Heralded from the 21st Century: String Theory

I know not how, may find their way to the minds of humanity in Some Dimensionality, and may stir up a race of rebels who shall refuse to be confined to limited Dimensionality." from Flatland, by E. A. Abbott

It is sometimes important to know what race of rebels had been raised to realize that such a revolution in the making had started from a place of thinking that many others
began to think about as well?

Cycle of Birth, Life, and Death-Origin, Indentity, and Destiny by Gabriele Veneziano

In one form or another, the issue of the ultimate beginning has engaged philosophers and theologians in nearly every culture. It is entwined with a grand set of concerns, one famously encapsulated in an 1897 painting by Paul Gauguin: D'ou venons-nous? Que sommes-nous? Ou allons-nous? "Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?"

See here for more information.

It is important to know where such models began to influence the idea to generate theoretical model for an apprehension of how we view this universe? Given the study at hand here are the following people for consideration.

Whence began this journey and revolution?

LEONARD SUSSKIND:

And I fiddled with it, I monkeyed with it. I sat in my attic, I think for two months on and off. But the first thing I could see in it, it was describing some kind of particles which had internal structure which could vibrate, which could do things, which wasn't just a point particle. And I began to realize that what was being described here was a string, an elastic string, like a rubber band, or like a rubber band cut in half. And this rubber band could not only stretch and contract, but wiggle. And marvel of marvels, it exactly agreed with this formula.
I was pretty sure at that time that I was the only one in the world who knew this.

So we have to take stock of the movements that change democratic societies. To have found such governments will change and fall according to the plight of it's citizens in science. As it goes with "theoretical positions?"

Working to understand the development of the model in consideration was needed in order for one to understand why Lee Smolin methodology to work science from a historical perspective is one I favour as well. It is sometimes necessary to list these developmental phases in order to get to a position to speak with authority. Find that "with certainty" we can make certain comments? Find, we must be confronted again, to say, any progress will go from There.

The Revolution that Didn't Happen by Steven Weinberg

I first read Thomas Kuhn's famous book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions a quarter-century ago, soon after the publication of the second edition. I had known Kuhn only slightly when we had been together on the faculty at Berkeley in the early 1960s, but I came to like and admire him later, when he came to MIT. His book I found exciting.

Evidently others felt the same. Structure has had a wider influence than any other book on the history of science. Soon after Kuhn's death in 1996, the sociologist Clifford Geertz remarked that Kuhn's book had "opened the door to the eruption of the sociology of knowledge" into the study of the sciences. Kuhn's ideas have been invoked again and again in the recent conflict over the relation of science and culture known as the science wars.

So we know where the idea of science wars began do we not? What instigates conflict as a healthy perspective to progress of the sciences. We will see the story unfold within this blog.

For some reason people might of thought my views were just held to Lee Smolin and the work that I had been accumulating with regards to his views of the Universe. While I had shown the cover of his book countless times, I would like to say that I have accumulated "other books," like those of Brian Greene as well.

Does this make me an expert on the subject in question or what ever Lee Smolin has written? Of course not.

But the work I have been doing, has not been limited to what the authors themself have given to the public in their outreach writing books. I have been at this a few years now, so I would like people to think this is not just a jaunt of journalism, that has been given to the public in it's books but has been a labour of love to understand my place in the universe.

The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory

The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory (ISBN 0-375-70811-1) is a book by Brian Greene published in 2000 which introduces string theory and provides a comprehensive though non-technical assessment of the theory and some of its shortcomings.

Beginning with a brief consideration of classical physics, which concentrates on the major conflicts in physics, Greene establishes an historical context for string theory as a necessary means of integrating the probabilistic world of the standard model of particle physics and the deterministic Newtonian physics of the macroscopic world. Greene discusses the essential problem facing modern physics: unification of Einstein's theory of General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics. Greene suggests that string theory is the solution to these two conflicting approaches. Greene uses frequent analogies and mental experiments to provide a means for the layman to come to terms with the theory which has the potential to create a unified theory of physics.

The Elegant Universe was adapted for a three hour program in two parts for television broadcast in late 2003 on the PBS series NOVA.

Thanks Q9 for the link to "Elegant physicist makes string theory sexy." I was going to posted it the day when you gave it to me, but instead seeing that Clifford of Asymptotia had it (same day), I thought I wouldn't. But as fate has it I must.

The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality (2004) is the second book on theoretical physics, cosmology and string theory written by Brian Greene, professor and co-director of Columbia's Institute for Strings, Cosmology, and Astroparticle Physics (ISCAP).[1]

Greene begins with the key question: What is reality? Or more specifically: What is spacetime? He sets out to describe the features he finds both exciting and essential to forming a full picture of the reality painted by modern science. In almost every chapter, Greene introduces its basic concepts and then slowly builds to a climax, which is usually a scientific breakthrough. Greene then attempts to connect with his reader by posing simple analogies to help explain the meaning of a scientific concept without oversimplifying the theory behind it.

In the preface, Greene acknowledges that some parts of the book are controversial among scientists. Greene discusses the leading viewpoints in the main text, and points of contention in the end notes. Greene has striven for balanced treatment of the controversial topics. In the end notes, the diligent reader will find more complete explanations relevant to points he has simplified in the main text.

Once you get this view of the gravitational connection between everything, the form of graviton, you get this preview of the bulk and what lensing may mean. It is hard not to think of "dimensional perspectives in relation to the energy" describing the particles of science in some way. Witten below in his "Strings Unravel" lets you know what string theory has accomplished.

Warped Passages is a book by Lisa Randall, published in 2005, about particle physics in general and additional dimensions of space (cf. Kaluza-Klein theory) in particular. The book has made it to top 50 at amazon.com, making it the world's first successful book on theoretical physics by a female author. See Where are my keys?

It's alway nice having one's own blog and nice that I can retained my dignity under the name of Plato. It keeps my personal life from being treated with disrespect at the whim of the stroke of a delete key. Of course I am willing to take my lumps understanding such a role as "older student." After being expose to the exchange between people in the tribe, it's thinking can do all kinds of damage to each other? But I would like to think that all sides remain cool to positions they hold in society

A Different Universe: Reinventing Physics from the Bottom Down by Robert B. LaughlinFrom the Publisher:

Why everything we think about fundamental physical laws needs to change, and why the greatest mysteries of physics are not at the ends of the universe but as close as the nearest ice cube or grain of salt.

Not since Richard Feynman has a Nobel Prize-winning physicist written with as much panache as Robert Laughlin does in this revelatory and essential book. Laughlin proposes nothing less than a new way of understanding fundamental laws of science. In this age of superstring theories and Big-Bang cosmology, we're used to thinking of the unknown as being impossibly distant from our everyday lives. The edges of science, we're told, lie in the first nanofraction of a second of the Universe's existence, or else in realms so small that they can't be glimpsed even by the most sophisticated experimental techniques. But we haven't reached the end of science, Laughlin argues-only the end of reductionist thinking. If we consider the world of emergent properties instead, suddenly the deepest mysteries are as close as the nearest ice cube or grain of salt. And he goes farther: the most fundamental laws of physics-such as Newton's laws of motion and quantum mechanics -are in fact emergent. They are properties of large assemblages of matter, and when their exactness is examined too closely, it vanishes into nothing.

See Laughlin, Reductionism, Emergence

Out of all this uncertainty that exists at the level with which we think about in "those dimensions" what value any constructive diagram if it did not lead you to the understanding of the building blocks that a condense matter theorist may describe as manifesting in our reality?

The Year is 2020 and that's our Eyesight

Columbia physicist Brian Greene inhabits a multiple-perspective landscape modeled after M.C. Escher's artwork in a scene from "The Elegant Universe," a public-TV documentary based on Greene's book.

Q: Hawking has said that there could be a “theory of everything” produced in the next 20 years, or by 2020. Do you get that same sense? Or will there ever be a theory of everything?

A: Well, I always find it difficult to make predictions that are tied to a specific time frame, because as we all know, one of the exciting things about science is that you don’t know when the big break is going to happen. It could happen tomorrow, it could happen 10 years from now, it could happen a century from now. So you just keep pressing on, making progress, and hope that you reach these major milestones — ideally in your own lifetime, but who knows? So I don’t know if 2020 is the right number to say. But I would say that string theory has a chance of being that unified theory, and we are learning more and more about it. Every day, every week, every month there are fantastically interesting developments.

Will it all come together by 2020, where we can actually have experimental proof and the theory develops to the point that it really makes definitive statements that can be tested? I don’t know. I hope so. But hope is not the thing that determines what will actually happen. It’s the hard work of scientists around the world.

But anyway onto what I wanted to say and "being censored" I couldn't.

Clifford is defending his position on how Lee Smolin and Peter Woit have assigned a "perspective view" to string theory as a modelled approach. As a theoretical discovery of science, Clifford from my view, had to show that this process is still unfolding and that any quick decision as to giving String theory such a final vote of opinion from Lee Smolin was premature. I have supported Clifford in this view because of where we had been historically in the past years that the formulation of string theory has been given.

D-Branes by Clifford V. Johnson

D-branes represent a key theoretical tool in the understanding of strongly coupled superstring theory and M-theory. They have led to many striking discoveries, including the precise microphysics underlying the thermodynamic behaviour of certain black holes, and remarkable holographic dualities between large-N gauge theories and gravity. This book provides a self-contained introduction to the technology of D-branes, presenting the recent developments and ideas in a pedagogical manner. It is suitable for use as a textbook in graduate courses on modern string theory and theoretical particle physics, and will also be an indispensable reference for seasoned practitioners. The introductory material is developed by first starting with the main features of string theory needed to get rapidly to grips with D-branes, uncovering further aspects while actually working with D-branes. Many advanced applications are covered, with discussions of open problems which could form the basis for new avenues of research.

While Clifford's book I do not have, I understand that the "second revolution" was necessary to help us move to consider where string theory was to take us. It was progressing in the theoretics as a model to help us see science assuming the ways in which such models adjust us to possible new views in science. Clifford may not of liked the implication of a Grokking of a kind that would refer to consuming model approaches and then becoming what you eat?

Clifford:

I’ve found that different people have different takes on what it means to have a “theory of everything”. There is a popular idea (perhaps the most common) that this somehow means that this theory will describe (at least in principle) all known basic physical phenomena (constituents and their interactions, if you like) once and for all. Others mean something less ambitious, a theory that consistently describes the four fundamental forces and the things that interact with them, achieving a unification of all the forces and phenomena that we currently understand. I personally think that the first idea of a theory of everything is rather naive, and my personal hunch (and bias from what I’ve learned about the history of science) is that there is simply no such thing.

So of course entertaining the idea of a "theory of everything" leaves a bad taste in some peoples mouth, and having them to reason that it is the naivity of such a thought, that I immediately felt insulted. Clifford saids,"this theory will describe (at least in principle) all known basic physical phenomena (constituents and their interactions, if you like) once and for all" and may have been the case for those less then spending the time and effort, would have probably been insulted as I was. I of course came to recognize the positive aspect of the second position Clifford assumes.

Bench Marks of theoretical Progress

Anyway there are positions that we can take when we look back and reassess everything that we have been doing in reading the public outreach, like so called "bench marks" to see if such progressions still have have a evolutionary way to go.

Edward Witten-Reflections on the Fate of Spacetime

Unravelling String Theory

But what is string theory? It may well be the only way to reconcile gravity and quantum mechanics, but what is the core idea behind it? Einstein understood the central concepts of general relativity years before he developed the detailed equations. By contrast, string theory has been discovered in bits and pieces — over a period that has stretched for nearly four decades — without anyone really understanding what is behind it. As a result, every bit that is unearthed comes as a surprise. We still don’t know where all these ideas are coming from — or heading to

See more here



So what shall we use to measure what had first seem so abstract in Susskind's mind as a "rubber band," or the start of Veneziano views on such strings at inception? We've come a long way.

Something that I perceived back in 2004 help to "shape my views on the way I speak" "today" allows for us to consider that strings take it's rightful place within the building blocks of matter, that following Robert Laughlins lead, it was that we shifted our times from the first three seconds of Steven Weinberg, to the "First three Microseconds" of strings within the process of the unfolding universe.

The resulting collisions between pairs of these atomic nuclei generate exceedingly hot, dense bursts of matter and energy to simulate what happened during the first few microseconds of the big bang. These brief "mini bangs" give physicists a ringside seat on some of the earliest moments of creation.

See How Particles Came to be?

While Laughlin may have not seen the continued relevance of particle reductionism it was leading to some amazing insights. I now wonder now, if held to the comparisons of this superfluid, how it would have appealed to him? I think Witten in last plate above recognized what had to be done.

It's a Penquin?

The jump from conventional field theories of point-like objects to a theory of one-dimensional objects has striking implications. The vibration spectrum of the string contains a massless spin-2 particle: the graviton. Its long wavelength interactions are described by Einstein's theory of General Relativity. Thus General Relativity may be viewed as a prediction of string theory!

Unfortunately I misplaced the owner of that quote.



I just finish spending the last 8 days with two of my seven grandchildren. One had passed just a couple of days after being born.

Yes "Happy feet" has become a intricate part of my days visiting as these children are mesmerized by the hearts songs and uniqueness of being borne learning to tap instead of singing. It's trials and tribulations of being different.

Images of brain show areas that become most active during perception of pictures (a and c, in green) and sounds (e, in yellow). Small arrows point to sites of greatest activity during recall of pictures (b and d) and sounds (f). Wheeler, Petersen, Buckner/Washington Univ.

"These new studies set the stage for more intensive explorations of memory retrieval in the brain," remarks Anthony D. Wagner of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge."

See more on Remembrance here

I gave reference at one time to the topic of "Super Learning" and the method used to induce information into the brain's matter.

Music and visualization combined can create quite a compelling story, and sink deep into what is "emotively charged" for our memories. It's part of that "deep play" that I had talked about previous. While one may talk on the surface about the triviality of things, useless knowledge, some things are indeed more "emotively charged."

Incites one to "take action" if felt deeply. Not all thoughts are equal? Your defining who you are "by reacting." This is your "signature."

The Mind Field

Michael Shermer-The Power of Belief-skepticism 101

See here for more explanation on the mind field.

No one said not to have this attitude about what is presented. But to breed the very attitude of arrogance that some think perpetuates areas of theoretical science, would be a good lesson, on what concert can be raised, as the "intonations echo and entrain other thoughts accordingly in the concert hall."

For some time, it was not clear to me how to get the word into this b quark paper that we were writing at the time…. Later…I had a sudden flash that the famous diagrams look like penguins. So we put the name into our paper, and the rest, as they say, is history.”

IT is no different then compiling all that has happened in Storm in a Teacup become the last statement as an image of all the statements and exchanges "felt based on the memory of our relations." The "Colour of gravity" plays an intricate part here.

What impact the agenda, while one is holding the plight of the student and workers within science to think, that the issues with Lee Smolin cannot revive the issues confronting science "other then" those agendas? These are "another issue" outside of what must be confronted separately.

A poster boy?

I was just taking a stroll through the blogosphere. I find a lot of "skeptical things" being "echoed from one person to the next?" As if, the "idea of the incredible" cannot exist in this world "without" some scientific explanation to it?

Development of the sociological idealization of the community in the matter of things and science's measure while the subjective sides suffers.

So they make fun of the idea about what is intuitive, gosh a "zen koan?" related in some way to eastern thinking. Can have a "greater meaning" by just playing with how ideas are born? Can "mature" from other things. What part did Feynman play in John Ellis's game of "dart throwing?"

Maybe it is my own ignorance then, that I do not have an explanation for "an event?" That like the young Einstein and his compass, I was maybe just not clear on what these lines may have meant in Gaussian coordinates. Does this mean I have the mind of this five year old. Like Sean, who said I was perfect? :)

The internet and Blogs


I don't have to spell it out as of late, that I could point to a paragraph and link directly to the source, "is just the echoing of what I think" is comparative to what people can do to belittle others( comments on bloggeries) and echo some idealization by example. What "tone" shall we set in motion?

To me these "point sources" linked in paragraph are more reminders what has been discovered of late. You reference by a ¹ and then go to the end of your post entry and add an addendum?

Where this research is leading. How it helps me to keep "in tune" with what is developing in the science world. Do some think these points trivial? I'd rather set the tone in motion that encourages the "subtle perceptions" that may arise in others, and include these in a critical analysis of what is related in science to that thinking?

Why bring together so many different concepts that may be of use in our scientific examination?


What Tone is being Set?

Lee Smolin:

What we are dealing with is a sociological phenomenon in the world of academic science. I do think that the ethics of science have been to some degree corrupted by the kind of groupthink explored in chapter 16, but not solely by the string-theory community. For one thing, it is the academic community writ large that makes the rules. In a court of law, a good lawyer will do anything within the law to advance the cause of his clients. We should expect that the leaders of a scientific field will likewise do everything within the unwritten rules of academia to advance their research program.

So Sean over at cosmic variance speaks about Maharishi Mathematics. The preposterousness of the post itself degenerates into the examples of what exists in eastern thinking adapted to the methods of science now?

I recall the work of Schwartz amidst the duelling Gellmann and Feynman? Can it be called that, or the philosophical difference? We know of Richard's thoughts on the philosophical of course. We know of the "eightfold path" by Murray?

Murray Gellman's reactivities to dispel corruption in the western world? Loud affirmations of "not I," as to reinforce what is thought to be the example of what is leading science in those country's philosophies? So he too was influence by the very word "Simplectics."

Sean Carroll is absorbing the influence of his location? Laughing from "that place" that his mentors did, as they welcomed "Schwartz." Never mind the desk. :)

I wonder if we can be “just as guilty” of perpetuating those things that one could despise?



Be careful least you "drawn lines" of a strange world that Dirac ventured. Whilst you drawn those "funny pictures of fabled stories" and take us on the strange journey of Alice and Babar.

Who is to know that Feynman may of understood the possibilities of the photon's journey to map this thing "as an exchange." That he could see in a geometrical way, while at a loss to write simplistically, and then, finally succeeded? See more on this relations of Gell Mann and Feynman here



Of course I am a lay person outside of the halls of science that I would want to lead by example that we have these priorities and methods to live by, other then playing the ole foolish game "look at them" and then "look at me."

Where are my keys?

"Yet I exist in the hope that these memoirs, in some manner, I know not how, may find their way to the minds of humanity in Some Dimensionality, and may stir up a race of rebels who shall refuse to be confined to limited Dimensionality." from Flatland, by E. A. Abbott

The Extra-Dimensions?

So you intuitively believe higher dimensions really exist?

Lisa Randall:I don't see why they shouldn't. In the history of physics, every time we've looked beyond the scales and energies we were familiar with, we've found things that we wouldn't have thought were there. You look inside the atom and eventually you discover quarks. Who would have thought that? It's hubris to think that the way we see things is everything there is.

And what is it that we don't see? I thought of a comment somewhere that spoke about what first started to make it's appearance in how we communicate?

Time is the Unseen fourth Dimension

They were able to create what we recognize today as the "elliptical" and "hyperbolic" non-Euclidean geometries. Most of Saccheri's first 32 theorems can be found in today's non-Euclidean textbooks. Saccheri's theorems are prefaced by "Sac."

One of my greatest "aha moments" came when I realized Non-euclidean geometries. I had to travel the history first with Giovanni Girolamo Saccheri, Bolya and Lobachevsky, for this to make an impression, and I can safely say, that learning of Gauss and Riemann, I was truly impressed.

Einstein had to include that "extra dimension of time." Greater then, or less then, 180 degrees and we know "this triangle" can take on some funny shapes when you apply them "to surfaces" that are doing funny things.?:)

Second, we must be wary of the "God of the Gaps" phenomena, where miracles are attributed to whatever we don't understand. Contrary to the famous drunk looking for his keys under the lamppost, here we are tempted to conclude that the keys must lie in whatever dark corners we have not searched, rather than face the unpleasant conclusion that the keys may be forever lost.

Let me just say that "it is not the fact that any drinking could have held the mind" of the person, but when they absentmindedly threw their car keys. The "point is" that if the light shines only so far, what conclusion should we live with?

Moving to the Fifth

So of course whatever real estate you are buying, make sure the light is shining on what your willing to purchase? Is this not a good lesson to learn?

Moving any idea to a fifth dimension I thought was important in relation to seeing what Einstein had done. See further: Concepts of the Fifth Dimension. I illustrate more ways in which we may see that has not been seen for most could have helped the mind see how this is accomplished in current day geometric methods.

Why was this thought "wrong" when one may of thought to include "gravity and light" together, after the conclusion of spacetime's 3+1? Gravity. What Had Maxwell done? What Had Riemann done?

You knew "the perfect symmetry" had to be reduced to General Relativity?

Greg Landsberg:

Two types of the extra-dimensional effects observable at collides.

A graviton leaves our world for a short moment of time, just to come back and decay into a pair of photons (the DØ physicists looked for that particular effect).

A graviton escapes from our 3-dimensional world in extra dimensions (Megaverse), resulting in an apparent energy non-conservation in our three-dimensional world.

So why would it matter to us if the universe has more than 3 spatial dimensions, if we can not feel them? Well, in fact we could “feel” these extra dimensions through their effect on gravity. While the forces that hold our world together (electromagnetic, weak, and strong interactions) are constrained to the 3+1-“flat” dimensions, the gravitational interaction always occupies the entire universe, thus allowing it to feel the effects of extra dimensions. Unfortunately, since gravity is a very weak force and since the radius of extra dimensions is tiny, it could be very hard to see any effects, unless there is some kind of mechanism that amplifies the gravitational interaction. Such a mechanism was recently proposed by Arkani-Hamed, Dimopoulos, and Dvali, who realized that the extra dimensions can be as large as one millimeter, and still we could have missed them in our quest for the understanding of how the universe works!

Of course these ideas are experimentally being challenged, like any good scientist would want of his theory. See EOT-WASH GROUP(4)

Finiteness of String Theory and Mandelstam

It might be that the laws change absolutely with time; that gravity for instance varies with time and that this inverse square law has a strength which depends on how long it is since the beginning of time. In other words, it's possible that in the future we'll have more understanding of everything and physics may be completed by some kind of statement of how things started which are external to the laws of physics. Richard Feynman

I was lead into this subject of Quantum Gravity, by Lee Smolin's book called, "Three Roads to Quantum Gravity." As a lay person reading what our scientist's have to say, I have a vested interest in what can start one off and find, that changes are being made to the synopsis first written. Did I understand his position correctly from the very beginning? I'll have to go back over my notes.

But with this format now I have the opportunity to...ahem... get it..directly from the horses mouth(no disrespect intended and written based on knowing how to read horses). As I said, I tried early on to see how the situation of string theory could be refuted. I "instigated" as a comparative front for Lubos Motl and Peter Woit to speak from each of their positions. I had to disregard "the tones" set by either, as to the nature of whose what and how ignorant one might be, and comparatively, one might be to intelligent design? To get "some evidence" of why string theory might not be such a good idea?

Now I believe this is a more "civil situation" that such a format has been proposed and that Lee Smolin can speak directly. As well as, "further information" supplied to counter arguments to Lee's position.


A sphere with three handles (and three holes), i.e., a genus-3 torus.

Jacques Distler :

This is false. The proof of finiteness, to all orders, is in quite solid shape. Explicit formulæ are currently known only up to 3-loop order, and the methods used to write down those formulæ clearly don’t generalize beyond 3 loops.

What’s certainly not clear (since you asked a very technical question, you will forgive me if my response is rather technical) is that, beyond 3 loops, the superstring measure over supermoduli space can be “pushed forward” to a measure over the moduli space of ordinary Riemann surfaces. It was a nontrivial (and, to many of us, somewhat surprising) result of d’Hoker and Phong that this does hold true at genus-2 and -3.

Just a reminder about my skills. While I do things like carpetry, plumbing, electrical, I do not call myself a Carpenter, a Plumber or a Electrician. Nor shall I ah-spire to be more then I'm not, as I am to old this time around.

Greg Kuperberg:

The string theorists are physicists and this is their intuition. Do you want physical intuition or not?

Okay, Smolin is also a physicist and his intuition is radically different from that of the strings theorists. So who is right?

Yet, least I not read these things, can I not decipher "the jest" while it not being to technical? Shall I call it a Physicists intuition or I will only call my intuition what it is?

Jacques Distler:

When most people (at least, most quantum field theorists) use the term “finiteness,” they are referring to UV finiteness.

While the things above talked about from Jacques are served by hindsight, "the jest" follows what comes after this point.

The Jest of the Problem?

My present research concerns the problem of topology changing in string theory. It is currently believed that one has to sum over all string backgrounds and all topologies in doing the functional integral. I suspect that certain singular string backgrounds may be equivalent to topology changes, and that it is consequently only necessary to sum over string backgrounds. As a start I am investigating topology changes in two-dimensional target spaces. I am also interested in Seiberg-Witten invariants. Although much has been learned, some basic questions remain, and I hope to be able at least to understand the simpler of these questionsStanley Mandelstam-Professor Emeritus Particle Theory

Gina has asked questions in context of "academic excellence" in relation to what is being seen in relation to string theory. Of course we thank Clifford for providing the format for that discussion.

“The Trouble With Physics,” by Lee Smolin, Index page 382, Mandelstam, Stanley, and string theory finiteness, pages 117,187, 278-79, 280, 281, 367n14,15

For reference above.

Gina:

I raised 16 points that I felt Lee’s arguments were not correct or problematic. This is an academic discussion and not a public criticism, and I truly think that such critique can be useful, even if I am wrong on all the 16 points.

Three of my 16 points were on more technical issues, but I feel that I can understand Lee’s logical argument even without understanding the precise technical nature of “finiteness of string theory” (I do have a vague impression of what it is.) I think that my interpretation of this issue is reasonable and my critique stands.

I find this interesting based on what information has been selected to counter the arguments that Lee Smolin used to support his contentions about what is being defined in string theory.


Stanley Mandelstam Professor Emeritus Research: Particle Physics

My research concerns string theory. At present I am interested in finding an explicit expression for the n-loop superstring amplitude and proving that it is finite. My field of research is particle theory, more specifically string theory. I am also interested in the recent results of Seiberg and Witten in supersymmetric field theories.

So of course, here, I am drawn to the content of his book and what is the basis of his argument from those four pages. I hope my explanation so far summarizes adequately. For the lay person, this information is leading perspective as to the basis of the argument.

Lee Smolin:

Perturbative finiteness is a major element of the claim of string theory as a potential theory of nature. If it is not true then the case for string theory being a theory of nature would not be very strong.

-Perturbative finiteness has not been proven. There is evidence for it, but that evidence is partial. There is a complete proof only to genus two, which is the second non-trivial term in an infinite power series, each term of which has to be finite. The obstacles to a complete proof are technical and formidable; otherwise we would certainly have either a proof or a counterexample by now. There is some progress in an alternative formulation, which has not yet been shown to be equivalent to the standard definition of string theory.

-This is not an issue of theoretical physicists rigor vrs mathematical rigor. There is no proof at either level. There is an intuitive argument, but that is far from persuasive as the issue is what happens at the boundaries of super-moduli space where the assumption of that argument breaks down. In the formulation in which there is a genus two result it is not clear if there is an unambiguous definition of the higher order terms.

Is string theory in fact perturbatively finite? Many experts think so. I worry that if there were a clear way to a proof it would have been found and published, so I find it difficult to have a strong expectation, either way, on this issue.

It should be known here and here that all along I have been reacting to Lee Smolin's new book. The title itself should have given this away?

The explanation of scientific development in terms of paradigms was not only novel but radical too, insofar as it gives a naturalistic explanation of belief-change. Thomas Kuhn

So of course knowing the basis of my thought development is a "good idea" as the links show what spending our dollars can do, having bought what our good scientist Lee Smolin has written.

There is a little "tit for tat" going on right now, but I think the point has been made sufficiently clear as to where Gina's thoughts in regards to the points on Finiteness is being made beyond 2?

In these lectures, recent progress on multiloop superstring perturbation theory is reviewed. A construction from first principles is given for an unambiguous and slice-independent two-loop superstring measure on moduli space for even spin structure. A consistent choice of moduli, invariant under local worldsheet supersymmetry is made in terms of the super-period matrix. A variety of subtle new contributions arising from a careful gauge fixing procedure are taken into account.

Yes I think I have to wait now to see if the discussion can now move beyond the first three points raised? Hopefully Lee will respond soon?

How do you fight sociology

Because this by any of the leaders of string theory. it was left to someone like me, as a quasi "insider" who had the technical knowledge but not the sociological commitment, to take on that responsibility. And I had done so because of my own interest in string theory, which I was working on almost exclusively at the time. Nevertheless, some string theorists regarded the review as a hostile act.

The trouble with Physics, by Lee Smolin, Page 281

I have discovered one of Lee Smolin's objection to a string theorist. They are only craftsman, and not seers.

Graviton in a Can?

After you consume "graviton in a can," you might never be the same? Brane thinking may then dominate your every view of the world. Then, it will all make sense?

Imagine while we peer deeper into the subject of the "perfect fluid/soup" we find that certain aspects of the reductionist work done, has indeed lead us to speculate on how the "new physics" formed through the research and understanding currently being worked in the LHC?

Is there some architectural design to the "Degree's of Freedom?" Why anything more then the spacetime we have come to recognize, which placed new parameters on our thinking? Moved it from the recogition of Maxwellian and Gaussian coordinates to Riemann geometries in the theory of General Relativity, to become known, as the Theory of gravity. Why "anything" more then that?


A picture of flux lines in QED (left) and QCD (right).

Although it didn't properly describe strong interactions, in studying string theory physicists stumbled upon an amazing mathematical structure. String theory has turned out to be far richer than people originally anticipated. For example, people found that a certain vibrational state of the string has zero mass and spin 2. According to Einstein's theory of gravity, the gravitational force is mediated by a particle with zero mass and spin 2. So string theory is, among many other things, a theory of gravity!

I mean how are such abstract notions in the mathematics supposed to make sense, if we can not see the logic of these formulations working in some kind of reality frame of reference?


by Jacob D. Bekenstein

TWO UNIVERSES of different dimension and obeying disparate physical laws are rendered completely equivalent by the holographic principle. Theorists have demonstrated this principle mathematically for a specific type of five-dimensional spacetime ("anti–de Sitter") and its four-dimensional boundary. In effect, the 5-D universe is recorded like a hologram on the 4-D surface at its periphery. Superstring theory rules in the 5-D spacetime, but a so-called conformal field theory of point particles operates on the 4-D hologram. A black hole in the 5-D spacetime is equivalent to hot radiation on the hologram--for example, the hole and the radiation have the same entropy even though the physical origin of the entropy is completely different for each case. Although these two descriptions of the universe seem utterly unalike, no experiment could distinguish between them, even in principle.

So we have these diagrams and thought processes developed from individuals like Jacob D. Bekenstein to help us visualize what is taking place. Gives us key indicators of the valuation needed, in order to determine what maths are going to be used? In this case the subject of Conformal Filed Theory makes itself known, for the thought process to hone in on what is going to be spoken too?

Holography encodes the information in a region of space onto a surface one dimension lower. It sees to be the property of gravity, as is shown by the fact that the area of th event horizon measures the number of internal states of a blackhole, holography would be a one-to-one correspondence between states in our four dimensional world and states in higher dimensions. From a positivist viewpoint, one cannot distinguish which description is more fundamental.Pg 198, The Universe in Nutshell, by Stephen Hawking

So we are given the label in which to speak about the holographical ntions of what is being talked about in the case of the blackhole's horizon.


Campbell's Soup Can by Andy Warhol Exhibited in New York (USA), Leo Castelli Gallery

While it is difficult of such images to be found displayed in the bloggery here to show what Dr. Gary Horowitz is saying you get the jest when you go right to the image of the tomato soup can.

Spacetime in String Theory-Dr. Gary Horowitz, UCSB-Apr 20, 2005

This year marks the hundredth anniversary of Einstein's "miraculous year", 1905, when he formulated special relativity, and explained the origin of the black body spectrum and Brownian motion. In honor of this occasion, I will describe the modern view of spacetime. After reviewing the properties of spacetime in general relativity, I will provide an overview of the nature of spacetime emerging from string theory. This is radically different from relativity. At a perturbative level, the spacetime metric appears as ``coupling constants" in a two-dimensional quantum field theory. Nonperturbatively (with certain boundary conditions), spacetime is not fundamental but must be reconstructed from a holographic, dual theory. I will conclude with some recent ideas about the big bang arising from string theory.

Imagine containing everything we know in this can. Yet,we find that the "soup image" has somehow been translated to other factors and values that seem beyond what we know is real. Is real within the confines and boundaries, and is not evidence of the "infinities" that arise from such non containment?

So, what of the "dilation field" that accumulates, as we speak to what the photon is in the measure of Glast. High energy photon determinations that may also be the valuation of the graviton in expression, as the photon travels through these fields?

Such unification is important once we move into the bulk perspective and what we see of the 2d image of the brane, as a value, and discernation of the label of the soup can?


The ALICE TPC in its clean room, where it is undergoing commissioning of all its sectors.

One of the first cosmic-ray events recorded and reconstructed in two sectors of the TPC.

The tests use the ALICE cosmic muon trigger detector ACORDE, as well as a specially designed UV laser system, to produce tracks in the detector. Preliminary analysis of the cosmic-ray events and the laser-induced tracks indicate that the drift velocity and diffusion of electrons liberated by traversing charged particles, as well as the spatial resolution, are very close to the design values.

So here we are then, having graduated in perspective about what is real, as one may ask the sociological aspect of this whole adventure?



If such missing energy is, "not accounted for" then what happens to the graviton as it is produced and causes energy to travel with them?

For example, people found that a certain vibrational state of the string has zero mass and spin 2. According to Einstein's theory of gravity, the gravitational force is mediated by a particle with zero mass and spin 2. So string theory is, among many other things, a theory of gravity!

Gravity and Electromagnetism?

"Yet I exist in the hope that these memoirs, in some manner, I know not how, may find their way to the minds of humanity in Some Dimensionality, and may stir up a race of rebels who shall refuse to be confined to limited Dimensionality." from Flatland, by E. A. Abbott

Oskar Klein and Theodor Franz Eduard Kaluza

What a novel idea to have the methods used by the predecessors like Maxwell, to have been united from Faraday's principals? To have Maxwell's equation Gaussian in interpretation of Riemann geometry, somehow, united by the geometries of Einstein and defined as gravity?

Then, to have Gravity and Light United?

A black hole is an object so massive that even light cannot escape from it. This requires the idea of a gravitational mass for a photon, which then allows the calculation of an escape energy for an object of that mass. When the escape energy is equal to the photon energy, the implication is that the object is a "black hole."

It seems then that the very statement of "Unification," the "Theory of everything," does not seem so far fetched as we look at the implications of what comes after. What comes from the knowledge, extended.



I was starting to loose hope here in the efforts of blogging as well, and was thinking that the time had come to a end. But "these questions" help to fuel the understanding that I had gained by giving time to "what work" has been put out there by scientists?



To think scientists would close up shop to their elite view, would seem disastrous to me, because of the leading perspective of what the physics means along side of that math.

We need to know what is "experimentally going" on so that we can also judge what theoretical models are doing for us as we extend this knowledge gained.

I gave a few views in environmental sciences in terms of the cosmic relation as well as what Gr was being introduced using time clocks and such, for views of the topographical understanding of earth from a fluidness point of view.

Now join the "cloud cover" along side of particle collisions sources, and have we learn anything that we didn't know before, or has this push new light onto what we now see of earth, as it's placed in the cosmological frontier?

Lisa Randall on Xtra Dimensions

In physics, Randall-Sundrum models imagine that the real world is a higher-dimensional Universe described by warped geometry. More concretely, our Universe is a five-dimensional anti de Sitter space and the elementary particles except for the graviton are localized on a (3 + 1)-dimensional brane or branes.

The models were proposed in 1999 by Lisa Randall and Raman Sundrum while studying technicolor models.

With the online chat yesterday I'll have to look in on Sabine Hossenfelder and Stefan's of Backreaction blog entry in this regard to look at it more in depth.


Photograph by Phil Knott
Click to view for a larger version.So you intuitively believe higher dimensions really exist?

I don't see why they shouldn't. In the history of physics, every time we've looked beyond the scales and energies we were familiar with, we've found things that we wouldn't have thought were there. You look inside the atom and eventually you discover quarks. Who would have thought that? It's hubris to think that the way we see things is everything there is.

If there are more than three dimensions out there, how does that change our picture of the universe?

The very ideas are of extra dimensions are very progressive, and are not without some history. Some people will label anything as crackpot, without understanding the history of these discussions."

Physics strings us along by Margaret Wertheim of LAtimes.com

In the latest, hottest Big Science tome — the delightfully titled "Warped Passages" — Harvard physicist Lisa Randall describes the idea that the universe we see around us is but one tiny part of a vast reality that may include an infinite number of other universes. Randall is an expert on both cosmology and that arcane branch of particle physics known as string theory. By marrying the two fields, she and her colleagues have formulated a picture in which our universe may be seen as a soap-film-like membrane (a "braneworld") sitting inside a much larger space: the bulk. According to general relativity, the universe we live in has four dimensions: three of space and one of time. Randall's work extends this framework and posits the existence of a fifth dimension. The fifth dimension is the bulk, and within its immeasurably expanded space, there is no reason to assume that ours is the only cosmos.

Back to the Beginning of Time

While some of us who had been engaged in a little prehistory examination of earliest QGP states as glast determination of high energy photons, the question, "to Be or not to be," how could we not ask what Professor Susskind offered up for examination under the title, "the elephant and the event horizon?"

What happens when you throw an elephant into a black hole? It sounds like a bad joke, but it's a question that has been weighing heavily on Leonard Susskind's mind. Susskind, a physicist at Stanford University in California, has been trying to save that elephant for decades. He has finally found a way to do it, but the consequences shake the foundations of what we thought we knew about space and time. If his calculations are correct, the elephant must be in more than one place at the same time.

I think there is still this far reaching philosophical question about what really started time? If "nothing" existed then how could we assume anything could arise from it?

While empirically Aristotle has lead the thinking, you know how I think don’t you:) Do you see me stand apart from Aristotle?

So I resolve this question in my own mind, even if I do refer to Gabriele Veneziano and his introduction of what began as string theory.

How could I resolve "anything" that has been taken down to the very first microseconds, while recognizing the value of anything "underneath the guise of building blocks of matter," and have said, "that this is the theory of everything?"

It only helped us to the point of the singularity, but it is much different then a complete death. The whole time reductionistic thinking has dominated the move back in history, there were other things going on, that us simple lay people were not aware of. Maybe for some scientists too?:)


Colliding galaxies, NGC 4676, known as "The Mice" (credit: Credit: NASA, H. Ford (JHU), G. Illingworth (UCSC/LO), M.Clampin (STScI), G. Hartig (STScI), the ACS Science Team, and ESA )

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is a large, infrared-optimized space telescope, scheduled for launch in 2013. JWST will find the first galaxies that formed in the early Universe, connecting the Big Bang to our own Milky Way Galaxy. JWST will peer through dusty clouds to see stars forming planetary systems, connecting the Milky Way to our own Solar System. JWST's instruments will be designed to work primarily in the infrared range of the electromagnetic spectrum, with some capability in the visible range.

JWST will have a large mirror, 6.5 meters (21.3 feet) in diameter and a sunshield the size of a tennis court. Both the mirror and sunshade won't fit onto the rocket fully open, so both will fold up and open only once JWST is in outer space. JWST will reside in an orbit about 1.5 million km (1 million miles) from the Earth.

JWST Science

The JWST science goals are divided into four themes. The key objective of The End of the Dark Ages: First Light and Reionization theme is to identify the first luminous sources to form and to determine the ionization history of the early universe. The key objective of The Assembly of Galaxies theme is to determine how galaxies and the dark matter, gas, stars, metals, morphological structures, and active nuclei within them evolved from the epoch of reionization to the present day. The key objective of The Birth of Stars and Protoplanetary Systems theme is to unravel the birth and early evolution of stars, from infall on to dust-enshrouded protostars to the genesis of planetary systems. The key objective of The Planetary Systems and the Origins of Life theme is to determine the physical and chemical properties of planetary systems including our own, and investigate the potential for the origins of life in those systems.

So again, we are being lead by science here to look ahead to what plans for the future may have influenced, or caused the decsisons they did, on another trip to refurbish the Hubble Space Telescope?

The Dark Ages of the UniverseBy Abraham Loeb

What makes modern cosmology an empirical science is that we are literally able to peer into the past. When you look at your image reflected off a mirror one meter away, you see the way you looked six nanoseconds ago--the light's travel time to the mirror and back. Similarly, cosmologists do not need to guess how the universe evolved; we can watch its history through telescopes. Because the universe appears to be statistically identical in every direction, what we see billions of light-years away is probably a fair representation of what our own patch of space looked like billions of years ago.

So then I am at a loss to explain that what happened billions of years ago near the beginning of this universe, could have ever been created in this universe now? Some body may say to you, "that the beginning of time and the distance of the beginning of the universe to now, has no correlation?"

If the circumstance are to be created in our colliders, then what said that mass determinations will ever arise from our research into the HiGG's, is not relevant, to what can be created in this space and time now?

Remember, everywhere you look in the cosmos this possibility exists. The WMAP is indictive of what I am saying.

So you say, the beginning of the universe and "the time created" to produce the particles of new physics, has no correlation into how this universe came into being?

Perhaps you may like to read Stephen Hawkings perspective on the beginning of time?

The conclusion of this lecture is that the universe has not existed forever. Rather, the universe, and time itself, had a beginning in the Big Bang, about 15 billion years ago. The beginning of real time, would have been a singularity, at which the laws of physics would have broken down. Nevertheless, the way the universe began would have been determined by the laws of physics, if the universe satisfied the no boundary condition. This says that in the imaginary time direction, space-time is finite in extent, but doesn't have any boundary or edge. The predictions of the no boundary proposal seem to agree with observation. The no boundary hypothesis also predicts that the universe will eventually collapse again. However, the contracting phase, will not have the opposite arrow of time, to the expanding phase. So we will keep on getting older, and we won't return to our youth. Because time is not going to go backwards, I think I better stop now.

What's on the Condense Matter Theorist's Mind?

The Theory of Everything


Prof. Robert B. Laughlin

The crystalline state is the simplest known example of a quantum , a stable state of matter whose generic low-energy properties are determined by a higher organizing principle and nothing else. Robert Laughlin

Thre are certain perspective that are different then what reductionism has done to serves it's purpose? Now such ideas lanquish because they seem unfitting. So you gain perspective by those who think about things differently and see what parameters rule the logic of their ideas.

In his book The End of Science John Horgan argues that our civilization is now facing barriers to the acquisition of knowledge so fundamental that the Golden Age of Science must must be thought of as over [38]. It is an instructive and humbling experience to attempt explaining this idea to a child. The outcome is always the same. The child eventually stops listening, smiles politely, and then runs off to explore the countless infinities of new things in his or her world. Horgan's book might more properly have been called the End of Reductionism, for it is actually a call to those of us concerned with the health of physical science to face the truth that in most respects the reductionist ideal has reached its limits as a guiding principle. Rather than a Theory of Everything we appear to face a hierarchy of Theories of Things, each emerging from its parent and evolving into its children as the energy scale is lowered. The end of reductionism is, however, not the end of science, or even the end of theoretical physics. How do proteins work their wonders? Why do magnetic insulators superconduct? Why is 3He a superfluid? Why is the electron mass in some metals stupendously large? Why do turbulent fluids display patterns? Why does black hole formation so resemble a quantum phase transition? Why do galaxies emit such enormous jets? The list is endless, and it does not include the most important questions of all, namely those raised by discoveries yet to come. The central task of theoretical physics in our time is no longer to write down the ultimate equations but rather but to catalogue and understand emergent behavior in its many guises, including potentially life itself. We call this physics of the next century the study of complex adaptive matter. For better or worse we are now witnessing a transition from the science of the past, so intimately linked to reductionism, to the study of complex adaptive matter, firmly based in experiment, with its hope for providing a jumping-off point for new discoveries, new concepts, and new wisdom.

So for me as I look at the state of the world I am asking what patterns were pre-esstablished that would govern the higg's mechanison and looking for such a "organizational attribute" would have settled the question as to why people gathered around the professor as Einstein crossed the room.

From a reductionsitic standpoint what was the "energy" doing as we used these colliders as mechanisims towards matter/mass comstituents discovery. Did this disavow our views on what was emergent from a point in spacetime?

So of course I will draw people's attention to what I think has to come into "expression" and how this is done. What is the "basis" of that expression and how we will see it explode into the sociological valuation that constitutes our society of exchanges.

I referred to John Nash here many times. What is it, he discovered at the heart of "negotiated processes?" What is the schematics of that expression that he identified in human behavior, as showing such schemas? Birds, that had some "higher organization pattern" that governed flock movement?

So are strings a emergent phenomena? You had to know their place in the scheme of things. Do your recognized the method as to the nergy valuation given? How such branching is effected, based on some "Feynman toy model discription" that revealed what about the early universe?

Edward Witten:

One thing I can tell you, though, is that most string theorist's suspect that spacetime is a emergent Phenomena in the language of condensed matter physics

What about pushing "perspective back" to the microseconds? At what point does the Universe make itself known? Had you already forgotten about the "first three microseconds?"