the E8 group geometry, as being observed from inside.
The second interpretation of E8 is relevant for Planck scale, i.e. for outer perspective. The dense interior of black hole is forming the physical vacuum, which is filled by spongy system of density fluctuations, similar to nested foam. Such structure has even a behavior of soap foam, because it gets more dense after introducing of energy by the same way, like soap shaken inside of closed vessel. Such behavior leads to the quantum behavior of vacuum and particle-wave duality. Every energy wave, exchanged between pair of particles (i.e. density fluctuations of foam) is behaving like less or more dense blob of foam, i.e. like gauge boson particle. Every boson can exchange its energy with another particles, including other gauge bosons, thus forming the another generation of interacalated particles.
Therefore the E8 Lie group solves the trivial question: which structure should have the tightest lattice of particles, exchanged by another particles? And such question has even perfect meaning from classical physics point of view! Such question has a perfect meaning in theory, describing the most dense structure of inertial particles, which we can even imagine, i.e. the interior of black hole.
Any enthusiast who has read Garrett’s paper front to back even without understanding all the math can get an excitement about the unification of what we all expected was unifiable but didn’t expect would be so hard to unify.
I’m wondering if the mapping of these into E8 will eventually in some way correlate to the mapping of living systems in terms of what their real functions are versus those which the consciousness insists exists. For example our consciousnesses insist on a certain smoothness which the sensory systems don’t actually exhibit. Our mind fills in.
Would the experts care to chime in on Smolin’s
http://arxiv.org/abs/0712.0977
I wish Lee Smolin would read Jacques Distler’s blog more often. The group theory part of Lisi’s paper has been completely debunked and yet, Smolin completely ignores this and gives Lisi his stamp of approval. The scientific standards of the LQG community seem to be really low these days.
This is an interesting spectacle. Could someone please elighten me wtf is going on?
I am not an expert, but here is my take, based in part on statements by Lisi at PhysicsForums.com. You say you’re a neophyte, so I’ll emphasize one idea, and that is the construction of a quantum theory from a corresponding classical theory through “quantization”. Physically that means introducing the uncertainty principle; mathematically it means reinterpreting the basic equations as operator equations.
Lisi starts with a field theory which can be called “BFE8″. The fields and their interactions all follow from the E8 symmetry. Then he adds some extra terms, in the way described in Smolin’s paper. The resulting theory has a MUCH smaller symmetry, first appearing in the “Pati-Salam model”, so I’ll call it a Lisi-Pati-Salam model.
It looks to me as if BFE8 theory exists classically, and as if this Lisi-Pati-Salam model exists classically AND as a quantum theory; but that there is no evidence that BFE8 theory exists as a quantum theory, and that one has good reason to think it does NOT exist as a quantum theory, namely, the Coleman-Mandula theorem. If there is no “quantum BFE8 theory”, then the use of E8 structure constants as coupling strengths in Lisi’s extended Pati-Salam model is just an eccentric way to specify their values and has no particular logic to it.
I should back up here and say that in generic quantum field theories, coupling constants (field interaction strengths) are parameters that mathematically you can choose as you wish; but in a theory with a particular Lie group as a symmetry, those numbers will be determined by the algebra. So it would make sense for a theory which REALLY has an E8 symmetry to have couplings determined by the E8 algebra. But if Lisi’s Pati-Salam model is not actually descended from a genuine quantum E8 theory, the use of those numbers is quite arbitrary.
Lisi and Smolin both say (in effect) that a quantum BFE8 theory exists and that it evades the Coleman-Mandula theorem because… well, sometimes the reason is that it has a de Sitter metric rather than a Minkowski metric, sometimes the reason is that it has no metric at all and is purely topological. My hunch is that this is a mistake, that their critics are right in this regard, and that quantum BFE8 theory simply does not exist. Certainly, if they wish to claim that it does, they need to exhibit it, somehow.
As for Distler’s debunking… Lisi’s attempt to squeeze the Standard Model and gravity into (his preferred representation of) E8 appears to be doomed for algebraic reasons independent of the quantization problem. So the reports about ‘20 new particles’ whose masses need only be calculated are wrong. Any particular equation that can be written down right now is known to be wrong even before one tries to calculate particle masses. So any attempt at E8-based unification is going to involve chan