Everyone knows that human societies organize themselves. But it is also true that nature organizes itself, and that the principles by which it does this is what modern science, and especially modern physics, is all about. The purpose of my talk today is to explain this idea.
So why is it so difficult to accept the idea that if a Professor is walking across the room, that many of his students would congregate.:) Just as they would in any other attempts at defining the nature of this reality?
Hooft, Witten and now Lauglin himself understands, that we have face to face with a problem? By arguing "stuff", would we have divested ourselves of recognition of this Third Superstring Revolution? Of course not.:)
Likewise, if the very fabric of the Universe is in a quantum-critical state, then the "stuff" that underlies reality is totally irrelevant-it could be anything, says Laughlin. Even if the string theorists show that strings can give rise to the matter and natural laws we know, they won't have proved that strings are the answer-merely one of the infinite number of possible answers. It could as well be pool balls or Lego bricks or drunk sergeant majors.
Witten's statement has then brought myself to recognize strings will manifest as a emergent property of spacetime. It is a conceptual reocgnition, that does not falter under the guise of irrelevant possibilties, but one facet of a concerted effort.
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