Sociology of Physics: comment and indices [Archive]

marcus

May24-09, 01:16 PM

Theoretical physics presents what I think is potentially an interesting bunch of sociology-of-science case studies and examples.

There is one guy (a string PhD named Ozzy Zapata) who is blogging specifically about this, has some fascinating comment:
http://spinningthesuperweb.blogspot.com/

There was also a kind of groundbreaking talk by Roger Penrose in 2006 called
Fashion, Faith and Fantasy in Physical Theory
The video is online and the slides are downloadable too, at Berkeley's Mathematical Sciences Research Institute:
http://www.msri.org/communications/vmath/VMathVideosSpecial/VideoSpecialInfo/3005/show_video

Basically Penrose and Zapata both discuss how intellectual fashions such as string theory function as expert fads. Penrose does this in an entertaining and illuminating manner, with a lot of hand-drawn cartoons.

Although Zapata got his PhD in string theory I am apprehensively curious about what his postdoc job prospects are, given the nature his comments. The guy is a kind of Feyer(brand)abend. Maybe he will move into the Philosophy of Science, or maybe there is a Sociology of Science research field opening up.
Here is one of his essays on the arxiv:
http://arxiv.org/abs/0905.1439

I keep track of how things are going with various objective indices (publication rates, citation counts by category, popular book salesranks) as well as subjective impressions.

Here are a couple of indices to watch.
The drop-off in citations to recent string papers:
2002: http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/topcites/2002/annual.shtml
Recent (1998-2002) string papers in top 30 of the 2002 citations ranking: 11
2008: http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/topcites/2008/annual.shtml
Recent (2004-2008) string papers in top 30 of the 2008 citations ranking: 0

The idea is that every year the Spires database lists the papers most highly cited in that year, and one can look to see how many recent (published in the past five years) string papers made the top 30. Eleven of the 30 papers cited most often in 2002 were recent (1998-2002) string publications. Cites are a measure of how important/valuable research appears to the researchers themselves. Eleven out of thirty is a good showing. This measure of value or importance (as seen by the experts themselves) has dropped off.

People still have to write papers, regardless of how useful the results are, so there has not been such a marked decline in the gross publication rate.
However there may have been some slight decline. Here's publications (keywords: superstring, M-theory, brane, AdS/CFT, compactification, heterotic) for the first four months of three successive years:
2007: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-abs_connect?db_key=AST&db_key=PHY&qform=PHY&aut_logic=OR&author=&ned_query=YES&sim_query=YES&start_mon=00&start_year=2007&end_mon=04&end_year=2007&ttl_logic=OR&title=&txt_logic=OR&text=heterotic+M-theory+brane+compactification+superstrings+AdS%2FC FT&nr_to_return=100&start_nr=1&jou_pick=ALL&ref_stems=&data_and=ALL&group_and=ALL&start_entry_day=&start_entry_mon=&start_entry_year=&end_entry_day=&end_entry_mon=&end_entry_year=&min_score=&sort=SCORE&data_type=SHORT&aut_syn=YES&ttl_syn=YES&txt_syn=YES&aut_wt=1.0&ttl_wt=0.3&txt_wt=3.0&aut_wgt=YES&obj_wgt=YES&ttl_wgt=YES&txt_wgt=YES&ttl_sco=YES&txt_sco=YES&version=1
2008: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-abs_connect?db_key=AST&db_key=PHY&qform=PHY&aut_logic=OR&author=&ned_query=YES&sim_query=YES&start_mon=00&start_year=2008&end_mon=04&end_year=2008&ttl_logic=OR&title=&txt_logic=OR&text=heterotic+M-theory+brane+compactification+superstrings+AdS%2FC FT&nr_to_return=100&start_nr=1&jou_pick=ALL&ref_stems=&data_and=ALL&group_and=ALL&start_entry_day=&start_entry_mon=&start_entry_year=&end_entry_day=&end_entry_mon=&end_entry_year=&min_score=&sort=SCORE&data_type=SHORT&aut_syn=YES&ttl_syn=YES&txt_syn=YES&aut_wt=1.0&ttl_wt=0.3&txt_wt=3.0&aut_wgt=YES&obj_wgt=YES&ttl_wgt=YES&txt_wgt=YES&ttl_sco=YES&txt_sco=YES&version=1
2009: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-abs_connect?db_key=AST&db_key=PHY&qform=PHY&aut_logic=OR&author=&ned_query=YES&sim_query=YES&start_mon=00&start_year=2009&end_mon=04&end_year=2009&ttl_logic=OR&title=&txt_logic=OR&text=heterotic+M-theory+brane+compactification+superstrings+AdS%2FC FT&nr_to_return=100&start_nr=1&jou_pick=ALL&ref_stems=&data_and=ALL&group_and=ALL&start_entry_day=&start_entry_mon=&start_entry_year=&end_entry_day=&end_entry_mon=&end_entry_year=&min_score=&sort=SCORE&data_type=SHORT&aut_syn=YES&ttl_syn=YES&txt_syn=YES&aut_wt=1.0&ttl_wt=0.3&txt_wt=3.0&aut_wgt=YES&obj_wgt=YES&ttl_wgt=YES&txt_wgt=YES&ttl_sco=YES&txt_sco=YES&version=1
1881, 1769, 1452 (preliminary numbers, publications with keywords superstring, M-theory, brane, heterotic, or compactification)

Here too is one possible window on the popularized physics (or wide-audience) book market:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/books/227399/

Chaos' lil bro Order

May27-09, 04:35 PM

Interesting marc,

So you gauge the popularity of a niche of science based on how many of its papers are in the top citations list. This could be a good indicator of whether the niche (string theory) is gaining peer acceptance or losing it.

I must say there are some criticisms readily available of this technique's accuracy, as I'm sure you are well aware. It would be interesting to see a behavioral psychologists analysis of this technique. One results skewing effect would be the tendency of peers to cite papers written by physics 'celebrities', like Penrose, Wolfram, etc. This looks good for their own paper when they've quoted a top gun, and it adds credence to their paper. The less popular the niche is, the less cites it will naturally garner. String Theory has been relatively stale in the last 5 years and many physicists wonder if its reached an experimental impass, which means it is losing favor, even amongst some theoretical physicists. This could clearly effect citations, but it does nothing to prove whether the underlying theories in string theory are true or false.

So while you citation rankings, is a decent indicator of what papers are important, it may also be just as good an indicator of what niches are popular.

Theoretical physics presents what I think is potentially an interesting bunch of sociology-of-science case studies and examples.

There is one guy (a string PhD named Ozzy Zapata) who is blogging specifically about this, has some fascinating comment:
http://spinningthesuperweb.blogspot.com/

There was also a kind of groundbreaking talk by Roger Penrose in 2006 called
Fashion, Faith and Fantasy in Physical Theory
The video is online and the slides are downloadable too, at Berkeley's Mathematical Sciences Research Institute:
http://www.msri.org/communications/vmath/VMathVideosSpecial/VideoSpecialInfo/3005/show_video

Basically Penrose and Zapata both discuss how intellectual fashions such as string theory function as expert fads. Penrose does this in an entertaining and illuminating manner, with a lot of hand-drawn cartoons.

Although Zapata got his PhD in string theory I am apprehensively curious about what his postdoc job prospects are, given the nature his comments. The guy is a kind of Feyer(brand)abend. Maybe he will move into the Philosophy of Science, or maybe there is a Sociology of Science research field opening up.
Here is one of his essays on the arxiv:
http://arxiv.org/abs/0905.1439

I keep track of how things are going with various objective indices (publication rates, citation counts by category, popular book salesranks) as well as subjective impressions.

Here are a couple of indices to watch.
The drop-off in citations to recent string papers:
2002: http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/topcites/2002/annual.shtml
Recent (1998-2002) string papers in top 30 of the 2002 citations ranking: 11
2008: http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/topcites/2008/annual.shtml
Recent (2004-2008) string papers in top 30 of the 2008 citations ranking: 0

The idea is that every year the Spires database lists the papers most highly cited in that year, and one can look to see how many recent (published in the past five years) string papers made the top 30. Eleven of the 30 papers cited most often in 2002 were recent (1998-2002) string publications. Cites are a measure of how important/valuable research appears to the researchers themselves. Eleven out of thirty is a good showing. This measure of value or importance (as seen by the experts themselves) has dropped off.

People still have to write papers, regardless of how useful the results are, so there has not been such a marked decline in the gross publication rate.
However there may have been some slight decline. Here's publications (keywords: superstring, M-theory, brane, AdS/CFT, compactification, heterotic) for the first four months of three successive years:
2007: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-abs_connect?db_key=AST&db_key=PHY&qform=PHY&aut_logic=OR&author=&ned_query=YES&sim_query=YES&start_mon=00&start_year=2007&end_mon=04&end_year=2007&ttl_logic=OR&title=&txt_logic=OR&text=heterotic+M-theory+brane+compactification+superstrings+AdS%2FC FT&nr_to_return=100&start_nr=1&jou_pick=ALL&ref_stems=&data_and=ALL&group_and=ALL&start_entry_day=&start_entry_mon=&start_entry_year=&end_entry_day=&end_entry_mon=&end_entry_year=&min_score=&sort=SCORE&data_type=SHORT&aut_syn=YES&ttl_syn=YES&txt_syn=YES&aut_wt=1.0&ttl_wt=0.3&txt_wt=3.0&aut_wgt=YES&obj_wgt=YES&ttl_wgt=YES&txt_wgt=YES&ttl_sco=YES&txt_sco=YES&version=1
2008: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-abs_connect?db_key=AST&db_key=PHY&qform=PHY&aut_logic=OR&author=&ned_query=YES&sim_query=YES&start_mon=00&start_year=2008&end_mon=04&end_year=2008&ttl_logic=OR&title=&txt_logic=OR&text=heterotic+M-theory+brane+compactification+superstrings+AdS%2FC FT&nr_to_return=100&start_nr=1&jou_pick=ALL&ref_stems=&data_and=ALL&group_and=ALL&start_entry_day=&start_entry_mon=&start_entry_year=&end_entry_day=&end_entry_mon=&end_entry_year=&min_score=&sort=SCORE&data_type=SHORT&aut_syn=YES&ttl_syn=YES&txt_syn=YES&aut_wt=1.0&ttl_wt=0.3&txt_wt=3.0&aut_wgt=YES&obj_wgt=YES&ttl_wgt=YES&txt_wgt=YES&ttl_sco=YES&txt_sco=YES&version=1
2009: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-abs_connect?db_key=AST&db_key=PHY&qform=PHY&aut_logic=OR&author=&ned_query=YES&sim_query=YES&start_mon=00&start_year=2009&end_mon=04&end_year=2009&ttl_logic=OR&title=&txt_logic=OR&text=heterotic+M-theory+brane+compactification+superstrings+AdS%2FC FT&nr_to_return=100&start_nr=1&jou_pick=ALL&ref_stems=&data_and=ALL&group_and=ALL&start_entry_day=&start_entry_mon=&start_entry_year=&end_entry_day=&end_entry_mon=&end_entry_year=&min_score=&sort=SCORE&data_type=SHORT&aut_syn=YES&ttl_syn=YES&txt_syn=YES&aut_wt=1.0&ttl_wt=0.3&txt_wt=3.0&aut_wgt=YES&obj_wgt=YES&ttl_wgt=YES&txt_wgt=YES&ttl_sco=YES&txt_sco=YES&version=1
1881, 1769, 1452 (preliminary numbers, publications with keywords superstring, M-theory, brane, heterotic, or compactification)

Here too is one possible window on the popularized physics (or wide-audience) book market:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/books/227399/

marcus

May30-09, 10:13 PM

It is still early but we can get an idea of how string publication looks for the first five months of 2009, by comparison with the first five months of previous years:

2007: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-abs_connect?db_key=AST&db_key=PHY&qform=PHY&aut_logic=OR&author=&ned_query=YES_query=YES&start_mon=00&start_year=2007&end_mon=05&end_year=2007&ttl_logic=OR&title=&txt_logic=OR&text=heterotic+M-theory+brane+compactification+superstrings+AdS%2FC FT&nr_to_return=100&start_nr=1&jou_pick=ALL&ref_stems=&data_and=ALL&group_and=ALL&start_entry_day=&start_entry_mon=&start_entry_year=&end_entry_day=&end_entry_mon=&end_entry_year=&min_score=&sort=SCORE&data_type=SHORT&aut_syn=YES&ttl_syn=YES&txt_syn=YES&aut_wt=1.0&ttl_wt=0.3&txt_wt=3.0&aut_wgt=YES&obj_wgt=YES&ttl_wgt=YES&txt_wgt=YES&ttl_sco=YES&txt_sco=YES&version=1

2008: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-abs_connect?db_key=AST&db_key=PHY&qform=PHY&aut_logic=OR&author=&ned_query=YES_query=YES&start_mon=00&start_year=2008&end_mon=05&end_year=2008&ttl_logic=OR&title=&txt_logic=OR&text=heterotic+M-theory+brane+compactification+superstrings+AdS%2FC FT&nr_to_return=100&start_nr=1&jou_pick=ALL&ref_stems=&data_and=ALL&group_and=ALL&start_entry_day=&start_entry_mon=&start_entry_year=&end_entry_day=&end_entry_mon=&end_entry_year=&min_score=&sort=SCORE&data_type=SHORT&aut_syn=YES&ttl_syn=YES&txt_syn=YES&aut_wt=1.0&ttl_wt=0.3&txt_wt=3.0&aut_wgt=YES&obj_wgt=YES&ttl_wgt=YES&txt_wgt=YES&ttl_sco=YES&txt_sco=YES&version=1

2009: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-abs_connect?db_key=AST&db_key=PHY&qform=PHY&aut_logic=OR&author=&ned_query=YES_query=YES&start_mon=00&start_year=2009&end_mon=05&end_year=2009&ttl_logic=OR&title=&txt_logic=OR&text=heterotic+M-theory+brane+compactification+superstrings+AdS%2FC FT&nr_to_return=100&start_nr=1&jou_pick=ALL&ref_stems=&data_and=ALL&group_and=ALL&start_entry_day=&start_entry_mon=&start_entry_year=&end_entry_day=&end_entry_mon=&end_entry_year=&min_score=&sort=SCORE&data_type=SHORT&aut_syn=YES&ttl_syn=YES&txt_syn=YES&aut_wt=1.0&ttl_wt=0.3&txt_wt=3.0&aut_wgt=YES&obj_wgt=YES&ttl_wgt=YES&txt_wgt=YES&ttl_sco=YES&txt_sco=YES&version=1

2307, 2225, 1715 (as of May 30, expected to increase with late entries)
Six keywords were used (superstring, M-theory, brane, AdS/CFT, compactification, heterotic.)

As of noon Pacific, May 31 the sales rank ratio for Smolin's book was 0.678. This compares its sales performance with that of the five most popular stringy books averaged to provide a benchmark for comparison. Trouble's amazon-wide salesrank was 6204 and the stringy average was 4206.2

marcus

Jun1-09, 03:18 PM

As of noon June 1 the successive publication numbers were 2307, 2225, 1727.
As expected the last number (for 2009) is still building up some with late May entries, though my guess is that it will end up showing a downtrend.

The usual salesrank ratio for Trouble with Physics was 0.583. I intend to take a three-day average (31st, 1st, 2nd) to smooth out some of the random fluctuation. Gokul suggested this some time back and it makes very good sense. TwP came on the market in September 2006. Here, to give some perspective on the present numbers, is its salesrank history, sampling the first of each month.

EDIT:
The three-day average for 1 June is finished.
31 May 0.678
1 June 0.583
2 June 0.934

average salesrank ratio around 1 June = 0.732

The Trouble with Physics (came out September 2006)

1 October 0.4 (2008)
1 November 0.6
1 December 0.6
1 January 0.6 (2009)
1 February 0.7
1 March 0.5
1 April 0.6
1 May 0.6
1 June 0.7

It seems to be performing rather steadily (against the string benchmark). Recent numbers don't suggest any pronounced upswing or downturn.

Trouble salesrank was 6544
Stringy top five were 1905, 2596, 3810, 8011, 14244, averaging 6113.2

marcus

Jun8-09, 03:39 PM

At noon 8 June, Smolin's Trouble with Physics ranked on par with the stringy topfive average.

The Trouble with Physics (came out September 2006)

1 October 0.4 (2008)
1 November 0.6
1 December 0.6
1 January 0.6 (2009)
1 February 0.7
1 March 0.5
1 April 0.6
1 May 0.6
1 June 0.7
...
8 June 1.0

Trouble salesrank was 7182
Stringy top five were 1876, 2211, 2631, 4934, 25393 averaging 7409.0

String research publication the first five months of 2009, by comparison with the first five months of previous years:

2007: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-abs_connect?db_key=AST&db_key=PHY&qform=PHY&aut_logic=OR&author=&ned_query=YES_query=YES&start_mon=00&start_year=2007&end_mon=05&end_year=2007&ttl_logic=OR&title=&txt_logic=OR&text=heterotic+M-theory+brane+compactification+superstrings+AdS%2FC FT&nr_to_return=100&start_nr=1&jou_pick=ALL&ref_stems=&data_and=ALL&group_and=ALL&start_entry_day=&start_entry_mon=&start_entry_year=&end_entry_day=&end_entry_mon=&end_entry_year=&min_score=&sort=SCORE&data_type=SHORT&aut_syn=YES&ttl_syn=YES&txt_syn=YES&aut_wt=1.0&ttl_wt=0.3&txt_wt=3.0&aut_wgt=YES&obj_wgt=YES&ttl_wgt=YES&txt_wgt=YES&ttl_sco=YES&txt_sco=YES&version=1

2008: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-abs_connect?db_key=AST&db_key=PHY&qform=PHY&aut_logic=OR&author=&ned_query=YES_query=YES&start_mon=00&start_year=2008&end_mon=05&end_year=2008&ttl_logic=OR&title=&txt_logic=OR&text=heterotic+M-theory+brane+compactification+superstrings+AdS%2FC FT&nr_to_return=100&start_nr=1&jou_pick=ALL&ref_stems=&data_and=ALL&group_and=ALL&start_entry_day=&start_entry_mon=&start_entry_year=&end_entry_day=&end_entry_mon=&end_entry_year=&min_score=&sort=SCORE&data_type=SHORT&aut_syn=YES&ttl_syn=YES&txt_syn=YES&aut_wt=1.0&ttl_wt=0.3&txt_wt=3.0&aut_wgt=YES&obj_wgt=YES&ttl_wgt=YES&txt_wgt=YES&ttl_sco=YES&txt_sco=YES&version=1

2009: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-abs_connect?db_key=AST&db_key=PHY&qform=PHY&aut_logic=OR&author=&ned_query=YES_query=YES&start_mon=00&start_year=2009&end_mon=05&end_year=2009&ttl_logic=OR&title=&txt_logic=OR&text=heterotic+M-theory+brane+compactification+superstrings+AdS%2FC FT&nr_to_return=100&start_nr=1&jou_pick=ALL&ref_stems=&data_and=ALL&group_and=ALL&start_entry_day=&start_entry_mon=&start_entry_year=&end_entry_day=&end_entry_mon=&end_entry_year=&min_score=&sort=SCORE&data_type=SHORT&aut_syn=YES&ttl_syn=YES&txt_syn=YES&aut_wt=1.0&ttl_wt=0.3&txt_wt=3.0&aut_wgt=YES&obj_wgt=YES&ttl_wgt=YES&txt_wgt=YES&ttl_sco=YES&txt_sco=YES&version=1

2307, 2225, 1886 as of 8 June, expected to increase with late entries.
Six keywords were used (superstring, M-theory, brane, AdS/CFT, compactification, heterotic.)

marcus

Jun27-09, 07:06 PM

We can begin to gauge the stringy publication rate for the first six months, compared with other years:

For the first six months:

2007: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-abs_connect?db_key=AST&db_key=PHY&qform=PHY&aut_logic=OR&author=&ned_query=YES_query=YES&start_mon=00&start_year=2007&end_mon=06&end_year=2007&ttl_logic=OR&title=&txt_logic=OR&text=heterotic+M-theory+brane+compactification+superstrings+AdS%2FC FT&nr_to_return=100&start_nr=1&jou_pick=ALL&ref_stems=&data_and=ALL&group_and=ALL&start_entry_day=&start_entry_mon=&start_entry_year=&end_entry_day=&end_entry_mon=&end_entry_year=&min_score=&sort=SCORE&data_type=SHORT&aut_syn=YES&ttl_syn=YES&txt_syn=YES&aut_wt=1.0&ttl_wt=0.3&txt_wt=3.0&aut_wgt=YES&obj_wgt=YES&ttl_wgt=YES&txt_wgt=YES&ttl_sco=YES&txt_sco=YES&version=1

2008: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-abs_connect?db_key=AST&db_key=PHY&qform=PHY&aut_logic=OR&author=&ned_query=YES_query=YES&start_mon=00&start_year=2008&end_mon=06&end_year=2008&ttl_logic=OR&title=&txt_logic=OR&text=heterotic+M-theory+brane+compactification+superstrings+AdS%2FC FT&nr_to_return=100&start_nr=1&jou_pick=ALL&ref_stems=&data_and=ALL&group_and=ALL&start_entry_day=&start_entry_mon=&start_entry_year=&end_entry_day=&end_entry_mon=&end_entry_year=&min_score=&sort=SCORE&data_type=SHORT&aut_syn=YES&ttl_syn=YES&txt_syn=YES&aut_wt=1.0&ttl_wt=0.3&txt_wt=3.0&aut_wgt=YES&obj_wgt=YES&ttl_wgt=YES&txt_wgt=YES&ttl_sco=YES&txt_sco=YES&version=1

2009: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-abs_connect?db_key=AST&db_key=PHY&qform=PHY&aut_logic=OR&author=&ned_query=YES_query=YES&start_mon=00&start_year=2009&end_mon=06&end_year=2009&ttl_logic=OR&title=&txt_logic=OR&text=heterotic+M-theory+brane+compactification+superstrings+AdS%2FC FT&nr_to_return=100&start_nr=1&jou_pick=ALL&ref_stems=&data_and=ALL&group_and=ALL&start_entry_day=&start_entry_mon=&start_entry_year=&end_entry_day=&end_entry_mon=&end_entry_year=&min_score=&sort=SCORE&data_type=SHORT&aut_syn=YES&ttl_syn=YES&txt_syn=YES&aut_wt=1.0&ttl_wt=0.3&txt_wt=3.0&aut_wgt=YES&obj_wgt=YES&ttl_wgt=YES&txt_wgt=YES&ttl_sco=YES&txt_sco=YES&version=1

So far the publication for the first half of 2007, 2008, and 2009 are 2657, 2526, 2194 continuing a slight downtrend. The 2009 number can be expected to increase (the month isn't even over and it takes Harvard abstracts people some time to catch up.)

========

I hadn't checked the salesrank of Smolin's Trouble with Physics for some weeks and happened to do so today 27 June. It ranked on par with the stringy topfive average.

The Trouble with Physics (came out September 2006)

1 October 0.4 (2008)
1 November 0.6
1 December 0.6
1 January 0.6 (2009)
1 February 0.7
1 March 0.5
1 April 0.6
1 May 0.6
1 June 0.7
...
8 June 1.0
...
27 June 1.0 (1 pm instead of usual noon reading)

marcus

Jun30-09, 03:27 PM

To track the stringy publication rate for the first six months, compared with other years, 6 keywords are used (superstring, M-theory, brane, compactification, AdS/CFT, and heterotic).

2007: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-abs_connect?db_key=AST&db_key=PHY&qform=PHY&aut_logic=OR&author=&ned_query=YES_query=YES&start_mon=00&start_year=2007&end_mon=06&end_year=2007&ttl_logic=OR&title=&txt_logic=OR&text=heterotic+M-theory+brane+compactification+superstrings+AdS%2FC FT&nr_to_return=100&start_nr=1&jou_pick=ALL&ref_stems=&data_and=ALL&group_and=ALL&start_entry_day=&start_entry_mon=&start_entry_year=&end_entry_day=&end_entry_mon=&end_entry_year=&min_score=&sort=SCORE&data_type=SHORT&aut_syn=YES&ttl_syn=YES&txt_syn=YES&aut_wt=1.0&ttl_wt=0.3&txt_wt=3.0&aut_wgt=YES&obj_wgt=YES&ttl_wgt=YES&txt_wgt=YES&ttl_sco=YES&txt_sco=YES&version=1

2008: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-abs_connect?db_key=AST&db_key=PHY&qform=PHY&aut_logic=OR&author=&ned_query=YES_query=YES&start_mon=00&start_year=2008&end_mon=06&end_year=2008&ttl_logic=OR&title=&txt_logic=OR&text=heterotic+M-theory+brane+compactification+superstrings+AdS%2FC FT&nr_to_return=100&start_nr=1&jou_pick=ALL&ref_stems=&data_and=ALL&group_and=ALL&start_entry_day=&start_entry_mon=&start_entry_year=&end_entry_day=&end_entry_mon=&end_entry_year=&min_score=&sort=SCORE&data_type=SHORT&aut_syn=YES&ttl_syn=YES&txt_syn=YES&aut_wt=1.0&ttl_wt=0.3&txt_wt=3.0&aut_wgt=YES&obj_wgt=YES&ttl_wgt=YES&txt_wgt=YES&ttl_sco=YES&txt_sco=YES&version=1

2009: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-abs_connect?db_key=AST&db_key=PHY&qform=PHY&aut_logic=OR&author=&ned_query=YES_query=YES&start_mon=00&start_year=2009&end_mon=06&end_year=2009&ttl_logic=OR&title=&txt_logic=OR&text=heterotic+M-theory+brane+compactification+superstrings+AdS%2FC FT&nr_to_return=100&start_nr=1&jou_pick=ALL&ref_stems=&data_and=ALL&group_and=ALL&start_entry_day=&start_entry_mon=&start_entry_year=&end_entry_day=&end_entry_mon=&end_entry_year=&min_score=&sort=SCORE&data_type=SHORT&aut_syn=YES&ttl_syn=YES&txt_syn=YES&aut_wt=1.0&ttl_wt=0.3&txt_wt=3.0&aut_wgt=YES&obj_wgt=YES&ttl_wgt=YES&txt_wgt=YES&ttl_sco=YES&txt_sco=YES&version=1

So far the string publication numbers for the first half of 2007, 2008, and 2009 are 2657, 2526, 2230 continuing a slight downtrend. The 2009 number can be expected to increase somewhat as the Harvard abstracts people catch up with their cataloging.

=======

The Trouble with Physics (came out September 2006)

1 October 0.4 (2008)
1 November 0.6
1 December 0.6
1 January 0.6 (2009)
1 February 0.7
1 March 0.5
1 April 0.6
1 May 0.6
1 June 0.7
...
30 June 0.628
1 July 1.366

I aim to make a 3-day average around July 1, to get rid of some random fluctuation. Today June 30 at noon TwP salesrank was 8959 and the five most popular stringy books (elegant, fabric, parallel, hyperspace, warped) ranked 3846, 3965, 4485, 6584, 9247 for an average of 5625.4.
EDIT: At noon on July 1 TwP rank was 4515 and stringy top five (elegant, fabric, parallel, hyperspace, warped) ranked 2868, 4041, 4823, 5808, 13287 averaging 6165.4 making the ratio 1.366.

marcus

Jul2-09, 01:28 PM

The Trouble with Physics (came out September 2006)

1 October 0.4 (2008)
1 November 0.6
1 December 0.6
1 January 0.6 (2009)
1 February 0.7
1 March 0.5
1 April 0.6
1 May 0.6
1 June 0.7
...
30 June 0.628
1 July 1.366
2 July 3.782

I aim to make a 3-day average around July 1, to get rid of some random fluctuation. Today June 30 at noon TwP salesrank was 8959 and the five most popular stringy books (elegant, fabric, parallel, hyperspace, warped) ranked 3846, 3965, 4485, 6584, 9247 for an average of 5625.4 making the ratio 0.628.
EDIT: At noon on July 1 TwP rank was 4515 and stringy top five (elegant, fabric, parallel, hyperspace, warped) ranked 2868, 4041, 4823, 5808, 13287 averaging 6165.4 making the ratio 1.366.
EDIT: At noon on July 2, TwP rank was 1545 and stringy top five (elegant, parallel, hyperspace, fabric, warped) ranked 3324, 3545, 5531, 6662, 10155 averaging 5843 making the ratio 3.782.
The average ratio for the three days (our smoothed value for the first of the month) is therefore 1.93 and I retabulate as usual:

The Trouble with Physics (came out September 2006)

1 October 0.4 (2008)
1 November 0.6
1 December 0.6
1 January 0.6 (2009)
1 February 0.7
1 March 0.5
1 April 0.6
1 May 0.6
1 June 0.7
1 July 1.9

The TwP index has been behaving in an unusual way recently. Afternoon and evening of 1 July it spent a lot of time in the 4-5 range. Also for part of the morning of 2 July, although it was down around 3.8 right at noon (pacific) my regular time to record. At 1:00 PM it was back up at 5.2.
Smolin has not made any public appearances or been on broadcast media lately (radio TV) as far as I know. However he did have a piece in a professional physicist magazine back in the first half of June. (The Institute of Physics--IOP--online Physics World) It could be readers with more of a science education buying the book that caused this spike. Or some other event that I'm not aware of. Here is the June issue Physics World link:
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/print/39306
His article is interesting and has a catchy title The Unique Universe.
It was picked up by a science/technology blog called X-Journals which commented favorably in a post titled "Forget the So-Called Multiverse: One Universe is Enough".
http://x-journals.com/2009/lee-smolin-forget-the-so-called-multiverse-one-universe-is-enough/
It could be the string landscape/multiverse idea has gotten into bad odor---enough science people may dislike it that by coming out against it, Smolin cause a jump in his booksales. I noticed a simultaneous jump in sales of the hardcover edition as well as the paperback.

At any rate for whatever reason Trouble with Physics has been recently selling around 4 or 5 times better than the stringy topfive average I use for comparison.
I checked several more times on 2 July. The ratio at 1 PM was 5.16, at 4 PM it was 5.34, at 5 PM it was 5.48, and at 9 PM it was 5.81.

At 11 PM on 2 July the ratio was 8.14. Trouble with Physics was doing 8 times better than the stringy topfive average Ive been using as benchmark for several years. It's odd. TwP rank was 852 and the top five (elegant, fabric, parallel, hyperspace, warped) ranked 2539, 3817, 7414, 8335, 12575 for an average of 6936.0.

marcus

Jul3-09, 03:44 PM

Something just happened which greatly increased sales of TwP. I'm not sure what it is yet. Here's a table of noon readings. Those for the first of each month are smoothed by averaging over a 3-day window.

The Trouble with Physics (came out September 2006)

1 October 0.4 (2008)
1 November 0.6
1 December 0.6
1 January 0.6 (2009)
1 February 0.7
1 March 0.5
1 April 0.6
1 May 0.6
1 June 0.7
1 July 1.9

2 July 3.78
3 July 5.88
4 July 5.11

The TwP index was in the 4-6 range for much of 2 July though briefly down below 4 at noon that day. At 1:00 PM it was back up over 5 and it stayed there for the rest of the day, being over 8 at 11 PM. I checked several times on 2 July. The ratio at 1 PM was 5.16, at 4 PM it was 5.34, at 5 PM it was 5.48, at 9 PM it was 5.81, at 11 PM on 2 July the ratio was 8.14.

Smolin has not made any public appearances or been on broadcast media lately (radio TV) as far as I know, but did publish an interesting piece in the June issue Physics World:
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/print/39306
It was picked up by a science/technology blog called X-Journals which commented favorably in a post titled "Forget the So-Called Multiverse: One Universe is Enough".
http://x-journals.com/2009/lee-smolin-forget-the-so-called-multiverse-one-universe-is-enough/
Other than this, what could have caused a jump in Smolin booksales?

At any rate at noon 3 July Trouble with Physics was doing 5.88 times better than the stringy topfive average Ive been using as benchmark for several years. TwP rank was 1003 and the top five ( fabric, elegant, parallel, hyperspace, idiot guide) ranked 2944, 3605, 5844, 6093, 1100 for an average of 5898.0.
At noon 4 July TwP was doing 5.11 better than benchmark. TwP ranked 1034 and the stringy top five (elegant, fabric, parallel, hyperspace, idiot guide) ranked 2774, 3527, 5715, 6526, 7858, for an average of 5280.0.

Haven't seen this kind of thing since the first 3 weeks or so after the paperback edition came out in 2007. It's quite strange.

===================
VandeCarr, I just saw your post #10 and will reply here because the time-limit has not run out and I can still edit this post. I believe there is a great latitude of stringy models of physics, you get a different physics, a different vacuum, for each way you pick to compactify or roll up the extra dimensions.
So there are many versions of physics leading to no unique prediction that would falsify the string approach. There is, in effect, a String Landscape.
The term was popularized in a 2003 paper by Leonard Susskind, one of the fathers of string. You may know about all this already. Individual versions undoubtably do make testable predictions.

I don't know of any version which actually reproduces what actually is known (the Standard Model) and in addition predicts some new phenomena at available energies which would make it testable. Someone else may hopefully correct me on this if I'm wrong. You could also start a thread in the Beyond Standard forum and ask that very question!

SW VandeCarr

Jul3-09, 08:53 PM

I'm not sure, but I think this question is appropriate to this thread. Are there any "stringy" theories that make testable predictions that cannot be predicted and tested under the Standard Model?

marcus

Jul5-09, 01:48 PM

Just checked at 10AM this morning (5 July) and the Smolin book was doing more than 10 times better than the topfive stringy average. I don't know why this remarkable surge in sales has happened.

Could it be a "Twitter" phenomenon? I don't follow Twitter and some of these other web network things, Digg etc. I've heard of them but I don't how they work or what their potential is. All I know is that in the standard media (radio TV blogs discussion-boards) nothing much has happened that could explain this. Can you suggest something?

A few little things, I mentioned some already:
Smolin has a new book written with Robert Unger which is in preparation. It will delve into the nature of physical law and how the laws could have evolved the way they are, and argue that time is realer than we have been thinking based on vintage 1915 General Relativity. And that conventional string landscape multiverse notions are ready for the discard pile. I think that's the message. They have come up with new arguments. You get an early taste of this in The Unique Universe which he just published in Physics World. The book is probably about a year off (guess: latter part of 2010) but Smolin always prepares the ground. He did that with Trouble with Physics, began magazining a year or so before the book itself appeared. I think Robert Unger is very smart and the new book may have an impact.

The annual string conference just concluded---Strings 2009 in Rome. It was lackluster. They got Witten to talk (he did not participate in Strings 2008) so that was a plus. But he chose not to talk about string--talked about all sorts of other interesting physics instead. So far the conference talks are not on line and little has been heard about it. Strings conference used to have a lot of media hoopla---interviews and science writers reportage etc.

Could the surge in Smolin book sales be related to a sense of let-down, or even flop?
But who is paying attention? What's the audience and the bookmarket we are talking about?
This morning TwP was number 499 in amazon book sales as a whole. That is competing against diet books and trash novels and who-dunnits and celebrity as-told-to memoirs. How did it get to be #499 in storewide sales?

If anybody has a clue, please post. Even if a very tenuous idea.
==============
Hi VandeCarr, I responded to you on the tail of my previous post, yesterday noon.
If anyone wants the salesrank details. at 10 AM today pacific time 5 July, Smolin's standing was 477 and the stringy top five (elegant, fabric, parallel, hyperspace, idiot guide) ranked 1760, 2657, 4068, 6490, 11640 for an benchmark average of 5323.0, making the ratio 10.67
At 12 noon Smolin's rank was even higher: 352, while the stringy top five (the same titles as at 10AM) were at 1283, 2086, 5119, 5628, 14222 for an average of 5667.6 making the ratio 16.10.

I have never seen such a high noon reading, even for a short spike.

====================
Fra! Nice to see you. I am glad you are interested in this kind of sideline index or gauge too. Sociology can reveal and raise questions I think. Good to include that kind of information in the mix. I will go look up numbers from last summer. As I recall, just from memory, last summer was around 0.4 - 0.6 similar to April May June of this year, but I will retrieve the record.

Fra

Jul5-09, 02:10 PM

Could the surge in Smolin book sales be related to a sense of let-down, or even flop?
But who is paying attention? What's the audience and the bookmarket we are talking about?
This morning TwP was number 499 in amazon book sales as a whole. That is competing against diet books and trash novels and who-dunnits and celebrity as-told-to memoirs. How did it get to be #499 in storewide sales?

If anybody has a clue, please post. Even if a very tenuous idea.

Interesting rise indeed. I really don't have much of a serious clue but maybe the global crisis slightly setting people back and forcing them to reconsider what they are doing. Maybe the crisis makes look upon all the established structures with doubt and critisism, not only in society but also in science. since it becomes more clear that in times of limited resources, some extra thought may be needed and we can not afford to invest in the wrong questions.

Perhaps the critics, and questioning of - how have all the investments in ST made us more fit? - is even more relevent in the crisis days when it becomes more obvious that time and money is limited. We have to question how be choose to invest every single dollar. Ultimately it's self-preservation.

In think that type of reasoning is more likely to appear during bad times.

How was the pattern last summer? ie. could there be some summer/vacation phenomenon?

/Fredrik

marcus

Jul5-09, 02:50 PM

How was the pattern last summer? ie. could there be some summer/vacation phenomenon?

/Fredrik

Fra, here is the record back from when the paperback edition came out (September 2007)
http://physicsforums.com/showthread.php?p=1986028#post1986028
You can see that the ratio was high in September October November which is understandable because there were a lot of book reviews and science writers discussing the book the year before when the hardcover came out (September 2006) and then later all that controversy. So then when the inexpensive paperback came out in September 2007 the sales shot up for a couple of months. That I think is understandable.

But then by Summer 2008, which you asked about, the sales were down.
There was not much of a summer reading effect. I thought I saw a little mild rush around May June when students graduate from highschool and college and their relatives buy them science-books as a graduation gift. And perhaps summer reading is included there too.
But by July August it was slack, like 0.4 and 0.5.

I think your economic crunch idea is interesting. I think it could work both ways---in very bad times people might go for escape literature, like Brian Greene and Lord of the Rings.
Fantasy, to take your mind off the bleak reality.
But it could also drive people to be more critical. And Smolin's book is critical. It says Why are we spending our science money so badly? Why are we putting all our brains in one basket? Why this bad and improvident strategy? What is wrong with the science establishment that makes it act out of touch with reality? What is the root of the Trouble.

Maybe the concept of trouble is a key lever. When there is trouble in a system (like banking or string) people want to know what is the reason. They were relying on it to work as usual, how could it unexpectedly go off the railroad tracks?

It's a thought. I don't say I am convinced by what you say. Right now I am eager to get any possible clue or suggestion. Because this surge in sales has no clear identifiable trigger that I know of.

I will copy the record from that other post and add on the later months:
1 September 6.4 (2007)
1 October 6.5
1 November 5.2
1 December 2.4
1 January 1.5 (2008)
1 February 1.3
1 March 0.4
1 April 0.6
1 May 1.0
1 June 1.0
1 July 0.5
1 August 0.4
1 September 0.8
1 October 0.4
1 November 0.6
1 December 0.6
1 January 0.6 (2009)
1 February 0.7
1 March 0.5
1 April 0.6
1 May 0.6
1 June 0.7
1 July 1.9

2 July 3.78
3 July 5.88
4 July 5.11
5 July 16.10

BTW it is pretty clear the European science establishment is more on the tracks than the US one. Did you look at the Planck Scale conference that just ended. I mean the website where there are online PDF files of the talks. This was a successful conference. New findings brought in by various different tribes converging from various different directions with their offerings to the great Sky Mother :biggrin: or whatever. Really first rate conference. Nothing like it in the US this year. That shows the ESF leadership quality. (the European Science Foundation) they have a little modest clarity of vision compared with the US NSF (national sci. found)

SW VandeCarr

Jul5-09, 03:40 PM

===================
VandeCarr, Individual versions undoubtably do make testable predictions.

Thanks marcus. You've answered by question.

marcus

Jul6-09, 12:47 AM

Thanks marcus. You've answered by question.
You are welcome! Actually you took part of what I said out of context, so let me continue quoting what I said back there so as to complete the idea. I think the hard part must be to construct a model that has no disagreement with what is already known.

I don't know of any version which...reproduces what...is known (the Standard Model) and in addition predicts some new phenomena at available energies which would make it testable...

To continue recording the noon readings for this interesting spike in sales of Smolin's book:
2 July 3.78
3 July 5.88
4 July 5.11
5 July 16.10
6 July 15.81

Trouble with Physics was number one on the Amazon list of physics books (ahead of Hawking, Greene, whoever). At noon on 6 July it ranked 395 and the string topfive average was 6286.2, making the ratio 15.81.
The five most popular string books that day (fabric, elegant, parallel, hyperspace, warped) ranked 1507, 1782, 5330, 7309, 15503.

Fra

Jul6-09, 01:26 AM

like Brian Greene and Lord of the Rings.
Fantasy, to take your mind off the bleak reality.

Hehe funny to put them in the same scentence - Lord of the Strings

In the Landscape where the Shadows lie.
One String to rule them all, One String to find them,
One String to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In the Landscape where the Shadows lie.

/Fredrik

Fra

Jul6-09, 01:39 AM

Yes, there are probably other causes I have not clue about.

Fantasy, to take your mind off the bleak reality.
But it could also drive people to be more critical.

I like to think there is a common motivation for what you call criticism and fantasy.

Somehow the disappointment of reality, or current paradigms, is what motivates looking for an alternative reality. This is in effect a form of critics. I don't think going to your fantasy and imagination, necessarily means letting go of ALL rationality.

After all, in the evolutionary perspective, there is a good rationality in diversity.

So I think considering ALL fantasies are actually rational. But the rationality also requires that we do not put all eggs in one random fantasy. Each fantasy will be considered, but in proportion to it's potential and constrained by resources we have to invest. Somewhere I think the feedback mechanism from investments to securing that we're on the right track went beserk. Perhaps it does take a crisis to open our eyes. Look at the unconstrained bonus system. It took a crisis to convince the masses that this is doubtful.

/Fredrik

marcus

Jul7-09, 04:45 PM

To continue recording this strange unexplained blip in TwP performance.
Noon pacific time, Smolin book's amazon salesrank performance ratio to stringy topfive average as benchmark for comparison:

1 September 6.4 (2007)
1 October 6.5
1 November 5.2
1 December 2.4
1 January 1.5 (2008)
1 February 1.3
1 March 0.4
1 April 0.6
1 May 1.0
1 June 1.0
1 July 0.5
1 August 0.4
1 September 0.8
1 October 0.4
1 November 0.6
1 December 0.6
1 January 0.6 (2009)
1 February 0.7
1 March 0.5
1 April 0.6
1 May 0.6
1 June 0.7
1 July 1.9

2 July 3.78
3 July 5.88
4 July 5.11
5 July 16.10
6 July 15.81
7 July 7.09
8 July 5.98

At noon pacific on 8 July TwP ranked 1144 and the stringy top five (elegant, fabric, hyperspace, parallel, idiot guide) ranked 2843, 4467, 5189, 5340, 16380 for an average of 6843.8 making the ratio 5.98

marcus

Jul7-09, 05:37 PM

I like to think there is a common motivation for what you call criticism and fantasy.

That true! And it's a fairly deep insight. I think in the United States it has been difficult to do social criticism because of a widespread fatuous complacency---an unquestioned conviction that our society is so good it should be the model for democracy all over the world. Bush-heads and Palin-drones think this. Maybe now that belief is not so widespread but in the 40s and 50s there was a pious creed that America was special, a land of freedom and fairness etc etc etc., example to the world.

Don't get me wrong, I'm very patriotic and always read the Declaration of Independence out loud on the 4th of July. Or encourage the young people to do it. I'm proud of some things about my country. But there has been excessive self-satisfaction.

And so because of this deafness to explicit social crit, I think that some of the energy of social criticism was channeled into SCIENCE FICTION. Which often, in the 1950s anyway, would really be exploring alternate forms of social and political organization. The imaginative exploration of technology was actually masking what was really going on in the genre. It was not science fantasy, it was social fantasy.
The invention of social alternatives was so to say enabled by the technological alternatives.

But we are not talking about American Exceptionalism, we are talking about String Exceptionalism: "The Only Game In Town".

marcus

Jul9-09, 03:17 PM

At this point I have to say the sudden July 2 rise in Smolin book's sales is looking less like a random unexplained blip and more like something significant. Could be a shift in the physicbook market reflecting a possible shift in public perception.
The spike in sales is too persistent to dismiss.

1 January 0.6 (2009)
1 February 0.7
1 March 0.5
1 April 0.6
1 May 0.6
1 June 0.7
1 July 1.9

2 July 3.78
3 July 5.88
4 July 5.11
5 July 16.10
6 July 15.81
7 July 7.09
8 July 5.98
9 July 5.58
10 July 3.87

At noon pacific on 9 July TwP ranked 1216 and the stringy top five (elegant, fabric, parallel, warped, hyperspace) ranked 2139, 3234. 5971, 9577, 12984 for an average of 6781 making the ratio 5.58.

At noon 10 July TwP was 1730 and string top five (hyperspace, fabric, elegant, parallel, idiot guide) were 3461, 3565, 3615, 11301, 11547 for average of 6697.8.

I wonder how much longer this will last.

John Creighto

Jul9-09, 04:05 PM

At this point I have to say the sudden July 2 rise in Smolin book's sales is looking less like a random unexplained blip and more like something significant. Could be a shift in the physicbook market reflecting a possible shift in public perception.
The spike in sales is too persistent to dismiss.

1 January 0.6 (2009)
1 February 0.7
1 March 0.5
1 April 0.6
1 May 0.6
1 June 0.7
1 July 1.9

2 July 3.78
3 July 5.88
4 July 5.11
5 July 16.10
6 July 15.81
7 July 7.09
8 July 5.98
9 July 5.58

At noon pacific on 9 July TwP ranked 1216 and the stringy top five (elegant, fabric, parallel, warped, hyperspace) ranked 2139, 3234. 5971, 9577, 12984 for an average of 6781 making the ratio 5.58.

I wonder how much longer this will last.

It will stop when enough of the market as read it. I thought about buying it before. The title sounded interesting. It is certainly a unique title. I don't see how if I bought the book it would say anything about my confidence in any particular paradigm in physics.

marcus

Jul11-09, 09:15 PM

It will stop when enough of the market as read it. Of course---I definitely agree! And one question is what is "enough" and when will that be, that "enough" is reached.

To give you perspective, the book came out in September 2006 and has had excellent sales for a good bit of that time, for the first 3-4 months but also including starting September 2007 when the paperback edition went on sale.

Most other stringrelated books that came out around or after September 2006 have disappeared, dropped out of sight. This one is still occasionally high up there. Why? What keeps fueling interest?

I thought about buying it before. The title sounded interesting. It is certainly a unique title. I don't see how if I bought the book it would say anything about my confidence in any particular paradigm in physics.

Like you, I don't see how it would relate to your confidence. If I were confident in some model then probably I would not be so interested in the quest for a quantum theory of geometry. I look at the leading approaches (dynamic triangulations, asymptotic safety, loop, spinfoam...) as steps along the way, gradual advances, work in progress.

1 January 0.6 (2009)
1 February 0.7
1 March 0.5
1 April 0.6
1 May 0.6
1 June 0.7
1 July 1.9

2 July 3.78
3 July 5.88
4 July 5.11
5 July 16.10
6 July 15.81
7 July 7.09
8 July 5.98
9 July 5.58
10 July 3.87
11 July 2.92
12 July 2.67 (11:31 AM, had to be out at noon)

At noon pacific on 9 July TwP ranked 1216 and the stringy top five (elegant, fabric, parallel, warped, hyperspace) ranked 2139, 3234. 5971, 9577, 12984 for an average of 6781 making the ratio 5.58.

At noon 10 July TwP was 1730 and string top five (hyperspace, fabric, elegant, parallel, idiot guide) were 3461, 3565, 3615, 11301, 11547 for average of 6697.8.

At noon 11 July TwP was 1831 and the current stringy top five (elegant, fabric, parallel, hyperspace, idiot guide) ranked 1970, 4497, 5879, 6399, 8016 for an average of 5352.2. In other words judging by salesrank the Smolin book was doing about 3 times better than the string topfive average that we use for benchmark.

Had to be out at noon on 12 July so took reading at 11:31 AM, Smolin 1973 and the benchmark (elegant, fabric, parallel, hyperspace, blackholewar) 2250, 3255, 3884, 7139, 9842 for average 5274.0 and ratio 2.67.

I still haven't learned of anything having been done to advertise or publicize the book, so the sudden spurt of sales, to levels like September-November 2007, is unexplained.
Anyone see anything or hear anything that could explain? The fact that the Strings 2009 conference in Rome was such a bust? Any straws in the wind?

Fra

Jul12-09, 06:32 AM

I don't see how if I bought the book it would say anything about my confidence in any particular paradigm in physics.

I think different people may read the book for different reasons. I've read Smolins 3 books, trouble with physics, 3 roads to QG, and the life of the cosmos and my reason for reading it is that wanted to learn about smolins reasoning. In particular his quest for new logic and evolving law.

The critique against string theory was not my reason for reading it. I somehow share alot of his views, and did so before hearing the name Smolin.

Maybe to some people, his books could be an eye opener. If so, why not. In particular might this apply to people who make decisions about funding.

However having read all 3 of his books, there is a decent amount of redundandy and overlap between the three books, and I think 3 roards was possily the best one, but maybe it's because that's the one i read first.

I think the message is clear in smolins books. The primary goal is NOT to just bash string theory and be done with it, it is to try to open the readers eyes and widern their reasoning in the quest for a better understanding that will benefit all of us. The note on string theory, is just (as I read it at least) an illustration that the past strategy has been moderately successful, further increasing the motivation for truly new and creative ideas. Maybe part of the diffuculty of the problems, isn't just that the problem is hard, it may be partly thay we're stuck in an old mode of analysing the problem. The way we ask questions in order to defined the problem may be part of the problem.

/Fredrik

marcus

Jul12-09, 02:23 PM

I think different people may read the book for different reasons. I've read Smolins 3 books, trouble with physics, 3 roads to QG, and the life of the cosmos and my reason for reading it is that wanted to learn about smolins reasoning. In particular his quest for new logic and evolving law...
/Fredrik

Fra, perceptive comment and interesting point of view on Smolin's books!
You might be interested in the FQXi Azores conference which just finished. They may be putting up some video and/or pdf on the talks.
home:
http://www.fqxi.org/conference/home
sample list of questions considered at the previous FQXi conference:
http://www.fqxi.org/conference/questions
Sabine's blog report on it:
http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2009/07/fqxi-on-azores.html
Lee Smolin was of course one of the participants (on scientific advisory board of FQXi, along with Frank Wilczek as I recall) and since the questions they home in on are often fairly deep ones it should be interesting to learn what he had to say, if they do post notes or video from the discussion.

Fra

Jul13-09, 01:42 AM

Thanks for those links Marcus! I noticed the talks aren't up yet, but hopefully they will be.

/Fredrik

Fra

Jul13-09, 05:20 AM

sample list of questions considered at the previous FQXi conference:
http://www.fqxi.org/conference/questions

Almost needless to say, they are listing excellent deep and highly motivated questions.

Just to quote a few from that list...

"
- Are there reasons to believe that standard QM is insufficient?
- Can we apply QM to the entire universe?
- How much information is really there in a quantum state?
- an one define probabilities in an eternally inflating spacetime?
- Is nature fundamentally analog or digital (continuous or discrete)?
- Is nature completely mathematical?
- What is dark energy?
"
Questions so good, that NOT insisting on asking them is to be considered as speculative in the sense of the ostrich putting his head in the sand. In that sense, "speculating" about these questions is rather LESS "speculative" in the sense or risk assessment. How far DARE we walk before we ask ourselves wether we got the direction right?

/Fredrik

marcus

Jul13-09, 03:10 PM

Trouble with Physics salesrank compared with string benchmark:

1 January 0.6 (2009)
1 February 0.7
1 March 0.5
1 April 0.6
1 May 0.6
1 June 0.7
1 July 1.9

2 July 3.78
3 July 5.88
4 July 5.11
5 July 16.10
6 July 15.81
7 July 7.09
8 July 5.98
9 July 5.58
10 July 3.87
11 July 2.92
12 July 2.67
13 July 6.42

At noon pacific on 13 July TwP ranked 1036 and the stringy top five (elegant, parallel, fabric, idiotguide, hyperspace) ranked 2677, 3873, 7634, 9522, 9538 for an average of 6648.8 making the ratio 6.42.

So judging by salesranks, the Smolin book was doing about six times better than the five most popular string-oriented books.
================

Fra, your last post is incisive. How I read it is that sometimes in physics people can waste their time by lacking philosophical smarts and depth.
Sometimes you have to analyze your concepts and if you don't, and if you just "shut up and calculate" or "shut up and accelerate" more and more particles, you run into cul de sac sterile deadend and waste everybody's time. So the "speculative" shoe is on the other foot, I think you are saying. It is NOT thinking about the meaning of the concepts that then becomes the careless and wasteful gamble, the speculation.
And that is really what Smolin is all about. The ideas he comes up with can be wrong sometimes and he's not afraid of that, but right or wrong, he is not shallow. He doesn't simply follow whatever herd of cattle or flock of sheep. The TwP book is interesting partly because of that.
Almost needless to say, they are listing excellent deep and highly motivated questions.

Just to quote a few from that list...

"
- Are there reasons to believe that standard QM is insufficient?
- Can we apply QM to the entire universe?
- How much information is really there in a quantum state?
- an one define probabilities in an eternally inflating spacetime?
- Is nature fundamentally analog or digital (continuous or discrete)?
- Is nature completely mathematical?
- What is dark energy?
"
Questions so good, that NOT insisting on asking them is to be considered as speculative in the sense of the ostrich putting his head in the sand. In that sense, "speculating" about these questions is rather LESS "speculative" in the sense or risk assessment. How far DARE we walk before we ask ourselves wether we got the direction right?

/Fredrik

But Smolin's next book, that he is writing with Robert Unger about time and the evolution of the laws of physics should actually be more philosophically interesting. The FQXi question "Can we apply QM to the entire universe?" Could have been taken right out of the Smolin-Unger book. The answer is probably No, we cannot, because we are not an outside observer performing repeated universe experiments.

John Creighto

Jul13-09, 08:32 PM

So judging by salesranks, the Smolin book was doing about six times better than the five most popular string-oriented books.
================

I'm still thinking "So". If two books cover topic A and one book covers topic B then the fact that the book which covers topic B is more popular then the two books that cover topic A says nothing about weather topic B is more popular then topic A. Also if a lot has been written about one topic and little of merit has been written about the second topic then of course the first book written about the second topic is going to show a surge in popularity at first.

Shouldn't there be a much better measure of public opinion then book sales or tweets for that matter. It reminds me of people who try to gauge danger by how much they hear about something on the news when in fact the more you hear something on the news the less common an occurrence it is.

Fra

Jul14-09, 08:17 AM

Fra, your last post is incisive. How I read it is that sometimes in physics people can waste their time by lacking philosophical smarts and depth.
Sometimes you have to analyze your concepts and if you don't, and if you just "shut up and calculate" or "shut up and accelerate" more and more particles, you run into cul de sac sterile deadend and waste everybody's time. So the "speculative" shoe is on the other foot, I think you are saying. It is NOT thinking about the meaning of the concepts that then becomes the careless and wasteful gamble, the speculation.

While it might not be right to claim that a specific someone body is wasting THEIR time from their point of view (it's somehow part of the evolutionary game, that each player has not other choice but to play THEIR game and gamble with their own existence and also has to rat their OWN risk, this I the inside-view perspective, it applies to the scientific process and (my personal conjecture) also to physical processes) - but what you rephrase is precisely what I'm saying!
But Smolin's next book, that he is writing with Robert Unger about time and the evolution of the laws of physics should actually be more philosophically interesting. The FQXi question "Can we apply QM to the entire universe?" Could have been taken right out of the Smolin-Unger book. The answer is probably No, we cannot, because we are not an outside observer performing repeated universe experiments.
Yes, I very much look forward to that book. Some of thoese ideas are already present, if perhaps less elaborated in smolins other books. At least I see it when I read his books.

So far the talk from perimeter on the reality of law, where he mentions his collaboration with unger, where he tries to make a philosophical argument against the notion of timeless law is probably a good indicator of what to expect from the book. I have listened to that talk several times because I had it with me on a trip last year on a mp3 player and it was the only thing I had to listen to. And I think at least to judge from that talk, there are still many open wires even for smolin. In particular on the objection of some that wether replacing timeless law, would again need a timeless metalaw or now. On this point his reasoning was not very clear. I hope that in the book he is more explicit and may come with ideas on howto formalise this, I think it can be done.

So I think his questioning of the notion of timless law, and replacing the ensemble or completely unphysical statistics of IMHO silly "multiverses" with instead the idea of ONE evolving universe is in the right direction. Also, this fairly deep suggestions has implications for the notion of the reality of physical law and our undertanding of science as a process. The scientific process almost becomes one with the physical processes. Just in my taste.

If I had to mention from the top of my head one person I'm aware of from media that insists on a change, smolins ideas are one of the top most interesting.

It's true that some of these ideas shake many of the foundations of science, especially the new notion of evolving law, but all circustances motivating questioning in this direction give me more confidence than weak argument that there is nothing wrong with the old logic judged on past success. there is also a good reason for this, which smolin explains when talking about how closed subsystems is a different story than an open environment. The logic that works for closed subsystems does not work for open environments.

/Fredrik

marcus

Jul14-09, 03:36 PM

marcus

Jul14-09, 09:24 PM

If two books cover topic A and one book covers topic B then the fact that the book which covers topic B is more popular then the two books that cover topic A says nothing about weather topic B is more popular then topic A...

Yes definitely. What interests me is how this index changes over time. I have kept track of it since September 2006. Doing a reading at or around the first of the month, always at noon pacific so as to avoid any accidental "cherrypicking"

For much of 2008 the index was down around 0.5 and 0.6. Also for much of 2009. And now it is up, often over 2 or 3.

This is a big change. Does it signal a longterm shift in the way the physics-fans in the general public are thinking? Or is it just a brief temporary spike? And if it is purely temporary, why did it happen now?

I think the public is capable of being fooled by science hype. Indeed it probably has been fooled quite a bit including by media specials (eg even with Hawking, Brian Greene,...) that you'd hope would be solid and not misleading. So you can't take booksales as an indicator of what is valid research or good science policy. It could even sometimes be a contrary indicator!

I don't need to keep track of wideaudience booksales to tell me what is valid science and what isn't. Neither do you. We have other ways---our critical faculties, citation counts, reading informed inside opinion.

What indices like this can tell us is about public perceptions and especially alert us to change---shifts in perception.

Smolin's book essentially advocates a more inclusive, broad front of attack on the quantum geometry/gravity problem. Not just string, but also spinfoam, causal sets, dynamic triangulations, loop quantum gravity...
And the book gives the reasons why you need to allow for string being a dead-end. A fundamental weakness in the string approach. No approach can you say from the outset that it is right. Every approach can turn out to be flawed some way, and it may turn out to be possible to work around the flaw or it may NOT. So the mature strategy is to develop along a variety of paths and support several research lines.

Well in 2006 there was a serious problem of overconcentration on string with an entrenched establishment protecting its own prestige, especially in the US.
Now that monopoly has broken somewhat in Europe, and the Europeans are being rewarded by exciting advances along the non-string lines. Most recently the socalled Asymptotic Safe approach that nobelist Steven Weinberg talked about at Cern (July 7) just this past week. But actually a lot of nonstring QG research action.
So the situation that Smolin assessed in the book has proven to be in some sense self-correcting. It is as if at least the European Scientific Establishment paid attention to what Smolin was saying. Or knew it already. So more funding HAS gone into the nonstring lines that Smolin was talking about, and also allied approaches that he didnt even mention.
Now it remains for the USA scientific establishment (DOE research, NSF, national science foundation,...) to get the message.
Smolin's book can be a helpful PART of this shift in perception and policy, but it can't do the job all by itself.

Still, I think it is an interesting index and I am waiting to see where it goes next.

BTW Smolin's next book (about Time and the Laws of Physics) is likely to be very controversial. In its day TwP was considered a dark horse and not likely to be as persistent and influential as it seems now to be. The new one could be like that too.

marcus

Jul14-09, 09:34 PM

Fra, on reflection I have nothing to add to your post #29. I concur completely with what you say there. (including about the open wires :biggrin:) details still to be filled in. missing connections that still have to be made.

Good idea to make an MP3 of a lecture that you can then take on a train trip.
In case anyone wants to copy your example I will post links to smolin perimeter lectures.
Here is one:
http://pirsa.org/08100049/

15 July 2.37
At noon, the regular time, Trouble ranked 2566 and the stringy benchmark was 6081.4 making the ratio 2.37.

marcus

Jul16-09, 03:12 PM

Kaboom! The big sales spike is over and TwP is back in the normal range. The unexplained excursion lasted just over 2 weeks.

Trouble with Physics salesrank compared with string benchmark:

1 January 0.6 (2009)
1 February 0.7
1 March 0.5
1 April 0.6
1 May 0.6
1 June 0.7
1 July 1.9

2 July 3.78
3 July 5.88
4 July 5.11
5 July 16.10
6 July 15.81
7 July 7.09
8 July 5.98
9 July 5.58
10 July 3.87
11 July 2.92
12 July 2.67
13 July 6.42
14 July 4.88
15 July 2.37
16 July 0.81

At noon pacific on 16 July TwP ranked 5350 and the stringy top five (elegant, fabric, blackhole, parallel, hyperspace) ranked 2079, 3252, 4395, 4413, 7516 for an average of 4331.0 making the ratio 0.81.

John Creighto

Jul16-09, 04:16 PM

Well in 2006 there was a serious problem of overconcentration on string with an entrenched establishment protecting its own prestige, especially in the US.
Now that monopoly has broken somewhat in Europe, and the Europeans are being rewarded by exciting advances along the non-string lines. Most recently the socalled Asymptotic Safe approach that nobelist Steven Weinberg talked about at Cern (July 7) just this past week. But actually a lot of nonstring QG research action.

So the situation that Smolin assessed in the book has proven to be in some sense self-correcting. It is as if at least the European Scientific Establishment paid attention to what Smolin was saying. Or knew it already. So more funding HAS gone into the nonstring lines that Smolin was talking about, and also allied approaches that he didnt even mention.
Now it remains for the USA scientific establishment (DOE research, NSF, national science foundation,...) to get the message.

I think in any field of research governments should avoid picking winners as much as possible. I'm curious as to why there were would be a disproportionate amount of research in string theory because in my mind the only justification would be if there were key predictions to test that required a large amount of research dollars to test. Otherwise, I think they should let the academics decide on their own which fields of research are most relevant for them to pursue. Perhaps funding preference could be given to people who write papers which are highly referenced and read.

Fra

Jul17-09, 01:06 AM

marcus

Jul17-09, 03:28 PM

Fra, Amazon does not provide figures on the numbers of copies sold. They only give a sales rank. The book that sells the most copies is #1, the next most copies sold gets rank #2.
Also publishers tend to be reticent about actual numbers sold. So all we have to go on are the ranks. I calculate the ratios myself because the rank of a physics book is hard to interpret, I like to know the rank compared with something.

So for example the ratio at noon today was 1.67. Trouble was doing a bit more than one and a half times better than the stringy benchmark I compare with. The way it works is this:
At noon TwP rank was 2907.
The five most popular stringy books today were elegant, fabric, parallel, idiot guide, hyperspace and their ranks were 2620, 2871, 4090, 5257, 9431.
This makes an average of 4853.8. One just adds up the five ranks and divides by 5.
So the average stringy rank, for books in the top five, was 4853.8.
Smolin's rank of 2907 was 1.67 times better than that. That is the ratio 4853.8/2907.

So I record this for today:
17 July 1.67

Another example was the ratio for 6 July, as described here:
...
To continue recording the noon readings for this interesting spike in sales of Smolin's book:
2 July 3.78
3 July 5.88
4 July 5.11
5 July 16.10
6 July 15.81

Trouble with Physics was number one on the Amazon list of physics books (ahead of Hawking, Greene, whoever). At noon on 6 July it ranked 395 and the string topfive average was 6286.2, making the ratio 15.81.
The five most popular string books that day (fabric, elegant, parallel, hyperspace, warped) ranked 1507, 1782, 5330, 7309, 15503.

On that day the most popular string books (and their ranks) were Brian Greene's Fabric (#1507) and Elegant (#1782), Michio Kaku's Parallel Worlds (#5330) and Hyperspace (#7309) and Lisa Randall's Warped Passages (#15503). Among the top five, the average salesrank was 6286.2. The Smolin book's salesrank was 15.81 times better than this stringy benchmark. Since that day it happened to be #395 among all books that Amazon sells.

The point of such an index is that it should be quick to calculate, and one should calculate it consistently always the same way. And one then watches it over time. Only the change over time, if there is any change, can mean something. By itself one cannot say what the number means.
The stringy benchmark to some extent measures the size of the problem (the over-hyping and over-selling of string to the public) and so the ratio has a connection with how well Smolin's initiative is doing relative to the size of the mountainous problem it addresses. But there is no rigorous meaning---one can learn what it means only by watching it over time and seeing what it correlates with. Like any other numerical indicator that one tracks.

marcus

Jul18-09, 04:37 PM

A couple of days ago I thought the spike was over and it was back to normal (like 0.5 - 0.7) but that hasn't happened yet actually. Trouble is still doing somewhat better than par.

Trouble with Physics salesrank compared with string benchmark:

1 January 0.6 (2009)
1 February 0.7
1 March 0.5
1 April 0.6
1 May 0.6
1 June 0.7
1 July 1.9

2 July 3.78
3 July 5.88
4 July 5.11
5 July 16.10
6 July 15.81
7 July 7.09
8 July 5.98
9 July 5.58
10 July 3.87
11 July 2.92
12 July 2.67
13 July 6.42
14 July 4.88
15 July 2.37
16 July 0.81
17 July 1.67
18 July 2.76
19 July 1.50

At noon pacific on 19 July, Trouble was 4081 and the most popular stringies (elegant, parallel, blackhole, fabric, hyperspace) were 3403, 5943, 6152, 7098, 8108 for an average of 6140.8 making the ratio 1.50.

Fra

Jul21-09, 02:49 AM

Thanks. I was just curious if the explanation could have been a random fluctuation. A random fluctuation as an explanation would be more plausiable the lower the total # of books is.

The larger # of individual books it is, the more remarkable is it.

So maybe one explanation could have been: A drop in totals sales# of all books (due to bad times?) + fluctuations which are bound to come in the small n limit :)

/Fredrik

marcus

Jul21-09, 04:54 PM

The main cause of turbulence just this past week, that I have seen, is the appearance of "Kindle" e-book versions of all these titles. Amazon is listing e-book ranks (from the "Kindle store") mixed into the physics bestseller list, which is quite confusing. e-book ranks are calculated on a different basis. I suspect that Kindle store sales (of the e-books) is small compared with total sales of ordinary books, so for the time being I am ignoring the Kindle versions of the titles. TwP now has a kindle version and it is doing quite well in the ranks, which surprises me. I thought that it would be mostly children and young people who buy the e-books, and I don't think of them as the main market for TwP. The appeal is that you get the book instantly, by wire, and also it is cheaper.
In any case, in doing these numbers I am focusing only on real books, and ignoring e-books.

Also there was a jump in sales of the Susskind black hole book (not really about string but I include it in calculating the stringy topfive because of some string-inspired stuff in chapters near the end.) This jump in sales came immediately after an article by Susskind appeared in Physics World. This makes it more believable that Smolin's spike in sales was at least partly caused by his having an article in Physics World (with some follow-on comment) a couple of weeks earlier. It was the magnitude of the spike that strikes me as unusual, not the timing.

Trouble is still doing somewhat better than par.

Trouble with Physics salesrank compared with string benchmark:

1 January 0.6 (2009)
1 February 0.7
1 March 0.5
1 April 0.6
1 May 0.6
1 June 0.7
1 July 1.9

2 July 3.78
3 July 5.88
4 July 5.11
5 July 16.10
6 July 15.81
7 July 7.09
8 July 5.98
9 July 5.58
10 July 3.87
11 July 2.92
12 July 2.67
13 July 6.42
14 July 4.88
15 July 2.37
16 July 0.81
17 July 1.67
18 July 2.76
19 July 1.50
20 July 1.19
21 July 1.30
22 July 1.39

At noon pacific on 21 July, Trouble was 3750 and the most popular stringies (blackhole, elegant, fabric, parallel, hyperspace) were 2071, 2121, 5145, 6722, 8284 for an average of 4868.6 making the ratio 1.30.

At noon pacific on 22 July, Trouble was 3055 and the most popular stringies (fabric, blackhole, elegant, parallel, hyperspace) were 2778, 3161, 3491, 3637, 8223, for an average of 4258.0 making the ratio 1.39.

marcus

Jul24-09, 04:14 PM

Something made the Smolin book sales pick up in late June/early July. There was an unexplained two-week spike in sales during the first half of July, which is now over. But the salesrank is still better than par, and better than in the first half of this year. I'm wondering if this indicates anything for the long term.

Trouble with Physics salesrank compared with string benchmark:

1 January 0.6 (2009)
1 February 0.7
1 March 0.5
1 April 0.6
1 May 0.6
1 June 0.7
1 July 1.9
...
19 July 1.50
20 July 1.19
21 July 1.30
22 July 1.39
23 July 1.79
24 July 1.09
25 July 0.53

At noon pacific on 23 July, Trouble was 2190 and the most popular stringies (elegant, blackhole, fabric, parallel, hyperspace) were 1701, 2234, 2379, 4976, 8333 for an average of 3924.6 making the ratio 1.79.

At noon pacific on 24 July, Trouble was 3848 and the most popular stringies (elegant, hyperspace, fabric, blackhole, parallel) were 2257, 3600, 4369, 4648, 6013 for an average of 4176.8 making the ratio 1.09.

On the 25th Trouble ranked 6714 compared with a stringy topfive average of 3564.2 making the ratio 0.53, more like what was typical during the first half of the year.

=====================
EDIT TO REPLY TO NEXT POST
Hi Views,
Since I can still edit this, I will save a post and reply to yours here. You asked what are my thoughts. I think the Kachru et al paper you refer to would not have had anything to do with the increase in sales of Smolin's book, The Trouble with Physics, during July.

ViewsofMars

Jul25-09, 10:40 AM

Something made the Smolin book sales pick up in late June/early July.

Marcus, it might have peeked due to this publication:

Work supported in part by US Department of Energy contract DE-AC02-76SF00515
Published in Annu. Rev. Nuc. Part. Sci
June 2009

MPP-2009-15
UPR-1205-T
SLAC-PUB-13531

D-brane Instantons in Type II String Theory

Ralph Blumenhagen1, Mirjam Cvetiˇc2, Shamit Kachru3,4 and Timo Weigand4
1 Max-Planck-Institut f¨ur Physik, F¨ohringer Ring 6,
D-80805 M¨unchen, Germany
2 Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Pennsylvania,
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6396, USA
3 Department of Physics, Stanford University,
Stanford, CA 94305, USA
4 SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Stanford University,
Menlo Park, CA 94309, USA

Abstract
We review recent progress in determining the effects of D-brane instantons
in N = 1 supersymmetric compactifications of Type II string theory to four
dimensions. We describe the abstract D-brane instanton calculus for holomorphic couplings such as the superpotential, the gauge kinetic function
and higher fermionic F-terms. This includes a discussion of multi-instanton
effects and the implications of background fluxes for the instanton sector.
Our presentation also highlights, but is not restricted to the computation
of D-brane instanton effects in quiver gauge theories on D-branes at singularities. We then summarize the concrete consequences of stringy D-brane instantons for the construction of semi-realistic models of particle physics or SUSY-breaking in compact and non-compact geometries.

[68 pages – Please read.]
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/cgi-wrap/getdoc/slac-pub-13531.pdf

I was especially interested in CONCLUSIONS AND OUTLOOK (p. 56 - 58). What are your thoughts about it?

ViewsofMars

Jul25-09, 05:12 PM

=====================
EDIT TO REPLY TO NEXT POST
Hi Views,
Since I can still edit this, I will save a post and reply to yours here. You asked what are my thoughts. I think the Kachru et al paper you refer to would not have had anything to do with the increase in sales of Smolin's book, The Trouble with Physics, during July.

Hi Marcus. :smile:That's fine.

Getting back to what you stated, "Something made the Smolin book sales pick up in late June/early July." I hope you won't mind me mentioning that I’m still new here so I hope it is ok for me to share with you what I just earlier observed elsewhere on physicsforums. You might consider in the future that because of you the 'increase in sales of Smolin's book' may have resulted when you presented on June 2, 2009 in Physics, Sub-Forums : Beyond the Standard Model, Topic: re: Introduction To Loop Quantum Gravity (page 11):

“This wide audience article by Smolin in PhysicsWorld (June 2, 2009) could turn out to be influential. It is part of the development of Unimodular Relativity (UR) in conjuctions with evolutionary cosmology (the conjectured evolutionary basis for the laws of physics).
It's a very readable article, called The Unique Universe."

and this quote of yours too may have had an effect on sales:
That true! And it's a fairly deep insight. I think in the United States it has been difficult to do social criticism because of a widespread fatuous complacency---an unquestioned conviction that our society is so good it should be the model for democracy all over the world. Bush-heads and Palin-drones think this. Maybe now that belief is not so widespread but in the 40s and 50s there was a pious creed that America was special, a land of freedom and fairness etc etc etc., example to the world.

Don't get me wrong, I'm very patriotic and always read the Declaration of Independence out loud on the 4th of July. Or encourage the young people to do it. I'm proud of some things about my country. But there has been excessive self-satisfaction.

And so because of this deafness to explicit social crit, I think that some of the energy of social criticism was channeled into SCIENCE FICTION. Which often, in the 1950s anyway, would really be exploring alternate forms of social and political organization. The imaginative exploration of technology was actually masking what was really going on in the genre. It was not science fantasy, it was social fantasy. The invention of social alternatives was so to say enabled by the technological alternatives.

But we are not talking about American Exceptionalism, we are talking about String Exceptionalism: "The Only Game In Town".

Marcus, I'd appreciate a response as I earlier asked of you on the the Kachru et al paper, D-brane Instantons in Type II String Theory that was supported in part by US Department of Energy. :smile: I'd like your input on it. Comments please. Thank you in advance for your consideration. I do think it is important for the public to realize that research is important. And, I'm most definately a big fan of the BIG BANG! (A round of applause for George Smoot!)

marcus

Jul26-09, 03:23 PM

marcus

Jul28-09, 03:21 PM

ViewsofMars

Jul29-09, 08:16 PM

Trouble with Physics salesrank compared with string benchmark:

1 January 0.6 (2009)
1 February 0.7
1 March 0.5
1 April 0.6
1 May 0.6
1 June 0.7
1 July 1.9
...
19 July 1.50
20 July 1.19
21 July 1.30
22 July 1.39
23 July 1.79
24 July 1.09
25 July 0.53
26 July 0.76
27 July 1.11

At noon pacific on 26 July, Trouble was 4686 and the most popular stringies (blackhole, elegant, fabric, idiotguide, parallel) were 1245, 2383, 4435, 5016, 5090 for an average of 3633.8 making the ratio 0.76.

At noon pacific on 27 July, Trouble was 3631 and the most popular stringies (blackhole, elegant, fabric, hyperspace, parallel) were 2617, 3653, 3915, 4027, 5976, for an average of 4037.6 making the ratio 1.11.

I'd like a link (url) that I can review from Amazon where you are obtaining those figures. :smile:

That's a curious thought. I rather doubt that anything we say here in SocialSci forum significantly influences the mass science book market or any other sector of the world at large.

I'm sure of the readership on physicsforums, and what you write on physicsforums is noted on peoples' blogs.

You sound like you see your role as getting a message across to the general public. What I'm interested in is accurately tracking what is going on. I'm interested in how some indices behave---and in trying to follow and understand certain trends.

You mean about George Smoot. Yup! He is a nobel prize winner. Top notch physicist.

I guess there is a secondary idea here also that public support for scientific research will be more solid and effective in the long run if the public is well-informed. If the public knows the truth about what is happening in physics research (not just the hype as per discovery channel and gee whiz science specials.) But that is a secondary consideration. First of all I want some objective comprehension for myself, of what is going on.

Yes, I agree with you 'that public support for scientific research will be more solid and effective in the long run if the public is well-informed'. And, maybe I can be of help to you in a sociological sense. Here is an excerpt of an article, Cosmology's Golden Age, from CERN ( International Journal of High-Energy Physics) Courier dated Jun 8, 2009 that was written by George F Smoot, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory:

The situation in cosmology is rife with opportunities. There are well defined but fundamental questions to be answered and new observations arriving to guide us in this quest. We should learn much more about inflation from the observations that we can anticipate over the next few years. Likewise we can hope to learn about the true nature of dark matter from laboratory and new accelerator experiments that are underway or soon to be operating, as at the LHC. We hope to learn more about possible extra dimensions through observations.

We continue to seek and encourage new ideas and concepts for understanding the universe. These concepts and ideas must pass muster – like a camel going through the eye of a needle – in agreeing with the multitude of precise observations and thereby yield an effective version of our now-working cosmological model. This is the key point of modern cosmology, which is fully flowering and truly exciting. It is the natural consequence and culmination of the path that Galileo started us on four centuries ago.
http://cerncourier.com/cws/article/cern/39163

I don't think a book should be the only indicator for future research as my example previously noted above. Funding is important.

Regarding strings, under Smoot Astrophysics Group Personnel (1) is Scientist Jodi Lamoureux-Christiansen. On her homepage (2) under RESEARCH INTERESTS, please note Cosmic Strings (3):
“CMB results rule out topological defects as the primary source of structure in the universe. They may only be a low-level source of structure. Their importance, however, has recently been recognized in theoretical work on hybrid inflation, D-Brane inflation and SUSY GUTS which all favor cosmic string formation. The discovery of Cosmic Strings would solve another dark theoretical mystery by putting a physical face to the yet another component of the universe.”
And please do review in Astrophysics (4):
Title: Search for Cosmic Strings in the GOODS Survey
Authors: J.L. Christiansen, E. Albin, K.A. James, J. Goldman, D. Maruyama, G.F. Smoot
(Submitted on 29 Feb 2008 (v1), last revised 24 May 2008 (this version, v2))
1. http://aether.lbl.gov/people.html
2. http://atom.physics.calpoly.edu/~jodi/
3. http://atom.physics.calpoly.edu/~jodi/strings.html
http://arxiv.org/abs/0803.0027v2
4. http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0803/0803.0027v2.pdf
###

Marcus, ever heard of Blue Ocean Strategy?:biggrin: Look, I'm creating a new market space by using a teaching module within your space along with providing you and our audience what I consider to be important feedback. Your topic "Sociology of Physics:comment and indices" isn't meant to reflect only *your* feedback without critique. It wouldn't be a democracy if I weren't allowed to comment. Also, at times, less certainty yields better decisions. :smile:

I should mention that I'm enjoying our exchanges. Sorry I didn't get back to you sooner.

marcus

Jul30-09, 03:29 PM

Getting close to the first of August. For compactness, I only save smoothed first-of-month readings.

Trouble with Physics salesrank compared with string benchmark:

1 January 0.6 (2009)
1 February 0.7
1 March 0.5
1 April 0.6
1 May 0.6
1 June 0.7
1 July 1.9
...
30 July 0.90
31 July 0.44

At noon pacific on 30 July, Trouble was 4736 and the five most popular stringies (fabric, elegant, hyperspace, parallel, blackhole) were 3418, 3651, 3804, 4623, 5714 for an average of 4242.0 making the ratio 0.90. I intend to smooth with a 5 day average around the first of the month. Take readings on the 30, 31, 1, 2, and 3 of August, which will average out some of the random fluctuation.
===================

In my previous post I introduced another index which we can track. First of all there's this:
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/find/hep/www?rawcmd=k+spin%2Cfoam+or+%28dk+quantum+gravity+ and+dk+loop+space%29+and+date+%3E+2006&FORMAT=WWW&SEQUENCE=citecount%28d%29
This is Loop/Spinfoam research published since 2006 (i.e. 2007-present) ranked by cites.
As of 28 July there are 251 papers listed, and the citecounts for the top ten run from 65 down to 25. Both publication rate and citations matter.

And here it is restricted to [2007, 2008]. The search finds 196 papers in the Spires data base.
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/find/hep/www?rawcmd=FIND+K+SPIN%2CFOAM+OR+%28DK+QUANTUM+GRA VITY+AND+DK+LOOP+SPACE%29+AND+DATE+%3E+2006+and+da te+%3C+2009&FORMAT=www&SEQUENCE=citecount%28d%29

Loop/Spinfoam publication rate (entries in the Spires database for two-year intervals)

[2003 2004] 126
[2005 2006] 136
[2007 2008] 196

A similar check shows string research publication declining over the past three years, and that citations to string papers have declined from highs in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
The research mix may be finding a new balance.
Various things suggest this and maybe I should also mention some anecdotal evidence tending to confirm it.

marcus

Aug1-09, 03:09 PM

Trouble with Physics salesrank compared with string benchmark:

1 January 0.6 (2009)
1 February 0.7
1 March 0.5
1 April 0.6
1 May 0.6
1 June 0.7
1 July 1.9
...
30 July 0.90
31 July 0.44
1 August 0.51
2 August 0.81
3 August ?

One more noon reading to take, for an average around 1 August.
At noon pacific on 2 August Trouble ranked 5824 and the stringy top five (blackhole, elegant, fabric, hyperspace, parallel) ranked 2715, 3797, 4024, 6387, 6555, for an average of 4695.6 making the ratio 0.81.

marcus

Aug3-09, 03:18 PM

The noon readings around 1 August turned out to be:
30 July 0.90
31 July 0.44
1 August 0.51
2 August 0.81
3 August 0.53

So the final average, giving the smoothed figure for 1 August is 0.64

Trouble with Physics salesrank compared with string benchmark:

1 January 0.6 (2009)
1 February 0.7
1 March 0.5
1 April 0.6
1 May 0.6
1 June 0.7
1 July 1.9
1 August 0.6
...

As far as I can see the most remarkable thing about Trouble sales long term is how steady the book's rank is holding. It came out in September of 2006 and so far shows no sign of going away. In case anyone is curious at noon pacific on 3 August Trouble ranked 9242 and the stringy top five (hyperspace, elegant, fabric, blackhole, parallel) ranked 2879, 3554, 3557, 5474, 8961, for an average of 4885.0 making the ratio 0.64.
===============================
Another index to keep track of is the:

Loop/Spinfoam publication rate

[2003 2004] 126
[2005 2006] 136
[2007 2008] 196

To check these figures use this Spires keyword search and adjust the dates accordingly---here the dates are set to give research output from [2007 2008]:

http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/find/hep/www?rawcmd=FIND+K+SPIN%2CFOAM+OR+%28DK+QUANTUM+GRA VITY+AND+DK+LOOP+SPACE%29+AND+DATE+%3E+2006+and+da te+%3C+2009&FORMAT=www&SEQUENCE=citecount%28d%29

==============
Another is a string publication index using keywords "superstring, M-theory, AdS/CFT, brane, compactification, heterotic" to search the Harvard archive.
Here are the results as of 3 August, for the first 6 months of three consecutive years:

2007: 2669
2008: 2597
2009: 2418

The links used are:
2007
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-abs_connect?db_key=AST&db_key=PHY&qform=PHY&aut_logic=OR&author=&ned_query=YES_query=YES&start_mon=00&start_year=2007&end_mon=06&end_year=2007&ttl_logic=OR&title=&txt_logic=OR&text=heterotic+M-theory+brane+compactification+superstrings+AdS%2FC FT&nr_to_return=100&start_nr=1&jou_pick=ALL&ref_stems=&data_and=ALL&group_and=ALL&start_entry_day=&start_entry_mon=&start_entry_year=&end_entry_day=&end_entry_mon=&end_entry_year=&min_score=&sort=SCORE&data_type=SHORT&aut_syn=YES&ttl_syn=YES&txt_syn=YES&aut_wt=1.0&ttl_wt=0.3&txt_wt=3.0&aut_wgt=YES&obj_wgt=YES&ttl_wgt=YES&txt_wgt=YES&ttl_sco=YES&txt_sco=YES&version=1

2008
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-abs_connect?db_key=AST&db_key=PHY&qform=PHY&aut_logic=OR&author=&ned_query=YES_query=YES&start_mon=00&start_year=2008&end_mon=06&end_year=2008&ttl_logic=OR&title=&txt_logic=OR&text=heterotic+M-theory+brane+compactification+superstrings+AdS%2FC FT&nr_to_return=100&start_nr=1&jou_pick=ALL&ref_stems=&data_and=ALL&group_and=ALL&start_entry_day=&start_entry_mon=&start_entry_year=&end_entry_day=&end_entry_mon=&end_entry_year=&min_score=&sort=SCORE&data_type=SHORT&aut_syn=YES&ttl_syn=YES&txt_syn=YES&aut_wt=1.0&ttl_wt=0.3&txt_wt=3.0&aut_wgt=YES&obj_wgt=YES&ttl_wgt=YES&txt_wgt=YES&ttl_sco=YES&txt_sco=YES&version=1

2009
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-abs_connect?db_key=AST&db_key=PHY&qform=PHY&aut_logic=OR&author=&ned_query=YES_query=YES&start_mon=00&start_year=2009&end_mon=06&end_year=2009&ttl_logic=OR&title=&txt_logic=OR&text=heterotic+M-theory+brane+compactification+superstrings+AdS%2FC FT&nr_to_return=100&start_nr=1&jou_pick=ALL&ref_stems=&data_and=ALL&group_and=ALL&start_entry_day=&start_entry_mon=&start_entry_year=&end_entry_day=&end_entry_mon=&end_entry_year=&min_score=&sort=SCORE&data_type=SHORT&aut_syn=YES&ttl_syn=YES&txt_syn=YES&aut_wt=1.0&ttl_wt=0.3&txt_wt=3.0&aut_wgt=YES&obj_wgt=YES&ttl_wgt=YES&txt_wgt=YES&ttl_sco=YES&txt_sco=YES&version=1

marcus

Aug9-09, 05:12 PM

Checking in on Smolin's book.

Trouble with Physics salesrank compared with string benchmark:

1 January 0.6 (2009)
1 February 0.7
1 March 0.5
1 April 0.6
1 May 0.6
1 June 0.7
1 July 1.9
1 August 0.6
...
8 August 0.89
9 August 1.49
10 August 0.39
...

At noon pacific 9 August, Trouble ranked 4129 and the five most popular string books (elegant, fabric, parallel, hyperspace, blackhole) ranked 2446, 3289, 3902, 5033, 16039 for an average of 6141.8, making the ratio 1.49.

I would say that although public interest and perception is a factor, there are some more important sociological indicators of changes in the fundamental physics research picture. Loop and allied research publication rate going up (see earlier post) and string publication lapsing. More researchers getting into nonstring QG and QC (the application of quantum gravity to cosmology). Exodus of smart people from string.

One can see a major shift in focus in the work of leaders like Hermann Nicolai, Petr Horava, Edward Witten, Steve Gidding, Juan Maldacena, Arkani-Hamed. Physicists show recognizable herd behavior, so what the leaders do is imporrtant.

Besides this exodus or shift in focus there has this summer been a remarkable run of conferences which combine Loop-and-allied speakers with String and ex-String folks. There is apparently more interest and openness on the part of the String and ex-String community---more desire to listen and discuss.
To mention a few:

Planck Scale (Wroclaw, June)
Marcel Twelve (Paris, July)
FQXi IV (Azores, July)
Emergent Gravity (Vancouver, August)
Ellisfest (Cape Town, August)
AsymSafe (Perimeter, November)

Another indicator of a change in the mental climate was Steven Weinberg's 7 July talk at CERN. (Basic message: string not the only game in town, SW currently chooses to work on an alternative, undercutting string motivation.) Five years ago Weinberg was an influential and staunch supporter: string as "our one best hope" of unification. No longer.

atyy

Aug12-09, 12:08 AM

Emergent Gravity (Vancouver, August)

Vidal: Entanglement, symmetries, and the simulation of strongly interacting systems on a lattice, AND its (VERY CLOSE) relation to spin networks: A Tensor Network (TN) exploits the structure of entanglement in strongly interacting systems on a lattice to provide an efficient representation of its ground state. TN algorithms are becoming increasingly popular, thanks to its ability to simulate systems that cannot be addressed with quantum Monte Carlo techniques, such as frustrated antiferromagnets and interacting spins on a 2D lattice. In my talk I will explain how, in the presence of a symmetry, a TN reduces to a linear superposition of exponentially many Spin Networks (of the type you like in loop quantum gravity). It follows that TN algorithms can be used to evaluate such linear superpositions efficiently.

Hmmm, are LQG spin networks still alive or have they been replaced by spin foams (sorry, am completely confused on by the whole state of LQG/spinfoams)?

marcus

Aug12-09, 11:40 AM

Hmmm, are LQG spin networks still alive or have they been replaced by spin foams (sorry, am completely confused on by the whole state of LQG/spinfoams)?

They are essentially the same theory. As the theory appears to be coming together, a spinfoam is how a spin network evolves.
So it would be impossible for one to replace the other. Or maybe I should say unnecessary.

Thanks for mentioning the Vidal presentation. Do you have a link?
What you quote here is what it says in the conference program http://www.emergentgravity.org/index.php?main=main_EGIV_programme.php
(in case anyone wants to see source and context---there are a lot of other interesting looking talks)
But what about a link to the corresponding work by Vidal?

marcus

Aug12-09, 12:41 PM

Actually Atyy one of the talks that I think interesting from a sociological point of view, at that Vancouver EG4 conference, is Matt Visser's. He's very influential and not allied to any one approach.

I know it doesn't bear directly on your condensed-matter-related QG perspective but I'll copy the abstract as a kind of sociological straw in the wind. It might catch other people's attention as well:

Visser
Who's afraid of Lorentz symmetry breaking?
"Is Lorentz symmetry truly fundamental? Or is it just an "accidental" low-momentum emergent symmetry? Opinions on this issue have undergone a radical mutation over the last few years. Historically, Lorentz symmetry was considered absolutely fundamental --- not to be trifled with --- but for a number of independent reasons the modern viewpoint is more nuanced. What are the benefits of Lorentz symmetry breaking? What can we do with it? Why should we care?"

Here are some citation numbers to gauge Visser's prominence:
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/find/hep/www?rawcmd=FIND+A+VISSER%2C++M&FORMAT=www&SEQUENCE=citecount%28d%29

Here is a recent paper on "Phenomenologically viable Lorentz-violating quantum gravity"
submitted arxiv April 2009 and already published Physical Review Letters and cited 34 times (!)
http://arXiv.org/abs/0904.4464

Again here is "Quantum gravity without Lorentz invariance"
arxived May 2009 and already has 31 cites
http://arXiv.org/abs/0905.2798

He is talking about the situation where the bending of Lorentz invariance is only perceptible at ultra-high energies. Like TeV gamma photons, I guess.
So in a normal lower-energy regime, ordinary Lorentz invariance emerges. OK he seems to like this. And he is influential. It is sometimes these "loose cannon" senior people that by behaving unpredictably and carrying some weight can get things to happen. I'm not a fan of Visser but I am glad to see the cannon rolling around on the deck.

His co-author here Silke Weinfurtner is an attractive woman who played a prominent role at the Planck Scale conference in Wroclaw in June 2008. I'll have to check out her video lecture from that conference, may have something to do with Matt Visser's presentation at EG4.

atyy

Aug12-09, 01:17 PM

I'm not a fan of Visser but I am glad to see the cannon rolling around on the deck.

His co-author here Silke Weinfurtner is an attractive woman who played a prominent role at the Planck Scale conference in Wroclaw in June 2008. I'll have to check out her video lecture from that conference, may have something to do with Matt Visser's presentation at EG4.

He, he - You are not a fan of Visser, while I'm a fan of Visser and not a fan of LQG (actually, just not a fan of "Trouble with Physics", and I like the tenor of Baez's and Freidel's work). Even more he, he - I suppose since this is sociology of physics you are allowed to mention that Silke Weinfurtner is an attractive woman. I shall have to watch her lecture now. :smile: Another recent surprise for me was that Zheng-Cheng Gu, Wen's collaborator, is a guy - I had assumed he was a lady until I saw his picture on Wen's Azores slides.

Here's a Vidal reference that seems relevant: http://arxiv.org/abs/0809.2393

marcus

Aug12-09, 01:59 PM

These conferences are sociological machines that help define what constitutes a particular field of science and who the authorities are and what directions of research are considered interesting. We can study conferences to get sociological clues. Maybe I will get links to the main QG ones that happened recently. You already have the links, Atyy, but I mean post them here for convenience. How else can you find a video of Silke Weinfurtner in a hurry when you want? Certain isolated key talks are also important landmarks (Rovelli at Strings 2008, Weinberg at CERN 7 July 2009) in part because the video shows audience reaction and response. But I'll leave that for later. Here are some main QG conference links:

Black Holes and Loop Quantum Gravity (Valencia, March)
http://www.uv.es/bhlqg/
Planck Scale (Wroclaw, June)
http://www.ift.uni.wroc.pl/~planckscale/
http://www.ift.uni.wroc.pl/~rdurka/planckscale/index-video.php
Marcel Twelve (Paris, July)
http://www.icra.it/MG/mg12/en/
http://www.icra.it/MG/mg12/en/invited_speakers_details.htm
FQXi IV (Azores, July)
http://www.fqxi.org/conference/talks
Loops 2009 (Beijing, August)
http://www.mighty-security.com/loop/timetable1.htm
Emergent Gravity (Vancouver, August)
http://www.emergentgravity.org/
http://www.emergentgravity.org/index.php?main=main_EGIV_programme.php
Ellisfest (Cape Town, August)
http://www.mth.uct.ac.za/~jeff/Quantum_Gravity/About.html
Corfu QG School (Corfu, September)
http://www.physics.ntua.gr/corfu2009/qg.html
AsymSafe (Perimeter, November)
http://www.perimeterinstitute.ca/Events/Asymptotic_Safety/Asymptotic_Safety_-_30_Years_Later/
http://www.perimeterinstitute.ca/Events/Asymptotic_Safety/Invited_Speakers/
http://www.perimeterinstitute.ca/en/Events/Asymptotic_Safety/Abstracts/

Silke's Wroclaw video has a bad audio track for the first 3 minutes and 30 seconds. So you have to wait until 3:30 before turning on the sound. Otherwise an annoying echo.
It's just a nice easy intro to Horava Lifschitz (and also the Visser-Weinfurtner modification or extension of it.)

atyy

Aug12-09, 10:48 PM

http://www.ift.uni.wroc.pl/~rdurka/planckscale/index-video.php

Remigiusz Durka links to abstruse goose which I hadn't read in some time. I came across http://abstrusegoose.com/137

marcus

Aug13-09, 04:42 PM

Great satire! I get a kick out of a lot of the Abstruse Goose comics. Thanks for linking to that stringy Xanadu.
I guess the appearance of satire is another aspect of the sociology scene. Please alert us if you see other goodies like that. I think that Peter Shor, a prof at MIT, produced a classic, in the form of an imaginary dialog.
====

String theorists: We've got the Standard Model, and it works great, but it doesn't include gravity, and it doesn't explain lots of other stuff, like why all the elementary particles have the masses they do. We need a new, broader theory.

Nature: Here's a great new theory I can sell you. It combines quantum field theory and gravity, and there's only one adjustable parameter in it, so all you have to do is find the right value of that parameter, and the Standard Model will pop right out.

String theorists: We'll take it.

String theorists (some time later): Wait a minute, Nature, our new theory won't fit into our driveway. String theory has ten dimensions, and our driveway only has four.

Nature: I can sell you a Calabi-Yau manifold. These are really neat gadgets, and they'll fold up string theory into four dimensions, no problem.

String theorists: We'll take one of those as well, please.

Nature: Happy to help.

String theorists (some time later): Wait a minute, Nature, there's too many different ways to fold our Calabi-Yao manifold up. And it keeps trying to come unfolded. And string theory is only compatible with a negative cosmological constant, and we own a positive one.

Nature: No problem. Just let me tie this Calabi-Yao manifold up with some strings and branes, and maybe a little duct tape, and you'll be all set.

String theorists: But our beautiful new theory is so ugly now!

Nature: Ah! But the Anthropic Principle says that all the best theories are ugly.

String theorists: It does?

Nature: It does. And once you make it the fashion to be ugly, you'll ensure that other theories will never beat you in beauty contests.

String theorists: Hooray! Hooray! Look at our beautiful new theory.
===
Shor is amazing:
Shor's algorithm in quantum computing, factoring exponentially faster than any known classical method.
As a kid he took second in International Math Olympiad. Putnam fellow at Caltech. Nevanlinna Prize.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Shor
http://www-math.mit.edu/~shor/

Chaos' lil bro Order

Aug13-09, 07:59 PM

Hey Marcus,

Maybe you could provide a little summary post describing your trend-finding... I think earlier you mentioned string theory was losing favor, based on book sales. Do you have any other running conclusions to share? Its easy for us casual readers than to sift through your masses of data (appreciate your efforts).

marcus

Aug14-09, 12:53 AM

Hey Marcus,
Maybe you could provide a little summary post describing your trend-finding... .

Did that a while back in this thread, Bro. Maybe it's time to elaborate, update. Booksales are the least of it, and the most lagging. The public takes the longest of anyone to become aware. Nevertheless it is a factor and I don't want to ignore it.

I would say that although public interest and perception is a factor, there are some more important sociological indicators of changes in the fundamental physics research picture. Loop and allied research publication rate going up (see earlier post) and string publication lapsing. More researchers getting into nonstring QG and QC (the application of quantum gravity to cosmology). Exodus of smart people from string.

One can see a major shift in focus in the work of leaders like Hermann Nicolai, Petr Horava, Edward Witten, Steve Gidding, Juan Maldacena, Arkani-Hamed. Physicists show recognizable herd behavior, so what the leaders do is important.

Besides this exodus or shift in focus there has this summer been a remarkable run of conferences which combine Loop-and-allied speakers with String and ex-String folks. There is apparently more interest and openness on the part of the String and ex-String community---more desire to listen and discuss.
To mention a few:

Planck Scale (Wroclaw, June)
Marcel Twelve (Paris, July)
FQXi IV (Azores, July)
Emergent Gravity (Vancouver, August)
Ellisfest (Cape Town, August)
AsymSafe (Perimeter, November)

Another indicator of a change in the mental climate was Steven Weinberg's 7 July talk at CERN. (Basic message: string not the only game in town, SW currently chooses to work on an alternative, undercutting string motivation.) Five years ago Weinberg was an influential and staunch supporter: string as "our one best hope" of unification. No longer.

Chaos' lil bro Order

Aug21-09, 05:23 PM

Great summary, especially important to myself was Weinberg's change in favor. Ty sir.

marcus

Aug21-09, 05:27 PM

changeseeker

Aug22-09, 11:22 PM

It's called the "Matthew Effect" (Robert Merton). Those people who are high-status will gain more publications as a result of their status, while the inverse will be true for those of low status.

Interesting marc,

So you gauge the popularity of a niche of science based on how many of its papers are in the top citations list. This could be a good indicator of whether the niche (string theory) is gaining peer acceptance or losing it.

I must say there are some criticisms readily available of this technique's accuracy, as I'm sure you are well aware. It would be interesting to see a behavioral psychologists analysis of this technique. One results skewing effect would be the tendency of peers to cite papers written by physics 'celebrities', like Penrose, Wolfram, etc. This looks good for their own paper when they've quoted a top gun, and it adds credence to their paper. The less popular the niche is, the less cites it will naturally garner. String Theory has been relatively stale in the last 5 years and many physicists wonder if its reached an experimental impass, which means it is losing favor, even amongst some theoretical physicists. This could clearly effect citations, but it does nothing to prove whether the underlying theories in string theory are true or false.

So while you citation rankings, is a decent indicator of what papers are important, it may also be just as good an indicator of what niches are popular.

marcus

Aug24-09, 03:28 PM

You are most welcome, Bro sir! I was glad to get some feedback.
This booksale indicator may be the least important of the lot, but I still keep track of it sporadically---and around the first of every month, so as to have record in case anything interesting happens.

Trouble with Physics salesrank compared with string benchmark:

1 January 0.6 (2009)
1 February 0.7
1 March 0.5
1 April 0.6
1 May 0.6
1 June 0.7
1 July 1.9
1 August 0.6
...
8 August 0.89
9 August 1.49
10 August 0.39
...
21 August 0.67

At noon pacific on 21 August, Trouble ranked 13664 and the five most popular string books (elegant, parallel, fabric, blackhole, hyperspace) averaged 9147.4 making the ratio 0.67.

Bro, if you want a link to the video of Weinberg's 6 July talk, or to the paper that goes with it, let me know.
I shouldn't give the impression of a complete shift of interest among those top people---more a moderation of interest in string and a spreading out. Some are still doing some string papers but their main effort seems marginal or unrelated. Horava has found his own approach to QG now (not stringy). Nicolai's recent research is nonstring---more about making the established QFT work better. These are kind of subtle changes. Weinberg's renewed interest in Asymptotic Safety was more pronouced and noticeable. This came out in the last 12 minutes of his talk.

Smolin's most recent book, The Trouble with Physics, seems to be hanging on to a fairly constant market share, relative to the most popular string reading. It could be that interest in both string apologetics and critique is fading.
In any case at noon on 24 August, Trouble ranked 9831 and the five string books currently most popular (fabric, parallel, blackhole, elegant, hyperspace) averaged 7726.2, making the ratio 0.79
Likewise on 25 August the ratio was 0.77. Trouble 13004 and string topfive average 9997.2.
The stringy top five were fabric, elegant, parallel, blackhole, idiot guide.

marcus

Aug31-09, 03:18 PM

Trouble with Physics salesrank compared with string benchmark:

1 January 0.6 (2009)
1 February 0.7
1 March 0.5
1 April 0.6
1 May 0.6
1 June 0.7
1 July 1.9
1 August 0.6
...
31 August 0.53
1 September 0.79

At noon pacific on 31 August, Trouble ranked 18585 and the five most popular string books (elegant, fabric, blackhole, parallel, hyperspace) ranked 3576, 6345, 11308, 13652, 13946, averaging 9765.4 for a ratio 0.53.
At noon 1 September, Trouble 11322 and string top five (elegant, fabric, parallel, hyperspace, paperback elegant) 6057, 6823, 7635, 10015, 14147, averaging 8935.4 for a ratio of 0.79

I'll take a 3 day average around the first of the month, to eliminate some random fluctuation.

marcus

Sep1-09, 05:14 PM

Another index we can occasionally check is raw string publication rate, using the Harvard abstracts database with keywords superstring, M-theory, brane, AdS/CFT, heterotic, compactification.

Here are the number of publications for the first seven months of three consecutive years:

2007: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-abs_connect?db_key=AST&db_key=PHY&qform=PHY&aut_logic=OR&author=&ned_query=YES_query=YES&start_mon=00&start_year=2007&end_mon=07&end_year=2007&ttl_logic=OR&title=&txt_logic=OR&text=heterotic+M-theory+brane+compactification+superstrings+AdS%2FC FT&nr_to_return=100&start_nr=1&jou_pick=ALL&ref_stems=&data_and=ALL&group_and=ALL&start_entry_day=&start_entry_mon=&start_entry_year=&end_entry_day=&end_entry_mon=&end_entry_year=&min_score=&sort=SCORE&data_type=SHORT&aut_syn=YES&ttl_syn=YES&txt_syn=YES&aut_wt=1.0&ttl_wt=0.3&txt_wt=3.0&aut_wgt=YES&obj_wgt=YES&ttl_wgt=YES&txt_wgt=YES&ttl_sco=YES&txt_sco=YES&version=1

2008: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-abs_connect?db_key=AST&db_key=PHY&qform=PHY&aut_logic=OR&author=&ned_query=YES_query=YES&start_mon=00&start_year=2008&end_mon=07&end_year=2008&ttl_logic=OR&title=&txt_logic=OR&text=heterotic+M-theory+brane+compactification+superstrings+AdS%2FC FT&nr_to_return=100&start_nr=1&jou_pick=ALL&ref_stems=&data_and=ALL&group_and=ALL&start_entry_day=&start_entry_mon=&start_entry_year=&end_entry_day=&end_entry_mon=&end_entry_year=&min_score=&sort=SCORE&data_type=SHORT&aut_syn=YES&ttl_syn=YES&txt_syn=YES&aut_wt=1.0&ttl_wt=0.3&txt_wt=3.0&aut_wgt=YES&obj_wgt=YES&ttl_wgt=YES&txt_wgt=YES&ttl_sco=YES&txt_sco=YES&version=1

2009: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-abs_connect?db_key=AST&db_key=PHY&qform=PHY&aut_logic=OR&author=&ned_query=YES_query=YES&start_mon=00&start_year=2009&end_mon=07&end_year=2009&ttl_logic=OR&title=&txt_logic=OR&text=heterotic+M-theory+brane+compactification+superstrings+AdS%2FC FT&nr_to_return=100&start_nr=1&jou_pick=ALL&ref_stems=&data_and=ALL&group_and=ALL&start_entry_day=&start_entry_mon=&start_entry_year=&end_entry_day=&end_entry_mon=&end_entry_year=&min_score=&sort=SCORE&data_type=SHORT&aut_syn=YES&ttl_syn=YES&txt_syn=YES&aut_wt=1.0&ttl_wt=0.3&txt_wt=3.0&aut_wgt=YES&obj_wgt=YES&ttl_wgt=YES&txt_wgt=YES&ttl_sco=YES&txt_sco=YES&version=1

Currently (as of 1 September) the figures are 2986, 2936, 2742.

There may be a slight downtrend but the main thing to note is that the rate is approximately steady. By contrast research publication rates in several nonstring types of quantum gravity are growing.

The average of three ratios around 1 September
31 August 0.53
1 September 0.79
2 September 0.57
came to 0.63
so the record continues as follows:

Trouble with Physics salesrank compared with the string benchmark

1 January 0.6 (2009)
1 February 0.7
1 March 0.5
1 April 0.6
1 May 0.6
1 June 0.7
1 July 1.9
1 August 0.6
1 September 0.6
...
At the moment textbooks dominate the physics book market which pushes popular and general reading into the background. At noon 2 September Smolin's book ranked 22562 and the top five stringy books (parallel, elegant, fabric, hyperspace, blackhole) averaged 12807.8, for a ratio of 0.57.

Chaos' lil bro Order

Sep2-09, 07:24 PM

That would great Marcus, I gratiously accept your offer to post the Weinberg lecture video link. He's my favorite cosmologist, ever since I studied his equation and first 3 minute theorum, I've been a fan. Do post!

You are most welcome, Bro sir! I was glad to get some feedback.
This booksale indicator may be the least important of the lot, but I still keep track of it sporadically---and around the first of every month, so as to have record in case anything interesting happens.

Trouble with Physics salesrank compared with string benchmark:

1 January 0.6 (2009)
1 February 0.7
1 March 0.5
1 April 0.6
1 May 0.6
1 June 0.7
1 July 1.9
1 August 0.6
...
8 August 0.89
9 August 1.49
10 August 0.39
...
21 August 0.67

At noon pacific on 21 August, Trouble ranked 13664 and the five most popular string books (elegant, parallel, fabric, blackhole, hyperspace) averaged 9147.4 making the ratio 0.67.

Bro, if you want a link to the video of Weinberg's 7 July talk, or to the paper that goes with it, let me know.
I shouldn't give the impression of a complete shift of interest among those top people---more a moderation of interest in string and a spreading out. Some are still doing some string papers but their main effort seems marginal or unrelated. Horava has found his own approach to QG now (not stringy). Nicolai's recent research is nonstring---more about making the established QFT work better. These are kind of subtle changes. Weinberg's renewed interest in Asymptotic Safety was more pronouced and noticeable. This came out in the last 12 minutes of his talk.

marcus

Sep3-09, 02:04 PM

That would great Marcus, I gratiously accept your offer to post the Weinberg lecture video link. He's my favorite cosmologist, ever since I studied his equation and first 3 minute theorum, I've been a fan. Do post!
Steven Weinberg's 6 July talk, main CERN link:
http://indico.cern.ch/conferenceDisplay.py?confId=57283
Weinberg video:
http://cdsweb.cern.ch/record/1188567/
To save time jump to minute 58, the last 12 minutes.

Last 12 minutes is where he starts talking about his recent research direction (asymptotic safety, making gravity renormalizable and unifiable with something akin to, or not drastically different from, what he calls "good old quantum field theory"). He expresses the opinion that string "might not be how the world is" and "might not be needed" although he doesn't want to discourage string theorists and supports their continuing to do string research if that's what they want to do. It does represent a marked change from how he was talking 4 or 5 years ago.

I recently updated the record of noon first-of-month salesrank readings:

Trouble with Physics salesrank compared with the string benchmark

1 January 0.6 (2009)
1 February 0.7
1 March 0.5
1 April 0.6
1 May 0.6
1 June 0.7
1 July 1.9
1 August 0.6
1 September 0.6
...

Smolin's book has now been out for 3 years. It came on the market September 2006. Most science books drop out of sight after a couple of years so it is somewhat remarkable how this one has made a place for itself, and retained market share.
I use the average salesrank of the five currently most popular string books as a benchmark for comparison.

marcus

Sep4-09, 10:42 PM

A popular SciFi mag ran a review of Smolin's book in its September 2009 issue.
http://www.analogsf.com/0909/altview_09.shtml

Timewarp. The book came out in September 2006, so why is Analog reviewing it now? Well it's a rave review--the guy really liked it.
Maybe now is as good a time as any.

There it is at the top of the list on their ToC page for the September issue.
http://www.analogsf.com/0909/issue_09.shtml

=====

EDIT: I just learned that the September 2009 issue was delivered by mid-June in Canada, and by around 1 July in parts of the US:
http://www.analogsf.com/aspnet_forum/messages.aspx?TopicID=621
This finally explains the bizarre spike in sales during July. The reviewer clearly spotlighted the book's good points and his readers went out and bought the book in substantial numbers.
I commented on the spike in this 16 July post:
Kaboom! The big sales spike is over and TwP is back in the normal range. The unexplained excursion lasted just over 2 weeks.

Trouble with Physics salesrank compared with string benchmark:

1 January 0.6 (2009)
1 February 0.7
1 March 0.5
1 April 0.6
1 May 0.6
1 June 0.7
1 July 1.9

2 July 3.78
3 July 5.88
4 July 5.11
5 July 16.10
6 July 15.81
7 July 7.09
8 July 5.98
9 July 5.58
10 July 3.87
11 July 2.92
12 July 2.67
13 July 6.42
14 July 4.88
15 July 2.37
16 July 0.81

At noon pacific on 16 July TwP ranked 5350 and the stringy top five (elegant, fabric, blackhole, parallel, hyperspace) ranked 2079, 3252, 4395, 4413, 7516 for an average of 4331.0 making the ratio 0.81.

marcus

Sep12-09, 03:15 PM

The raw string publication rate (measured using the Harvard abstracts database with keywords superstring, M-theory, brane, AdS/CFT, heterotic, compactification) continues holding steady, or to show a slight decline.

Here are the number of publications for the first seven months of three consecutive years:

2007: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-abs_connect?db_key=AST&db_key=PHY&qform=PHY&aut_logic=OR&author=&ned_query=YES_query=YES&start_mon=00&start_year=2007&end_mon=07&end_year=2007&ttl_logic=OR&title=&txt_logic=OR&text=heterotic+M-theory+brane+compactification+superstrings+AdS%2FC FT&nr_to_return=100&start_nr=1&jou_pick=ALL&ref_stems=&data_and=ALL&group_and=ALL&start_entry_day=&start_entry_mon=&start_entry_year=&end_entry_day=&end_entry_mon=&end_entry_year=&min_score=&sort=SCORE&data_type=SHORT&aut_syn=YES&ttl_syn=YES&txt_syn=YES&aut_wt=1.0&ttl_wt=0.3&txt_wt=3.0&aut_wgt=YES&obj_wgt=YES&ttl_wgt=YES&txt_wgt=YES&ttl_sco=YES&txt_sco=YES&version=1

2008: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-abs_connect?db_key=AST&db_key=PHY&qform=PHY&aut_logic=OR&author=&ned_query=YES_query=YES&start_mon=00&start_year=2008&end_mon=07&end_year=2008&ttl_logic=OR&title=&txt_logic=OR&text=heterotic+M-theory+brane+compactification+superstrings+AdS%2FC FT&nr_to_return=100&start_nr=1&jou_pick=ALL&ref_stems=&data_and=ALL&group_and=ALL&start_entry_day=&start_entry_mon=&start_entry_year=&end_entry_day=&end_entry_mon=&end_entry_year=&min_score=&sort=SCORE&data_type=SHORT&aut_syn=YES&ttl_syn=YES&txt_syn=YES&aut_wt=1.0&ttl_wt=0.3&txt_wt=3.0&aut_wgt=YES&obj_wgt=YES&ttl_wgt=YES&txt_wgt=YES&ttl_sco=YES&txt_sco=YES&version=1

2009: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-abs_connect?db_key=AST&db_key=PHY&qform=PHY&aut_logic=OR&author=&ned_query=YES_query=YES&start_mon=00&start_year=2009&end_mon=07&end_year=2009&ttl_logic=OR&title=&txt_logic=OR&text=heterotic+M-theory+brane+compactification+superstrings+AdS%2FC FT&nr_to_return=100&start_nr=1&jou_pick=ALL&ref_stems=&data_and=ALL&group_and=ALL&start_entry_day=&start_entry_mon=&start_entry_year=&end_entry_day=&end_entry_mon=&end_entry_year=&min_score=&sort=SCORE&data_type=SHORT&aut_syn=YES&ttl_syn=YES&txt_syn=YES&aut_wt=1.0&ttl_wt=0.3&txt_wt=3.0&aut_wgt=YES&obj_wgt=YES&ttl_wgt=YES&txt_wgt=YES&ttl_sco=YES&txt_sco=YES&version=1

As of 12 September the 7-month figures are 2986, 2936, 2745.

I should get some research publication rates in nonstring quantum gravity for comparison.

Today I took a noon reading of the TwP book's amazon salesrank. (The way I'm keeping track, only around the first of the month goes on the record, but we can check now and then at other times.)

Trouble with Physics salesrank compared with the string benchmark

1 January 0.6 (2009)
1 February 0.7
1 March 0.5
1 April 0.6
1 May 0.6
1 June 0.7
1 July 1.9
1 August 0.6
1 September 0.6
...
12 September 0.8
13 September 1.2

The rush on physics textbooks has eased and popular general reading has returned pretty much to normal. At noon 12 September Smolin's book ranked 10424 and the top five stringy books (elegant, parallel, fabric, blackhole, elegant paperback) ranked 3462, 5381, 7969, 12077, 12927, averaging 8363.2 for a ratio of 0.80.

At noon 13 September TwP ranked 8739 and the string top five average rank was 10311.6, for a ratio of 1.18. The five most popular stringy books (elegant, fabric, parallel, blackhole, hyperspace) ranked 5601, 7748, 11451, 12911, 13847.

There's an index I mentioned earlier we could be keeping track of:
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/find/hep/www?rawcmd=k+spin%2Cfoam+or+%28dk+quantum+gravity+ and+dk+loop+space%29+and+date+%3E+2006&FORMAT=WWW&SEQUENCE=citecount%28d%29
This is Loop/Spinfoam research published since 2006 (i.e. 2007-present) ranked by cites.

Here's the same thing but just for 2009:
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/find/hep/www?rawcmd=FIND+K+SPIN%2CFOAM+OR+%28DK+QUANTUM+GRA VITY+AND+DK+LOOP+SPACE%29+AND+DATE+%3D+2009&FORMAT=www&SEQUENCE=citecount%28d%29

Suppose we divide into two-year chunks and check for a trend:
[2003 2004]
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/find/hep/www?rawcmd=FIND+K+SPIN%2CFOAM+OR+%28DK+QUANTUM+GRA VITY+AND+DK+LOOP+SPACE%29+AND+DATE+%3E+2002+and+da te+%3C+2005&FORMAT=www&SEQUENCE=citecount%28d%29

[2005 2006]
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/find/hep/www?rawcmd=FIND+K+SPIN%2CFOAM+OR+%28DK+QUANTUM+GRA VITY+AND+DK+LOOP+SPACE%29+AND+DATE+%3E+2004+and+da te+%3C+2007&FORMAT=www&SEQUENCE=citecount%28d%29

[2007, 2008]
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/find/hep/www?rawcmd=FIND+K+SPIN%2CFOAM+OR+%28DK+QUANTUM+GRA VITY+AND+DK+LOOP+SPACE%29+AND+DATE+%3E+2006+and+da te+%3C+2009&FORMAT=www&SEQUENCE=citecount%28d%29

126
136
197

marcus

Sep15-09, 03:35 PM

Here's a Spires list of the Loop/Spinfoam research which appeared in 2009 ranked by cites.

http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/find/hep/www?rawcmd=FIND+K+SPIN%2CFOAM+OR+%28DK+QUANTUM+GRA VITY+AND+DK+LOOP+SPACE%29+AND+DATE+%3D+2009&FORMAT=www&SEQUENCE=citecount%28d%29

As of 15 September (nearly 3/4 of the way thru the year) the count is 67, so if you add a third of that to get an estimate for the whole year you get 100. I would guess that if publication continues at the current rate we will have 100 or more Loop papers this year. This agrees with what we saw earlier---197 papers for the two-year period [2007, 2008]

[2003 2004]
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/find/hep/www?rawcmd=FIND+K+SPIN%2CFOAM+OR+%28DK+QUANTUM+GRA VITY+AND+DK+LOOP+SPACE%29+AND+DATE+%3E+2002+and+da te+%3C+2005&FORMAT=www&SEQUENCE=citecount%28d%29

[2005 2006]
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/find/hep/www?rawcmd=FIND+K+SPIN%2CFOAM+OR+%28DK+QUANTUM+GRA VITY+AND+DK+LOOP+SPACE%29+AND+DATE+%3E+2004+and+da te+%3C+2007&FORMAT=www&SEQUENCE=citecount%28d%29

[2007, 2008]
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/find/hep/www?rawcmd=FIND+K+SPIN%2CFOAM+OR+%28DK+QUANTUM+GRA VITY+AND+DK+LOOP+SPACE%29+AND+DATE+%3E+2006+and+da te+%3C+2009&FORMAT=www&SEQUENCE=citecount%28d%29

126
136
197

Here's an update of noon readings of the TwP book's amazon salesrank. (The way I'm keeping track, only around the first of the month goes on the record, but we can check now and then at other times.)

Trouble with Physics salesrank compared with the string benchmark

1 January 0.6 (2009)
1 February 0.7
1 March 0.5
1 April 0.6
1 May 0.6
1 June 0.7
1 July 1.9
1 August 0.6
1 September 0.6
...
12 September 0.8
13 September 1.2
14 September 0.5
15 September 0.8
...

At noon 15 September Smolin's book ranked 11075 and the top five stringy books (parallel, fabric, hyperspace, elegant, elegant paperback) ranked 4323, 6625, 7865, 7900, averaging 8369.4 for a ratio of 0.76.

marcus

Sep19-09, 03:19 PM

http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/find/hep/www?rawcmd=FIND+K+SPIN%2CFOAM+OR+%28DK+QUANTUM+GRA VITY+AND+DK+LOOP+SPACE%29+AND+DATE+%3D+2009&FORMAT=www&SEQUENCE=citecount%28d%29

To correct something I said earlier, as of 19 September (nearly 3/4 of the way thru the year) the count is 67, so if you add a third of that to get an estimate for the whole year you get about 90. I would guess that if publication continues at the current rate we will have 90 papers listed for this year. This is down some 10% from what we saw earlier---197 papers for the two-year period [2007, 2008] an average of nearly 100 per year. But we'll have to see, there may be a bunch posted in the final quarter of 2009 that bring the rate for the year back up.

Trouble with Physics salesrank compared with the string benchmark

1 January 0.6 (2009)
1 February 0.7
1 March 0.5
1 April 0.6
1 May 0.6
1 June 0.7
1 July 1.9
1 August 0.6
1 September 0.6
...
12 September 0.8
13 September 1.2
14 September 0.5
15 September 0.8
...
17 September 0.8
18 September 0.8
19 September 0.6
20 September 0.3
...

At noon 19 September Smolin's book ranked 12792 and the top five stringy books (elegant, hyperspace, parallel, fabric, hyperspace, elegant paperback) ranked 3491, 3976, 4536, 12511, 12687, averaging 7440.2 for a ratio of 0.58.

We have been watching the raw string publication rate (measured using the Harvard abstracts database with keywords superstring, M-theory, brane, AdS/CFT, heterotic, compactification). These links are for the publications appearing in the first eight months of three consecutive years:

2007: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-abs_connect?db_key=AST&db_key=PHY&qform=PHY&aut_logic=OR&author=&ned_query=YES_query=YES&start_mon=00&start_year=2007&end_mon=08&end_year=2007&ttl_logic=OR&title=&txt_logic=OR&text=heterotic+M-theory+brane+compactification+superstrings+AdS%2FC FT&nr_to_return=100&start_nr=1&jou_pick=ALL&ref_stems=&data_and=ALL&group_and=ALL&start_entry_day=&start_entry_mon=&start_entry_year=&end_entry_day=&end_entry_mon=&end_entry_year=&min_score=&sort=SCORE&data_type=SHORT&aut_syn=YES&ttl_syn=YES&txt_syn=YES&aut_wt=1.0&ttl_wt=0.3&txt_wt=3.0&aut_wgt=YES&obj_wgt=YES&ttl_wgt=YES&txt_wgt=YES&ttl_sco=YES&txt_sco=YES&version=1

2008: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-abs_connect?db_key=AST&db_key=PHY&qform=PHY&aut_logic=OR&author=&ned_query=YES_query=YES&start_mon=00&start_year=2008&end_mon=08&end_year=2008&ttl_logic=OR&title=&txt_logic=OR&text=heterotic+M-theory+brane+compactification+superstrings+AdS%2FC FT&nr_to_return=100&start_nr=1&jou_pick=ALL&ref_stems=&data_and=ALL&group_and=ALL&start_entry_day=&start_entry_mon=&start_entry_year=&end_entry_day=&end_entry_mon=&end_entry_year=&min_score=&sort=SCORE&data_type=SHORT&aut_syn=YES&ttl_syn=YES&txt_syn=YES&aut_wt=1.0&ttl_wt=0.3&txt_wt=3.0&aut_wgt=YES&obj_wgt=YES&ttl_wgt=YES&txt_wgt=YES&ttl_sco=YES&txt_sco=YES&version=1

2009: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-abs_connect?db_key=AST&db_key=PHY&qform=PHY&aut_logic=OR&author=&ned_query=YES_query=YES&start_mon=00&start_year=2009&end_mon=08&end_year=2009&ttl_logic=OR&title=&txt_logic=OR&text=heterotic+M-theory+brane+compactification+superstrings+AdS%2FC FT&nr_to_return=100&start_nr=1&jou_pick=ALL&ref_stems=&data_and=ALL&group_and=ALL&start_entry_day=&start_entry_mon=&start_entry_year=&end_entry_day=&end_entry_mon=&end_entry_year=&min_score=&sort=SCORE&data_type=SHORT&aut_syn=YES&ttl_syn=YES&txt_syn=YES&aut_wt=1.0&ttl_wt=0.3&txt_wt=3.0&aut_wgt=YES&obj_wgt=YES&ttl_wgt=YES&txt_wgt=YES&ttl_sco=YES&txt_sco=YES&version=1

As of 19 September (really too early to say much) the 8-month figures were 3307, 3303, 2991.
The 7-month figures (by now fairly stable) were 2989, 2942, 2745.

marcus

Sep24-09, 03:15 PM

http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/find/hep/www?rawcmd=FIND+K+SPIN%2CFOAM+OR+%28DK+QUANTUM+GRA VITY+AND+DK+LOOP+SPACE%29+AND+DATE+%3D+2009&FORMAT=www&SEQUENCE=citecount%28d%29

Loop/foam publications are currently 70 for the year, not too great. We still have 3 months to go, so it might get up into the 90s. In 2007 and 2008 loop/foam papers averaged close to 100 per year, may be down from that in 2009.

Of course there has been an increase in other kinds of 4D QG, especially Horava but also some other types. So if one could construct a collective measure for all kinds of 4D quantum gravity, it would be showing considerable growth right now.

Trouble with Physics salesrank compared with the string benchmark fluctuates quite a bit but stays more or less the same.

1 January 0.6 (2009)
1 February 0.7
1 March 0.5
1 April 0.6
1 May 0.6
1 June 0.7
1 July 1.9
1 August 0.6
1 September 0.6
...
...
17 September 0.8
18 September 0.8
19 September 0.6
20 September 0.3
...
23 September 0.7
24 September 0.5

As an illustration, at noon 19 September Smolin's book ranked 12792 and the top five stringy books (elegant, hyperspace, parallel, fabric, hyperspace, elegant paperback) ranked 3491, 3976, 4536, 12511, 12687, averaging 7440.2 for a ratio of 0.58.

Update on the string publication rate (measured using the Harvard abstracts database with keywords superstring, M-theory, brane, AdS/CFT, heterotic, compactification). These links are for the publications appearing in the first eight months of three consecutive years:

2007: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-abs_connect?db_key=AST&db_key=PHY&qform=PHY&aut_logic=OR&author=&ned_query=YES_query=YES&start_mon=00&start_year=2007&end_mon=08&end_year=2007&ttl_logic=OR&title=&txt_logic=OR&text=heterotic+M-theory+brane+compactification+superstrings+AdS%2FC FT&nr_to_return=100&start_nr=1&jou_pick=ALL&ref_stems=&data_and=ALL&group_and=ALL&start_entry_day=&start_entry_mon=&start_entry_year=&end_entry_day=&end_entry_mon=&end_entry_year=&min_score=&sort=SCORE&data_type=SHORT&aut_syn=YES&ttl_syn=YES&txt_syn=YES&aut_wt=1.0&ttl_wt=0.3&txt_wt=3.0&aut_wgt=YES&obj_wgt=YES&ttl_wgt=YES&txt_wgt=YES&ttl_sco=YES&txt_sco=YES&version=1

2008: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-abs_connect?db_key=AST&db_key=PHY&qform=PHY&aut_logic=OR&author=&ned_query=YES_query=YES&start_mon=00&start_year=2008&end_mon=08&end_year=2008&ttl_logic=OR&title=&txt_logic=OR&text=heterotic+M-theory+brane+compactification+superstrings+AdS%2FC FT&nr_to_return=100&start_nr=1&jou_pick=ALL&ref_stems=&data_and=ALL&group_and=ALL&start_entry_day=&start_entry_mon=&start_entry_year=&end_entry_day=&end_entry_mon=&end_entry_year=&min_score=&sort=SCORE&data_type=SHORT&aut_syn=YES&ttl_syn=YES&txt_syn=YES&aut_wt=1.0&ttl_wt=0.3&txt_wt=3.0&aut_wgt=YES&obj_wgt=YES&ttl_wgt=YES&txt_wgt=YES&ttl_sco=YES&txt_sco=YES&version=1

2009: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-abs_connect?db_key=AST&db_key=PHY&qform=PHY&aut_logic=OR&author=&ned_query=YES_query=YES&start_mon=00&start_year=2009&end_mon=08&end_year=2009&ttl_logic=OR&title=&txt_logic=OR&text=heterotic+M-theory+brane+compactification+superstrings+AdS%2FC FT&nr_to_return=100&start_nr=1&jou_pick=ALL&ref_stems=&data_and=ALL&group_and=ALL&start_entry_day=&start_entry_mon=&start_entry_year=&end_entry_day=&end_entry_mon=&end_entry_year=&min_score=&sort=SCORE&data_type=SHORT&aut_syn=YES&ttl_syn=YES&txt_syn=YES&aut_wt=1.0&ttl_wt=0.3&txt_wt=3.0&aut_wgt=YES&obj_wgt=YES&ttl_wgt=YES&txt_wgt=YES&ttl_sco=YES&txt_sco=YES&version=1

As of 24 September the 8-month figures were 3318, 3306, 3080.

marcus

Sep29-09, 03:06 PM

Time to start averaging for the smoothed 1 October index.

Trouble with Physics salesrank compared with the string benchmark

1 January 0.6 (2009)
1 February 0.7
1 March 0.5
1 April 0.6
1 May 0.6
1 June 0.7
1 July 1.9
1 August 0.6
1 September 0.6
...
...
29 September 0.48
30 September 0.36
1 October ?
2 October ?
3 October ?

As an illustration, at noon (pacific time) on 29 September, Smolin's book ranked 14632 and the top five stringy books (elegant, fabric, hyperspace, parallel, black hole) ranked 4320, 5472, 5531, 5769, 13871, averaging 6992.6 for a ratio of 0.48.

Surprising physics-sociology poll response:
http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=2321&cpage=1#comment-50462
A poll was conducted of active physics researchers, to which over 1000 individuals responded. A reply rate of around 14%.

Of the respondents, 23% said good press helps funding!

==quote==

“In your experience, how important is it in obtaining funding that your project or research area is well covered in the media?”

Very important/somewhat important: 23.5%

Results of a survey conducted by UCSB survey center in April 2009 among active researchers in physics in North America. The final number of respondents amounted to 1816, which corresponds to response rate of 14.42%.
==endquote==

The blessèd and very nearly canonized Bee Hossenfelder, whose with-it-ness is beyond compare, reports this!

marcus

Oct2-09, 03:15 PM

Ready to do the average for 1 October. (Five noon readings taken around the date, to smooth out some of the random fluctuation.)

Trouble with Physics salesrank compared with the string benchmark

1 January 0.6 (2009)
1 February 0.7
1 March 0.5
1 April 0.6
1 May 0.6
1 June 0.7
1 July 1.9
1 August 0.6
1 September 0.6
...
...
29 September 0.48
30 September 0.36
1 October 0.19
2 October 0.60
3 October 0.43

As an illustration, at noon (pacific time) on 29 September, Smolin's book ranked 14632 and the top five stringy books (elegant, fabric, hyperspace, parallel, black hole) ranked 4320, 5472, 5531, 5769, 13871, averaging 6992.6 for a ratio of 0.48.

Likewise at noon on 3 October, TwP ranked 12851 and the top five stringies (fabric, elegant, parallel, hyperspace, black hole) ranked 1956, 2528, 3642, 5980, 13313, for an average of 5483.8 making the ratio 0.43.

Taking the mean for the five days around the first of the month gives 0.41. So our updated record is

1 January 0.6 (2009)
1 February 0.7
1 March 0.5
1 April 0.6
1 May 0.6
1 June 0.7
1 July 1.9
1 August 0.6
1 September 0.6
1 October 0.4

=============
We have been tracking the string publication rate measured using the Harvard abstracts database with keywords superstring, M-theory, brane, AdS/CFT, heterotic, compactification. As of 2 October the 8-month figures (successive years, through the end of August) were 3318, 3306, 3081.

It is not yet time to check the 9-month figures since the 2009 entries for September won't have been completed, but I will set up the links.

2007: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-abs_connect?db_key=AST&db_key=PHY&qform=PHY&aut_logic=OR&author=&ned_query=YES_query=YES&start_mon=00&start_year=2007&end_mon=09&end_year=2007&ttl_logic=OR&title=&txt_logic=OR&text=heterotic+M-theory+brane+compactification+superstrings+AdS%2FC FT&nr_to_return=100&start_nr=1&jou_pick=ALL&ref_stems=&data_and=ALL&group_and=ALL&start_entry_day=&start_entry_mon=&start_entry_year=&end_entry_day=&end_entry_mon=&end_entry_year=&min_score=&sort=SCORE&data_type=SHORT&aut_syn=YES&ttl_syn=YES&txt_syn=YES&aut_wt=1.0&ttl_wt=0.3&txt_wt=3.0&aut_wgt=YES&obj_wgt=YES&ttl_wgt=YES&txt_wgt=YES&ttl_sco=YES&txt_sco=YES&version=1

2008: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-abs_connect?db_key=AST&db_key=PHY&qform=PHY&aut_logic=OR&author=&ned_query=YES_query=YES&start_mon=00&start_year=2008&end_mon=09&end_year=2008&ttl_logic=OR&title=&txt_logic=OR&text=heterotic+M-theory+brane+compactification+superstrings+AdS%2FC FT&nr_to_return=100&start_nr=1&jou_pick=ALL&ref_stems=&data_and=ALL&group_and=ALL&start_entry_day=&start_entry_mon=&start_entry_year=&end_entry_day=&end_entry_mon=&end_entry_year=&min_score=&sort=SCORE&data_type=SHORT&aut_syn=YES&ttl_syn=YES&txt_syn=YES&aut_wt=1.0&ttl_wt=0.3&txt_wt=3.0&aut_wgt=YES&obj_wgt=YES&ttl_wgt=YES&txt_wgt=YES&ttl_sco=YES&txt_sco=YES&version=1

2009: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-abs_connect?db_key=AST&db_key=PHY&qform=PHY&aut_logic=OR&author=&ned_query=YES_query=YES&start_mon=00&start_year=2009&end_mon=09&end_year=2009&ttl_logic=OR&title=&txt_logic=OR&text=heterotic+M-theory+brane+compactification+superstrings+AdS%2FC FT&nr_to_return=100&start_nr=1&jou_pick=ALL&ref_stems=&data_and=ALL&group_and=ALL&start_entry_day=&start_entry_mon=&start_entry_year=&end_entry_day=&end_entry_mon=&end_entry_year=&min_score=&sort=SCORE&data_type=SHORT&aut_syn=YES&ttl_syn=YES&txt_syn=YES&aut_wt=1.0&ttl_wt=0.3&txt_wt=3.0&aut_wgt=YES&obj_wgt=YES&ttl_wgt=YES&txt_wgt=YES&ttl_sco=YES&txt_sco=YES&version=1

These are for the first 9 months of each year, using keywords superstring, brane, M-theory, AdS/CFT, compactification, heterotic.

marcus

Oct21-09, 03:53 PM

String publication rate for the first 9 months, measured using the Harvard abstracts database with keywords superstring, M-theory, brane, AdS/CFT, heterotic, compactification. As of 21 October the 9-month figures (successive years, through the end of September) for 2007, 2008, 2009 were 3656, 3651, 3495.

2007: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-abs_connect?db_key=AST&db_key=PHY&qform=PHY&aut_logic=OR&author=&ned_query=YES_query=YES&start_mon=00&start_year=2007&end_mon=09&end_year=2007&ttl_logic=OR&title=&txt_logic=OR&text=heterotic+M-theory+brane+compactification+superstrings+AdS%2FC FT&nr_to_return=100&start_nr=1&jou_pick=ALL&ref_stems=&data_and=ALL&group_and=ALL&start_entry_day=&start_entry_mon=&start_entry_year=&end_entry_day=&end_entry_mon=&end_entry_year=&min_score=&sort=SCORE&data_type=SHORT&aut_syn=YES&ttl_syn=YES&txt_syn=YES&aut_wt=1.0&ttl_wt=0.3&txt_wt=3.0&aut_wgt=YES&obj_wgt=YES&ttl_wgt=YES&txt_wgt=YES&ttl_sco=YES&txt_sco=YES&version=1

2008: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-abs_connect?db_key=AST&db_key=PHY&qform=PHY&aut_logic=OR&author=&ned_query=YES_query=YES&start_mon=00&start_year=2008&end_mon=09&end_year=2008&ttl_logic=OR&title=&txt_logic=OR&text=heterotic+M-theory+brane+compactification+superstrings+AdS%2FC FT&nr_to_return=100&start_nr=1&jou_pick=ALL&ref_stems=&data_and=ALL&group_and=ALL&start_entry_day=&start_entry_mon=&start_entry_year=&end_entry_day=&end_entry_mon=&end_entry_year=&min_score=&sort=SCORE&data_type=SHORT&aut_syn=YES&ttl_syn=YES&txt_syn=YES&aut_wt=1.0&ttl_wt=0.3&txt_wt=3.0&aut_wgt=YES&obj_wgt=YES&ttl_wgt=YES&txt_wgt=YES&ttl_sco=YES&txt_sco=YES&version=1

2009: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-abs_connect?db_key=AST&db_key=PHY&qform=PHY&aut_logic=OR&author=&ned_query=YES_query=YES&start_mon=00&start_year=2009&end_mon=09&end_year=2009&ttl_logic=OR&title=&txt_logic=OR&text=heterotic+M-theory+brane+compactification+superstrings+AdS%2FC FT&nr_to_return=100&start_nr=1&jou_pick=ALL&ref_stems=&data_and=ALL&group_and=ALL&start_entry_day=&start_entry_mon=&start_entry_year=&end_entry_day=&end_entry_mon=&end_entry_year=&min_score=&sort=SCORE&data_type=SHORT&aut_syn=YES&ttl_syn=YES&txt_syn=YES&aut_wt=1.0&ttl_wt=0.3&txt_wt=3.0&aut_wgt=YES&obj_wgt=YES&ttl_wgt=YES&txt_wgt=YES&ttl_sco=YES&txt_sco=YES&version=1

As a spot check to see how Smolin's book is doing, at noon (pacific time) on 21 October it ranked 11327 and the top five stringy books (fabric, elegant, parallel, hyperspace, black hole) ranked 3820, 4153, 4413, 11620, 14185, averaging 7638.2 for a ratio of 0.67.

1 January 0.6 (2009)
1 February 0.7
1 March 0.5
1 April 0.6
1 May 0.6
1 June 0.7
1 July 1.9
1 August 0.6
1 September 0.6
1 October 0.4
...
...
21 October 0.7

Averaging the figures for the first of each month gives 0.72. Roughly speaking that means that judging by salesranks Trouble with Physics is doing about 70% as good as the average popular string top-fiver. That topfive string salesrank is what I've been using as a benchmark for comparison for several years.
==============

Here is loop/foam publication rate in two-year chunks.

[2003 2004]
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/find/hep/www?rawcmd=FIND+K+SPIN%2CFOAM+OR+%28DK+QUANTUM+GRA VITY+AND+DK+LOOP+SPACE%29+AND+DATE+%3E+2002+and+da te+%3C+2005&FORMAT=www&SEQUENCE=citecount%28d%29

[2005 2006]
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/find/hep/www?rawcmd=FIND+K+SPIN%2CFOAM+OR+%28DK+QUANTUM+GRA VITY+AND+DK+LOOP+SPACE%29+AND+DATE+%3E+2004+and+da te+%3C+2007&FORMAT=www&SEQUENCE=citecount%28d%29

[2007, 2008]
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/find/hep/www?rawcmd=FIND+K+SPIN%2CFOAM+OR+%28DK+QUANTUM+GRA VITY+AND+DK+LOOP+SPACE%29+AND+DATE+%3E+2006+and+da te+%3C+2009&FORMAT=www&SEQUENCE=citecount%28d%29

127, 136, 196

And here's publication for this year so far:
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/find/hep/www?rawcmd=FIND+K+SPIN%2CFOAM+OR+%28DK+QUANTUM+GRA VITY+AND+DK+LOOP+SPACE%29+AND+DATE+%3D+2009&FORMAT=www&SEQUENCE=citecount%28d%29

as of 21 October, 77

marcus

Oct25-09, 03:31 PM

As noon spot checks to see how Smolin's book is doing,
on 21 October it ranked 11327 and the top five stringy books averaged 7638.2 for a ratio of 0.67.
On 24 October, it ranked 7501 compared with stringy benchmark 4978.4 for a ratio of 0.66.
On 25 October, it ranked 8927 compared with benchmark 8116.2 for a ratio of 0.91.
On 26 October, it ranked 13321 compared with 6271.6 for a ratio of 0.47.

The stringy top five on those four days happened to be
fabric, elegant, parallel, hyperspace, black hole, and then
elegant, parallel, fabric, hyperspace, idiot guide--- then
parallel, fabric, elegant, hyperspace, paperback elegant---and
parallel, hyperspace, fabric, elegant, paperback elegant.

1 January 0.6 (2009)
1 February 0.7
1 March 0.5
1 April 0.6
1 May 0.6
1 June 0.7
1 July 1.9
1 August 0.6
1 September 0.6
1 October 0.4
...
...
21 October 0.7
...
24 October 0.7
25 October 0.9
26 October 0.5
...

Averaging the figures for the first of each month gives 0.72. Roughly speaking that means that judging by salesranks Trouble with Physics is doing about 70% as good as the average string top-fiver. That topfive string salesrank average is what I've been using as a benchmark for comparison for several years.
==============

As of 26 October, string publication rate for the first 9 months, measured using the Harvard abstracts database with keywords superstring, M-theory, brane, AdS/CFT, heterotic, compactification, through the end of September for 2007, 2008, 2009
were 3657, 3651, 3501.
Late listings can still raise the last figure, but so far it has not come up as much as I expected.

marcus

Oct27-09, 12:56 PM

The risks associated with letting an academic discipline go "off the rails" and the damage to the discipline itself were highlighted in a post quoted on Brad DeLong's blog. It's so telling that I thought i would copy a portion of it here:
http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2009/10/the-state-of-economics-in-the-2000s-analogized.html
The poster quoted by DeLong (an economist at UC Berkeley) draws analogy between postmodern ("pomo") literary studies and Market-worship econ, referred to here as "freshwater" economics----the Chicago school.

==quote==
I've been watching the freshwater/saltwater economics wars with a kind of horrified fascination -- something like the way I feel on those rare occasions when I watch train wreck TV (Hoarders and the like.) One of the things I keep wondering is: how on earth did this happen? How did large chunk of the economics profession come so completely unmoored that Larry Summers could say "There are idiots", and have that be a useful response to anything? How did it come about that Richard Posner could write this:

The dominant conception of economics today, and one that has guided my own academic work in the economics of law, is that economics is the study of rational choice. People are assumed to make rational decisions across the entire range of human choice, including but not limited to market transactions, by employing a form (usually truncated and informal) of cost-benefit analysis. The older view was that economics is the study of the economy, employing whatever assumptions seem realistic and whatever analytical methods come to hand.

as though economics could just stop being "the study of the economy" using whatever methods seem useful and appropriate?

Plainly there has to be an intellectual explanation for this, which people like Paul Krugman have addressed. But I think there also has to be an explanation in terms of the sociology of academic disciplines. And in that light, it seems to me that if I were a journalist, I'd consider writing a piece comparing freshwater economics to the other major recent case in which an academic discipline went completely off the rails, namely English departments' swing into postmodernism in the '80s and early '90s. Offhand, there seem to be some real similarities, e.g.:

In both cases, the people involved maintained, credibly, that you couldn't really assess the work in question without putting a lot of effort into understanding it.

In both cases, that required mastering difficult stuff. (In econ, all the math and models; in pomo lit stuff, mastering the literally incomprehensible language in which a lot of that stuff was written.)

In both cases, that deterred a lot of people on the outside who were generally puzzled and skeptical, but didn't want to spend years getting into a position in which they could credibly say: yes, this is, in fact, nuts.

So in both cases practitioners were largely insulated from criticism they had to take seriously.

Relatedly, in both cases it took shocks from the outside to expose the problems in this (in the case of English, things like the Sokal hoax; in the case of econ, the near-collapse of the global economy.)

Both cases involved a lot of arrogance, and a generally dismissive attitude towards other approaches. Since, in both cases, practitioners were able to seize significant amounts of control over a discipline before their approach crashed and burned, this did real damage to the disciplines in question (leading to, e.g., large chunks of previous disciplinary history being forgotten.)
...
==endquote==

marcus

Oct31-09, 02:55 AM

I'm trying a better search which explicitly includes loop cosmology. Earlier searches missed loop cosmology papers which didn't happen to be tagged LQG.
Here is loop/foam publication rate in two-year chunks.

[2003 2004]
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/find/hep/www?rawcmd=FIND+K+SPIN%2CFOAM+OR+DK+LOOP+SPACE+AND +%28DK+QUANTUM+GRAVITY+OR+DK+QUANTUM+COSMOLOGY%29A ND+DATE+%3E+2002+AND+DATE+%3C+2005&FORMAT=www&SEQUENCE=

[2005 2006]
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/find/hep/www?rawcmd=FIND+K+SPIN%2CFOAM+OR+DK+LOOP+SPACE+AND +%28DK+QUANTUM+GRAVITY+OR+DK+QUANTUM+COSMOLOGY%29A ND+DATE+%3E+2004+AND+DATE+%3C+2007&FORMAT=www&SEQUENCE=

[2007, 2008]
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/find/hep/www?rawcmd=FIND+K+SPIN%2CFOAM+OR+DK+LOOP+SPACE+AND +%28DK+QUANTUM+GRAVITY+OR+DK+QUANTUM+COSMOLOGY%29A ND+DATE+%3E+2006+AND+DATE+%3C+2009&FORMAT=www&SEQUENCE=
144, 165, 242

And here's publication for this year so far:
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/find/hep/www?rawcmd=FIND+K+SPIN%2CFOAM+OR+DK+LOOP+SPACE+AND +%28DK+QUANTUM+GRAVITY+OR+DK+QUANTUM+COSMOLOGY%29A ND+DATE+%3D+2009&FORMAT=www&SEQUENCE=
93

Smolin book's performance compared with string top five benchmark

1 January 0.6 (2009)
1 February 0.7
1 March 0.5
1 April 0.6
1 May 0.6
1 June 0.7
1 July 1.9
1 August 0.6
1 September 0.6
1 October 0.4
...
...
31 October 0.59
1 November ?
2 November ?
...
...
To eliminate some random fluctuation I will average three noon readings around 1 November to determine the first-of-month figure.

At noon pacific on 31 October Trouble ranked 10125 and the five most popular string books (fabric, elegant, parallel, hyperspace, paperback elegant) ranked 3617, 3704, 6568, 6899, 9089 for an average of 5975.4 making the ratio 0.59.

marcus

Nov1-09, 03:44 PM

Smolin book's performance compared with string top five benchmark

1 January 0.6 (2009)
1 February 0.7
1 March 0.5
1 April 0.6
1 May 0.6
1 June 0.7
1 July 1.9
1 August 0.6
1 September 0.6
1 October 0.4
...
...
31 October 0.59
1 November 0.30
2 November 0.68
...
...
To eliminate some random fluctuation I will average three noon readings around 1 November to determine the first-of-month figure.

At noon pacific on 31 October Trouble ranked 10125 and the five most popular string books (fabric, elegant, parallel, hyperspace, paperback elegant) ranked 3617, 3704, 6568, 6899, 9089 for an average of 5975.4 making the ratio 0.5902.
At noon 1 November it ranked 14296 and the stringy top five averaged 4302.4 making the ratio 0.3010.
At noon 2 November Trouble ranked 13091 and the stringy top five (fabric, elegant, hyperspace, parallel, paperback elegant) ranked 4607, 4942, 7920, 8098, 18892 for an average of 8891.8 making the ratio 0.6792. Averaging the three ratios around 1 November gives the smoothed figure of 0.523.

Smolin book's performance, updated:

1 January 0.6 (2009)
1 February 0.7
1 March 0.5
1 April 0.6
1 May 0.6
1 June 0.7
1 July 1.9
1 August 0.6
1 September 0.6
1 October 0.4
1 November 0.5

======================

Another popular book related to 4D quantum gravity/cosmology has come on the market---this time in Germany.
In the USA, Knopf has purchased the rights to publish an English version but the translation has not appeared.
What is remarkable is how well the book has been doing. It came out in January 2009, and yesterday (when I came across it for the first time) it was Amazon's #1 in cosmology and #2 in theoretical physics.
The book is Zurück vor den Urknall, by Martin Bojowald, published by Fischer.
http://www.amazon.de/Zurück-vor-den-Urknall-Geschichte/dp/3100039106
I just checked today and saw it was #4 in theoretical physics and #5 in cosmology.

Knall means bang, and Ur means original or primordial---Urknall is German for big bang. The title means "back before the big bang." Bojowald essentially initiated the field of Loop Quantum Cosmology (LQC) with his 2001 paper where he applied LQG ideas to the usual cosmology model---which assumes isotropy and homogeneity---and found that the classical singularity did not occur, but was replaced by a bounce.

marcus

Nov6-09, 07:21 PM

Another popular book related to 4D quantum gravity/cosmology has come on the market---this time in Germany.
In the USA, Knopf has purchased the rights to publish an English version but the translation has not appeared.
What is remarkable is how well the book has been doing. It came out in [correction: April] 2009, and yesterday (when I came across it for the first time) it was Amazon's #1 in cosmology and #2 in theoretical physics.
The book is Zurück vor den Urknall, by Martin Bojowald, published by Fischer.
http://www.amazon.de/Zurück-vor-den-Urknall-Geschichte/dp/3100039106
I just checked today and saw it was #4 in theoretical physics and #5 in cosmology.

Knall means bang, and Ur means original or primordial---Urknall is German for big bang. The title means "back before the big bang." Bojowald essentially initiated the field of Loop Quantum Cosmology (LQC) with his 2001 paper where he applied LQG ideas to the usual cosmology model---which assumes isotropy and homogeneity---and found that the classical singularity did not occur, but was replaced by a bounce.

On 6 November, when I happened to look, Bojowald's book ranked 7117 and we can use Green's two books Das elegante Universum, and Der Stoff aus dem der Kosmos ist as a benchmark for comparison.

Zurück 7117
Elegante 5509
Stoff 11613
Benchmark average 8561.0
Ratio 1.2

That is, on a basis of salesranks, Bojowald's book was doing slightly better than par. It was better than the arbitrary benchmark by a factor of 1.2.

I'll be interested to see how this book does, in part because it is the first book of its kind. It is the first popular book that focuses on the Loop Quantum Gravity approach to modeling the universe. This approach first appeared in 2001 in a paper by Martin Bojowald (who founded Loop Quantum Cosmology as a research field when he was a 28 year old postdoc at Penn State.)

Other books have touched on Loop and on that theory's application to cosmology---to the extent of a chapter, or a part of a chapter. But no book that I know of has presented the theory as its main focus---and made that a window on quantum cosmology.

In some sense the benchmark I've chosen represents the "size of the problem" which a book like Bojowald's confronts. The public has been sold the idea that string promises a unified fundamental theory of nature. The perennially high salesrank of the two Greene books (now 5-10 years old) is an objective measure of the extent of that persistent illusion. So the benchmark is a simple way to compute and represent the "target". That's one reason I'm interested in seeing how Back before the Big Bang does in relation to it. Another is that it affords a convenient and fairly reliable benchmark just to give meaning to the numbers.

marcus

Nov8-09, 03:58 PM

At noon pacific on 8 November, Bojowald's book (Zurück vor den Urknall) was doing about 90% as good as the stringy benchmark.
Zurück ranked 5198
while Elegante and Stoff ranked 7023 and 2463 for an average of 4743.0, making the ratio 0.9.

I think it is darned respectable. He's basically just a hardhead young physicist, and this is his first book. He's not a salesman word-artist in the same league as Greene. He simply created the current going field of quantum cosmology and is writing about it. I don't expect him to be able to write literary pop-sci, or to compete with Brian Greene. But he's doing OK.
The book is holding up. It stays at around #1 to #5 in the Amazon bestseller categories of Cosmology and of Theoretical Physics, which is where the Greene books have tended to be around #1 or #2 a lot of the time.

Smolin's book is not specifically focused on Loop (which Martin's book is). Smolin's is about the whole range of QG approaches, string and various non-string initiatives, and why it would be smarter to use a mixed strategy (in science research policy) rather than all the eggs in one dubious and over-sold basket.
So the books are quite different. Bojowald is a positive focused science book. Smolin is more a critique and policy overview book.

And Smolin's book is also hanging in there. We are into its third year on the market (first edition September 2006). As of noon pacific 8 November, Trouble ranked 5989 and the string top five (parallel, fabric, hyperspace, elegant, paperback elegant) ranked 3362, 4510, 7501, 8292, 11759, for an average of 7084.8 making the ratio 1.2.
So the Smolin book was actually doing better than the string benchmark, today.

========================

Today, 9 November, I decided to check Bojowald's standing at 6PM Berlin time, that is 9 AM in the morning here (Pacific time is the local time where I live.)
I found that there was another popular string book in the picture---Lisa Randall's Verborgene ("Warped")

The ranks on Deutsch Amazon were:
Zurück 5522

Stoff 3068
Verborgene 7958
Elegante 15739

I now think that in the German market I should take as benchmark the top two stringy books, whatever they happen to be. In the past, except for today, whenever I looked the top two stringies were always the Greene books, Stoff and Elegante---so it amounted to the same thing.
All one needs is some consistent benchmark for comparison that is always defined the same way---then one can see trends, if there are any.

So doing it that way we have the stringy top two benchmark (3068+7958)/2 = 5513.0
and the ratio 5513/5522 = 1.0.
Bojowald performance is right on par with the string benchmark we are using.
We'll see where this goes---I have no guess about it.

marcus

Nov10-09, 04:12 PM

I'm experimenting with keeping track of the salesrank of Zurück vor den Urknall (ZvU) compared with a string benchmark. Based on the Amazon.de rank at 6PM Berlin time. The benchmark I'm currently trying out is the average rank of the 3 most popular string books

9 November 1.6
...
11 November 0.5

Today at 6 PM central europe time, the "back before primal bang" book's performance was only about 50% as good as the benchmark I have chosen for comparison---the average rank of the three stringy books which are currently most popular.
To illustrate, Zurück ranked 20726, and the three most popular stringies (which happened to be Stoff, Verborgene, and Elegante) ranked 5616, 8759, 16385 for an average 10253.3 and ratio 0.49.
===============

The Smolin book is surprisingly durable in the USA market. But the index jumps around a lot.
At noon pacific (the usual time to check) on 10 November it ranked 8065 and the top five stringies (fabric, parallel, elegant, hyperspace, paperback elegant) averaged 7559.4 for a ratio of 0.94.
On the other hand at noon on 11 November the ratio was 0.30! Trouble ranked 16820 and the five currently most popular string books (elegant, fabric, parallel, hyperspace, paper elegant) 2356, 3811, 5192, 5946, 7521, averaging 4965.2 for a ratio of 0.30. Partly because of this variability, the first-of-month figures recorded here are smoothed---averaged over a window of several days around the date in question. Here is how the book has done so far this year:

Trouble with Physcs, Amazon salesrank performance compared with five most popular string titles.

1 January 0.6 (2009)
1 February 0.7
1 March 0.5
1 April 0.6
1 May 0.6
1 June 0.7
1 July 1.9
1 August 0.6
1 September 0.6
1 October 0.4
1 November 0.5
================
Publications from Spires (keywords spin foam OR group field theory OR loop [quantum gravity or quantum cosmology])
2005:
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/find/hep/www?rawcmd=FIND+K+SPIN%2CFOAM+OR+DK+field+theory%2 C+group+OR+DK+LOOP+SPACE+AND+%28DK+QUANTUM+GRAVITY +OR+DK+QUANTUM+COSMOLOGY%29AND+DATE+%3D+2005&FORMAT=www&SEQUENCE=
2006:
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/find/hep/www?rawcmd=FIND+K+SPIN%2CFOAM+OR+DK+field+theory%2 C+group+OR+DK+LOOP+SPACE+AND+%28DK+QUANTUM+GRAVITY +OR+DK+QUANTUM+COSMOLOGY%29AND+DATE+%3D+2006&FORMAT=www&SEQUENCE=
2007:
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/find/hep/www?rawcmd=FIND+K+SPIN%2CFOAM+OR+DK+field+theory%2 C+group+OR+DK+LOOP+SPACE+AND+%28DK+QUANTUM+GRAVITY +OR+DK+QUANTUM+COSMOLOGY%29AND+DATE+%3D+2007&FORMAT=www&SEQUENCE=
2008:
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/find/hep/www?rawcmd=FIND+K+SPIN%2CFOAM+OR+DK+field+theory%2 C+group+OR+DK+LOOP+SPACE+AND+%28DK+QUANTUM+GRAVITY +OR+DK+QUANTUM+COSMOLOGY%29AND+DATE+%3D+2008&FORMAT=www&SEQUENCE=
2009:
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/find/hep/www?rawcmd=FIND+K+SPIN%2CFOAM+OR+DK+field+theory%2 C+group+OR+DK+LOOP+SPACE+AND+%28DK+QUANTUM+GRAVITY +OR+DK+QUANTUM+COSMOLOGY%29AND+DATE+%3D+2009&FORMAT=www&SEQUENCE=

marcus

Nov11-09, 05:02 PM

Correction to above post (too late to edit)
2005:
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/find/hep/www?rawcmd=FIND+K+SPIN%2CFOAM+OR+DK+FIELD+THEORY%2 C+GROUP+OR+DK+QUANTUM+GRAVITY%2C+LOOP+SPACE+OR+QUA NTUM+COSMOLOGY%2C+LOOP+SPACE+AND+DATE+%3D+2005&FORMAT=www&SEQUENCE=
2006:
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/find/hep/www?rawcmd=FIND+K+SPIN%2CFOAM+OR+DK+FIELD+THEORY%2 C+GROUP+OR+DK+QUANTUM+GRAVITY%2C+LOOP+SPACE+OR+QUA NTUM+COSMOLOGY%2C+LOOP+SPACE+AND+DATE+%3D+2006&FORMAT=www&SEQUENCE=
2007:
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/find/hep/www?rawcmd=FIND+K+SPIN%2CFOAM+OR+DK+FIELD+THEORY%2 C+GROUP+OR+DK+QUANTUM+GRAVITY%2C+LOOP+SPACE+OR+QUA NTUM+COSMOLOGY%2C+LOOP+SPACE+AND+DATE+%3D+2007&FORMAT=www&SEQUENCE=
2008:
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/find/hep/www?rawcmd=FIND+K+SPIN%2CFOAM+OR+DK+FIELD+THEORY%2 C+GROUP+OR+DK+QUANTUM+GRAVITY%2C+LOOP+SPACE+OR+QUA NTUM+COSMOLOGY%2C+LOOP+SPACE+AND+DATE+%3D+2008&FORMAT=www&SEQUENCE=
2009:
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/find/hep/www?rawcmd=FIND+K+SPIN%2CFOAM+OR+DK+FIELD+THEORY%2 C+GROUP+OR+DK+QUANTUM+GRAVITY%2C+LOOP+SPACE+OR+QUA NTUM+COSMOLOGY%2C+LOOP+SPACE+AND+DATE+%3D+2009&FORMAT=www&SEQUENCE=

As of 11 November 2009 the numbers of publications in successive years were 40, 82, 121, 129, 108.
To get the list ordered by citation count, use the above links and select citecount sequence from the menu.
The DESY keywords used here are "spin, foam", "field theory, group", "quantum gravity, loop space", and "quantum cosmology, loop space".

Continuing to keep track of the Bojowald book---the first popular book I know of that is specifically focused on the Loop approach to gravity. Here's the salesrank of Zurück vor den Urknall (ZvU) compared with a string benchmark. Based on the Amazon.de rank at 6PM Berlin time. The benchmark I'm currently trying out is the average rank of the 3 most popular string books

9 November 1.6
...
11 November 0.5
12 November 0.7

To illustrate, at 6PM central European time on 11 November, Zurück ranked 20726, and the three most popular stringies (which happened to be Stoff, Verborgene, and Elegante) ranked 5616, 8759, 16385 for an average 10253.3 and ratio 0.49.

marcus

Nov14-09, 12:18 PM

In terms of "Academic Sociology" we can see non-string QG, especially Loop, getting more established as new centers grow up. Today I got news of a new center at Erlangen. An email from Thomas Thiemann was circulated. Here's an excerpt:

"The successful candidate will be part of the new international centre for quantum gravity at the FAU which is currently in its building up phase. In the close future the centre will host one W3 professor position (chair),
three W2 (associate, tenured) professor positions
and at least three postdoc positions
plus guests, fellows, PhD and diploma students."

[so that means 4 tenured professors, and at least 3 postdocs, one hopes more]

"Altogether, there is space for up to 30 scientists. Current staff includes professors Michael Thies and Thomas Thiemann (chair), Emeriti Frieder Lenz (former chair) and Hartmut Hofmann, postdocs Emanuele Alesci, Enrique Ferandez Borja,
Jonathan Engle and Inaki Garay, as well as Phd and Diploma students."

Thiemann's name should be familiar. Prominent in the Loop research community for some 15 years. Most of that time divided between Perimeter Institute (at Waterloo) and the Albert Einstein Institute (AEI at Potsdam-Golm).

Engle was Ashtekar's PhD student, then postdoc with Rovelli at Marseille, then at the AEI with Thiemann. Alesci is a Rovelli PhD who postdoc'd at Marseille and AEI.

Until recently the AEI was the only center for Loop QG research in Germany. Today's news from Thiemann falls in line with a trend towards proliferation of centers. In France this process occurred earlier. The first center was set up at Marseille, when Rovelli moved there. Now there are researchers at Lyon and Tours, with related work also being done at Montpellier and Saclay.
One can see a similar process occurring in Poland, among other places. Also a proliferation of centers involved in QG research which is not Loop, but somewhat related like CDT (Triangulations QG)

======================

We now have what seems like a pretty good Loop publication index. It uses the Spires base with DESY keywords "spin, foam", "field theory, group", "quantum gravity, loop space", and "quantum cosmology, loop space".
As of 14 November the numbers of publications in successive years were:

2005 40
2006 82
2007 121
2008 129
2009 112 (incomplete)

2005:
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/find/hep/www?rawcmd=FIND+K+SPIN%2CFOAM+OR+DK+FIELD+THEORY%2 C+GROUP+OR+DK+QUANTUM+GRAVITY%2C+LOOP+SPACE+OR+QUA NTUM+COSMOLOGY%2C+LOOP+SPACE+AND+DATE+%3D+2005&FORMAT=www&SEQUENCE=
2006:
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/find/hep/www?rawcmd=FIND+K+SPIN%2CFOAM+OR+DK+FIELD+THEORY%2 C+GROUP+OR+DK+QUANTUM+GRAVITY%2C+LOOP+SPACE+OR+QUA NTUM+COSMOLOGY%2C+LOOP+SPACE+AND+DATE+%3D+2006&FORMAT=www&SEQUENCE=
2007:
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/find/hep/www?rawcmd=FIND+K+SPIN%2CFOAM+OR+DK+FIELD+THEORY%2 C+GROUP+OR+DK+QUANTUM+GRAVITY%2C+LOOP+SPACE+OR+QUA NTUM+COSMOLOGY%2C+LOOP+SPACE+AND+DATE+%3D+2007&FORMAT=www&SEQUENCE=
2008:
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/find/hep/www?rawcmd=FIND+K+SPIN%2CFOAM+OR+DK+FIELD+THEORY%2 C+GROUP+OR+DK+QUANTUM+GRAVITY%2C+LOOP+SPACE+OR+QUA NTUM+COSMOLOGY%2C+LOOP+SPACE+AND+DATE+%3D+2008&FORMAT=www&SEQUENCE=
2009:
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/find/hep/www?rawcmd=FIND+K+SPIN%2CFOAM+OR+DK+FIELD+THEORY%2 C+GROUP+OR+DK+QUANTUM+GRAVITY%2C+LOOP+SPACE+OR+QUA NTUM+COSMOLOGY%2C+LOOP+SPACE+AND+DATE+%3D+2009&FORMAT=www&SEQUENCE=

Europe tends to be ahead of the USA in Quantum Gravity so it is not surprising that the first popular book specifically focused on the Loop approach should appear in Europe. Martin Bojowald's Zurück vor den Urknall ("Before the Big Bang", I abbreviate it ZvU). I've been checking its amazon.de rank at 6PM Berlin time. For a comparison I'm using a string benchmark---the average rank of the 3 currently most popular string books

9 November 1.6
...
11 November 0.5
12 November 0.7
...
14 November 0.9

To illustrate, at 6PM central European time on 14 November, Zurück ranked 8253, and the three most popular stringies (which happened to be Stoff, Verborgene, and Elegante) ranked 6349, 6867, 8250 for an average 7155.3 and ratio 0.87.

marcus

Nov16-09, 12:22 PM

It looks like our Loop publication index might be a bit down this year from last. But still roughly the same level as 2007 and 2008, keeping the gains made since 2005. The index uses the Spires base with DESY keywords "spin, foam", "field theory, group", "quantum gravity, loop space", and "quantum cosmology, loop space".
As of 17 November the numbers of publications in successive years were:

2005 40
2006 82
2007 121
2008 129
2009 115

Of course not all the 2009 papers are in, since we still have the remainder of the year to go. In case anyone would like to check out this year's papers, here is the link:

2009:
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/find/hep/www?rawcmd=FIND+K+SPIN%2CFOAM+OR+DK+FIELD+THEORY%2 C+GROUP+OR+DK+QUANTUM+GRAVITY%2C+LOOP+SPACE+OR+QUA NTUM+COSMOLOGY%2C+LOOP+SPACE+AND+DATE+%3D+2009&FORMAT=www&SEQUENCE=

==========
Martin Bojowald's book is still doing pretty well. I check sporadically---take its amazon.de rank at 6PM Berlin time and compare with a string benchmark,the average rank of the 3 currently most popular string books.

Salesrank performance of Zurück vor den Urknall ("Before the Big Bang").

9 November 1.6
...
11 November 0.5
12 November 0.7
...
14 November 0.9
...
16 November 0.3
17 November 1.4

To illustrate, at 6PM central European time on 14 November, Zurück ranked 8253, and the three most popular stringies (which happened to be Stoff, Verborgene, and Elegante) ranked 6349, 6867, 8250 for an average 7155.3 and ratio 0.87.

Again, at 6PM central European time on 17 November, Bojowald's book ranked 8808 and the three most popular string books (Stoff, Elegante, Verborgene) ranked 8647, 13307, 14385 for an average of 12133, making the ratio 1.38.
=============

Yesterday I glanced at the noon standing of Smolin's book. It was at 40% of the string benchmark.
First of month figures this year have been:

Trouble with Physcs, Amazon salesrank performance compared with five most popular string titles.

1 January 0.6 (2009)
1 February 0.7
1 March 0.5
1 April 0.6
1 May 0.6
1 June 0.7
1 July 1.9
1 August 0.6
1 September 0.6
1 October 0.4
1 November 0.5
...
...
16 November 0.4

The figure yesterday, 16 November, was not especially good, but not terrible either. The five most popular stringies at noon today were parallel, elegant, hyperspace, fabric, black hole. Average salesrank 6510.0. Trouble with Physics ranked 15,958.

marcus

Nov20-09, 06:01 PM

Updates on a few indices:
Loop publication index is roughly the same level as 2007 and 2008, keeping the gains made since 2005. The index uses the Spires base with DESY keywords "spin, foam", "field theory, group", "quantum gravity, loop space", and "quantum cosmology, loop space".

2005 40
2006 82
2007 121
2008 129
2009 119 (as of 21 November)

In case anyone would like to check out this year's papers, here is the link:
2009:
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/find/hep/www?rawcmd=FIND+K+SPIN%2CFOAM+OR+DK+FIELD+THEORY%2 C+GROUP+OR+DK+QUANTUM+GRAVITY%2C+LOOP+SPACE+OR+QUA NTUM+COSMOLOGY%2C+LOOP+SPACE+AND+DATE+%3D+2009&FORMAT=www&SEQUENCE=
The index has not yet registered several papers that came out around the 19th, primarily by Thomas Thiemann's group.
Nor has it registered the Krasnov-Gomez paper that appeared earlier. There can be lag and uncertainty in the classification but on the whole it is excellent and a great help.
==========

Salesrank performance of Zurück vor den Urknall ("Before the Big Bang")
at 6PM Berlin time, compared with the average rank of the 3 currently most popular string books

9 November 1.6
...
11 November 0.5
12 November 0.7
...
14 November 0.9
...
16 November 0.3
17 November 1.4
...
19 November 0.5
20 November 0.4

To illustrate, at 6PM central European time on 17 November, Bojowald's book ranked 8808 and the three most popular string books (Stoff, Elegante, Verborgene) ranked 8647, 13307, 14385 for an average of 12133, making the ratio 1.38.

Again, at 6PM central European time on 19 November, Zurück ranked 13523, and the three most popular stringies (which happened to be Stoff, Verborgene, and Elegante) ranked 3616, 7117, 10605 for an average 7112.7 and a ratio of 0.53. In other words Bojowald's book was doing only about half as well as the stringy benchmark (since his rank was about twice the stringy average.)
=============

Trouble with Physcs, Amazon salesrank performance compared with five most popular string titles.

1 January 0.6 (2009)
1 February 0.7
1 March 0.5
1 April 0.6
1 May 0.6
1 June 0.7
1 July 1.9
1 August 0.6
1 September 0.6
1 October 0.4
1 November 0.5
...
16 November 0.4
...
19 November 0.3
20 November 0.4
21 November 0.5

To illustrate, at noon California time on 20 November, Trouble ranked 23668 and the five most popular stringies (parallel, hyperspace, elegant, fabric, black hole) ranked 5325, 6085, 6275, 6782 for an average of 9717.2 and a ratio of 0.40.
At noon on 21 November, Trouble ranked 12309 and the stringy top five averaged 5698.8, making the ratio 0.46.

marcus

Nov22-09, 03:22 PM

Our Loop publication index uses the Spires base with DESY keywords "spin, foam", "field theory, group", "quantum gravity, loop space", and "quantum cosmology, loop space".

2005 40
2006 82
2007 121
2008 129
2009 121 (as of 22 November)

Here is the link for 2009 papers:
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/find/hep/www?rawcmd=FIND+K+SPIN%2CFOAM+OR+DK+FIELD+THEORY%2 C+GROUP+OR+DK+QUANTUM+GRAVITY%2C+LOOP+SPACE+OR+QUA NTUM+COSMOLOGY%2C+LOOP+SPACE+AND+DATE+%3D+2009&FORMAT=www&SEQUENCE=
The index has not yet registered a few of the papers that came out around the 19th from Thomas Thiemann's group.
==========

Salesrank performance of Zurück vor den Urknall ("Before the Big Bang")
at 6PM Berlin time, compared with the average rank of the 3 currently most popular string books

9 November 1.6
...
11 November 0.5
12 November 0.7
...
14 November 0.9
...
16 November 0.3
17 November 1.4
...
19 November 0.5
20 November 0.4
...
22 November 0.4

To illustrate how the index works, at 6PM central European time on 19 November, Zurück ranked 13523, and the three most popular stringies (which happened to be Stoff, Verborgene, and Elegante) ranked 3616, 7117, 10605 for an average 7112.7 and a ratio of 0.53. In other words Bojowald's book was doing about half as well as the stringy benchmark (since its rank was about twice the stringy average.)
=============

Trouble with Physcs, Amazon salesrank performance compared with five most popular string titles.

1 January 0.6 (2009)
1 February 0.7
1 March 0.5
1 April 0.6
1 May 0.6
1 June 0.7
1 July 1.9
1 August 0.6
1 September 0.6
1 October 0.4
1 November 0.5
...
16 November 0.4
...
19 November 0.3
20 November 0.4
21 November 0.5
22 November 0.6

E.g. at noon California time on 22 November, Trouble ranked 10450 and the five most popular stringies ( elegant, fabric, parallel, hyperspace, black hole) ranked 3289, 3609, 4731, 7749, 10243 for an average of 5924.2 and a ratio of 0.57.