Problem solved: There are no laws of physics, says prominent string theorist
| June 6, 2018 | Posted by News under Cosmology, Intelligent Design, Naturalism, Physics |
And Sabine Hossenfelder, author of Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray, can just suck it up. From IAS director Robbert Dijkgraaf at Quanta:
Scientists seek a single description of reality. But modern physics allows for many different descriptions, many equivalent to one another, connected through a vast landscape of mathematical possibility.
The current Standard Model of particle physics is indeed a tightly constructed mechanism with only a handful of ingredients. Yet instead of being unique, the universe seems to be one of an infinitude of possible worlds. We have no clue why this particular combination of particles and forces underlies nature’s structure. Why are there six “flavors” of quarks, three “generations” of neutrinos, and one Higgs particle? Furthermore, the Standard Model comes with 19 constants of nature — numbers like the mass and charge of the electron — that have to be measured in experiments. The values of these “free parameters” seem to be without any deeper meaning. On the one hand, particle physics is a wonder of elegance; on the other hand, it is a just-so story.
If our world is but one of many, how do we deal with the alternatives? The current point of view can be seen as the polar opposite of Einstein’s dream of a unique cosmos. Modern physicists embrace the vast space of possibilities and try to understand its overarching logic and interconnectedness. From gold diggers they have turned into geographers and geologists, mapping the landscape in detail and studying the forces that have shaped it.
The game changer that led to this switch of perspective has been string theory. More.
What a surprise.
Mathematician and string theory skeptic Peter Woit comments at Not Even Wrong:
While giving the usual 1995 justification for the “M-theory” conjecture of a unique string theory, Dijkgraaf neglects to mention that, 23 years later, no one has a viable proposal for what this unique theory might be. He mentions none of the problems of moduli stabilization, or that the theorists “mapping the landscape in detail” don’t actually know what equations govern this supposed landscape and thus have hit a dead-end, unable to predict anything about anything.
…
The argument seems to be that we need to throw out our highly successful quantum field theories, replacing them with a “radical new framework” describing “impenetrable complexity”. But what is this “radical new framework”? As best I can tell, what’s now popular at the IAS is the “it from qubit” idea that is the topic of this summer’s PITP program. More.
Well, throwing things out, whether those things are ideas or biology profs, is now Cool. Rationality is on the run everywhere. Check out the invasion of the sciences by post-modernism and the feeble response from Big Science.
See also: Well, physics probably HAS gone off the rails if NBC is reporting it. They used to be a regular stop for news of crackpot cosmology.
and
How string theory can be a theory of everything. That’s so typical. It’s either a theory of everything or a theory of nothing. Such grandeur can easily do without much evidence.
6 Responses to Problem solved: There are no laws of physics, says prominent string theorist
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Poor Allan Keith. No laws of physics for God to violate. How will he ever be able to believe.
Mute testimony to the power of the fine tuning challenge.
One can only smile and shrug at such a/mat nonsense.
“the universe seems to be one of an infinitude of possible worlds”
What makes it seem so?
This claim just hangs there, in that Wile E Coyote moment before it plummets, utterly unsupported by fact or logic, to the cold hard rocky depths of stupid canyon …
“Mute testimony to the power of the fine tuning challenge.”
Indeed it has driven them MAD (Materialist-Atheist-Darwinian).
There certainly are laws of physics.
One of them is that physicists are not immune from idiocy.
The Christian presupposition that there should even be universal laws governing the universe lay at the founding of modern science.
In fact, the first major unification in physics, indeed the founding of modern physics, was Sir Isaac Newton’s realization that “the same force that caused an apple to fall at the Earth’s surface—gravity—was also responsible for holding the Moon in orbit about the Earth”,,
In regards to this first unification, Sir Isaac Newton stated: “This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being. And if the fixed stars are the centres of other like systems, these, being formed by the like wise counsel, must be all subject to the dominion of One;,,,”
Atheists simply do not now have, nor have they ever had, a coherent reason why the universal laws should remain constant, Moreover, if the universal laws did not remain constant, modern science would not be possible.
The unchanging nature of the universal laws have now been measured, in many cases, to extraordinary degrees of precision:
Verse:
It wouldn’t be the first time people have mistaken the problem for the solution.