Insights My Superparticle Bet with Frank Wilczek - Comments

[strangerep]

It's settled now http://newscientist.com/article/2101550-surfer-physicist-wins-superparticle-bet-with-nobel-laureate/

It says FW has conceded, but has he actually paid up?

Hmm, now who might be the next over-confident high-profile theoretical physicist from whom a wager can be extracted?

 

[allan marcelo]

Hi sir garret,

I have a few questions regarding the geometric theory of everything:

1. does the E8 describe the whole structure of spacetime or does it describe the fundamental parts that make up spacetime?
2. does it imply that the spacetime itself influences the way matter is being formed or is it the other way around?
3. if spacetime is made of an E8 based structure, how does it behave?

please correct me if i am wrong on this i am really interested in your work and on how it is related to the structure of spacetime
and on how matter, energy, and other emergents behave to fit in current observations.

 

[PAllen]

I once heard a lecture by Steven Weinberg, in which he explained that that is called "hedging". Of course, we know how well that has worked out.

Edit: Oops, actually Frank did the opposite of what Weinberg and Hawking did, which is to bet against their own favourites.

Not sure what you mean here. Frank bet in favor of his favorite, supersymmetry. Hawking bet in favor of BH information loss and in favor of cosmic censorship, both of which were his favorites. On the former, Hawking conceded completely. On the latter, Hawking admitted he lost on what he considered a technicality, paid up, and reissued a tighter form of the cojecture (evolution of a naked singularity from any set of initial conditions, not containing a naked singularity, not of measure zero). The reissued bet is still wide open.