Dear Anton,
Do you disagree with MDT's central postulate and equation? Could you please kindly man up and talk Noble physics like an honorable, Noble man, as opposed to wallowing in snark and petty politics? Remember, we are trying to bring the Heroic Spirit of physics back! Thanks!
MDT has a vast and growing audience, even though it lacks the 100s of millions of misappropriated dollars sunk into string theory and LQG and the like.
And even more importantly, MDT is both true and beautiful, and Time is on Truth's side. I'd much rather have a True Theory that has no funding, as opposed to a False Theory which has hundreds of millions in fiat-debt funding.
Dear Anton,
Do you disagree with MDT's central postulate and equation?
MDT's postulate: The fourth dimensions is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions at c. MDT's equation: dx4/dt=ic.
Simple proofs of MDT:
MDT PROOF#1: Relativity tells us that a timeless, ageless photon remains in one place in the fourth dimension. Quantum mechanics tells us that a photon propagates as a spherically-symmetric expanding wavefront at the velocity of c. Ergo, the fourth dimension must be expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions at the rate of c, in a spherically-symmetric manner. The expansion of the fourth dimension is the source of nonlocality, entanglement, time and all its arrows and asymmetries, c, relativity, entropy, free will, and all motion, change, and measurement, for no measurement can be made without change. For the first time in the history of relativity, change has been wedded to the fundamental fabric of spacetime in MDT.
MDT PROOF#2: Einstein (1912 Man. on Rel.) and Minkowski wrote x4=ict. Ergo dx4/dt=ic.
MDT PROOF#3: The only way to stay stationary in the three spatial dimensions is to move at c through the fourth dimension. The only way to stay stationary in the fourth dimension is to move at c through the three spatial dimensions. Ergo the fourth dimension is moving at c relative to the three spatial dimensions.
MDT twitter proof (limited to 140 characters): SR: photon is stationary in 4th dimension. QM: photon is probability wave expanding @ c. Ergo: 4th dimension expands @ c & MDT: dx4/dt=ic -from http://twitter.com/45surf
MDT Honors the Greats' Definition of Science
Einstein and Galileo embodied and exalted the heroic spirit in which Moving Dimensions Theory was conceived:
"But before mankind could be ripe for a science which takes in the whole of reality, a second fundamental truth was needed, which only became common property among philosophers with the advent of Kepler and Galileo. Pure logical thinking cannot yield us any knowledge of the empirical world; all knowledge of reality starts from experience and ends in it. (Yes! Moving dimensions theory begins in experience-the double slit experiment, entropy, relativity, nonlocality, time and all it arrows and asymmetries, and it ends in experience, by providing a physical model predicting all these entities!) Propositions arrived at by purely logical means (String theory, loop quantum gravity (which might not even use logic)) are completely empty as regards reality. Because Galileo saw this, and particularly because he drummed it into the scientific world, he is the father of modern physics--indeed, of modern science altogether. -Einstein, Ideas and Opinions
Einstein's above quote is quite prominent in its complete absence from today's leading "physics" books and blogs, as are many of the Greats' quotes below, wherein the Greats define what science is and ought to be-wherein they define what science has ever been. Einstein states that, "all knowledge of reality starts from experience and ends in it," and a glaring problem with string theory is that nobody has ever seen a tiny little string (and thus ST does not begin in experience), nor measured one, nor conceived of an experiment that would allow us to see strings (and thus ST does not, and cannot end in experience either). Nor has anyone ever seen a multiverse, nor come up with a way of measuring or detecting multiverses. Nor has anyone ever come across any of the tiny, little loops of loop quantum gravity, nor any way to detect nor measure tiny little loops. So it is that all these non-theories begin in the imagination, and end in it. One will hear their proponents singing of the great beauty of their theories, but then, when one asks them for the fundamental equation, they are unable to produce any. Indeed, it turns out there are millions of equivalent non-theories with various amounts of dimensions, with ever-changing math which never adds up to predict anything we see in physical reality. In that sense, the theories are actually quite ugly. Especially when compared to the simple beauty of Moving Dimensions Theory's simple, fundamental, far-ranging equation, dx4/dt=ic, which predicts nonlocality, entanglement (the fundamental characteristic of QM according to Schrodenger), entropy, time and all its arrows and asymmetries, and from which all of relativity is derived. dx4/dt=ic is more fundamental than relativity's two physical postualtes, as both of relativity's postulates arise from it.
Karl Popper: Good tests kill flawed theories; we remain alive to guess again.
Karl Popper: Science must begin with myths, and with the criticism of myths.
Karl Popper: In so far as a scientific statement speaks about reality, it must be falsifiable; and in so far as it is not falsifiable, it does not speak about reality.
If we are to write a scientific book, we must first of all define what science is and ought be. In order to do this, I turn towards the greatest scientists and philosophers of all time--those Founding Fathers who are never quoted, nor mentioned, nor exalted in the myriad of books devoted to string theory, multiverses, loop quantum gravity, and other mathematical farses, failures, and frauds perpetuated for fleeting fortune and fame, of funded by the very same fiat-debt regimes which fail on moral and spiritual levels by privatizing profits and socializing risks. Below are the scientsists I boldly ride forth with--many were persecuted in their own day and age by the cruelty and ignorance of their peers, as I am today by the proud imposters gaining tenure for treatises on space aliens, multiverses, parallel universes, strings, loops, and countless other imaginary conjectures with absolutely no physical reality, but only fiat realties. But just as S=klogw is engraved on Ludwig von Boltzman's tombstone, after his theory of entropy was derided, castigated, ignored, and impugned by his peers, contributing to his suicide, so too shall dx4/dt=ic be engraved on my tombstone, as sure ax xp-px=ih is engraved on Max Born's tombstone. Here is how the Greats define science:
When the solution is simple, God is answering.[ii] -Einstein
A physical theory can be satisfactory only if its structures are composed of elementary foundations. The theory of relativity is ultimately as little satisfactory as, for example, classical thermodynamics was before Boltzmann had interpreted the entropy as probability.[iii] -Einstein
Max Born wrote, "All great discoveries in experimental physics have been made due to the intuition of men who made free use of models which for them were not products of the imagination but representations of real things."
Albert Einstein: Before I enter upon a critique of mechanics as a foundation of physics, something of a broadly general nature will first have to be said concerning the points of view according to which it is possible to criticize physical theories at all. The first point of view is obvious: The theory must not contradict empirical facts. . . The second point of view is not concerned with the relation to the material of observation but with the premises of the theory itself, with what may briefly but vaguely be characterized as the "naturalness" or "logical simplicity" of the premises (of the basic concepts and of the relations between these which are taken as a basis). This point of view, an exact formulation of which meets with great difficulties, has played an important role in the selection and evaluation of theories since time immemorial.
Isaac Newton: No great discovery was ever made without a bold guess.
Sir Isaac Newton: "If I have seen farther than others, it is because I was standing on the shoulders of giants."
Isaac Newton: I was like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.
Isaac Newton: If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants.
Isaac Newton: We build too many walls and not enough bridges.
Richard Feynman: Learn from science that you must doubt the experts. . . . Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts."
Isaac Newton: As the ocean is never full of water, so is the heart never full of love."
Sir Isaac Newton: This most beautiful system [The Universe] could only proceed from the dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being.
Einstein: Play Is The Highest Form Of Research.
Albert Einstein: Once it was recognised that the earth was not the center of the world, but only one of the smaller planets, the illusion of the central significance of man himself became untenable. Hence, Nicolaus Copernicus, through his work and the greatness of his personality, taught man to be honest. (Albert Einstein, Message on the 410th Anniversary of the Death of Copernicus, 1953)
To me there has never been a higher source of earthly honor or distinction than that connected with advances in science.[iv] -Newton
The only real valuable thing is intuition. -Einstein
A person starts to live when he can live outside himself. -Einstein
The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education. -Einstein
Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding. -Einstein
No great discovery was ever made without a bold guess.[v] -Newton
For an idea that does not at first seem insane, there is no hope.[vi] - Einstein
If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants.[vii] -Newton
In questions of science, the authority of thousands is not worth the humble reasoning of one individual.[viii] -Galileo
Books on physics are full of complicated mathematical formulae. But thought and ideas (the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions at c), not formulae (dx4/dt=ic), are the beginning of every physical theory.[ix] --Einstein/Infeld, The Evolution of Physics
But before mankind could be ripe for a science which takes in the whole of reality, a second fundamental truth was needed, which only became common property among philosophers with the advent of Kepler and Galileo. Pure logical thinking cannot yield us any knowledge of the empirical world; all knowledge of reality starts from experience and ends in it. Propositions arrived at by purely logical means are completely empty as regards reality. Because Galileo saw this, and particularly because he drummed it into the scientific world, he is the father of modern physics--indeed, of modern science altogether. -Einstein[x], Ideas and Opinions
Epur si muove - (And yet it does move.)[xi] -Galileo
.. my dear Kepler, what do you think of the foremost philosophers of this University? In spite of my oft-repeated efforts and invitations, they have refused, with the obstinacy of a glutted adder, to look at the planets or Moon or my telescope.[xii] -Galileo
A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up with it.[xiii] -Planck
Planck: Let us get down to bedrock facts. The beginning of every act of knowing, and therefore the starting-point of every science, must be our own personal experience.[xiv] (All physicists have personally experienced the double-slit experiment, and as relativity tells us that photons remain stationary in x4, x4 must thus be propagating at c with both a wavelike and quantum nature!)
Einstein: Mathematics are well and good but nature keeps dragging us around by the nose.[xv]
Einstein: The theory must not contradict empirical facts. . . The second point of view is not concerned with the relation to the material of observation but with the premises of the theory itself, with what may briefly but vaguely be characterized as the "naturalness" or "logical simplicity" of the premises of the basic concepts and of the relations between these which are taken as a basis. [xvi]
Planck: That we do not construct the external world to suit our own ends in the pursuit of science, but that vice versa the external world forces itself upon our recognition with its own elemental power, is a point which ought to be categorically asserted again and again . . . From the fact that in studying the happenings of nature . . . it is clear that we always look for the basic thing behind the dependent thing, for what is absolute behind what is relative, for the reality behind the appearance and for what abides behind what is transitory. . this is characteristic not only of physical science but of all science.[xvii] (dx4/dt=ic is the "basic, abiding thing" behind all relativity, entropy, and QM!)
Einstein: Truth is what stands the test of experience.[xviii]
Heisenberg: Science. . . is based on personal experience, or on the experience of others, reliably reported. . . Even today we can still learn from Goethe . . . trusting that this reality will then also reflect the essence of things, the 'one, the good, and the true.[xix]
Since we experience both particles and waves, and since the Greats agree that physics begins and ends in experience, MDT follows the Greats in providing a foundational model underlying the physical, experiential reality of waves and particles--of the analog and digital--of relativity, QM, and entropy, as well as time and all its arrows and asymmetries. MDT agrees with the Greats:
Schrodinger: The world is given but once. . . The world extended in space and time is but our representation. Experience does not give us the slightest clue of its being anything besides that. [xx]
Bohr: The classical concepts, i.e., "wave" and "corpuscle" do not fully describe the real world and are, moreover, complementary in part, and hence contradictory. . . . Nor can we avoid occasional contradictions; nevertheless, the images help us to draw nearer to the real facts. Their existence no one should deny. "Truth dwells in the deeps." [xxi]
Schrodinger: Everything--anything at all--is at the same time particle and field.[xxii] (This is because MDT's expanding x4 is continually spreading and distributing locality.)
Einstein: Time and again the passion for understanding has led to the illusion that man is able to comprehend the objective world rationally by pure thought without any empirical foundations--in short, by metaphysics.[xxiii] (MDT begins and ends with empirical foundations!)
Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius--and a lot of courage--to move in the opposite direction.[xxiv] -Einstein
Mathematicians may flatter themselves that they possess new ideas which mere human language is as yet unable to express. Let them make the effort to express these ideas in appropriate words without the aid of symbols, and if they succeed they will not only lay us laymen under a lasting obligation, but, we venture to say, they will find themselves very much enlightened during the process, and will even be doubtful whether the ideas as expressed in symbols had ever quite found their way out of the equations into their minds.[xxv] -Maxwell
I don't believe in mathematics.[xxvi] -Einstein
Sir Francis Bacon: And all depends on keeping the eye steadily fixed upon the facts of nature and so receiving their images simply as they are. For God forbid that we should give out a dream of our own imagination for a pattern of the world; rather may he graciously grant to us to write an apocalypse or true vision of the footsteps of the Creator imprinted on his creatures.
Do not worry about your difficulties in mathematics, I assure you that mine are greater.[xxvii] -Einstein
Geometry is not true, it is advantageous.[xxviii] -Poincare
John Wilkins: I shall most insist on the observation of Galilæus, the inventor of that famous perspective, whereby we may discern the heavens har by us; whereby those things others have formerly guessed at, are manifested to the eye, and plainly discovered beyond exception of a doubt. -1638
Science's heroic spirit comes from the scientists, philosophers, and poets of yore. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe wrote, "Science arose from poetry--when times change the two can meet again on a higher level as friends," and Socrates who mentored Plato who mentored Aristotle who inspired Copernicus, Newton, and Galileo, cited the heroic acts of Achilles as his epic inspiration.
In Einstein's Mistakes, Dr. Hans Ohanian reports on how physics advances via the emphasis not on math, but on physical reality, "(Max) Born described the weak point in Einstein's work in those final years: ". . . now he tried to do without any empirical facts, by pure thinking. He believed in the power of reason to guess the laws according to which God built the world.""[xxix] MDT exalts nature and the physical reality of a timeless, ageless photon, providing a simple, unifying physical model for entropy, statistical mechanics, relativity, and quantum mechanics.
A good decision is based on knowledge and not on numbers.[xxx] -Plato
Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.[xxxi] -Einstein
Mathematics are well and good but nature keeps dragging us around by the nose.[xxxii] -Einstein
In Disturbing the Universe, Freeman Dyson writes, "Dick [Feynman] fought back against my skepticism, arguing that Einstein had failed because he stopped thinking in concrete physical images (as MDT does!) and became a manipulator of equations. I had to admit that was true. The great discoveries of Einstein's earlier years were all based on direct physical intuition. Einstein's later unified theories failed because they were only sets of equations without physical meaning. Dick's sum-over-histories theory was in the spirit of the young Einstein, not of the old Einstein. It was solidly rooted in physical reality."[xxxiii] In The Trouble With Physics, Lee Smolin writes that Bohr was not a Feynman "shut up and calculate" physicist, and from the above Dyson quote, it appears that Feynman wasn't either. Lee writes, "Mara Beller, a historian who has studied his [Bohr's] work in detail, points out that there was not a single calculation in his research notebooks, which were all verbal arguments and pictures."[xxxiv] Please see MDT's Fig. 1, presenting a physical model, at the end of this document. (Many more to come!)
In Dark Matters, Dr. Percy Seymour writes, "Albert Einstein was a great admirer of Newton, Faraday, and Maxwell. In his office he had framed copies of portraits of these scientists. He had this to say about Faraday and Maxwell: "The greatest change in the axiomatic basis of physics--in other words, of our conception of the structure--since Newton laid the foundation of theoretical physics was brought about by Faraday's and Maxwell's work on electromagnetic phenomena."[xxxv]
In his book Einstein, Banesh Hoffman and the great Michael Faraday exalt physical reality over mere math:
Meanwhile, however, the English experimenter Michael Farady was making outstanding experimental discoveries in electricity and magnetism. Being largely self-taught and lacking mathematical facility, he could not interpret his results in the manner of Ampere. And this was fortunate, since it led to a revolution in science. . . most physicists adept at mathematics thought his concepts mathematically naïve.[xxxvi]
Bohr and Einstein debating the nature of quantum mechanics.
Einstein: God does not play dice with the universe.
Neils Bohr: Einstein, stop telling God what to.
Had Einstein wholeheartedly accepted the physical reality of quantum mechanics and the natural nonlocality and entanglement of photons it implied, perhaps he would have seen that not only were light and time connected in relativity, but that relativity and quantum mechanics were connected by a deeper physical reality of a fourth dimension expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions at c. After all, Einstein did write x1=x, x2=y, x3=z, and x4 = ict (implying dx4/dt=ic to those bold enough to see it), only he arrived at this years after he set forth the principle of relativity and its two postulates. MDT starts with a more fundamental physical principle of a fourth expanding dimension and its equation--dx4/dt=ic--and it derives all of relativity while also providing a physical model for quantum entanglement and nonlocality, and thus its probabilistic nature. MDT exalts the beauty of wonderment, asking: "Why Relativity, Entanglement, Entropy, Nonlocality & Time?"
The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed. -Einstein
The important thing is not to stop questioning.[xxxvii] -Einstein (Why Relativity, Entanglement, Entropy, Nonlocality & Time? because dx4/dt=ic!)
And now that the Greats have defined what science is and ought to be, we might also let them define what science isn't. And in doing so, we can contrast MDT's simple, beautiful, elegant, unifying successes with String Theory's "not even wrongishness" and now entrenched religion of failure. The first page of String Theory in a Nutshell states in a footnoted sentence:
String Theory has been the leading candidate ... for a theory that consistently unifies all the fundamental forces of nature, including gravity. It gained popularity because it provides a theory that is UV finite.(1) . . . The footnote (1) reads: "Although there is no rigorous proof to all orders that the theory is UV finite..."[xxxviii] -STRING THEORY IN A NUTSHELL
So you see, string theory is not a finite theory, but this is generally kept to the footnotes, when mentioned at all. Many esteemed, famous, and Nobel Laureate physicists harbor reservations regarding strings:
We don't know what we are talking about[xxxix]. -Nobel Laureate David Gross on string theory
It is anomalous to replace the four-dimensional continuum by a five-dimensional one and then subsequently to tie up artificially one of those five dimensions in order to account for the fact that it does not manifest itself. -Einstein to Ehrenfest (Imagine doing this for 10-30+ dimensions!)
String theorists don't make predictions, they make excuses[xl]. - Feynman, Nobel Laureate
String theory is like a 50 year old woman wearing too much lipstick.[xli] -Robert Laughlin, Nobel Laureate
Actually, I would not even be prepared to call string theory a "theory" rather a "model" or not even that: just a hunch. After all, a theory should come together with instructions on how to deal with it to identify the things one wishes to describe, in our case the elementary particles, and one should, at least in principle, be able to formulate the rules for calculating the properties of these particles, and how to make new predictions for them. Imagine that I give you a chair, while explaining that the legs are still missing, and that the seat, back and armrest will perhaps be delivered soon; whatever I did give you, can I still call it a chair?[xlii] -'t Hooft, Nobel Laureate
It is tragic, but now, we have the string theorists, thousands of them, that also dream of explaining all the features of nature. They just celebrated the 20th anniversary of superstring theory. So when one person spends 30 years, it's a waste, but when thousands waste 20 years in modern day, they celebrate with champagne. I find that curious.[xliii] -Sheldon Glashow, Nobel Laureate
Nobel prize winner Martinus Veltman concludes his 2003 book
facts and mysteries in elementary particle physics
with:
The fact is that this book is about physics, and this implies that the
theoretical ideas must be supported by experimental facts. Neither
supersymmetry nor string theory satisfy this criterion. They are
figments of the theoretical mind. To quote Pauli:
They are not even wrong. They have no place here. -Nobel Laureate Martinus Veltman
Why is the smart money all tied up in strings? Why is so much theoretical capital
expended upon the properties of supersymmetric systems of quantum strings propagating
in ten-dimensional space-time? The good news is that superstring theory may have the
right stuff to explain the "low-energy phenomena" of high-energy physics and gravity as
well. In the context of possible quantum theories of gravity, each of the few currently
known superstring theories may even be unique, finite and self-consistent. In principle a
superstring theory ordains what particles exist and what properties they have, using no
arbitrary or adjustable parameters. The bad news is that years of intense effort by dozens
of the best and the brightest have yielded not one verifiable prediction, nor should any
soon be expected. Called "the new physics" by its promoters, it is not even known to
encompass the old and established standard model. -Sheldon Glashow, Nobel Laureate & Paul Ginsparg, Ph.D.
In lieu of the traditional confrontation between theory and experiment, superstring
theorists pursue an inner harmony where elegance, uniqueness and beauty define truth.
The theory depends for its existence upon magical coincidences, miraculous cancellations
and relations among seemingly unrelated (and possibly undiscovered) fields of mathemat-
ics. Are these properties reasons to accept the reality of superstrings? Do mathematics
and aesthetics supplant and transcend mere experiment? Will the mundane phenomeno-
logical problems that we know as physics simply come out in the wash in some distant
tomorrow? Is further experimental endeavor not only difficult and expensive but unneces-
sary and irrelevant? Contemplation of superstrings may evolve into an activity as remote
from conventional particle physics as particle physics is from chemistry, to be conducted
at schools of divinity by future equivalents of medieval theologians. For the first time since
the Dark Ages, we can see how our noble search may end, with faith replacing science once
again. Superstring sentiments eerily recall "arguments from design" for the existence of a
supreme being. Was it only in jest that a leading string theorist suggested that "super-
strings may prove as successful as God, Who has after all lasted for millennia and is still
invoked in some quarters as a Theory of Nature"? -Sheldon Glashow, Nobel Laureate & Paul Ginsparg, Ph.D.
The trouble is that most of superstring physics lies up at the Planck mass -- about
10 GeV - and it is a long and treacherous road down to where we can see the light of
day. A naive comparison of length scales suggests that to calculate the electron mass from
superstrings would be a trillion times more difficult than to explain human behavior in
terms of atomic physics. Superstring theory, unless it allows an approximation scheme for
yielding useful and testable physical information, might be the sort of thing that Wolfgang
Pauli would have said is "not even wrong." It would continue to attract newcomers to the
field simply because it is the only obvious alternative to explaining why certain detectors
light up like video games near the end of every funding cycle.
-Sheldon Glashow, Nobel Laureate & Paul Ginsparg, Ph.D., Desperately Seeking Superstrings
In the old days we moved up in energy step by step, seeing smaller and smaller struc-
tures. Observations led to theories or models that suggested further experiments. The
going is getting rougher; Colliders are inordinately expensive, detectors have grown im-
mense, and interesting collisions are rare. Not even a politically popular "Superstring
Detection Initiative" with a catchy name like "String Wars" could get us to energies where
superstrings are relevant. We are stuck with a gap of 16 orders of magnitude between
theoretical strings and observable particles, unbridgeable by any currently envisioned ex-
periment. Conventional grand unified theories, which also depend on a remote fundamental
energy scale (albeit one extrapolated upward from known phenomena rather than down-
ward from abstract principle), retain the grand virtue that, at least in their simplest form,
they were predictive enough to be excluded -- by our failure to observe proton decay.
-Sheldon Glashow, Nobel Laureate & Paul Ginsparg, Ph.D., Desperately Seeking Superstrings
How tempting is the top-down approach! How satisfying and economical to explain
everything in one bold stroke of our aesthetic, mathematical or intuitive sensibilities, thus
displaying the power of positive thinking without requiring tedious experimentation! But
a priori arguments have deluded us from ancient Greece on. Without benefit of the
experimental provocation that led to Maxwell's equations and, inevitably, to the special
theory of relativity, great philosophers pondering for millennia failed even to suspect the
basic kinematical structure of space-time. Pure thought could not anticipate the quantum.
And even had Albert Einstein succeeded in the quest that consumed the latter half of his
life, somehow finding a framework for unifying electromagnetism and gravity, we would by
now have discarded his theory in the light of experimental data to which he had no access.
He had to fail, simply because he didn't know enough physics. Today we can't exclude the
possibility that micro-unicorns might be thriving at a length scale of 10−18 cm. Einstein's
path, the search for unification now, is likely to remain fruitless.
-Sheldon Glashow, Nobel Laureate & Paul Ginsparg, Ph.D., Desperately Seeking Superstrings
Richard Feynman, an heroic physicists who married commonsense to his mathematical genius, stated in 1987, a year before his death:
...I think all this superstring stuff is crazy and it is in the wrong direction. ... I don't like that they're not calculating anything. I don't like that they don't check their ideas. I don't like that for anything that disagrees with an experiment, they cook up an explanation--a fix-up to say "Well, it still might be true."
"Feynman was careful to hedge his remark as being that of an elder statesman of science, who collectively have a history of foolishly considering the speculations of younger researchers to be nonsense, and he would have almost certainly have opposed any effort to cut off funding for superstring research, as it might be right, after all, and should be pursued in parallel with other promising avenues until they make predictions which can be tested by experiment, falsifying and leading to the exclusion of those candidate theories whose predictions are incorrect. . . One wonders, however, what Feynman's reaction would have been had he lived to contemplate the contemporary scene in high energy theoretical physics almost twenty years later. String theory and its progeny still have yet to make a single, falsifiable prediction which can be tested by a physically plausible experiment. This isn't surprising, because after decades of work and tens of thousands of scientific publications, nobody really knows, precisely, what superstring (or M, or whatever) theory really is; there is no equation, or set of equations from which one can draw physical predictions. Leonard Susskind, a co-founder of string theory, observes ironically in his book The Cosmic Landscape (March 2006), "On this score, one might facetiously say that String Theory is the ultimate epitome of elegance. With all the years that String Theory has been studied, no one has ever found a single defining equation! The number at present count is zero. We know neither what the fundamental equations of the theory are or even if it has any." (p. 204). String theory might best be described as the belief that a physically correct theory exists and may eventually be discovered by the research programme conducted under that name. - http://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/reading_list/indices/book_502.html reviewing Peter Woit's Not Even Wrong
The problem, to state it in a manner more inflammatory than the measured tone of the author, and in a word of my choosing which I do not believe appears at all in his book, is that contemporary academic research in high energy particle theory is corrupt. As is usually the case with such corruption, the root cause is socialism, although the look-only-left blinders almost universally worn in academia today hides this from most observers there. Dwight D. Eisenhower, however, twigged to it quite early. In his farewell address of January 17th, 1961, which academic collectivists endlessly cite for its (prescient) warning about the "military-industrial complex", he went on to say, although this is rarely quoted,
In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.
Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been over shadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.
The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.
And there, of course, is precisely the source of the corruption. This enterprise of theoretical elaboration is funded by taxpayers, who have no say in how their money, taken under threat of coercion, is spent. Which researchers receive funds for what work is largely decided by the researchers themselves, acting as peer review panels. While peer review may work to vet scientific publications, as soon as money becomes involved, the disposition of which can make or break careers, all the venality and naked self- and group-interest which has undone every well-intentioned experiment in collectivism since Robert Owen comes into play, with the completely predictable and tediously repeated results. What began as an altruistic quest driven by intellectual curiosity to discover answers to the deepest questions posed by nature ends up, after a generation of grey collectivism, as a jobs program. In a sense, string theory can be thought of like that other taxpayer-funded and highly hyped program, the space shuttle, which is hideously expensive, dangerous to the careers of those involved with it (albeit in a more direct manner), supported by a standing army composed of some exceptional people and a mass of the mediocre, difficult to close down because it has carefully cultivated a constituency whose own self-interest is invested in continuation of the program, and almost completely unproductive of genuine science.
- http://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/reading_list/indices/book_502.html
I don't like that they're not calculating anything. I don't like that they don't check their ideas. I don't like that for anything that disagrees with an experiment, they cook up an explanation-a fix-up to say, "Well, it might be true." For example, the theory requires ten dimensions. Well, maybe there's a way of wrapping up six of the dimensions. Yes, that's all possible mathematically, but why not seven? . . . So the fact that it might disagree with experience is very tenuous, it doesn't produce anything; it has to be excused most of the time. It doesn't look right.[xliv] -Nobel Lareate R.P. Feynman
But superstring physicists have not yet shown that theory really works. They cannot demonstrate that the standard theory is a logical outcome of string theory. They cannot even be sure that their formalism includes a description of such things as protons and electrons. And they have not yet made even one teeny-tiny experimental prediction. Worst of all, superstring theory does not follow as a logical consequence of some appealing set of hypotheses about nature.[xlv] --Nobel Laureate Sheldon Glashow
"... There have always been kookie fanatics following strange visions. One of the most kookie, and of course most brilliant, was Einstein himself. It has often been said by my string theory friends that superstrings are going to dominate physics for the next half of a century. Ed Witten has said that. I would like to modify that remark. I would say that string theory will dominate the next fifty years of physics in the same way that Kaluza-Klein theory, another kookie theory upon which string theory is based, has dominated particle physics in the past fifty years. Which is to say, not at all." -Sheldon Glashow
Burton Richter: The anthropic principle, I think, is one of the most stupid ideas ever to infect the scientific community. Look, the anthropic principle is an observation not an explanation. It is perfectly true that if the electromagnetic force had a significantly different strength, then atoms as we know them and molecules as we know them couldn't exist and we couldn't exist. This is an observation, it doesn't tell you anything about how the electromagnetic force got to be that way. Sure we're here, we're having an interview, that means the electromagnetic force is constrained to be within a certain narrow boundary but the physics is; why is it in that narrow boundary? Now, you can beg that and you can go back to the scholastics in the Middle Ages and their answer would be 'God made it so'. That may turn out to be the only thing...we may never find an explanation. If we don't find an explanation then it's just an arbitrary constant. -Former Director of Stanford Linear Accelerator, http://www.abc.net.au/rn/scienceshow/stories/2007/1861083.htm (Burton Richter, Director Emeritus, SLAC)
Robyn Williams: So the new accelerators could well change our view of the universe, but what Burton Richter isn't so keen on is what he calls the theology that so many theoreticians like Stephen Hawking and Paul Davies goes in for. He wants his physics hard.
Burton Richter: I called it theological speculation. They seem to have forgotten they have to be connected to physical reality.
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/scienceshow/stories/2007/1861083.htm (Burton Richter, Director Emeritus, SLAC)
To me, some of what passes for the most advanced theory in particle physics these days is not really science. When I found myself on a panel recently with three distinguished theorists, I could not resist the opportunity to discuss what I see as major problems in the philosophy behind theory, which seems to have gone off into a kind of metaphysical wonderland. Simply put, much of what currently passes as the most advanced theory looks to be more theological speculation, the development of models with no testable consequences, than it is the development of practical knowledge, the development of models with testable and falsifiable consequences (Karl Popper's definition of science)...
The anthropic principle is an observation, not an explanation... I have a very hard time accepting the fact that some of our distinguished theorists do not understand the difference between observation and explanation, but it seems to be so... -http://www.physicstoday.org/vol-59/iss-10/p8.html, Burton Richter, Director Emeritus, SLAC
String theory has no credibility as a candidate theory of physics. Recognizing failure is a userful part of the scientific strategy. Only when failure is recognized can dead ends be abandoned and useable
pieces of failed programs be recycled. Aside from possible utility, there is a responsibility to recognize failure. Recognizing failure is an essential part of the scientific ethos. Complete scientific failure must be recognized eventually." -Dan Friedan, early Rutgers String Theorist
"Likewise, the fact that certain beautiful mathematical forms were used in the period 1905-1974 to make the presently successful theory of physics does not imply that any particular standard of mathematical beauty is fundamental to nature. The evidence is for certain specific mathematical forms, of group theory, differential geometry and operator theory. The evidence comes from a limited range of spacetime distances. That range of distances grew so large by historical standards, and the successes of certain specific mathematical forms were so impressive, that there has been an understandable psychological impulse in physicists responsible for the triumph, and in their successors, to believe in a certain standard of mathematical beauty. But history suggests that it is unwise to extrapolate to fundamental principles of nature from the mathematical forms used by theoretical physics in any particular epoch of its history, no matter how impressive their success. Mathematical beauty in physics cannot be separated from usefulness in the real world. The historical exemplars of mathematical beauty in physics, the theory of general relativity and the Dirac equation, obtained their credibility first by explaining prior knowledge. . . General relativity explained Newtonian gravity and special relativity. The Dirac equation explained the non-relativistic, quantum mechanical spinning electron. Both theories then made definite predictions that could be checked. Mathematical beauty in physics cannot be appreciated until after it has proved useful. Past programs in theoretical physics that have attempted to follow a particular standard of mathematical beauty, detached from the requirement of correspondence with existing knowledge, have failed. The evidence for beautiful mathematical forms in nature requires only that a candidate theory of physics explain those specifc mathematical forms that have actually been found, within the range of distances where they have been seen, to an approximation consistent with the accuracy of their observation." -{ 11 {JHEP10(2003)063, Dan Friedan
This book is about physics, and this implies that theoretical ideas must be supported by experimental facts. Neither supersymmtry nor string theory satisfy this crieterion. They are figments of the theoretical mind. -Dan Friedan
The great irony of string theory, however, is that the theory itself is not unified. . . For a theory that makes the claim of providing a unifying framework for all physical laws, it is the supreme irony that the theory itself appears so disunited!![xlvi] Introduction to Superstrings & M-Theory -Kaku
"Is string theory a futile exercise as physics, as I believe it to be? It is an interesting mathematical specialty and has produced and will produce mathematics useful in other contexts, but it seems no more vital as mathematics than other areas of very abstract or specialized math, and doesn't on that basis justify the incredible amount of effort expended on it.
Until string people can interpret perceived properties of the real world they simply are not doing physics. Should they be paid by universities and be permitted to pervert impressionable students? Will young Ph.D's, whose expertise is limited to superstring theory, be employable if, and when, the string snaps? Are string thoughts more appropriate to departments of mathematics, or even to schools of divinity, than to physics departments? How many angels can dance on the head of a pin? How many dimensions are there in a compacted manifold, 30 powers of ten smaller than a pinhead? -Nobel Laureate Sheldon Glashow
My belief is based on the fact that string theory is the first science in hundreds of years to be pursued in pre-Baconian fashion, without any adequate experimental guidance. It proposes that Nature is the way we would like it to be rather than the way we see it to be; and it is improbable that Nature thinks the same way we do.
The sad thing is that, as several young would-be theorists have explained to me, it is so highly developed that it is a full-time job just to keep up with it. That means that other avenues are not being explored by the bright, imaginative young people, and that alternative career paths are blocked." --Philip W. Anderson Physicist and Nobel laureate, Princeton
If Einstein were alive today, he would be horrified at this state of affairs. He would upbraid the profession for allowing this mess to develop and fly into a blind rage over the transformation of his beautiful creations into ideologies and the resulting proliferation of logical inconsistencies. Einstein was an artist and a scholar but above all he was a revolutionary. His approach to physics might be summarized as hypothesizing minimally. Never arguing with experiment, demanding total logical consistency, and mistrusting unsubstantiated beliefs. The unsubstantial belief of his day was ether, or more precisely the naïve version of ether that preceded relativity. The unsubstantiated belief of our day is relativity itself. It would be perfectly in character for him to reexamine the facts, toss them over in his mind, and conclude that his beloved principle of relativity was not fundamental at all but emergent (emergent from MDT!) . . . It would mean that the fabric of space-time was not simply the stage on which life played out but an organizational phenomenon, and that there might be something beyond.[xlvii] (MDT!) -A Different Universe, Laughlin, Nobel Laureate
[String Theory] has no practical utility, however, other than to sustain the myth of the ultimate theory. There is no experimental evidence for the existence of strings in nature, nor does the special mathematics of string theory enable known experimental behavior to be calculated or predicted more easily. . . String theory is, in fact, a textbook case of Deceitful Turkey, a beautiful set of ideas that will always remain just barely out of reach. Far from a wonderful technological hope for a greater tomorrow, it is instead the tragic consequence of an obsolete belief system-in which emergence plays no role and dark law does not exist.[xlviii] --A Different Universe, Laughlin
MDT and Socrates' & Feynman's Honorable Pursuit of Truth
MDT delivers an ultimate theory underlying Huygens' Principle which Feynman's many-paths formulation of QM also exalts, whereas Loop Quantum Gravity and String Theory only sustain a myth of an ultimate theory and thus perpetual funding. Nobel Laureates have referred to this present era as the dark ages of physics, where progress in physics is frozen in a block universe tied together with tiny, vibrating strings and little loops which nobody has ever physically seen, violating the fundamental maxim of science put forth by Galileo, Einstein, et. al. Feynman echoes the words of the heroic Achilles (whom Socrates referenced while defending philosophy as a virtuous pursuit in the Apology[xlix]) in defining science as an honest, honorable pursuit: "As I detest the doorways of death, so too do I detest that man who speaks forth one thing while hiding in his heart another." (Achilles in Homer's Iliad[l])
The first principle is that you must not fool yourself--and you are the easiest person to fool. ... You just have to be honest in a conventional way after that. . . I would like to add something that's not essential to the science, but something I kind of believe, which is that you should not fool the layman when you're talking as a scientist. . . I'm talking about a specific, extra type of integrity that is not lying, but bending over backwards to show how you are maybe wrong, that you ought to have when acting as a scientist. And this is our responsibility as scientists, certainly to other scientists, and I think to laymen. . . If you're representing yourself as a scientist, then you should explain to the layman what you're doing--and if they don't want to support you under those circumstances, then that's their decision. [li] -Feynman, Cargo Cult Science
Errors are not in the art but in the artificers.[lii] -Newton
Please heed our advice that you too are not smitten--The book is not finished, the last word is not Witten. -Nobel Laureate Shedlon GlashowAttachment #1: 7_1_ja_wheeler_recommendation_mcgucken_medium2.jpgAttachment #2: 8_figure9.jpg
