Is there a support group for spouses of physicists?

[Evo]

Self Adjoint - Thank you! I will look into these! I really cannot express how much I appreciate the extra effort that you and Marcus have taken to come down to my level and offer material that I may be able to comprehend.

I know most of the people here are so far beyond where I am that it is difficult to envision what I need.

You two are AWESOME! I know smiley faces are beneath you "smart guys", but it does express my gratitude for what you have done for me.

 

[Evo]

Originally posted by jeff
When it comes to LQG vs ST at PF, it's more a question of motives than knowledge - this isn't the physics community and people get "attached", to put it charitably, to theories for reasons that make no sense. So if you'd like to know what the true status of LQG is in the physics community, rather than waste time figuring out who at PF "knows what they're talking about", just visit the websites of 20 or 30 of the world's top university physics departments and see how often LQG is mentioned in the list of subjects being researched by their respective high energy theory groups. After you discover that the number is zero (or maybe one) come back here and ask the PF-LQG-cult members why they don't think it's fair to ever mention this? I mean, the first thing I ask about a complicated issue that I don't really understand but am interested in is, what do the experts think? Anyway, don't take my word for any of this, verify it on your own. Go visit the physics department home pages of stanford, mit, harvard, princeton, cal tech, chicago, berklee, columbia, cambridge, etc. Doing so certainly won't hurt your ability to judge who's posts need to be taken with more than a grain of salt, at least when it comes to this subject. After that, satisfy your basic curiosity about LQG, including why it's viewed as being so implausible by virtually everyone working in QG and HET.

Yes, I agree that people do get very attached to what they believe, and I will seek out these other opinions. But I feel that you tend to "talk above" me rather than talk "to me" on my level, well maybe that's asking a bit too much, kind of like me talking optical networks to a kindergartener. But Marcus in his first post on this thread stated that popular opinion was against LQG and much more slanted towards ST. Isn’t this in support of what you are saying?
Tsunami,

As you have doubtless gathered, I am real lowbrow and you are welcome to waste time trying to discuss anything you want with me, popular or not among whomever. As for research "demographics", here are numbers from a Los Alamos archive database. This relates to "popularity among physicists".

Numbers of scholarly preprints by year in Loop Gravity research topics
(keywords "loop quantum gravity", "spin foam", or "loop quantum cosmology")

2000 46
2001 48
2002 64
2003 70


--------------
Numbers of scholarly preprints by year in String research topics (keywords "string", "brane", "M-theory"


2000 1457
2001 1496
2002 1500
2003 1265

That is, those where the abstract summary of the paper has in it somewhere the word string, or the word brane, or the word M-theory.

More about this, and links to sources in the "Rovelli's program" thread serving as a Loop Gravity link-basket for want of sticky.

https://www.physicsforums.com/showth...8448#post128448

Anecdotal evidence, in my experience, tends to confirm what you see in the numbers. I have repeatedly come across papers by authors who formerly did string research and have largely or entirely switched over.

 

[Tsu]

This is the BEST thread!

Evo, thanks for taking over for me and posting my thoughts and feelings! I will PM you the first chance I get. *aside to other posters here - you know, Evo and I were separated at birth! We are SO (oddly) alike in SO many things... She expresses us better, tho!* I have been hammered at work and haven't had time to do a lot of additional study on ST/LQG theories. I have another week or two before I can get back into it hot and heavy.

Marcus and selfAdjoint, thanks so incredibly much for your posts. You guys are the BEST! While I may not be posting much here right now, I AM reading and keeping up (well, sort of... like I said, I'm hammered at work). Please keep this going while I'm 'out of site'!

Jeff! You're next! Be ready! (sorry! I can't live without smilies!) Fun and laughter are the best parts of life! Trust me on this one. If you ever have to have a cat scan or a barium enema - you're going to want someone like ME doing it! Yes, I've been told I can make even a barium enema a FUN experience! (What a claim to fame, ya? )

 

[jeff]

Originally posted by Tsunami
Jeff! You're next! Be ready!

Originally posted by Tsunami
If you ever have to have a...barium enema...

Originally posted by Tsunami
I've been told I can make even a barium enema a FUN experience!

 

[Tsu]

ROTFLMAOAPMP!

Oh, jeff. *wiping tears from my eyes* You are FUNNY! There's hope for you nerds, yet! I'm looking forward to quizzing you about ST, if you have time. I promise not to 'dry tip' you if you do!

 

[Tsu]

Well, I'm completely loaded up with material. I expect to be reading for MONTHS! The thing is - I can find all kinds of stuff on the net about ST (for dummies), but not much on LQG. Oh well... I'm getting there. I have some books and videos chosen and in my basket at the PF Bookstore, I just have one more book to choose and then I'm outta there! Am I doing this backwards? (as usual) Would I understand LQG better (easier) if I first got a good handle on ST?

Jeff! Straighten me out here, tho! 'String Theory' refers to the original bosonic string theory? And supersymmetry was added to these theories to become 'Superstring Theory'? And what was added to what to become M-Theory (which is on the back burner until I figure out the first two)? And LQG has taken ST stuff and gone off in another direction? I'm also confused with the number of dimensions in each. Can you help? Will finally getting to watch Elegant Universe straighten this out for me? If so, you can ignore this question. In another week (or three ) I'll be back in here with more questions.
THANK YOU!

 

[ranyart]

Originally posted by Tsunami
Well, I'm completely loaded up with material. I expect to be reading for MONTHS! The thing is - I can find all kinds of stuff on the net about ST (for dummies), but not much on LQG. Oh well... I'm getting there. I have some books and videos chosen and in my basket at the PF Bookstore, I just have one more book to choose and then I'm outta there! Am I doing this backwards? (as usual) Would I understand LQG better (easier) if I first got a good handle on ST?

Jeff! Straighten me out here, tho! 'String Theory' refers to the original bosonic string theory? And supersymmetry was added to these theories to become 'Superstring Theory'? And what was added to what to become M-Theory (which is on the back burner until I figure out the first two)? And LQG has taken ST stuff and gone off in another direction? I'm also confused with the number of dimensions in each. Can you help? Will finally getting to watch Elegant Universe straighten this out for me? If so, you can ignore this question. In another week (or three ) I'll be back in here with more questions.
THANK YOU!

Tsunami, before the Wave comes crashing down on jeff maybe you should consider Ed Witten:http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/find/hep/www?rawcmd=ea+Witten,+Edward

also here:http://www.sns.ias.edu/~witten/

Not only is he a much pleasant person, he is instrumental in throwing String Theory into the 21st century!

 

[Tsu]

Originally posted by ranyart
Tsunami, before the Wave comes crashing down on jeff maybe you should consider Ed Witten:http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/find/hep/www?rawcmd=ea+Witten,+Edward

also here:http://www.sns.ias.edu/~witten/

Not only is he a much pleasant person, he is instrumental in throwing String Theory into the 21st century!

You mean the TSUNAMI (wave)?? (ok. i'll stop now.)

So which one of those 25 items at the first site would you suggest? Few of them appear to be written in English (read NON-physicist language) and the ones that look as though they might be, aren't. I don't speak Physicsese.

The second one looked more promising until I started the second paragraph of the first article. It's frustrating and discouraging if you're not a 'real' scientist. Remember! You're dealing with a true Physics Dummy here! But I WANT TO KNOW WHAT IT'S ALL ABOUT!

Besides, I promised Jeff I wouldn't 'dry tip' him if he helped me out a little bit with ST.

Let me ask you this, though. If science finally decides that 'this' (ST or M-Theory or LQG) is 'the one' - what's that going to tell us? How the universe began? What banged? Did God do it or is it just random-chance chaos at work? The recipe for primordial soup? WHAT?

 

[arivero]

Originally posted by Tsunami
Let me ask you this, though. If science finally decides that 'this' (ST or M-Theory or LQG) is 'the one' - what's that going to tell us? How the universe began? What banged? Did God do it or is it just random-chance chaos at work? The recipe for primordial soup? WHAT? [/B]

You could want to check the table in page 60 of http://arxiv.org/ps/hep-th/0303185

As for philosophical results, notice the title of quant-ph/9802020 from Carlo Rovelli.

 

[marcus]

Originally posted by arivero
You could want to check the table in page 60 of http://arxiv.org/hep-th/0303185

As for philosophical results, notice the title of quant-ph/9802020 from Carlo Rovelli.

I have edited the links that Alejandro gave to make
sure they work for my (sometimes reluctant) browser
http://arxiv.org/hep-th/0303185
http://arxiv.org/quant-ph/9802020


"Incerto tempore, incertisque loci": Can we compute the exact time at which a quantum measurement happens?
Carlo Rovelli
6 pages
Published in "Foundations of Physics" 28 (1998) 1031-1043

----quote from Rovelli's abstract----
Without addressing the measurement problem (i.e. what causes the wave function to "collapse", or to "branch", or a history to become realized, or a property to actualize), I discuss the problem of the timing of the quantum measurement: assuming that in an appropriate sense a measurement happens, when precisely does it happen? This question can be posed within most interpretations of quantum mechanics. By introducing the operator M, which measures whether or not the quantum measurement has happened, I suggest that, contrary to what is often claimed, quantum mechanics does provide a precise answer to this question, although a somewhat surprising one.
------end quote-----

The other link Alejandro gives here is to the table on page 60
of "How far are we from the quantum theory of gravity?"

This table summarizes the results of section 8 of that paper
"How well do the theories answer the questions?"
This section compares String and Loop systematically point by point.
The author does research in both fields and knows both theories first-hand, so it's an interesting comparison.
Section 8 begins on page 59 (right before this table) with
a profound and thought-provoking truth uttered by Jean Cretien, the Prime Minister of Canada.

-------------
Rovelli's Latin quote "At a random time and in a random place"
is from Lucretius "De Rerum Natura"
-------------
One may assume that Smolin likes Loop Gravity since he is one of its founders. But the fact remains that he has published a number of String papers, has a detailed knowledge of both fields, and
even wrote a Stringy paper last month.
His "How far are we..." tries to make a balanced objective comparison.
That is what the table on page 60 tries to do.
Some String/Brane theorists may complain it doesn't make their theory look good enough. They could try making their own table.
Smolin's recent string paper, with Magueijo, was
hep-th/0401087.

 

[arivero]

Originally posted by marcus

http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/980202
"Incerto tempore, incertisque loci":
Published in "Foundations of Physics" 28 (1998) 1031-1043

Actually, the main clue is the title itself. Sorry the pedantic mode, but as you can know, I like very much to overuse some classics.
With this quote, Rovelli refers to a late anarchist author, Titus Lucretius

corpora, quom deorsum rectum per inane feruntur
ponderibus propriis, incerto tempore ferme
incertisque locis spatio depellere paulum
tantum quod momem mutatum dicere possis

Er... did I say an-archist? Well it is true that Lucretius's book was used last December in a bomb sent from Bologna to Brussels EuroJustice department, and it is also true that the current translation to Spanish is due to an anarchist-biased philologist. But I probably mean to say a-tomist. Really, it is the only whole surviving text on ancient atomic theory, although it does not work out the mathematical issues.

Also Lee Smoolin chooses this word to title his divulgation article in Scientific American this January: Atoms of Geometry

Ancient atomic theory has two variants. A static one, devised to calculate volume of any figure, and a dynamical one, aimed to absorb the arguments of Zeno without requiring the limit procedure Newton uses. To this end, the world is considered to be a foam or lattice of vacuum separated by atoms, or a set of atoms separated by vacuum, and then a lost rule to refine the lattice. The only information contained in atoms is rhythm (?), contact and direction, so -I guess- they can not be divided because they do not carry, by themselves, spatial information. Duality is important to Democritus, and he uses a wordplay to remark it, calling sometimes "muth-on" and "on", say no-zing and zing, to vacuum and atoms respectively. Note that we have respected the nomenclature "-on" to name elementary particles.

LQG postulates a intriguing quantum of area, because it is not a solid chunk of space, but simply the fact that if you measure an area, the result will always be above this value. Just as in special relativity any measurement of speed is always below c.

Speaking of that, old atomic theory also tells that there is a maximum speed, anhyperbleton and that atoms should move freely at this speed but that a hidden cause, perhaps a sort of imperceptible interaction with vacuum or with other atoms, will ultimatelly cause the bouncing and scattering that let us to define matter. This imperceptible deviation, or clinamen, is the one alluded in the verses used by Rovelli

 

[marcus]

Originally posted by Tsunami
...Let me ask you this, though. If science finally decides that 'this' (ST or M-Theory or LQG) is 'the one' - what's that going to tell us? How the universe began? What banged? Did God do it or is it just random-chance chaos at work? The recipe for primordial soup? WHAT?

I am still mulling over what it was Alejandro meant when he
pointed you to the table on page 60 of
"How far are we from the theory of quantum gravity?"

I believe it was because Smolin has thought deeply about
just what it is that a quantum theory of gravity (if we finally
settle on one) should tell us.

What questions should a satisfactory theory of gravity answer?

Smolin thinks carefully about this and lays out the questions.

that is what allows him to compare progress at answering them and to judge "How far" we still are.
-------------

Smolin also has a short 4-page section right at the beginning
"Physical questions the theories should answer"
this is pages 10-14
it says what questions a satisfactory quantum theory of gravity]
should answer

so hey! that answers your question, Tsunami!
Alejandro's link was very much to the point, which i did not see
immediately (par for the course, I often have to look twice at things)
------------------

 

[arivero]

Originally posted by marcus
I am still mulling over what it was Alejandro meant when he
pointed you to the table on page 60 of
"How far are we from the theory of quantum gravity?"

Well, I can be dark, but I am not Heraclitus! The table shows an evaluation of the questions that Loop Quantum Gravity actually aims to answer, and Tsunami was just asking what's that [theory] going to tell us?

 

[marcus]

Originally posted by arivero


Also Lee Smoolin chooses this word to title his divulgation article in Scientific American this January: Atoms of Geometry

...
LQG postulates a intriguing quantum of area, because it is not a solid chunk of space, but simply the fact that if you measure an area, the result will always be above this value. Just as in special relativity any measurement of speed is always below c.

Speaking of that, old atomic theory also tells that there is a maximum speed, anhyperbleton and that atoms should move freely at this speed but that a hidden cause, perhaps a sort of imperceptible interaction with vacuum or with other atoms, will ultimatelly cause the bouncing and scattering that let us to define matter. This imperceptible deviation, or clinamen, is the one alluded in the verses used by Rovelli

the mediterranean world is at the root of science and we will not be surprised if Lucretius said some things that again Rovelli says

but Smolin's article was "Atoms of Space and Time" I think and
not geometry---although spacetime and geometry is maybe the same thing.

thanks for the latin text. it is amazing that there was an ancient idea of a speed limit
because the modern speed limit idea only goes back to AE's paper of
1905---an-hyper-bleton is a funny word
"not-more-speedy(entity)"?

 

[arivero]

You are right, Atoms of Space and Time. I was quoting from memory.

The atomist abhors infinity even more strongly that Aristotle abhors vacuum. So for them it was logical to put a maximum to speed, but they looked for this funny name to avoid paradoxes, I supposse. The word appears in an extant letter of Epicurus, if I remember well.

I have brought here Lucretius because he partly tryes to answer the more metaphysical questions of Tsunami, which obviously are not going to be addressed in a paper of physics.

 

[marcus]

Originally posted by arivero

Ancient atomic theory has two variants. ... The only information contained in atoms is rhythm (?), contact and direction, so -I guess- they can not be divided because they do not carry, by themselves, spatial information. ...


LQG postulates a intriguing quantum of area, because it is not a solid chunk of space, but simply the fact that if you measure an area, the result will always be above this value. Just as in special relativity any measurement of speed is always below c.

...

it seems to me to be a good idea to compare ancient physics theory
(Lucretius c.100BC to c.50BC?) to LQG

I think by "rythm" you mean rhythm, peculiar English spelling.

I did not know that Lucretian atoms contained rhythm information, associating existence with vibration frequency, on some level. an idea also associated with modern physics.
lots of surprises this morning.

the key word always seem to be "measurement"
if one part of the universe measures another part, then...
every puzzle seems sometime to come down to this

so for example: space is not made of lumps, but if you
measure the surface area or volume of something the result must be from
a discrete set of possibilities
like drops of dew on the spider's thread

 

[marcus]

always exciting to read and think about your posts A.R.
now I feel as if I have drunk too many cups of coffee
but it is just the philosophical considerations not the caffeine

must attend to mundane chore and return to this later

 

[arivero]

crosslink

A subthread on Lucretius and family has been open at
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=14281

 

[glitterboi]

G-day. I read through all the posts and ah have quantized your mind. ;)

You're natually people-oriented and curious about them [pyschology I wager]. You may be better off learning a unpopular protoscience - Numerology. this way you gain an insightful understanding of the differences between you and the physics freaks and labcoats. then you could also be more educated in realizing how important numbers and symbols (which are embedded numbers also) in the world around us and related it is to everything.

Brain hard-"wired" differently: From my impression, you need finely tuned processing speed, laser precision focus, and specialized perception depth to really comprehend [theoretical] physics or the mysteries of life. Some people can be taught to understand it while others are naturally capable and will exceed those who can only be taught.

this capability belongs to a number in Numerology - 7. Theoretical physics exemplify this vibration. here's a snippet:

7-Mind, you are the searcher and the seeker of the truth.
You have a clear and compelling sense of yourself as a spiritual being. As a result, your life path is devoted to investigations into the unknown, and finding the answers to the mysteries of life.
You are well-equipped to handle your task. You possesses a fine mind; you are an analytical thinker, capable of great concentration and theoretical insight. You enjoy research, and putting the pieces of an intellectual puzzle together. Once you have enough pieces in place, you are capable of highly creative insight and practical solutions to problems.
-Decoz master numerology program 6.0

Notice, it mentioned "great" concentration. a highly understatement. It is the best and unmatched among the basic numbers from 1 - 6 and 8- 9.

If you're interested, I'll provide more information.

Marcus: Would you indulge me? I gather you have this vibration somewhere in your birthdate or your names or both. I like to test Numerology's postulates given above because I rarely run across 7s except from reading their theophysics.

later

Originally posted by Tsunami
I think, pretty much - never mind. I tried to watch Integral's link to the PBS video, but I need to use Ivan's computer with the high-speed connection and that just isn't going to happen any time soon. I have so many questions, even I can't get them sorted out enough to make sensible posts. I can try to find more basic info about LQG and string theory somewhere on the net. Guess I'll first google "LQG for Dummies" first... Also probably "String Theory for Dolts". Once I have that all figured out, I'll be back with some questions. Maybe in my next life I'll be hard-wired for this stuff... (GOOD LORD! WHAT AM I WISHING FOR?)

Can anyone guide me to some sites about these two theories where they don't speak Greek? (you know, Greek - like 'sumthinorother diffeomorphism' - What the h*** IS THAT?)

Thanx anyway...

i should seek professinal help... i marry a nerd and i hang out with him and all his friends who just scramble my brains... YOU'RE ALL OUT TO GET ME, AREN'T YOU?! IT'S A CONSPIRACY! hmm... professional help it IS... Is there a 12-step group for physics wives?

 

[Nereid]

Welcome to Physics Forums glitterboi!

Would you mind if I suggest that there's a very good sub-forum here for Numerology and related topics? It's called Theory Development, and if you post there I'm sure you'll find many folk who are interested in discussing your ideas (and they can be quite energetic about it too).

Personally, I'd prefer that this thread remains on the topic of LQG and/or ST, and unless I'm mistaken, numerology is not part of either.

Thank you in advance for your cooperation.

 

[Tsu]

Originally posted by glitterboi
G-day. I read through all the posts and ah have quantized your mind. ;)

Now THAT'S darn scary! I didn't feel a thing!

Update: still studying (sporadically though, as work has finally started taking up my free time at work!).