The string theory of 1880

Peter Woit quotes:

From its beginnings in 1867 to its end at about 1900, the [vortex] theory was frequently justified on methodological and aesthetic grounds rather than its ability to explain and predict physical phenomena. In an 1883 review of ether physics, Lodge described the vortex atom theory as ‘beautiful’ and ‘the simplest conception of the material universe which has yet occurred to man’. He added, just as Michelson would do twenty years later, that it was a ‘theory about which one many almost dare to say that it deserves to be true’.

Maxwell wrote for Encyclopedia Britannica:

But the greatest recommendation of this theory, from a philosophical point of view, is that its success in explaining phenomena does not depend on the ingenuity with which its contrivers “save appearances,” by introducing first one hypothetical force and then another. ... The difficulties of this method are enormous, but the glory of surmounting them would be unique.

It was a misguided attempt at a top-down mathematical atomic theory. String theory was a similar failure, a century later.

Unmoved by considerations of beauty

Arthur I. Miller reviews Quantum Man: Richard Feynman's Life in Science, by Lawrence Krauss:

Krauss argues persuasively for the importance Feynman placed on experimental data at every stage in his theoretical work. However, I must disagree with his claim that Feynman was unmoved by considerations of beauty, or that data were all that mattered. In 1957 Feynman and Gell-Mann worked out a theory of the weak interaction that conflicted with key experimental data. Feynman insisted, along with Gell-Mann, that the data were wrong: "There was a moment when I knew how nature worked. [Our theory] had elegance and beauty." The experiment was redone and the data indeed turned out to have been wrong. This was a bold move with few precedents, although Einstein, with a similar aesthetic bent, had asserted in 1907 that data conflicting with the special theory of theory of relativity were incorrect. He was right too.

Miller thinks that there is some sort of virtue in a scientist ignoring the data.

Lorentz and Poincare explained why their relativity theory was better than the competing theories, but had to admit that it could be proved wrong by experimental data. Einstein did not even pay much attention to experiments, according to historians like Miller.

Einstein's 1907 comment was:

It will be possible to decide whether the foundations of the relativity theory correspond with the facts only if a great variety of observations is at hand... In my opinion, both [the alternative theories of Abraham and Bucherer] have rather slight probability, ...

Here, Einstein is defending Lorentz's theory. Lorentz got the 1902 Nobel Prize, and had the more established and accepted theory at the time.

In 1907, the aesthetically preferred version of relativity was the spacetime geometry theory of Poincare and Minkowski. However, Einstein did not even understand it, and did not mention it in his relativity review paper.

At that time, Einstein's relativity was nothing more than an exposition of Lorentz's theory, along with Poincare's clock synchronization. That is how everyone understood it at the time. Not even Einstein claimed that it was anything more. Einstein did not need to consider the experimental data, because he trusted Lorentz's analysis of the experiments.

Miller and many of his fellow historians and philosophers are promoting a crazy idea of science. Krauss has a much more sensible view. I've read the first couple of chapters of Krauss's new book, and I like it better than his previous books.

Miller is a big Einstein idolizer:

The most important scientist of the 20th century, Albert Einstein, and its most important artist, Pablo Picasso, went through their period of greatest creativity and achievements around the same time, and in similar circumstances. In 1905 Einstein discovered his theory of relativity and in 1907 Picasso discovered Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, the painting that brought art into the 20th century and that contains the seeds of cubism. Even though they did not know about each other, they were both – each in his own way – identifying connections across the so-called “two cultures" of science and art, and striving to find a solution to the question of how to represent the nature of space and time in a more satisfying manner.

At the beginning of the 20th century, it was in the air that revolutionary changes were about to occur in many fields. Yet some of the greatest thinkers of the period bucked this tide. The great French philosopher-scientist Henri Poincaré was one of them. To my surprise, he turned out to be a common denominator between Einstein and Picasso. Both men were inspired by his book, Science and Hypothesis. Poincaré failed because he was unable to rid himself of the notion that time was an absolute and not a relative quantity. Just the opposite of what Einstein found when he combined space and time into a single continuum – space–time – and what Picasso did in his cubism, when he represented multiple perspectives all at once on a single canvas. Einstein studied temporal simultaneity, Picasso spatial simultaneity.

Miller is quite wrong about this.

Here is what Poincare says in chapter 6 of Science and Hypothesis:

1. There is no absolute space, and we only conceive of relative motion; and yet in most cases mechanical facts are enunciated as if there is an absolute space to which they can be referred.

2. There is no absolute time. When we say that two periods are equal, the statement has no meaning, and can only acquire a meaning by a convention.

3. Not only have we no direct intuition of the equality of two periods, but we have not even direct intuition of the simultaneity of two events occurring in two different places. I have explained this in an article entitled "Mesure du Temps."

It was Poincare who combined space and time into a single continuum, and Einstein who publicly complained that he did not see any value to it.

Lorentz covariance confirmed again

Quantum gravity
is one of the great physics boondoggles of all time. A lot of effort by a lot
of smart people has gone into to it, with nothing to show for it.
This announcement shows the latest failure for the theorists:

ESA’s Integral gamma-ray observatory has provided results that will dramatically affect the search for physics beyond Einstein. It has shown that any underlying quantum ‘graininess’ of space must be at much smaller scales than previously predicted.

Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity describes the properties of gravity and assumes that space is a smooth, continuous fabric. Yet quantum theory suggests that space should be grainy at the smallest scales, like sand on a beach.

One of the great concerns of modern physics is to marry these two concepts into a single theory of quantum gravity. ...

“This is a very important result in fundamental physics and will rule out some string theories and quantum loop gravity theories,” says Dr Laurent.

Here is the abstract and full paper.

This experiment proves Lorentz covariance to very high precision. The concept was discovered by Poincare, based on ideas from Lorentz. Einstein had nothing to do with it, and did not even understand what Poincare had done.

The idea that space should be grainy is not supported quantum mechanics, relativity, or any experimental evidence.

The most famous experiment showing Lorentz covariance is the 1887 Michelson–Morley experiment. It persuaded FitzGerald, Lorentz, Poincare, and eventually everyone else, as explained in the recently-translated 1910 Laue paper, Is the Michelson Experiment Conclusive?. Most historians say that Einstein did not appreciate this experiment when he wrote his famous 1905 paper on Lorentz's relativity theory. Einstein was describing the theory without necessarily understanding how it came about. This is explained in my book.

Update: Wired mag says that the new data shows that Universe Almost Certainly Not a Hologram.

Zukav Bell diagram

This is from the Dancing Wu-Li masters, and reproduced as Figure 1 - Classical Bell's Theorem Originally Depicted by Gary Zukav as a Decision Tree.

A lot of modern quantum mechanics books say falsely that Bell's theorem implies that there is no quantum reality, or some such silliness. I was surprised to find this 1979 new age physics book give a much more accurate account of the implications of Bell's Theorem.

Einstein's blunder

An Oregon physicist writes about Einstein's Greatest Blunder, and says this about the electron double-slit experiment on his blog:

In principle, there are three possible explanations for why this happens:

1. Properties of these quantum particles are not real, as we understand "real" numbers. (See, for example, the "i" in the Schrodinger equation.)
2. All properties of quantum particles are real, but there is non-local phenomena, sometimes colloquially called faster-than-light transmission of information.
3. Or, perhaps everything is real and nothing gets transmitted faster than light. Called local realism, there must be some sort of "hidden variable" that -- although we do not observe it -- determines what the final states are.

He says that option 3 is ruled out by the Bell test experiments.

Einstein's mistake was to say that quantum particles are real, I guess, and to deny that God plays dice.

The double slit experiment is the proof that electrons wave wave properties. I don't think that it says anything about reality or determinism, unless you don't believe that waves are real.

New age physics book

I had low expections for The Dancing Wu Li Masters:

The Dancing Wu Li Masters by Gary Zukav is a popular new age book from 1979 about mysticist interpretations of quantum physics. ... The author participated in a physics conference of eastern and western scientists at Esalen Institute, California, in 1976 and used the occasion as material for his book.

The 123 Amazon reviews are mostly favorable, but some say that it is bad physics.

Zukav is not a physicist, but his book is surprisingly good. There are a lot of good physics explanations mixed in with an occasional new age speculation. You can learn a lot by reading his book. It also has metaphysical statements like this:

The Copenhagen interpretation was, in effect, a recognition of the limitations of left hemispheric thought ... [chap.2, p.65]

Okay, it is a little wacky, but I say that Brian Greene is worse because he claims to speak with authority and Wu-Li does a better job of separating fact from fiction.

Here is the whole pdf book.

Baby Einstein creators win lawsuit

Here is news about the Disney baby videos:

But, the Denver Post reports, a University of Washington study bashing the products, a major lawsuit and a slew of bad press tainted the "Baby Einstein" name. Now, Julie Aigner-Clark and Bill Clark are getting some redemption, according to the newspaper.

The couple, who live outside Denver, forced the university, which paid them $175,000 for legal fees, to hand over the original research, which proves the study had several flaws, the Post reports.

The study, published in the Journal of Pediatrics in 2007, claimed "Baby Einstein" actually made a child's vocabulary worse than kids who did not watch the videos, according to the newspaper. Headlines world-wide screamed that "Baby Einstein" made kids dumber.

The videos are probably worthless, but that does not excuse the university researchers doing a sloppy study and then refusing to release their research data. The standards in the pediatric community are pretty low when they make proclamation about what is good for kids. Much of the time, they are completely wrong.

Einstein had nothing to do with any of this junk, but an Israeli university gets royalties on the videos just because they use Einstein's name. I did not have to pay to use the name in my Einstein book.