Confusions in physics: individuals and interactions

The trouble with physics: the rise of string theory, the fall of a science

Chinese translation <confusions in physics>.

Alan sakonis

Peng Rose is not the only top mathematician who has created a quantum gravity method for himself. Perhaps the greatest one is, of course, the most interesting one. The Mathematician at the place is Alan o'konnis. I like to talk to Alan. Sometimes I don't understand what he says, but his profound thoughts and wonderful jokes make me happy. (Jokes are often not suitable for children, although sometimes they are black holes or nasty kakhu manifold. > However, although I cannot always understand Alan, he can always understand me. He knows what you want and can better say what you want. Although he and his thoughts are so relaxed, they do not like to fight at all.Sincere curiosity. Alan's quantum gravity method should go back to its foundation and invent a new mathematics capable of perfectly unifying the geometric structure and quantum gravity. This kind of mathematics I mentioned in chapter 14th is called non-pair and easy ry, which fundamentally unifies algebra and ry. Only people like him who explore mathematics and creatively and strategically think about the knowledge structure of mathematics and its future can create such ideas.

Feyabhoun

Feye arbeni believes that science is a kind of human activity. It is the business of speculators who do not follow the general logic or method and do anything that can enhance knowledge (no matter how you define it). So his big question is: how science works, why is it doing so well? Even if he opposed all of my explanations, I think he is eager to pursue this problem because he is not scientific, but because he cares about science.

A few years later, he got a teacher. He asked a friend, who knew little about how to attend classes. The friend told him to write what he thought he knew. He wrote a full page of paper. The friend then told him to take the first sentence as the topic of the first lesson, and the second sentence as the topic of the second lesson. In this way, the student passing through the soldiers and actors in physics became a professor of philosophy.

Feye ambend drove us back to Berkeley campus. When he left, he gave us the last piece of advice. "Just do what you want and don't care about anything else. In my experience, I have never spent five minutes doing what I don't want to do ."

Feye ambend's remarks are far from a timely wake-up agent. If I want to do a good job in science, I must realize that all the people I have the honor to work with are contemporary scientists. They and all big scientists are achieved by correct ideas and struggles. If your thinking is correct and you strive for it, you will always achieve remarkable results. Do not waste time worrying about yourself, or be sad about Einstein or boyr. No one can help you, only you can develop your own ideas, and only you can struggle for them.

Tehuft

This is the question of relativity. What if quantum theory is wrong? This is the weakness of the entire quantum gravity program. If quantum theory is wrong, it would be a waste of space to combine gravity. Has anyone considered this problem?

Yes. One of them is tehu ft. When I was a graduate student in utretv, tehuft and an older cooperator proved that quantum Yang-Mills theory was reasonable. This discovery made the entire standard model possible, of course, his achievements won the Nobel Prize. That is one of his many basic discoveries about standard models. But in the past 10 years he has become the most daring thinker on basic issues. His main point is the holographic principle. In his conception, there is no space. Every event that occurs in an area we often think of as a space can be represented as happening on the surface that surrounds the space. Furthermore, the theory describing the world of borders is not quantum theory, but a theory he believes can replace quantum theory.

The idea that tehovtt uses borders to represent the world should remind us of the conjecture of mardhina. In fact, tehuft's idea is one of the sources of inspiration for madhna, and some people think that the holographic principle will become a basic principle of string theory. With this alone, tehu Ft can easily become a leader in the string theory group, if he is interested in this role. However, in 1980s, tehuft began his own journey. At that time, just as he was in the prime time, and no one was technically better than him. However, when he left the mainstream, he was still ridiculed by his particle physics partners. He doesn't seem to mind or even have no idea, but I believe it hurts him. In any case, he almost doubted everything and made his own basic physics path. His core belief over the past few decades is that quantum physics is wrong. No one is more serious and sincere. One thing we like in the field of quantum gravity is that we can see his shadows everywhere. He attended many of our meetings, but he never talked about politics with other big figures in the hall. He prefers to go to every sub-venue, which is generally the case only for young students. He came to the venue early in the morning and dressed in spotless suits (other people wear jeans and T-shirts). He sat in the front row all day and listened to the reports of every student and postdoc. He does not often post comments, or even occasionally doze off for a minute or two, but his respect for each of his peers is unforgettable. When it was his turn to speak, he stood up and did not make a speech at all about his thoughts and conclusions. He knows that he is walking alone, and I will not be surprised if he complains. How can a person give up his team of leaders? Is it because he cannot figure out the meaning of quantum mechanics? Think about the personality.

Ba Bo

Ba Bo told us that when he was a graduate student on his mountain trip, he suddenly remembered that time may be an illusion. So he began to examine the root cause of our time understanding in general relativity. He realized that he could not do the traditional academic research if he had doubts about the nature of time. He also knew that if he wanted to continue to study the problem, he would have to devote all his attention to it, it cannot be disturbed by the pressure of conventional physics. So he bought an old farmhouse in a small village an hour away from Oxford, and brought his newly-married wife to settle down on time issues. He reported his results to his colleagues about 10 years later. During that period, he and his wife gave birth to four children, who relied on him as a translator to raise them. He spent less than 20 hours translating a week, and he always had a lot of time thinking. Like most scientists in academic institutions, apart from teaching and administrative affairs, there is only so much time to think about.

In order to relate to the temporal meaning of general relativity, BA Bo got into the subject and traced back the history of physics and philosophy. Finally, he conceived a new theory in which space and time are just a relational system. His thesis on this topic gradually began to attract attention and eventually became an honor Member of the quantum gravity group. He re-interpreted Einstein's general theory of relativity as a relational theory, which is exactly what people in our field now understand.

This is not all of his work, but it is enough to show how different the experience of a successful prophet is from that of traditional professional scientists. People like this don't rush into the tide. In fact, they probably don't know enough about the subject, and they don't know what the trend is. Such a person is motivated by a belief that others have lost a key thing. Their methods are more academic, because they can only think clearly if they read the entire history of the problems that have plagued them. Their work is highly specific, but it takes a long time to get some results. No matter what the outcome is, it will not help them in their career. Bob has matured and has changed science more than most professional scientists. But while most physicists are seeking for a lifetime position, he does not have anything to show off.

We should remember that if Ba and wallentini want to earn an ordinary research position, there will be no achievements. If you are an ordinary assistant or assistant professor, you will try your best to post articles and strive for honors in order to earn the invitation and funding required for advanced training. But Balb and wallentini are fruitful. They have been thinking, thinking more deeply and focused on a stubborn problem than assistant professors. After ten years of hard work, they will form a rigorous, original, and mature viewpoint, which will soon affect them. After years of painstaking research, they have gained important new discoveries, established their own authority, and become the core of people who care about those issues. Enduring long-term loneliness at the beginning (or even later) is the basic experience of the prophets.

Grootendick

It is said that grootendick is currently the most competent and imaginative mathematician. He has had the most unusual experience. Some of his contributions that have a major impact have not been publicly published, but sent to his friends in the form of hundreds of pages of letters, and then gradually spread in a small circle where they can understand them. His parents fled his home to escape political persecution and war; he grew up in the second post-war world camp. when he emerged in Paris's mathematics field, he fell down from heaven. After a short time, he almost left his science career in 1970s, at least partly because he opposed mathematics to serving the military. In 1991, he completely disappeared. Despite rumors that he was hiding in the pyrenniu mountains, no one knows where he is. Obviously, he is an extreme example. However, we can still see the envy, surprise, and even fear on the face of some outstanding mathematicians. The following describes some of his experiences:

I learned to be lonely in those turbulent years. But even this form does not really express what I mean. In any case, I don't want to learn loneliness. The reason is simple: I never forgot this kind of knowledge in my childhood. That is what we are born. However, in the three years of being alone (1945 ~ 1948) I forgot to work along the path I learned by myself, which brought me strong self-confidence (not arrogant but persistent 〉, I believe that I have the ability to do a good job in mathematics, but it has nothing to do with any consensus on the formation of rules, and it has nothing to do with any fashion ...... What I mean is that in order to grasp what I want to learn, I have to rely on my own approach, rather than on schools of big and small sizes. not to mention my own school or the idea of self-proclaimed authoritative School for any other reason (whether in middle school or university, public or tacit, those silent consensus made me understand that we should not worry about the true meaning of terms such as "volume, which is "obviously self-evident", "universally known", "unquestionable "...... It is with this kind of "detachment" that we can achieve ourselves, rather than become the pawn of consensus, in order to refuse to stay in the circles delineated by others. it is in such a rare action that we can discover the true creativity. All other things are justified.

Since then, I have had the opportunity to meet many people in the world of mathematics that has been called to me, including my elders and young people of my age. They are far more intelligent than me, far more talented than I have ". I envy their talents. Using new ideas is like playing tricks, as if I had been familiar with them from the cradle. however, I feel clumsy and even decreed, and am walking on the rugged road in pain, just like a stupid cow facing a mountain that cannot reach my head-it's all I want to learn, it is something that I don't think I can understand and follow. In fact, I have almost no characteristics that can be considered as a smart student, neither winning the reputation of the competition nor easily digesting most of the terrible knowledge. In fact, most of my colleagues who are smarter than me have become famous mathematical masters. However, from the perspective of 30 or 35 years later, I can say that they are not very profound in our mathematics today. They have done a lot of things, which are usually wonderful, but they have started before, and they didn't want to destroy them. They unknowingly fall into small circles that are invisible and define the world of a specific environment in a given region. To break these boundaries, they must discover their inherent (like me) capabilities again:Endure loneliness.

Author (Li yunsmorin)

Years have passed, and I think I can finally understand what drives me out of supergravity. I read einstein's original book to learn physics, and have a special experience with the idea penetrating revolutionary new physics. I hope that the new unification should start from a deep principle, just like the inertial principle or equivalent principle. From this point of view, we can gain profound and surprising insights and find that two irrelevant things are essentially the same thing. Energy is mass, and motion and static cannot be distinguished. Acceleration and gravity are the same.

When I look back on the scientific careers of people I 've been familiar with over 30 years, I feel more and more dependent on people's personality. Some people are willing to take the next step and dedicate everything to it, so as to make an important contribution to the rapidly developing field. Others may be less impatient. Some people may be confused, so it takes a long time to think about everything. You probably think we are better than these people, but don't forget that Einstein also belongs to them. Based on my experience, the truly shocking new ideas and methods often come from people like this. There are also some people-I belong to the third category: they only take their own path, they are Maverick, just because they do not want to join a field as some people do in order to stand on the side of their home. Therefore, when I am different from others, I do not feel worried because I find thatA person's temperament almost completely determines what kind of science he is doing. Fortunately, science requires contributions from different types of people. I gradually realized that those who can do well in science have chosen the right questions for themselves.