So thanks everyone for reading and contributing to the discussion.

See you all next time, when we will no doubt repeat our arguments all over again, as though this thread never happened….

Cheers,

-cvj

Trying to derail some physics discussions to focus on a very poor and highly selective reading of the history of the subject (and the achievements therein) seems, indeed, mean-spirited. There’s been enough mean-spiritedness in this thread already, and we don’t need a nationalistic flavour to be added. I was hoping my attempt at humour in my previous comment would have helped diffuse it, but I was wrong.

So could I firmly request that we get away from this very silly argument and try to be a bit more constructive?

Thanks.

-cvj

Over the last century there have been truly great contributions to physics from Europeans, North Americans, Russians, Asians, Africans, South Americans and Antipodeans. I have colleagues from all over the world whom I admire and respect. Physics is something that brings us together, not something that divides us.

Hear hear! Let’s leave the “my team is best” claims to the world of sports.

Why are you guys starting a flame war based on nationality? Over the last century there have been truly great contributions to physics from Europeans, North Americans, Russians, Asians, Africans, South Americans and Antipodeans. I have colleagues from all over the world whom I admire and respect. Physics is something that brings us together, not something that divides us. Why would you start such a mean spirited argument?

Dear Dr. Conlon

Thank you for the helpful comments on your work. It’s nice to see people work through classes of models with the care that you and Fernando have taken. Keep up the good work!

With regard to statistics/counting arguments, I must say that they make me rather queasy. It’s far from clear to me at the present time [maybe this is just a statement of my ignorance] whether the most generic sources of low-energy supersymmetry breaking should be sought in geometric effects [volume effects or warping], or in non-perturbative field/string effects [gauge instantons, Euclidean D-brane instantons, metastable vacua at strong coupling a la ISS, et cetera]. Until we get good studies [such as the ones that you and Fernando have done on your large volume compactifications] on a broad range of constructions I think that this will largely remain an open question. I also have misgivings about statistics arguments in an infinitely self-reproducing multiverse due the the [general coordinate invariance] gauge dependence inherent in the constant time hypersurface slicing on super-horizon scales.

One of the damages Nazi regime produced in Europe is the moving of the greatest physicists from Europe to USA. So, today physics speaks english, no more german.

I think that situation in physics today is due the way someone thinks about such science fiction that easily can excite not well aware people to give funds to academia. This is true vandalism.

Andy

What a nonsense. Just check the Nobel prizes. Name me one important thing what has come out from fundamental physics research eg from Germany in the last 60 years. And I would say part of the reason is the attitude of people like you.

@150 “pressure forcing CERN to terminate its EXT preprint service”

Again what a nonsense.. as I happen to know first-hand, the people of the library took down this service because of constant misuse by crackpots. Another example how an inititally good idea has been destroyed by vandals. The internet is full of them.

-cvj

I think I should thank you for informing about my not proper correct english. I do not do that rather I see the poverty of your arguments. Grammatics or spelling are not answers. Sorry.

Your views about the peer-review system are rather naive. There is no serious technical control on papers unless they belong to the proper turf. Also in this case the control is rather sloppy.

Anyhow, having seen how sound are your arguments (spelling and grammatics) I am almost convinced that American “leaded” literature should have no problems for the future. I also appreciate American “leaded” movies. In this case too spelling and grammatics are relevant.

Good luck for supersimmetry at LHC. Otherwise I think that American “leaded” physics will be remembered for the greatest fiasco in the history. And I think you should not feel upset if someone will be laughing at you and your dear fellows then.

Andy

a correct theory can never stop being rubbish because of experiments: experiments only inform researchers about the validity of a theory but any theory is either valid and valuable or invalid and worthless before the experiments are performed which is why your musings about the LHC, supersymmetry, and string theory are lay misconceptions.

Supersymmetry is spelled with ‘i’, not ‘y’ and the adjective ‘Japanese’ is capitalized. In the process of renormalization, infinities are not ’swept under cover’ or ‘the rug’ but rather properly evaluated to obtain meaningful and accurate physical predictions and these predictions obtained from the formally infinite integrals are as important for physics as the simple predictions that don’t require any renormalization which is not the only reason why the Nobel prize for Feynman, Schwinger, and Tomonaga was one of the most deserved Nobel prizes for one of the most important discoveries in physics. In Feynman’s case, this discovery was surely not the only one and the path integral approach to quantum mechanics is a great gift of the U.S.-led physics, too.

Renormalization and renormalization group, other mostly American discoveries, are considered to be the most important developments of the last 60 years by many physicists and you haven’t mentioned these notions at all.

‘USA leaded’ should be ‘U.S.-led’ because ‘USA leaded’ is broken English. Time machines and wormholes are speculative and probably unphysical solutions of general relativity that are, by the way, studied uniformly in the whole world, not just the U.S., while the multiverse is no fiction but rather the correct explanation for the cosmological constant according to a significant portion of top contemporary physicists.

Publication of articles is decided by their being correct and articles are attractive or less attractive according to the power of their content, not fashions. Gauge theories might be considered to be a mere technical development in comparison with relativity and quantum mechanics but they are extremely important technical developments anyway.

Cheers
Anonymous hero

the QED including quantum corrections,
perturbative renormalizations,
electroweak theory … ,
quantum chromodynamics … ,
supersymmetry …”.

With respect to QED, Andy (149) noted “… Tomonaga was Japanese … QED was already known … by European researchers …”.
According to the book “The Second Creation” by Crease and Mann (revised edition, Rutgers 1996), (Swiss) E. C. G. Stueckelberg “… apparently wrote up a lengthy paper - in English, for once - that outlined a complete and correct description of the renormalization procedure for quantum electrodynamics. Sometime in 1942 or 1943, he apparently mailed it to the Physical Review. It was rejected. “They said it was not a paper, it was a program, an outline, a proposal,” Stueckelberg remembered. …”.
According to the book “The Beat of a Different Drum: The Life and Sciece of Richard Feynman”, by Jagdish Mehra (Oxford 1994), “… [ Richard Feynman won ] … the Nobel Prize in phyiscs for 1965, jointly with Julian Schwinger of Harvard and Sin-Itiro Tomonoga of Japan … After the Nobel award ceremonies … Feynman went to … CERN … to give a lecture. … Feynman’s lecture at CERN was attended by Ernst C. G. Stueckelberg … After the lecture, Stueckelberg was making his way out alone … from the CERN ampitheatre, when Feynman - surrounded by admirers - made the remark:
“He [ Stueckelberg ] did the work and walks alone toward the sunset; and, here I [ Feynman ] am, covered in all the glory, which rightfully should be his!” … “.

With respect to renormalization, according to the book “The Second Creation” by Crease and Mann (revised edition, Rutgers 1996), E. C. G. Stueckelberg “… [ with ] his student, Andre Petermann, invented … 1951 … the renormalization group, which is now essential to the construction of grand unified theories …”.

With respect to electroweak theory, (Dutch) ‘t Hooft made the crucial proof of renormalizability. According to the book “The Second Creation” by Crease and Mann (revised edition, Rutgers 1996), “… To Stephen Weinberg, ‘t Hooft’s proof just seemed like hand-waving. Then he heard that his friend , the Korean-American physicist Benjamin Lee was working on it. … Working on the problem himself, he [Weinberg] slowly grasped … his old SU2)xU(1) model. …”.

With respect to quantum chromodynamics, ‘t Hooft had the crucial insight of asymptotic freedom. According to the book “The Second Creation” by Crease and Mann (revised edition, Rutgers 1996), “… In June of 1972, ‘t Hooft attended a congress on gauge theories in Marseille … ‘t Hooft got up and announced that he had done the requisite calculations, and that Yang-Mills heories could have a negative coupling constant … to be asymptotically free …”.

With respect to supersymmetry, would the USA look good by taking credit for something for which there is zero experimental evidence, despite many years of explicit searching ?

Some other things:

Three-generation quark mixing was done by (Japanese) Kobayashi and Maskawa.

Independent alternative approaches to USA superstring dogma are attacked and suppressed in the USA (including blacklisting by the USA Cornell arXiv and pressure forcing CERN to terminate its EXT preprint service). Suppressed ideas include, but are not limited to, work motivated by (but not identical to) (Swiss) Armand Wyler’s approach to calculating force strengths.

Tony Smith

String theory is rubbish until we can see some experimental verifications. Not in sight. I hope for you and your friends that people at LHC will find at least supersimmetry. Otherwise you and your fellows will have wasted all your time that would have been better used otherwise, the same for funds.

QED was already known before WWII formulated by European researchers (please check Fermi lectures at Ann Harbor published on RMP). Feynman and Schwinger just invented a way to put infinities under the cover. Tomonaga was japanese.

Standard model cannot be seen as a true revolution, not as relativity and quantum mechanics at least. You are already looking for a way to supersede it. Supersimmetry has not been seen yet. You cannot put it in the list. Not yet.

There is a lot of science fiction that USA leaded research has produced: Multiverse, time machines, wormholes… Besides some freedom in research is going progressively degrading being superseded by what should collect more money in a faster time for academia. Fashions can decide about publication and a lot of meaningless papers appear in the most important journals. There is enough to be tired of this situation.

Relativity and quantum theory still stand there untouched.

Andy

Yes, I agree with you (and did say) that non-perturbative effects could violate perturbative baryon number violation. To do this check is model-dependent. However, it changes the dimensional estimate for the proton lifetime suppression from 1/M_string^2 (or whatever power applies) to 1/M_string^2 times e^{-something}
So as long as e^{-something} is small, the proton is sufficiently long lived.

Best wishes
Joe

if string theory were the only thing that the US-led physics gave to the mankind, it would already be comparable to relativity or quantum theory. But the US-led physics has also given the world of theoretical physics the following things: the QED including quantum corrections, perturbative renormalizations, electroweak theory (2/3 from the US), quantum chromodynamics (3/3), supersymmetry (10/20), many experimental insights in particle physics and cosmology, and many other things…

Thanks for your comments about our work. Perhaps I can make some comments.

With regard to proton decay and baryon number violation, this comes back to the nature of intersecting brane models as has been mentioned above in the thread. As long as the SU(3) originates from a U(3) = SU(3) x U(1) brane stack, with the U(1) being anomalous as normally occurs in intersecting brane models, then U(1)_B survives as an exact perturbative global symmetry of the low energy theory. At the string scale it becomes a gauge theory (the gauge boson of the anomalous U(1) becomes massive at the string scale by the Green-Schwarz mechanism). Baryon number is then only broken non-perturbatively. The existence of such global U(1) symmetries is a generic feature of intersecting brane models and so proton stability is not I think a particularly hard model building requirement.

On the presence of large volumes. I’m not sure why you think it should be unrepresentative to generate the hierarchy through the volume rather than anywhere else. The existence of the (susy) hierarchy can be expressed in the requirement that the gravitino mass be small. This is

m_{3/2} = e^(K/2) W = (flux-part)/Volume

To get hierarchically small m_{3/2} dynamically, you need a dynamic mechanism either to make W very small or Volume very large. That is, there are only two ways to get the susy hierarchy, and one of them is through a large volume. The statistics/counting results suggest that the flux-part W is expected to be 1 in natural units. If you accept this counting measure, then any dynamical generation of the susy hierarchy has to come through the volume. The large-volume models give a dynamical method to get exponentially large volume, and thus the hierarchy.

With the alpha’ corrections, they are always present and need to be included in every model, not just ours. But the fact that the volume is stabilised at such large values controls the alpha’ expansion and in particular kills the higher alpha’ terms.
This is analogous to what happens at a Banks-Zaks fixed point: as long as you stabilise at weak coupling you can forget higher loop effects.

With gauge coupling unification, you can’t have eveything

Best wishes
Joe

Andy

EXCELLENT SUGGESTION! I was vaguely aware of the existence of an argument of the kind JD outlined, but it was exceedingly interesting to see it articulated in that degree of detail. A still more detailed explanation would be *extremely* helpful and might even move this debate along!

I’m aware of this class of models, but have always regarded as unrepresentative, models that use large volumes to bring down the fundamental scales hierarchically [Horava-Witten was about my limit in this regard]. The work of Conlon and Quevedo is interesting, but I’m not convinced that it is representative of where the bulk of the IIB constructions consistent with the world we inhabit will lie. This just emphasizes Mark Srednicki’s point that we need to get a better handle on the space of solutions before we can really pose these arguments correctly.

“Mark,
I don’t buy your argument about proton decay. I’ve given mine. We disagree. People can look at both and make up their minds, or decide there’s no way to tell. In any case, it’s far from the main issue here.”

What argument? As Mark has noted, for you to claim that an anthropic [hence consistent with the Goldhaber bound] landscape is disfavoured by the Super-Kamiokande data, you would need to argue that it is statistically probable that string landscape solutions dynamically generate an “intermediate” mass scale [between 10^{11} and a few times 10^[15} GeV], in addition to the underlying string scale and the standard model scale whose generation is the problem that has dominated particle physics for the last 25 years. You have so far provided NO plausible argument that a third mass scale is generic. If a third mass scale is generic, how about a fourth? a fifth? What according to you is the number of mass scales that is most generic in the landscape, after anthropic cuts?

And yes, it is the main issue here! You have flatly asserted, here and elsewhere, that the longevity of the proton means that the anthropic landscape “has flat out been falsified”; but you then avoid giving any physics argument for the generation of the mass scale of the proton decay operator that such an assertion would require.

Now that the thread has calmed down, I hope, I wanted to mention what my understanding of zeta regularization is, as compared to energy cutoffs and other things.

First of all, I disagree, on a philosophical level, with the idea that a “theory of everything” can be “only an effective theory”. When you are in grad school in physics or math (and I spent 8 years so situated), the most certain way you can choose that will result in your not solving a problem is to assume that it is unsolvable. With respect to understanding the elementary particles in an ontological fashion rather than in only an effective fashion, I say the same principle applies. If you assume you are too stupid to understand the elementary particles then you are right.

The reason energy regularization is ugly is that it introduces a physical parameter, an energy, that one must add to the long list of arbitrary parameters you need to describe elementary particles. For the physicists, zeta regularization is preferable in that it doesn’t bring in an arbitrary paramater.

Or better, zeta regularization doesn’t bring in an arbitrary parameter if you are a physicist. If you are a mathematician, and you’ve read Hardy’s book on divergent series (as I have), then you know that zeta regularization is accomplished by making a small adjustment to the series.

Such a theory (i.e. one that assumes zeta regularization) is equivalent to a theory with no need for zeta regularization where the series are slightly modified by a small constant. That small constant a mathematician would include with the series is an arbitrary parameter just like an energy choice. Such a theory, from a mathematical point of view, needs to admit that when it is talking about zeta regularization, it is implicitly including an arbitrary parameter, one that theory does not address.

Far preferable, I think, is to work in a version of QFT that avoids infinities.

By the way, I have Zee and have read it.

It looks that the scenario Mark beautifully described (#128) reflects a real issue for string theory and perhaps any competing theory. A huge number of solutions may indeed raise a difficulty about how to verify that the whole approach is valid. Internal integrity of the whole theoretical structure is probably a good step towards accepting such a theory. (Probably we are still far from this point.)

There is the philosophical question which comes back in circles in this discussions:

Can there be science without falsifiable empirical predictions?

It is much too early to tell if we will have to deal with this question, and the strong desire for falsifiable prediction is certainly justified. But I think we do have to be prepared for a ‘yes’ answer. In any case, a theory being empirically unfalsifiable (either temporary or permanently), cannot be regarded as equivalent of it being wrong or of being of no content.

Woit’s book

It is absurd to suggest Woit’s book as a place for physicist to learn physics and it is not clear why Peter thinks that making absurd insulting claims will reflect well on him and his ideas. As for Peter’s book let me repeat that I found the part about physics a very good popular description of high energy physics especially for readers who are mathematically inclined. The part attacking string theory is not of academic level and is overall not convincing (but provide interesting food for thought). Most of this part is philosophical with many anecdotes and strong rhetoric. Chapter 12 is technical while still on a popular level. And again, a detailed popular-scientific response for Chapter 12 can be useful. If such a response exists please please let me know. (As I said, Aaron Bergman’s short response is very useful.)

Beside this, I do not think Woit’s book is a “poisoning” book. The book is of some influence and can be regarded as rather successful, but it looks Woit misunderstands the nature of his own success. The charm of Woit’s book is that he does not come from a position of an authority on any of the topics discussed there but from a position of a curious rather scholarly bystander. So it is a little strange to see Peter behaving now like an authority whether it is on “what is science” or on “string phenomenology” not to speak of “what is the appropriate font in weblog discussions.” (And regarding fonts the recent CAPITALIZATION (#130) was really really confusing.)

We do witness a certain shift of rhetoric in popular descriptions of ST between something like “string theory is on the verge of success and superstrings and M theory are two towers that are solid permanent parts of our understanding of nature” to “string theory represents one of the most daring, difficult and deep human scientific endeavors. It is not clear how far we are from success and success is not guaranteed”. Both these views and a whole spectrum of variations reflect some string theorists’ opinion all along. It is only natural that in the past people who were more optimistic were also more interested in the popular and “outreach” activities. At present (like on this post), we see a certain shift in rhetorics regarding string theory towards the second description. This reflects primarily the scientific emerging story and the findings within string theory, but perhaps the books of Woit and Smolin and the public debate also contributed to or triggered this.

For the general public, both these descriptions can be equally appealing. For young Ph.d’s I find the second description even more appealing than the first. This shift in popular rhetoric does not matter at all for how string theory is practiced, and has very small relevance if any to issues of funding and to the stature of string theorists in the scientific community.

Woit’s book and blog also attract some “anti science” voices and sentiments (and we certainly see many anti science-establishment and anti successful-scientists remarks.) I do not think anybody can take for granted not only string theory but the scientific endeavor as a whole, and making sincere effort to explain from time what science is all about is worth the trouble. (But frankly, neither the scientific endeavor nor prominent parts of it like string theory are in any immanent grave danger.)

The weblog discussion

The phenomenon of weblog discussions on academic and scientific matters is quite fascinating. It is very moving to see shoulder to shoulder, discussing scientific issues, for example, Chris Oakley, Joe Polchinski, Mark Srednicki, and Toni Smith (named ordered alphabetically), and it gives a good name to the scientific spirit and scientific community.

A lot of the discussions are repetitious (maybe the weblog ethic should exclude repeating the same idea the same way more than three times a month; with an exception for Peter - 30 times). But some parts are very interesting. Some personal reflections of Polchinski and Srednicki (and others) on their own career and on early history of string theory look valuable.

I really liked the long discussion (on cosmic variance) initiated by Oakley on QFT, renormalization and mathematics (”ST and public debate” late 400’s).

I also found the discussion of Gauss-law and higher representations of gauge groups (same thread late 300’s) of interest. There were several interesting explanations (with deep connections between them) why higher representations cannot appear in any variation of QED (and more general theories). The starting point for this particular exchange was an idea of Peter Woit that he himself quickly explained was not meant to apply to QED.

At the end, I still was not convinced that high order representations whose combined effect on Gauss law will be zero cannot eventually emerge in a variant of QED. (If only to show (in a friendly way) that Peter with all this debate and crusade mode will not be able to recognize a promising idea worth working on; even if it is his own idea. )

And what did I say that constitutes an “ad hominen argument”? That I dared to point out that your crtiicism, such as it is, applies not just to string theory, but to every research program in particle theory, including your own?

I agree completely that “people should be honestly evaluating what has worked and what hasn’t, and trying to figure out how to encourage people to do the kind of work necessary to come up with new ideas”. I think that’s exactly what’s happening, as it always does. The difference is, I believe the most promising avenues are still within string theory. Jacques has outlined one way things might work out well. You disagree, and want to pursue something else. I think that’s fine. I even think research of that sort deserves funding.

What I strongly disagree with is using an argument that actually applies to all current research to denigrate only one particular area of research.