Yep, it turns out our theories are true and there's no magical way to create an anti-gravity field or go faster than light. Disappointing, but definitely not unexpected...
These theories are now further supported by evidence. The Standard Model isn't based on a couple of experiments. Its supported by thousands of independent observations over a multitude of points in physics. There's still a lot of stuff left unexplained, and currently unpredictable by the Standard Model. Dark matter and dark energy are just a couple of them. How the universe even started is still another. The big questions are still unanswered and may well surprise us all.
Also remember that there is the Standard Model Higgs boson, the one predicted by theory, and what's just being seen in experimental data. The team doing the announcement the other day were very explicit in saying that they've found a Higgs-like particle, but it may not be exactly the one in the Standard Model. i.e. There may be multiple types of Higgs bosons. Its going to take years of more research to really nail down what's just now being glimpsed.
Another good thing to keep in mind is the place of Newtonian physics in the Standard Model. Up until the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Newtonian physics were very well understood, and some scientists thought that may well have been all there was to know. Newtonian physics fits nicely inside the Standard Model. Its entirely possible, though who's to say if probable or not, that the current Standard Model will itself fit into an entirely new overarching branch of physics in the decades to come.
The LHC will be operating for 3 more months so that even more data can be collected, then will be shut down for about 2 years for repairs and upgrades. When it comes back on line, it will be much, much more powerful and who knows what might be discovered yet.
Quality of this article appears to be below regular standard of The Atlantic. Not only added content is full of exaggerations and stupid epithets, it's mostly a quote of a blog post!
I've gotten the feeling the Atlantic has made a major change in publishing policy in the last two or three months. They now seem to have a lot of what the print world calls blogs, which is to say: linkbait by notables that is conspicuously below their long-established reputation for quality. I hope they're not in trouble, this is one of those metrics-driven last ditch moves that media companies having trouble moving to the web pull.
Wolfram's ego really is a parody of itself at this point. Here we can read a grand tour of particle physics over 35 years and the only specific figure Wolfram manages to mention and give accolades to is Stephen Wolfram. His links to his own publications, his book, his his his, me me me, I I I. Unbelievable.
Edit: Higgs gets a mention, but just to highlight Wolfram's complaints to him about his theory, which turned out to be correct!
To be fair: (1) he actually worked in the field and knows the material, and (2) it's a blog post, not a corporate communication.
Talking about stuff you've done in a blog post isn't really notable. Obviously there's more to the story, and I wouldn't point anyone to it for a general overview of 70's physics. But I read it and was interested.
I agree that the Higgs mechanism feels like a hack. Something in my intuition raises a flag. Even more so when I was learning about theoretical particles called "gravitons" back in grade school. It's always seemed forced (no pun intended) the way many scientists shoehorn gravity in with the other three forces (weak strong and EM), which share much more in common with each other than with gravity. One of these things is not like the other...
Likewise, and related, dark matter/energy is a total hack. It's a shortcut contrived to sweep something we don't fully understand under the rug.
The idea of gravity as an emergent force, related to inertia, has been more appealing:
Wolfram and you both make the mistake of thinking that there is any value in saying that an established natural fact 'feels like a hack' or 'disagrees with your intuition'.
One of the most important lessons of modern physics is that intuition is a terrible guide when it comes to understanding the physical world at its most fundamental level.
Ha! I remember reading somewhere that Einstein refused to acknowledge Big bang theory and accelerating universe, because eventual heat death of universe was too depressing or something. I'm sure we'd all like a subspace communication channel, a warp drive, etc. but things are the way they are, we can just observe them, for now.
Einstein introduced the cosmological constant lambda Λ in an attempt to produce a steady state model of the universe -- in his view the most elegant solution to the problem of our existence was a universe infinite in age.
Later on when the Big Bang was firmly established it came to be seen as an unnecessary mistake.
In a twist of fate, when we discovered the accelerating expansion of the universe in the 90s -- also known as dark energy -- Einstein's cosmological constant Λ was the perfect place to 'absorb' it.
Can you provide further reading on that? I'd love to find out more about how exactly dark energy "absorbed" Einstein's ideas, and I'm sure I'm not alone here.
To me, 'hack' and 'unintuitive' carry different meanings. 'Hack' indicates some kind of ad-hoc patch to fix the model. Even if it fits the data, there could be a theoretical irregularity. I suspect that programmers experience this quite often when making a change that keeps the program working. Sure, it is possible that ultimately the hack is indeed how nature works, but its still worth exploring and making precise the nature of the irregularity.
The Higgs mechanism feels indeed like a hack, but the ( at the moment not significant ) clues, that we have an enhanced photon ratio gives some hope, I think. ( Likewise the absence of an signal in the tau-tau channel.)
On the other hand, we have good reason to believe in the graviton, since gravity is a field and if all fields are fundamentally quantum then we need a field-quanta, the graviton.
For dark matter we actually know quite a lot from the cosmic microwave background and from astronomical observations like the bullet cluster. And these point in the direction of a kind of particle. ( Dark energy is of course more of a hack.)
Maybe I'm misunderstanding something, but the Higgs Boson does not have anything to do with gravity, with one curious exception.
But it's "main" job is inertia. The Higgs Boson get us one step closer to explaining why it takes more energy to start a proton moving than to start an electron moving. It does not explain them attracting eachother.
The one curious problem with Higgs' Boson not being related to gravity is that for some unknown and currently unexplained reason, inertial mass is equal (except for a constant factor) to gravitic mass.
Gravity is in the unique position of directly affecting everything. No other field (unless I'm mistaken) does this. Most people say there is a gravitational force between two objects that have mass. Mass (rest-mass/invariant mass) is just another form of energy. Photons don't have rest mass, yet they are affected by gravity. Every type of thing we've ever observed is affected by, and contributes to the gravitational field, because everything we've ever observed involves energy. A gravitational field that has energy even interacts with itself.
My personal opinion is that we'll eventually find that gravity is something completely different than the other three fundamental interactions, and can't be lumped in with an analogous theory. It has a unique relationship with spacetime.
That's how Wolfram usually is, but I do find him to be intelligent and have some interesting things to say, if you can get past the style. For example, I think there really are some interesting things in A New Kind of Science about philosophy of computation, if you read it as a Regular Book and pretend all the hype and Book To End All Books positioning isn't there.
First, it's based on a Wolfram blog, which should have been submitted instead of this. Perhaps it was. I don't know.
Second, cue up the "I hate Wolfram because he has a big ego" chorus which always runs on ad infinitum whenever the man's name comes up.
Third, it's a post from The Atlantic -- yet again. Can a day go by without multiple posts from that place appearing on HN? Is The Atlantic so incredible to not even get the mandatory blogspam comment that any other attempt like this would receive here?
</rant>
You know, when I was a teenager I was very excited about Stephen's book. Then I found and read Shalizi's review, and reluctantly changed my mind. At the time I didn't have enough background knowledge or intellectual confidence to really see it for what it is, which is a kind of weird character assassination masquerading as a scientific critique (it is interesting to note that Shalizi's PhD advisor and Stephen go way back).
Much later, after some pure math and a bit of industry, I actually met Wolfram, talked to him at length, did some science in the NKS style, and in fact I found the whole thing so stimulating (and the other people so cool) that I applied for a job at Wolfram Research, where is where I now work. In fact, at this exact moment, I'm acting as an instructor at the Wolfram science summer school, supervising students around the world ranging from gifted high-school to PhD. It's a lot of fun.
NKS -- both the book and the methodology -- isn't perfect, and hasn't delivered on some of its promises. However, I think it does represent a really cool network of ideas and insights, if you take the trouble to understand them, especially in their historical context. Many of them familiar, of course, but Wolfram puts them in a new light and unifies various ideas.
And I think in the next few decades it will really come into its own, when we get memristor arrays that need to be programmed, universal constructors that need simple rules to operate, algorithmic drugs that have to be both simple and effective, and so on. "Watch this space", etc.
I agree with a lot of the sentiments here about Wolfram's ego. Aside from all that, I found his blog post interesting. The below items I found the most interesting (note: I haven't read NKS, and I'm aware of the criticisms, but his insistence on the significance of it is intriguing nonetheless):
-----
> Was it worth spending more than $10 billion to find this out? I definitely think so. Now, what’s actually come out is perhaps not the most exciting thing that could have come out. But there’s absolutely no way one could have been sure of this outcome in advance.
> Perhaps I’m too used to the modern technology industry where billions of dollars get spent on corporate activities and transactions all the time. But to me spending only $10 billion to get this far in investigating the basic theory of physics seems like quite a bargain.
> I think it could be justified almost just for the self-esteem of our species: that despite all our specific issues, we’re continuing a path we’ve been on for hundreds of years, systematically making progress in understanding how our universe works. And somehow there’s something ennobling about seeing what’s effectively a worldwide collaboration of people working together in this direction.
> That in fact there’s no reason all the richness we see in our universe couldn’t arise from some underlying rule—some underlying theory—that’s even quite simple.
There are all sorts of things to say about what that rule might be like, and how one might find it. But what’s important here is that if the rule is indeed simple, then on fundamental grounds one shouldn’t in principle need to know too much information to nail down what it is. But what I suspect is that from the experimental results we have, we already know much more than enough to determine what the correct ultimate theory is—assuming that the theory is indeed simple.
Wolfram may be betting on the Nightmare Scenario, which is that the Higgs turns out to be exactly the standard model Higgs, and nothing else is learned.
This is not true. Check http://www.meessen.net/AMeessen/STQ/STQ.pdf for a new theory extending the standard model. Beside predicting a bunch of new elementary particles, it also propose a new organization of elementary particles equivalent to the mendeliev table, except that it's a 3D structure. These new particles have all no electrict charge and may combine together as quarks to form hadron like particles my father call neutralons. These could stand for black matter.
I heard similiar pessimistic claims from physicist in my lab: there is nothing much left to discover in high energy physics. Maybe it's like a post partum depression thing. Just after a major and popular question has been answered, and before a new one, with a new theory, has been settled, some researcher may feel lost.
From my father's work, many of which is not published yet, I know that there is still allot to be discovered and tested. They just need a new theory. That's all.
45 comments
[ 5.7 ms ] story [ 103 ms ] threadhttp://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2012/07/a-moment-for-particle...
Also remember that there is the Standard Model Higgs boson, the one predicted by theory, and what's just being seen in experimental data. The team doing the announcement the other day were very explicit in saying that they've found a Higgs-like particle, but it may not be exactly the one in the Standard Model. i.e. There may be multiple types of Higgs bosons. Its going to take years of more research to really nail down what's just now being glimpsed.
Another good thing to keep in mind is the place of Newtonian physics in the Standard Model. Up until the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Newtonian physics were very well understood, and some scientists thought that may well have been all there was to know. Newtonian physics fits nicely inside the Standard Model. Its entirely possible, though who's to say if probable or not, that the current Standard Model will itself fit into an entirely new overarching branch of physics in the decades to come.
The LHC will be operating for 3 more months so that even more data can be collected, then will be shut down for about 2 years for repairs and upgrades. When it comes back on line, it will be much, much more powerful and who knows what might be discovered yet.
Edit: Higgs gets a mention, but just to highlight Wolfram's complaints to him about his theory, which turned out to be correct!
Talking about stuff you've done in a blog post isn't really notable. Obviously there's more to the story, and I wouldn't point anyone to it for a general overview of 70's physics. But I read it and was interested.
Likewise, and related, dark matter/energy is a total hack. It's a shortcut contrived to sweep something we don't fully understand under the rug.
The idea of gravity as an emergent force, related to inertia, has been more appealing:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/13/science/13gravity.html?pag....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropic_gravity
Later on when the Big Bang was firmly established it came to be seen as an unnecessary mistake.
In a twist of fate, when we discovered the accelerating expansion of the universe in the 90s -- also known as dark energy -- Einstein's cosmological constant Λ was the perfect place to 'absorb' it.
On the other hand, we have good reason to believe in the graviton, since gravity is a field and if all fields are fundamentally quantum then we need a field-quanta, the graviton.
For dark matter we actually know quite a lot from the cosmic microwave background and from astronomical observations like the bullet cluster. And these point in the direction of a kind of particle. ( Dark energy is of course more of a hack.)
But it's "main" job is inertia. The Higgs Boson get us one step closer to explaining why it takes more energy to start a proton moving than to start an electron moving. It does not explain them attracting eachother.
The one curious problem with Higgs' Boson not being related to gravity is that for some unknown and currently unexplained reason, inertial mass is equal (except for a constant factor) to gravitic mass.
My personal opinion is that we'll eventually find that gravity is something completely different than the other three fundamental interactions, and can't be lumped in with an analogous theory. It has a unique relationship with spacetime.
That's just perfectly backwards.
This is great for physics - now humanity knows that much more about the reality in which we live.
Bad for physicists, becuase now they will have a harder time getting grants.
First, it's based on a Wolfram blog, which should have been submitted instead of this. Perhaps it was. I don't know.
Second, cue up the "I hate Wolfram because he has a big ego" chorus which always runs on ad infinitum whenever the man's name comes up.
Third, it's a post from The Atlantic -- yet again. Can a day go by without multiple posts from that place appearing on HN? Is The Atlantic so incredible to not even get the mandatory blogspam comment that any other attempt like this would receive here? </rant>
Come on guys. We can do better than this.
... First Cause is inexplicable. Get over it.
Ironically, I'd consider myself a believer, but some arguments are flat out cringe-worthy.
/me runs
Would people who know the book or the man say this is accurate? It's all I associate with the name now.
You know, when I was a teenager I was very excited about Stephen's book. Then I found and read Shalizi's review, and reluctantly changed my mind. At the time I didn't have enough background knowledge or intellectual confidence to really see it for what it is, which is a kind of weird character assassination masquerading as a scientific critique (it is interesting to note that Shalizi's PhD advisor and Stephen go way back).
Much later, after some pure math and a bit of industry, I actually met Wolfram, talked to him at length, did some science in the NKS style, and in fact I found the whole thing so stimulating (and the other people so cool) that I applied for a job at Wolfram Research, where is where I now work. In fact, at this exact moment, I'm acting as an instructor at the Wolfram science summer school, supervising students around the world ranging from gifted high-school to PhD. It's a lot of fun.
NKS -- both the book and the methodology -- isn't perfect, and hasn't delivered on some of its promises. However, I think it does represent a really cool network of ideas and insights, if you take the trouble to understand them, especially in their historical context. Many of them familiar, of course, but Wolfram puts them in a new light and unifies various ideas.
And I think in the next few decades it will really come into its own, when we get memristor arrays that need to be programmed, universal constructors that need simple rules to operate, algorithmic drugs that have to be both simple and effective, and so on. "Watch this space", etc.
-----
> Was it worth spending more than $10 billion to find this out? I definitely think so. Now, what’s actually come out is perhaps not the most exciting thing that could have come out. But there’s absolutely no way one could have been sure of this outcome in advance.
> Perhaps I’m too used to the modern technology industry where billions of dollars get spent on corporate activities and transactions all the time. But to me spending only $10 billion to get this far in investigating the basic theory of physics seems like quite a bargain.
> I think it could be justified almost just for the self-esteem of our species: that despite all our specific issues, we’re continuing a path we’ve been on for hundreds of years, systematically making progress in understanding how our universe works. And somehow there’s something ennobling about seeing what’s effectively a worldwide collaboration of people working together in this direction.
> That in fact there’s no reason all the richness we see in our universe couldn’t arise from some underlying rule—some underlying theory—that’s even quite simple. There are all sorts of things to say about what that rule might be like, and how one might find it. But what’s important here is that if the rule is indeed simple, then on fundamental grounds one shouldn’t in principle need to know too much information to nail down what it is. But what I suspect is that from the experimental results we have, we already know much more than enough to determine what the correct ultimate theory is—assuming that the theory is indeed simple.
But it's the unexpected that are the most exciting, no?
I heard similiar pessimistic claims from physicist in my lab: there is nothing much left to discover in high energy physics. Maybe it's like a post partum depression thing. Just after a major and popular question has been answered, and before a new one, with a new theory, has been settled, some researcher may feel lost.
From my father's work, many of which is not published yet, I know that there is still allot to be discovered and tested. They just need a new theory. That's all.