Archive for the 'string theory' Category

Nuclear Guy Goes Nuclear

Published
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Clifford
on November 23, 2006
in science, science in the media and string theory
. 6 Comments

star rhic goldFollowing on from her earlier post (with Stefan) on the research effort to understand Brookhaven’s RHIC physics with string theory, Bee reports some things she heard about a nuclear physics conference in Shanghai (Quark Matter ‘06). Apparently Larry McLerran -who is at Brookhaven- did a 20 minute anti-string (and anti-Brian Greene) rant. You can see some slides, etc, over there.

(Note for the non-expert:- RHIC means “Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider”. Picture on right (click for larger): Tracks from collision of two beams of gold nuclei -the heavy ions- recorded by the STAR detector at the RHIC experiment. More here. In a sense, a new form of matter is formed in these conditions - the issue is how to understand its properties.)

This sort of thing is rather funny, so far (apparently Brian Greene was given a “Pinocchio award” in the talk?! ). Let’s hope it does not turn into something serious.

In moving forward:

Continue reading ‘Nuclear Guy Goes Nuclear’

More Scenes From the Storm in a Teacup, VI

Published
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Clifford
on November 10, 2006
in science, science education, science in the media and string theory
. 326 Comments

A quick update:

  • There was a second installment of the discussion led by George Johnson about press coverage of string theory. He went back to look to see what exactly some of those early articles said… How much coverage was there to start with? When did it start? When did it begin get out of hand? Did it get out of hand? Is this all just part of a standard bubble that happens for any field that the press decides to cover, a sort of manufactured (my word not his) boom and bust cycle? All issues that were touched upon in the discussion. Note also that the discussion broadens out considerably -as it should, (finally!)- to talk about the broader issue of coverage of topics in physics and science in general. The positive and negative effects of press coverage on attracting the next generation of students was also discussed. The discussion (this aspect in particular) was especially interesting because of the remarks by a number of senior people in the audience who were able to talk about their experiences over the years having seen the cycles recruitment of students in their own departments. Worth a listen/look at the archive here.
  • Lee Smolin has written a “Dear Friends” letter in response to some of the things that have been pointed out about his book, and about other points he’s made publicly in various discussions*. He’s given over some time to write quite a bit, which in general is a good thing to have done. You can find it here.

I’ll leave it to you to form your own opinion about Smolin’s remarks (I’ve not had time to read it in detail yet), and start a discussion here. Maybe ask him some followup questions here, for example. To help with context and build a more complete picture, do read some of the earlier comments and discussions involving him -and questions put directly to him- on the threads that share the name of this post. (e.g., Here and here.) Put those alongside the discussion with Peter Woit and of the central thesis of Woit’s book too. They are inseparable.

My set of opinions on the issue is the same as it was before. Even though I’ve said it all so many times here, since blogs seem to have no memory, I will summarize a bit:

Continue reading ‘More Scenes From the Storm in a Teacup, VI’

Spooky Strings

Published
by
Clifford
on October 31, 2006
in fun and string theory
. 7 Comments

Strings are just everywhere. Have you noticed? Spooky isn’t it?

Spotted this two weeks ago one foggy morning outside my hotel window in Cambridge, and saved it for today to share with you (click for larger):

Cambridge Cobwebs

Have a spooky stringy Halloween!

-cvj

String Theory Goes A Little Bit Country?

Published
by
Clifford
on October 31, 2006
in humour and string theory
. 2 Comments

In these hard times for basic science research, scientists look elsewhere for supplementary financial support. It seems that the monolithic entity simply known as “String Theory” is trying to diversify its funding sources even more creatively than before! Some recently spotted* evidence in the Nashua Telegraph in New Hampshire:

“String Theory plays at barn dance”
WINDHAM – The Windham Recreation Committee will host a Family Barn Dance at the Town Hall from 8-11 p.m. on Friday.

Live fiddle music will be provided by String Theory. Frank Woodward will be the caller. All dances are taught. Beginners, singles, families and children are welcome.

Donations will be accepted at the door.

-cvj

(*Thanks Michelle!)

More Scenes From the Storm in a Teacup, V

Published
by
Clifford
on October 27, 2006
in science, science and society, science education, science in the media and string theory
. 91 Comments

At the (K)ITP the other day there was a journalist-led discussion/presentation on the largely-media-driven “controversy” about string theory. You know my opinion on this -it’s a largely made up story based on two inaccurate chariacatures (in book form) of research in the field- told by the same journalists and editors who some time earlier brought you the glossy stories about string theory that played up the excitement and promise, and played down the often-said but often-ignored cautionary remarks. The irony of all of this seems to have been lost on most. (I’m not saying that string theorists are entirely blameless in this, but I’ve seen how hard it is to get a balanced remark -about the basic process of seeing a complex scientific program through to its end- to survive next to a glossy one-liner).

The point is that the story being told now in the press is simply the one that journalists and editors want to tell now - a David vs Goliath story. It has little or nothing to do with what is actually going on in the science research. The journalist -George Johnson- does a good job of pointing out supporting evidence for this by going through a Continue reading ‘More Scenes From the Storm in a Teacup, V’

News From the Front, IV

Published
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Clifford
on October 22, 2006
in science, string theory and work
. 8 Comments

(A relatively technical post follows.)

So imagine the following:

You’re walking along the street, minding your own business, and somebody walks up to you and tries to sell you a string theory. So you stop and examine the goods, since you’re in the market for string theories, on the lookout for any that might be novel, useful, bright, or shiny, etc. You never know when one or other property might come in useful.

Question: How do you know that it is a string theory? Let me be sure to point out that it comes with a lot of the defining path integral done for you. In other words, you don’t have to do the integral over string world sheet metrics and world sheet fields. This was done in the factory for you. What you have access to are parameters such as the coefficients of the operators in the theory, and you can also adjust the value of the string coupling.

So a lot of the stuff you would recognize as a string theory in your typical string theorist’s notebook have been cleaned up. They’ve been integrated over. The observable physics actually never cared about them (the technical details of summing over metrics - slicing up the moduli space of inequivalent metrics properly at each genus, etc etc…. all done), assuming you’ve done the integrals properly. The factory did it all for you.

So what criteria do you use to decide that it is a string theory at all? Actually, this is not an idle question. Think about the issue in the context of trying to understand some phenomenon or phenomena in Nature. How would you know you had a string theory description underlying the physics?

Well, what we might start doing at this point is start listing various things we’ve learned about strings that we think are rather spiffy about the theory that make them different from what we’ve seen before. I’m sure you have your favourites.

A word or more of caution though. From my new paper:

With a few notable (and highly instructive) examples in D ≤ 2, string theory still lacks a satisfactory and well–understood non–perturbative definition. It is fair to say that while strings have marvellous properties that may prove a great boon for studying Nature, we have not been learning about these properties systematically, but instead by following the theory into regimes which have become accessible to us by various techniques. As a result, it is not clear what the big picture is —certainly not clear is the complete list of phenomena we should expect from string theory.

My point? Do we really know enough about what string thory is to decide when to rule out something as being stringy or not. How do you know when to hand over the cash to the person on the street trying to sell you one?

Ok, so you’re thinking: What’s he getting at? What’s in this paper?

Well, one of the things of which we are all very proud -that we show off at theorist parties to all our theorist friends from other fields, you’ll admit- are branes, right? We’ve spent a huge amount of effort on them in the last decade or so expecially, and Continue reading ‘News From the Front, IV’

More Scenes From the Storm in a Teacup, IV

Published
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Clifford
on October 5, 2006
in science, science in the media and string theory
. 165 Comments

Finally we get to some real substance in the program! (See earlier notes, and thoughts.) Jeff actually mentions all the effort going on string theory and experiments at Brookhaven, and asks that question I keep asking everyone… “why oh why is this never mentioned by the press in these discussions?” I’ve asked this of Peter Woit on his blog a lot too, for example, and have never got much of an answer. Peter and Lee want the world to believe -by reading their books- that the entire field of string theory is just people sitting around discussing the Anthropic Principle and lots of different universes, and blah blah blah… It serves the purpose of the books in question to completely distort the view of what is actually going on in the field. They claim that there is no experimental support (true) or hope for experimental support (how can they know that?) for string theory… but they ignore the fact -they intentionally don’t tell you, dear reader- about the interesting work going on by a huge percentage of the field to use string theory to study the structure of nuclear matter. It is still in its early stages, and may not work, but it is rather interesting. As Jeff put it, about the new form of matter that is constructed in these experiments, string theory is “the only approach that I know of” that currently seems to be able to explain the observed properties….

Lee, about the omission of this huge effort in string theory research from his book: “At least it is alluded to…”

That’s just lame.

He then proceeds to rather poorly attempt to claim that such contact with experiment Continue reading ‘More Scenes From the Storm in a Teacup, IV’

More Scenes From the Storm in a Teacup, III

Published
by
Clifford
on October 5, 2006
in science, science in the media and string theory
. 8 Comments

Poor Jeff!

I’m listening to the program now, and 40 minutes into it, there’s been long sections of completely pointless waffle by Lee and the presenter (the latter keeps reading long and largely peripherally relevant quotes from philosophers), broken up by breaks to shout the name of the station at you…. then long musical ditties… then back to more waffle…. and then the few times Jeff gets to come in, he is interrupted again by the presenter with more irrelevant stuff about philosophy. Jeff managed to say at one point “I’d rather talk about what can be measured, what we can calculate…”, but this seems to have been ignored. (Here and later I am not giving the exact words of what was said… you should listen to the archive.) He is given a little time to start to explain what strings is about….

A bit later…. Lee is just going on and on and on and on about…. uh…. crap and utter irrelevance. The battle between Liebniz and Newton. Relational vs absolute. Sigh. I just don’t get it. Why is this happening? Another music/station reminder break…

A bit later…. Jeff finally manages to get a bit of a word in. He has to jump in at one point when Lee starts actually redefining on the spot what his book is about… Continue reading ‘More Scenes From the Storm in a Teacup, III’

More Scenes From the Storm in a Teacup, II

Published
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Clifford
on October 5, 2006
in science, science in the media and string theory
. 18 Comments

I just heard* that at 9:00pm Chicago time, there will be a discussion between Lee Smolin and Jeff Harvey, presumably about string theory, and you can listen to it live on radio station WGN, here.

Thinks:

  • I wonder if it will be as utterly content-free and pointless as the one that took place between Lee Smolin and Brian Greene on Science Friday some weeks back? That one was so annoying in places that I never finished the blog post I was writing about it. It was mostly of the following structure (I paraphrase):

    Lee says wise and learned things like “there should be a diversity of effort in approaching problems in fundamental physics”.

    The host, Ira Flatow, turns to Brian (on telephone link) and says “what do you think of that, Brian Greene?”

    Brian says, “Yes, I agree. I have several students working on things outside of string theory.”

    …thus blowing a bit of a hole in the claim that string theory is this cult/monolith that somehow blinds us all to other great ideas.

  • I wonder if Lee will bring out what I consider to be one of the most ridiculous Continue reading ‘More Scenes From the Storm in a Teacup, II’

Southern California Strings Seminar

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Clifford
on September 22, 2006
in science and string theory
. 8 Comments

Southern California String SeminarOn Friday and Saturday of next week (September 29th and 30th), the next Southern California Strings Seminar will be happening! It’s a regional meeting for people doing research in string theory and related topics, and as I’ve said before, I’d especially like to see more young people come out and take part. We make a special effort to ask the speakers to spend a little time at the beginning of their talk setting the scene (speaking about motivations, what has gone before, etc) so that the series can be of great value to people who are trying to learn what’s going on in a particular topic at research level (this can be students, postdocs, or faculty, in fact).

If you’re doing this kind of physics research anywhere in the Southern California region, and want to take part, please come. See the website for details, and try to let the hosts -this time it is USC- know that you’re coming so that we can arrange lunches, etc. (We’ll be asking for a contribution of about $5-$10 to help with lunches, cookies, coffee, and other goodies that will be on tap during the day.)

From the main page of the website, I wrote:

ken intriligator at scssJoin us as we (members of several of the local groups with interest in string theory and related topics) sit together to discuss new ideas and developments (both general and technical) in the field. The presentations will be accompanied by plenty of discussion and in the first part of each talk the speaker will take special care to set the scene and context of the work in a pedagogical manner so as to encourage participation by younger members of the field.

Also, here’s what I mention about the inaugural one, which was in May 2005, hosted Continue reading ‘Southern California Strings Seminar’

The String Doll Gang

Published
by
Clifford
on September 7, 2006
in humour, science and string theory
. 6 Comments

Actually, it’s even better than I thought! There’s a whole collection called “The String Doll Gang”. Here are some of them (click for larger):

  string doll gang   string doll gang

Cute aren’t they? Yes, each apparently made of onecontinuouspieceofstring. More about them, and closeups (and prices) at this site.

Now, being a responsible citizen and all, I can’t discourage you enough from trying to match various members of the real live string community to these dolls. That would be a bad thing to do. Bad!

-cvj

Little Open String Prince

Published
by
Clifford
on September 5, 2006
in humour, science and string theory
. 5 Comments

So, string theorists, the next time anyone asks you again whether scientists will ever be able to directly demonstrate that everything and everyone is made of string, show ‘em this !
the little string prince

Yes, this (a surprise gift last week*) is a “Little Prince” doll, made of onecontinuouspieceofstring!

-cvj

(*Thanks Michelle!)

More Scenes From the Storm in a Teacup, I

Published
by
Clifford
on August 21, 2006
in science, science in the media and string theory
. 4 Comments

Aaron Bergman has written an extensive review of Peter Woit’s attack-book on string theory. I’ll let you read the thoughtfully written 11-page pdf document linked there. I think that Aaron deserves some sort of medal or other award for making the effort. Peter responded here.

Note from the title that this post is part I of II. Part I was to be a quick rundown of my thoughts on the recent Science Friday program featuring a head-to-head between Brian Greene and Lee Smolin over string theory research. I never finished writing it. I’ll try again in a day or two, and make it part II of this.

You can pretty much tell from the title of this post what I’m going to say. This is all just mostly media-inflated nonsense, which will continue for some time. In case it is not obvious why, I’ll summarise my reasons for saying this (again) in that post.

Summer has ended for me. Tons of stuff to do during first day of semester tomorrow.

-cvj

(Spotted at Uncertain Principles.)

All Done

Published
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Clifford
on August 17, 2006
in science, string theory and work
. 0 Comments

Well, I gave the talk and I’m back at my temporary apartment. I’m exhausted, as is always the case for me after general talks. Does that happen to you?

I think I managed to get across everything I wanted to (see the previous post) and it was a nice complement to the TV interview. I was pleased to get to talk about the exciting research applying string techniques to strongly coupled gauge theory, and emphasize the storm-in-a-teacup nature of the current media obsession with the “Landscape issue”.

There were several excellent questions, which included staying after the lecture answering several questions into the night. A worthwhile evening, it must be said. If interested, in addition to the TV interview already showing daily since Wednesday, there are several opportunities to see the entire talk on Grassroots TV starting this weekend (check their online schedule for times).

Now to get back to the huge number of things to be done before the Summer ends for me this year. Only problem is, I’ve only one non-weekend day of the Summer left. The insanity begins on Monday.

-cvj

Talking Heads On Strings

Published
by
Clifford
on August 15, 2006
in science, science in the media and string theory
. 3 Comments

Well, I had the “Aspen Physics Preview” interview for the station called “Grassroots TV” this afternoon. It was a pleasant chat with host Sy Coleman about aspects of research into fundamental physics and string theory. I don’t have a good sense of what it was like since I was focusing on answering questions, but I do believe that I was able to get across some of the key ideas that I mentioned earlier, although we ran out of time before we got into the details of the Landscape “controversy”, but it was mentioned as a sort of teaser for the main talk. We just talked for 27 minutes non-stop, and it will be broadcast as recorded -unedited- warts and all.

My main mission in a lot of this discussion is to point out that:

Continue reading ‘Talking Heads On Strings’

Aspen Talks

Published
by
Clifford
on August 15, 2006
in string theory and work
. 0 Comments

I’m going to try to tell you a bit about a few of the talks (physics and otherwise) that I’ve seen here at Aspen, but not now. I’ve got rather a lot to do right now…. But I will try later in the week. In the meantime, here is a shot of one of the talks we had on the patio, with the sounds of the rehearsals for the Music Festival coming from the tent nearby. It is of David Berenstein (one of the organizers of the earlier string workshop) telling us about an idea for doing phenomenology directly using brane constructions. You can see Hirosi Ooguri listening intently at the front of the audience.

David Berenstein in action

David’s proposals were bold (there is a paper coming) and he was given a rough time here and there, but he persevered to the end. Looks a bit like he is emerging from Elsewhere in a flash of light, doesn’t it? Hmm…

-cvj

The Blurb

Published
by
Clifford
on August 14, 2006
in academia, science and string theory
. 4 Comments

Well, I dashed off a lecture summary to be printed out in time for the public lecture on Thursday:

Title: Strings Everywhere?

Hold it right there. What is the meaning of the title? I’m riffing on two things, one physical and the other sociological. The first, vastly more important theme is the fact that strings are powerful tools that represent one of the major steps in modern “technologies” (like quantum field theory) that are useful in several areas of theoretical physics, and -I suspect- may well become useful in several other areas as the field matures. I have in mind the idea of an “effective theory”: that there are physical phenomena that are not as easily (or in some cases -not at all-) described by standard particle-like theories (quantum field theories, relativistic or otherwise) as they are by string theories. Stringy techniques -quantum mechanics of extended objects- have and (I suspect) will continue to show up in diverse places in physics, and not just particle physics where it began. I hope to give some indication of this in the talk. One of my primary examples will be the contrast between electromagnetism and the strong interactions, I imagine. There are phenomena like quark confinement that are rather hard to describe using standard QFT, but seem to be extremely natural in a string theory framework…

The second, which to my mind is a storm in a teacup, is the issue of strings showing up all over the press, and increasingly (because the press -editors, some writers, and publishers- love a controversy and a David-vs-Goliath fairlytale, sadly sometimes at the expense of painting an accurate picture; see e.g., here) in a negative light as being some useless juggernaut-come-cult. I’ll talk about that a bit too…

Anyway, here is the blurb I dashed off for the background to the lecture:

Continue reading ‘The Blurb’

Hard To Avoid

Published
by
Clifford
on August 14, 2006
in academia, science, science education and string theory
. 7 Comments

Well, I have to face up to it. There’s been this embarrassing thing all around town here in Aspen that I have not told you about, but I have to get it done this week. Everywhere you go around town -and I mean everywhere- there are little piles or pinboards of free flyers telling you what things there are to do in Aspen this Summer, along with other information about bus routes, timetables, etc. So you’ll see things for the Summer Films, the Theatre series, the Music Festival, the Music School, the talks going on at the Aspen Institute, and…. the Summer Public Physics Lectures at the Aspen Center for Physics. I’m pleased that the latter gets such wide distribution, since…. well you know how I feel about getting more Science out to the Public. But here’s the embarrassing bit:

flyer at large

closeup of flyerI’m giving one of the Public lectures this Summer, and they decided to use an image of me as the cover of the flyer! So everywhere I go, there I am smiling back at me, holding up some strings. (Closeup on right, if you click.) It is actually quite an honour to be chosen to give such a talk, and more so that they wanted to use my photo for the series this year. Of course they got my agreement before using the photo, but it is still a shock to see it all over the town, but a bit embarrassing when asked about it by my colleagues! (I admit that am very pleased -given my passions in this area- to be alongside useful information about public transport. I like that a lot somehow….Perhaps I could have supplied them with a picture of me with the Brompton.)

The image they used, which is by the excellent photographer Phil Channing, has haunted me for years since it pops up to the front page of the USC website at least once a day -as part of a thing they do where they feature their faculty on the front page- which is always a shock when I need to go there for something. I have to explain to people from time to time that I am not always on the site and that I am not the face of USC. (You know, like Susan Sarandon and Halle Berry for Revlon, or Whoever-it-is-now for Maybelline, or Scarlett Johansson and Penelope Cruz for L’Oreal… although if USC wanted to pay me their level of salary to do so, I’d be pleased with that… I could do the theoretical physicist’s equivalent of a supermodel swoop of the hair (write a long equation with brightly coloured chalk maybe) and say, in an annoying way, “Because I’m worth it”.) To be fair, the photo does a good job, since it gets people asking questions about what that thing is I’m holding up, and why.

(The backstory there is that the USC people in charge of the website project asked some of us to come to a photo shoot, and Continue reading ‘Hard To Avoid’

The Anthropic Approach To String Theory

Published
by
Clifford
on August 11, 2006
in science and string theory
. 7 Comments

Since I wrote an article about this last year for the non-expert to get some idea of what the discussion was about, let me first point you to it via this link. Since in that article, by way of illustration of the “Landscape” idea, I used a picture of the Maroon Bells and the accompanying valley and lake, let me put here a version that I took today. (The supersymmetric vacua are no longer visible, you’ll notice. I’m hoping that maybe it is time we learned to stop focusing on those for guidance, but….)

maroon bells copyright cvj

Let me next point out a post I did about the panel discussion on “Naturalness” at the SUSY 2006 conference, hosted by UC Irvine, held at Newport Beach. There was a lot said about the Landscape there. Have a read.

Finally, let me point out that Science writer Tom Siegfried (who was also at the conference) has written an article on the science and sociology of the Landscape/Anthropic/String “issue” in the August 11th edition of Science Magazine. He has several quotes and interviews with the key players -such as with Joe Polchinski, particularly discussing his “conversion”- and he also has quotes from the perhaps-not-so-key, such as your friendly neighbourhood host/writer of this blog:

Other physicists, although reluctant to embrace anthropic reasoning, decry the acrimony and seek a middle ground. “It’s unfortunate that it has turned into a situation where you have to choose to be in one camp or the other,” says Clifford Johnson, a string theorist at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. “It would be nice if we could explore some of those unpalatable ideas just in case that’s the way that nature chooses to go.”

Continue reading ‘The Anthropic Approach To String Theory’

Punch and Judy Science Coverage

Published
by
Clifford
on July 30, 2006
in science, science in the media and string theory
. 6 Comments

Punch and Judy

(Since I took the image from their site, and since they are making available lovely examples of the traditional puppets, I’ll make sure you can link to the punch and judy company I found.)

There is a style of coverage of issues which the media in the UK uses a lot, which is really loved by the viewers and listeners. I think it has to do with the tradition of Punch and Judy, which is deeply ingrained into the psyche of a child growing up in the UK. Basically, there’s a fair amount of conflict between two puppets -Punch and Judy- (sometimes coming down to beatings with a bat or truncheon, and yelling of “oh yes it is!” vs “oh no it isn’t!”) and the kids and adults sit and watch this and have a good laugh. Occasionally there are other traditional characters, like the crocodile, and the policeman, but it’s basically just an entertaining conflict between two traditional puppets with funny voices done by the person behind the screen.

Often, it is a lot of fun, actually.

What the BBC’s Radio 4 (especially) likes to do, is use this formula to sustain the listenership of their morning show called “Today”. Basically, a huge percentage of the population all listens to this show every morning. It is a pretty excellent source of news and current affairs that you listen to as you get ready for the day, and/or on your way to work/school/etc. There’s a bit of chatter in the studio, and a lot of reports from around the country and the world on various things, sent in by journalists.

At certain points in the programme, they have the Punch and Judy format. The primary one is the big interview just after 8:00am. These are most enjoyed when they have someone like the journalist John Humphrys to do the interview with some senior politician of the day. This is basically a blood sport that is appreciated by one and all, which has a useful primary output: You get real information about political positions, the unvarnished story behing matters of policy, etc., as a result of a skilled interviewer breaking past the fascade. Actual political decisions at the highest levels have been changed as a result of what has been brought out in such interviews. As an example of the style, see this post that I did about one example a while back.

When applied in certain other areas, the Punch and Judy style has serious shortcomings as a means of getting across real information. One constraint is that they are very mindful of appearing “unbalanced” and so oftentimes they will inappropriate put together two representatives to bring the argument for each “side” of the debate, producing a pairing which does no favours to either side, and ends up confusing or trivialising the issue in the name of, essentially, entertainment. (I’ve witnessed them use a popular comedian in a supposedly serious debate about an environmental issue, for example. Or pair a “research scientist” (male, of course) with a “worried mum” on a debate about immunization. I know what you’re thinking about this latter example: Seems like a reasonable choice of representatives, right? Not if the debate comes down to dryly digested facts and figures about trials and the history of immunization on the one hand, and “but will my Binky get autism?” on the other. Both valid concerns, but a useless set-piece debate to set up.)

One of those issues poorly served by this is science. It is not that the format fails in and of itself, but rather, the editors of the programme often simply give up on trying to do a good job of getting across good science information in favour of having a good Continue reading ‘Punch and Judy Science Coverage’