Saturday, October 27, 2018

Stop doing fundamental physics

Lubos Motl writes:
The video starts boldly:
I will talk about string theory not because I think it's interesting but because it's uninteresting and we should stop talking about it.
Holy cow. String theory remains the only game in town and everyone who wants to scientifically investigate any physical phenomena that go beyond effective quantum field theories – whose limitations are self-evident and well-known – simply must learn string/M-theory. There is no known alternative. To "stop talking about it" is almost exactly equivalent to stop doing fundamental physics. ...

On the other hand, Hossenfelder clearly doesn't have any alternative to string theory. She doesn't have any quantum mechanical theory that agrees with Einstein's equations at long distances but preserves the information when the black hole evaporates. But she – and her brain-dead followers – just don't care.
Yeah, I just don't care about such a theory.

Einstein's equations at long distances are the same as for Newtonian gravity. Either way, you can add dark energy, altho, as Bee explains, much of string theory was based on dark energy being negative, and we now know that it is positive.

But string theory preserves the info when a black hole evaporates? That is just nonsense. It makes more sense to talk about the Biblical apocalypse.

Maybe fundamental physics should stop. It is going nowhere. All that brainpower could be put to more productive purposes.

3 comments:

  1. Somehow, however long it takes, "There is no known alternative" has to stop.

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  2. When you are walking on an uncertain surface, you test each foothold carefully before taking the next step. While slow, this methodical approach allows for a safer more certain passage. High energy physics is presently racing ahead so far of what can even be remotely tested (much less confirmed) that it now resembles the coyote from the Bugs Bunny Road Runner Show, running on thin air like solid ground... until he looks down and reality magically reasserts itself.

    Quite simply, government funded science as a whole needs to prioritize.
    Funding for applied physics should grow, while money for theoretical physics should contract.

    We don't need to dither around with the undetectable inner workings of reified black data holes, useless Ads/CFT conjectures about made up math universes which observably don't function like ours, and magic multiverses which aren't observable at all … these are (at best) make work IMAGINARY problems which don't require serious attention (or money) any time soon (if ever).

    We do need to develop better energy production and storage solutions as well as the new materials which will be required to construct them ...as these are ACTUAL problems which require a great deal attention right now in the only universe we can do anything about.

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  3. Lubos Motl is Czech for outrageous asshole. They're not even wasted because they're overrated to begin with.

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