The Fabric of the Cosmos

  On 12/12/2011 at 11:52 AM, Babar said:

  On 12/11/2011 at 7:14 PM, Smettingham Rutherford IV said:

Can anyone recommend books on these matters that are dumbed down in layman's terms while still essentially substantive?

 

I'd recommend:

Time does not exist : tales of a neutrino hater

by Babar R. Weirder (2012)

 

thanks.

added to my amazon wishlist

  On 12/12/2011 at 8:36 PM, Super lurker ultra V12 said:

  On 12/12/2011 at 11:52 AM, Babar said:

  On 12/11/2011 at 7:14 PM, Smettingham Rutherford IV said:

Can anyone recommend books on these matters that are dumbed down in layman's terms while still essentially substantive?

 

I'd recommend:

Time does not exist : tales of a neutrino hater

by Babar R. Weirder (2012)

 

thanks.

 

added to my amazon wishlist

if time doesn't exist why wait till 2012???

I demand a reformulation then

@michael

time |exist〉 ⊗ |does_not_exist〉.

  On 12/12/2011 at 6:24 AM, luke viia said:

auxien, are you studying physics?

no i'm not luke, why do you ask?

ah, no worries. I was just wondering why you are so mistrustful of string theory. I understand that it can not be directly tested (it's not really 'falsifiable' and so it's not really science, they say - and I'm tempted to agree)... but I guess I don't really understand the hatred for it as a possible explanation of the physics of the absolutely tiny.

Proponents of string theory say the math works; detractors say you can't test the theory. Fair enough on both sides... I don't personally have any experience with the mathematics of quantum mechanics, but I gather from hearsay that string theory manages to make the math of QM and of classical physics agree with each other -- and if that is true (I'll have to wait a while before I can even marginally rely on my own understanding about this), then what harm does it do to keep string theory in mind as a possibly valid physical theory?

Even someone as vocal about ST as Brian Greene readily admits that it probably won't be experimentally tested or have a chance to be proved in our lifetimes, and so the jury will be out for a while... seems like a pretty rational viewpoint, but I dunno.

  On 12/13/2011 at 6:54 AM, luke viia said:

ah, no worries. I was just wondering why you are so mistrustful of string theory. I understand that it can not be directly tested (it's not really 'falsifiable' and so it's not really science, they say - and I'm tempted to agree)... but I guess I don't really understand the hatred for it as a possible explanation of the physics of the absolutely tiny.

everything about string theory is suspicious. that doesn't mean it's not true; that is certainly possible. i just happen to think it's very unlikely. until it can be tested and experimented with to prove itself, it really is just a nice idea. the hatred i have for it comes from it's utter ridiculousness, and it's nearly-blind acceptance by many.

  On 12/13/2011 at 6:54 AM, luke viia said:

Proponents of string theory say the math works; detractors say you can't test the theory. Fair enough on both sides... I don't personally have any experience with the mathematics of quantum mechanics, but I gather from hearsay that string theory manages to make the math of QM and of classical physics agree with each other -- and if that is true (I'll have to wait a while before I can even marginally rely on my own understanding about this), then what harm does it do to keep string theory in mind as a possibly valid physical theory?

i've no experience with the guts and dirt of quantum mechanics, being a layperson who is simply very interested in the concepts. the understanding you explain is my understanding of it as well. i just think it's absolutely insane. that insanity could very well be true, and if it is true and valid and becomes tested and proved, so be it. i don't mind being wrong about my gut instincts. the slit experiments with photons, and the issues with 'observers,' and quantum entanglement, despite all being experimentally proven many times over, still seems like insane bunk to me; at least in our understanding of it. the fact that it is happening seems obvious enough, but the explanations for it, however, seem like just the best bridge we could make given what we know. to me, it seems that the true understanding of all these things will come to be known eventually, and will be quite different from the explanations that are accepted widely by scientists. i mention this because i imagine that string theory will be seen as something like that; an explanation that fits the evidence, but just doesn't make sense, and is known to be false.

  On 12/13/2011 at 6:54 AM, luke viia said:

Even someone as vocal about ST as Brian Greene readily admits that it probably won't be experimentally tested or have a chance to be proved in our lifetimes, and so the jury will be out for a while... seems like a pretty rational viewpoint, but I dunno.

and that's where some more of my distaste for string theory comes from. despite his acknowledgment that it is currently untestable, instead of pouring all his time and effort into devising a way to fix that problem, he writes books about string theory instead. if it were one or two people writing a few books on the theory, i wouldn't mind. but there's a LOT out there. and still....no proof. at all. there's some math that connects the dots (i'm in college for mathematics currently, so i'm not playing down the importance of mathematics in the least), but that's all there is. and the implications of the mathematics are just beyond rational thought. don't get me wrong, every major leap in paradigms in science requires thinking beyond what is comfortable or could be considered reasonable, but string theory is just SO much that i just can't accept it on what boils down to nearly-blind faith.

it should've been a theory that everyone kept in their pockets, saying 'hey, lets test this when we can. until then, let's see what else we can figure out,' but it almost seems like that is not happening at all. i'm sure there's lots of scientists working on other explanations, but that doesn't mean we should just pretend like string theory is the answer until we come up with something that actually makes sense. a collective 'we really don't know right now' is entirely appropriate, i think.

great answer, dude. I agree with the heart of every point you made. thanks :sup:

It was brought up in some documentary, might be one of those BBC Horizon documentaries, that it's quite odd that you can explain pretty much everything in the physical world with mathematics. Like it's something like Plato's idea of perfect forms floating "out there". Mathematics is a human invention, but somehow with the help of it it can sometimes be the only way of understanding how the universe works. To understand how quantum mechanics works, we can only use mathematics, it's beyond the human language. To quote Niels Bohr "We must be clear that when it comes to atoms, language can be used only as in poetry. The poet, too, is not nearly so concerned with describing facts as with creating images and establishing mental connections. "

We have made predictions out of abstract mathematical theories that have at a later point been proven in experiments. We have created new kinds of mathematics to explain something we observe. Which came first, mathematics or the universe? They are so interlinked it's weird. I am sure that if we would discover another universe with vastly different physical laws and we somehow could observe and experiment in it, we could use our mathematics from our universe to explain what goes on in that other vastly different universe. Why is that? We came to exist in a universe that is underpinned by physical laws that can be understood in the language of mathematics, does that mean that we somehow intrinsically have the ability to use mathematics to understand the world around us? Is mathematics universal in the broadest sense?

the objective and subjective are absolutley linked. We perceive the universe the way we do because it is an outward projection of a subjective consciousness. The multiverse is the outward projection of the total of all possible subjective consciousnesses. We didn't come to exist in a universe that can be understood in the language of mathematics. The universe came to exist in brains equipped with an adaptable language of mathematics to conceive it and subsequently describe it.

Brian Greene reacts to today's CERN announcement:

http://worldsciencefestival.com/blog/brian_greene_reacts_to_todays_cern_announcement

hmmmm.... He's almost as annoying as Prof. Brian Cox from D-REAM

  On 12/13/2011 at 5:26 PM, Fred McGriff said:

Brian Greene reacts to today's CERN announcement:

 

http://worldsciencef...rn_announcement

I don't like this. He's assuming the LHC should be able to detect the particle. Granted, I don't know much about it, but if the machine isn't capable, then obviously we're not going to find anything.

I guess they'll just build a bigger, more powerful machine?

So who here can imagine a TOE that does not sound insane? People who say string theory is suspicious because it sounds crazy, if they are being consistent, must reject essentially all of theoretical physics. Alternatives to string theory like loop quantum gravity etc. also sound crazy to people who are not intimately familiar with the subject.

String theory is essentially a branch of pure mathematics, and should be treated as such. But that is not a strike against it necessarily. the days of gaining huge physical insight with fairly intuitive straightforward mathematics are long over.

that said

I've read Lee Smolin's books, and his depiction of the state of string theory research is not optimistic. I respect him a lot and agree with him/auxien that other theories should be given more attention.

I'm absolutely entranced by any observation scientists can muster out of quantum physics, but I am certain that the real nature of these physics (or realms) cannot be quantified by the human brain. Whether they can remains to be seen, but if they truly can, I guess Albert's saying, that the strangest thing about the universe is its comprehensibility, remains true.

  On 12/17/2011 at 1:57 AM, extherium said:

  On 12/13/2011 at 5:26 PM, Fred McGriff said:

Brian Greene reacts to today's CERN announcement:

 

http://worldsciencef...rn_announcement

 

I don't like this. He's assuming the LHC should be able to detect the particle. Granted, I don't know much about it, but if the machine isn't capable, then obviously we're not going to find anything.

 

I guess they'll just build a bigger, more powerful machine?

he's assuming that because he studied particle physics before writing about the higgs boson