Why is there so much crackpot physics?

[edd]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2013/may/23/roll-over-einstein-meet-weinstein - this piqued my curiousity, as an example of someone from outside the physics community claiming a ToE but being taken somewhat more seriously than your typical crank.

 

[edd]

Hmm well I doubt we'll hear much more for a little while. Apparently they put a lecture on physics on in one of the physics buildings and didn't bother to email the physicists....

 

[ctamblyn]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2013/may/23/roll-over-einstein-meet-weinstein - this piqued my curiousity, as an example of someone from outside the physics community claiming a ToE but being taken somewhat more seriously than your typical crank.

His theory has the merit of making actual predictions: some 150 as-yet unobserved particles with interesting properties. It'll be interesting to read the preprint when it appears on arxiv.org.

 

[ben m]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2013/may/23/roll-over-einstein-meet-weinstein - this piqued my curiousity, as an example of someone from outside the physics community claiming a ToE but being taken somewhat more seriously than your typical crank.

I read the mathematicians' quotes as "taking him seriously" and the physicists' quotes as "the standard polite response to crackpots is to say you're waiting for a paper with more detail".

On the other hand, from the pop-science-level descriptions, it doesn't sound like madness. It sounds like it might be an honest attempt at grand unification, using tools and techniques recognizable from past attempts.

 

[Cuddles]

On the other hand, from the pop-science-level descriptions, it doesn't sound like madness. It sounds like it might be an honest attempt at grand unification, using tools and techniques recognizable from past attempts.

There are two parts I find particularly telling that separate him from most crackpots. Firstly, while he may not technically be part of the current academic community, someone with a PhD in mathematical physics, who apparently worked as a physicist in two universities before changing careers, who started work on his theory while still an active physicist and who has since been working in a heavily mathematical field, is not exactly your average Joe. Compared to the usual project managers, engineers, and uneducated loons, a PhD in physics from Harvard really isn't in the same league even if it is a few years old.

Secondly, maths. As has been noted many times, a complete lack of maths is one of the hallmarks of crackpottery. This guy may well turn out to be wrong, but at least he's speaking the right language.

 

[ben m]

Secondly, maths. As has been noted many times, a complete lack of maths is one of the hallmarks of crackpottery. This guy may well turn out to be wrong, but at least he's speaking the right language.

I hope so. It may turn out to be like E. Garrett Lisi's famous "E8" unification attempt, while also wrong in some details (as far as I understand), was a serious and mathematically-savvy application of real QFT tool to a real QFT problem.

 

[edd]

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn23595-weinsteins-theory-of-everything-is-probably-nothing.html

 

[Dmytry]

I think there's so many crackpots because physicists of the past are most known geniuses, and narcissists need to compare themselves to geniuses.

It may also be the case that physics is particularly well suited for identifying crackpots. I know of some bunch of self improvement / "rationalism" crackpots; most of the stuff they write is not immediately testable and/or not disproved by any test. It's when they foray into physics that they get an opportunity to reveal their ignorance of the topics they write on.

 

[edd]

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn23595-weinsteins-theory-of-everything-is-probably-nothing.html

That link is due for an update. Apparently the failure to let the local physicists know was not a failure on MdS's part.

 

[lpetrich]

edd's link titled:
Weinstein's theory of everything is probably nothing - opinion - 24 May 2013 - New Scientist
More:
Geometric Unity: phenomenal advance, or crazy theory? | The Aperiodical notes
Eric Weinstein may have found the answer to physics' biggest problems | Marcus du Sautoy | Science | guardian.co.uk
From his description, some sort of Grand Unified Theory with a big symmetry group.
Special Simonyi Lecture 2013: Eric Weinstein | The Simonyi Professorship

A program for Geometric Unity is presented to argue that the seemingly baroque features of the standard model of particle physics are in fact inexorable and geometrically natural when generalizations of the Yang-Mills and Dirac theories are unified with one of general relativity.

Peter Woit isn't very impressed by this science-by-press-conference:
Eric Weinstein on Geometric Unity | Not Even Wrong
A Tale of Two Oxford Talks | Not Even Wrong

Dear Guardian: You’ve Been Played | Cocktail Party Physics, Scientific American Blog Network
Jennifer Ouellette is totally skeptical. She asks where is Eric Weinstein's paper? Why hasn't he submitted anything to arXiv?

This is not science » Pharyngula PZ Myers is a biologist, but it seemed to him that EW was hiding something.

 

[lpetrich]

Seems like Eric Weinstein is going along a well-trodden path. I suspect that he'll likely rediscover something that someone else had proposed long ago.

The Standard Model has three kinds of symmetries and partial symmetries, often with related conservation laws.

• Space-time and related symmetries, like charge
• Gauge symmetries
• Flavor symmetries

Extensions of the Standard Model include supersymmetry, which belongs among space-time and related symmetries, and supersets of the SM gauge group (GUT's). Flavor symmetries often emerge as a side effect of GUT symmetry breaking. Symmetries like the one associated with conservation of baryon number.

Kaluza-Klein theories offer a potential way of making both our space-time symmetry group and our gauge symmetry group subsets of some big space-time symmetry group. That would happen by compactified space-time degrees of freedom becoming gauge degrees of freedom. But it does not seem possible to get the Standard Model in that fashion.

 

[Farsight]

It is.

You just say the Higgs field is a relativistic aether responsible for photon momentum, then you apply α=e²/4πε₀ħc and 1/4πε₀ and l=√(ћG/c³) and 4πn/√(c³) and think standing waves, and: BANG goes the first free parameter. Then the others are going down like ninepins and you've got foundations. Then you follow that G and you're putting gravity in.

Don't underestimate Weinstein, he knows more than you know.

Can't stop. I enjoyed my little "holiday". Been busy.

 

[Reality Check]

You just say the Higgs field is a relativistic aether responsible for photon momentum, then you apply α=e²/4πε₀ħc and 1/4πε₀ and l=√(ћG/c³) and 4πn/√(c³) and think standing waves, and: BANG goes the first free parameter.

This is what a crackpot would do - deny the actual physics, write physical and mathematical nonsense and then run away !

• There is no aether in relativity.
• photons have no mass and so the Higgs mechanism does not apply to them.
• Your random equations seem to stem from a fantasy of what Eric Weinstein stated.
• No standing waves involved!

Another symptom that crackpots show is blind acceptance of new ideas just because they are not the old ideas.
Don't overestimate Weinstein when there is no evidence that he has valid ideas - not even a pre-print outlining his framework. It would be nice if someone who attended the lecture (Special Simonyi Lecture 2013: Eric Weinstein | The Simonyi Professorship) on 23 May 2013 wrote up what Eric Weinstein actually stated. The delay implies that it was not impressive enough for a comprehensive review.

 

[edd]

then you apply α=e²/4πε₀ħc and 1/4πε₀ and l=√(ћG/c³) and 4πn/√(c³) and think standing waves, and: BANG goes the first free parameter.

You didn't get any of that from Andrew Worsley did you, by any chance?

 

[ctamblyn]

Another signature of crackpot physics is apparently throwing around mathematical terms as though they were magical incantations. That is to say, practising numerology.

This is often coupled with a disregard for dimensional correctness.

 

[ctamblyn]

BTW, returning to the topic of the mystery theory, you can follow @EricRWeinstein on Twitter if you like. The latest tweets suggest that his paper isn't exactly imminent.

 

[lpetrich]

Checking on Peter Woit's Eric Weinstein on Geometric Unity | Not Even Wrong, I found a hint in the comments. Near the end of the first page of them is Leaker's repeating some comments by a mathematician who attended EW's talk. Like "The core idea seems to be to work with the 14-dimenional bundle of all metrics over a 4-dimensional manifold, as a way of generalising GR, the standard model, and QFT a the same time." As one would expect, this theory predicts lots of new particles. However, EW is still working out his ideas, and he does not have a preprint.

I'm confused.

Is it some 14D entity that lives in 4D space, like a gauge field whose gauge group has 14 generators? The Standard Model has 12 gauge-group generators, so it could fit. BTW, there is a simple Lie algebra with 14 generators: G2. However, G2 is not a superset of the SM symmetry group SU(3)*SU(2)*U(1).

Or is space-time 14D compactified into 4 large and 10 small dimensions? That would mean a gauge group with at most 10 generators, too small for the Standard Model.

 

[lpetrich]

I'll now consider what happens for a Kaluza-Klein split of a 14D space-time into a "large" 4D one and a "small" 10D space.

Rotations: SO(13,1) -- like Lorentz group, SO(3,1) -- rotations/boosts
Overall: Euc(13,1) -- like Poincaré group, Euc(3,1) -- translations, rotations/boosts

Doing the split, we get SO(13,1) -> SO(3,1) * SO(10) and Euc(13,1) -> Euc(3,1) * Euc(10)

If the small space is a 10-sphere, then we get SO(11) instead of Euc(10).


This is awfully interesting, because one proposed GUT gauge group is SO(10). Let's see what its particle content is.

Particle | Space-time | Gauge
Elem. fermions | Spinor: 2+2* | Spinor: 16+16*
Higgs particles | Scalar: 1 | Vector: 10
Gauge particles | Vector: 4 | ASym 2-tensor: 45
Graviton | Sym 2-tensor: 9+1 | Scalar: 1

By chirality, the elementary fermions are (2,16) + (2*,16*)

Let's see what 14D particles can produce these particles.

Spinor: 64 -> (2,16) + (2*,16*), 64* -> (2,16*) + (2*,16)
Vector: 14 -> (4,1) + (1,10)
Sym 2-tensor: 104+1 -> (9+1,1) + (4,10) + (1,54+1)
ASym 2-tensor: 91 -> (3+3*,1) + (4,10) + (1,45)

Spinor: elementary fermions
Vector: Higgs particles + extras
Sym traceless 2-tensor: Graviton + extras
ASym 2-tensor: no gauge particles!

One needs something like an antisymmetric 3-tensor to get the gauge particles:
364 -> (4,1) + (3+3*,10) + (4,45) + (1,120)


So Eric Weinstein *may* have been able to get the Standard Model's particles out of his model.

 

[sol invictus]

I'll now consider what happens for a Kaluza-Klein split of a 14D space-time into a "large" 4D one and a "small" 10D space.

Rotations: SO(13,1) -- like Lorentz group, SO(3,1) -- rotations/boosts
Overall: Euc(13,1) -- like Poincaré group, Euc(3,1) -- translations, rotations/boosts

Doing the split, we get SO(13,1) -> SO(3,1) * SO(10) and Euc(13,1) -> Euc(3,1) * Euc(10)

If the small space is a 10-sphere, then we get SO(11) instead of Euc(10).


This is awfully interesting, because one proposed GUT gauge group is SO(10). Let's see what its particle content is.

Particle | Space-time | Gauge
Elem. fermions | Spinor: 2+2* | Spinor: 16+16*
Higgs particles | Scalar: 1 | Vector: 10
Gauge particles | Vector: 4 | ASym 2-tensor: 45
Graviton | Sym 2-tensor: 9+1 | Scalar: 1

By chirality, the elementary fermions are (2,16) + (2*,16*)

Let's see what 14D particles can produce these particles.

Spinor: 64 -> (2,16) + (2*,16*), 64* -> (2,16*) + (2*,16)
Vector: 14 -> (4,1) + (1,10)
Sym 2-tensor: 104+1 -> (9+1,1) + (4,10) + (1,54+1)
ASym 2-tensor: 91 -> (3+3*,1) + (4,10) + (1,45)

Spinor: elementary fermions
Vector: Higgs particles + extras
Sym traceless 2-tensor: Graviton + extras
ASym 2-tensor: no gauge particles!

One needs something like an antisymmetric 3-tensor to get the gauge particles:
364 -> (4,1) + (3+3*,10) + (4,45) + (1,120)


So Eric Weinstein *may* have been able to get the Standard Model's particles out of his model.

Certainly there are ways to get the SM particles that way - plus lots and lots of other particles. The problem is arranging it so that the SM particles have the right interactions and masses, but all the extra crap is massive or invisible to experiment for some other reason.

That's generally very, very tough - it's rather similar to the kind of model building people attempt in string theory (where you start from 10 or 11 dimensions rather than 14).

If you want to incorporate gravity, you also need a mechanism that accounts for why the extra dimensions are small and compact and remain so, and why they were small throughout the expansion history of the universe. Again, the sorts of problems that make string phenomenology so devilishly difficult.

 

[lpetrich]

Certainly there are ways to get the SM particles that way - plus lots and lots of other particles. The problem is arranging it so that the SM particles have the right interactions and masses, but all the extra crap is massive or invisible to experiment for some other reason. ...

For instance, GUT's almost always predict particles that cause proton decay, but experimental upper limits on that process's rate are low enough to make those particles have GUT-scale masses. So GUT symmetry breaking must somehow have given *every* proton-decay-causing particle a GUT-scale mass.

This is a consequence of how their gauge groups include the QCD one, by not making it standalone. There's only one GUT that I know of that does not predict proton decay, and that's "trinification", with gauge group SU(3)*SU(3)*SU(3). One of the SU(3)'s becomes the QCD group, and is thus a standalone one.

As to very weakly interacting particles, there's one whose interactions that we can easily observe: the graviton. That happens because the graviton is massless, because its interactions do not alter the quantum numbers of the particles that it interacts with, and because its interactions do not cancel out for typical materials. Thus, the graviton's interactions are cumulative. Violation of any of these conditions will make a particle's interactions much less cumulative.


It seems to me that Eric Weinstein is at where GUT and string model builders were at some decades ago. They discovered that they could get the Standard Model out of a few multiplets with an appropriate gauge group, but they had only started to work out the details of getting from GUT's and strings to the SM.

To me, that's evident from EW not having worked out a lot of the details of his theory.