Replying in a longstanding discussion with Sabine Hossenfelder, author of Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray, Chad Orzel, author of Breakfast with Einstein: The Exotic Physics of Everyday Objects, thinks she could be making too big a fuss about the current crisis in theoretical physics. Hossenfelder doubts the value of billion-dollar colliders, given the current mess.
Hossenfelder’s view regarding the beauty paradigm, as much as I find it congenial, is not by any means the consensus. There are plenty of eminent theorists out there who will argue with equal passion that current theoretical approaches are on the right track, and will eventually pay off. Those people tend to argue the opposite moral imperative— that other fields should bend their efforts toward new kinds of exotic physics searches.
To me, then, the current situation in theoretical physics isn’t clear enough to provide the kind of moral imperative Hossenfelder is arguing for. I agree that they have problems, and I am sympathetic to her view of the origin of those problems, but at the present moment the problems of particle theory are for particle theorists to sort out …
So, as I said above, it’s a classic agree-to-disagree situation. If I shared Hossenfelder’s belief that the problems of fundamental particle theory are the most important issue in physics, I would likely agree that these experiments should not be done. I don’t share that belief, though, so I find these kinds of experiments a perfectly reasonable avenue to pursue while we wait for particle theory to get its collective act together.
Chad Orzel, “The Crisis In Theoretical Particle Physics Is Not A Moral Imperative” at Forbes
Hmmm. He’s not giving them much of an incentive to sort out the mess. On the other hand, civilized theoretical physicists fight so politely that you can learn a lot by listening.
See also: Physicist Chad Orzel Takes Cosmos Remake Star Tyson To Task For Attack On Teachers
You Have To Know The Cosmos Remake Is In Trouble When … physicist Chad Orzel is saying stuff like this at ScienceBlogs
and
Science Blogger Chad Orzel Treads On Superman’s Cape
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Perhaps one problem with physics is that Biology is becoming the new queen of science, thus rendering the other main branches of fundamental science just servants of biology. How many biologists have switch to work in physics? I personally don’t recall any case. Do we know of any physician who have gone to work in biology related issues? Yes.
The same question may apply to computer science, electrical engineering, etc.
It’s been happening lately and it can’t be denied. Why?
Perhaps one problem with physics is that Biology is becoming the new queen of science, thus rendering the other main branches of fundamental science just servants of biology. How many biologists have switch to work in physics? I personally don’t recall any case. Do we know of any physician who have gone to work in biology related issues? Yes.
The same question may apply to computer science, electrical engineering, etc.
It’s been happening lately and it can’t be denied. Why?
Sorry, i meant “physicist”, not “physician”.
My mistake.
Chad Orzel is an establishment voice, just as Ethan Siegel “Starts with a Bang” is an establishment voice. That is why they are always defending the status quo, though neither of them can defend how we arrived at the status quo. That is, certain assumptions were made in 1950, 1970, 1990 and 2010 that led to particular subfields getting money while others were defunded. When the chosen fields did not produce results, as Sabine reminds us, we did not go back to try the other alternatives, instead, we gave more funds to add “new physics”: bells, whistles and above all adjustable dials to those barren theories. This is why we are stuck today, with billions invested in high-energy colliders and dark-matter detectors that have returned a fat zero for 30+ years.
Sabine says this is abnormal. Chad says it’s the new normal, get used to it. Ethan waffles between multiverse solutions and forbidding multiverse solutions, flitting from one wild metaphysic to another.
My own view is that we need to go back to 1950 and revisit the alternatives. Because solving today’s impasse doesn’t require any new physics, but old physics done differently.
Particles are unnecessary entities. Waves are sufficient to explain everything.
The main purpose of the LHC is,,,
Thus, one of the main purposes, if not the main purpose, of the Large Hadron collider is to help find a reconciliation between quantum mechanics and general relativity. In other words, the main overriding purpose of the Large Hadron collider is to help physicists in their quest to find the ultimate ‘theory of everything’
As to their observation that “the Standard Model appears to be unsatisfactory”
The Standard Model is unsatisfactory for a far more fundamental reason than most people, including these researchers, apparently realize.
First a little background: The standard model grew out of the success of Quantum electrodynamics (QED)
And QED unifies special relativity with quantum mechanics,,,
Whereas the ‘renaissance’ of Quantum Field Theory (QFT), which led to the Standard Model, is the result of the combination of classical field theory, quantum mechanics, and special relativity
Richard Feynman (and others) were only able to unify special relativity and quantum mechanics into Quantum Electrodynamics by quote unquote “brushing infinity under the rug” with a technique called Renormalization.
This “brushing infinity under the rug” with QED never set right with Feynman.
In the following video, Richard Feynman expresses his unease with “brushing infinity under the rug” in Quantum-Electrodynamics:
“Taking ‘an infinite amount of logic to figure out what one stinky tiny bit of space-time is going to do’ also happens to be fully compatible with Christian presuppositions
One of the more interesting facets of “brushing infinity under the rug” in Quantum-Electrodynamics, (besides the fact it happens to be fully compatible with Christian presuppositions), is that, interestingly, “Although quantum field theory is fully compatible with the special theory of relativity, a relativistic treatment of quantum measurement has yet to be formulated.”
That is to say, although they unified special relativity and quantum mechanics together in QED by “brushing infinity under the rug”, this unification between special relativity and quantum mechanics into Quantum Electrodynamics has come at the unacceptable cost of leaving the entire enigma of Quantum Measurement on the cutting room floor.
Quantum measurement is precisely where conscious observation makes its presence fully known in quantum mechanics. As the following researcher stated, “It proves that measurement is everything. At the quantum level, reality does not exist if you are not looking at it.”
The following video goes into more detail shows that there is a very tight correlation between quantum mechanics and consciousness, or more precisely there is a very tight correlation between quantum measurement and consciousness.
For them to brush quantum measurement, and therefore consciousness itself, under the rug in their formulation of the Standard Model is simply unacceptable in any theory that hopes to be the correct ‘theory of everything’. Bottom line, consciousness is absolutely essential in any adequate description of reality that we may wish to devise:
Thus, since theorists have brushed consciousness itself under the rug when they formulated the standard model, it necessarily follows that the standard model, or any other model that forsakes consciousness in its formulation, will fail to be the correct theory of everything.
And as was also touched upon at the end of the “How Quantum Mechanics and Consciousness Correlate” video, allowing the Agent causality of God ‘back’ into physics, as the Christian founders of modern science originally envisioned,,,, (Isaac Newton, Michael Faraday, James Clerk Maxwell, and Max Planck, to name a few of the Christian founders),,, and as quantum mechanics itself now empirically demands (with the closing of the free will loophole by Anton Zeilinger and company), rightly allowing the Agent causality of God ‘back’ into physics provides us with a very plausible resolution for the much sought after ‘theory of everything’ in that Christ’s resurrection from the dead provides an empirically backed reconciliation, via the Shroud of Turin, between quantum mechanics and general relativity into the much sought after ‘Theory of Everything”
And of course, consciousness is not left on the cutting room floor in this ‘Christian model’ of the theory of everything and therefore it is, unlike the standard model, at least on the right track as to being the correct theory of everything even before we consider any of the substantiating evidence from the Shroud of Turin:
Verse and video: