What Is Stopping A Unfied Theory Of Physics?

[Aethelwulf]

First of all, gravity is inadequate when you are talking about high and low energy physics. Low energy physics deals with gravity very well... it describes the curvature (or geometry) of space and time. But when you wind the clock of the universe back, you end up with a microscopic system which has no geometry but a lot of curvature. How do you understand that in the face of Relativity?

 

So the next problem, well is, a consensus on physics. Not everyone agrees whether the unified theory is correct, as we have had many. So the task is, not just to create a theory which is mathematically-compatible, but also a theory which is universally-acceptable... that is probably the biggest task.

 

Classical theories, like relativity must be modernized given the present knowledge, such as the uncertainty principle which relativity neglects - the neglection will stop a progressive theory of everything.

 

Heirachy problem, the idea of why particle masses exist in the forms they do... even with the newly discovered, or believed Higgs Boson, why do all particles have the masses they do? To this date, no theory can reconcile the mass of an electron to any other particle.

 

 

What do have in mind?

 

final conclusions...

 

The universe is far too complex to rectify into a simple set of equations.

[Aethelwulf]

Some other problems -

 

 

 

A grand unified theory needs to make sense of why a proton seems infinitely stable. Why are they infinitely stable when they have a mass and a charge? What makes them infinitely stable?

 

What is dark matter? Is dark matter even real? Isn't dark matter just gravitational influences which General Relativity does not account for on very large distances?

 

What about the beginning of time? According to many current theories of physics the universe appeared from nothing... If that is the case, there is a current causal problem concerning the universes appearance.

[Little Bang]

Whats stopping a unified theory, the standard model.

[tetrahedron]

From my relatively :lol: untutored perspective sometimes most of the interesting phenomena occur at the interfaces between two (or more) different extremes. For me those extremes are (at least) the Higgs boson and the graviton (which might as well be the Einstein boson) at 0/2 and 4/2 fundamental spin. I also think that there are fundamental 3/2 spin particles (not string-theory sparticles) that don't ACT like particles. I have some hints that each spin is associated with coupling to spacetime dimensionality. By the time you get to 3/2 particality wouldn't be obvious anymore. In any case if you add all this together it might help to explain why we have no unified theory yet.

 

Jess Tauber

Edited December 16, 2012 by pascal

[Rade]

A grand unified theory needs to make sense of why a proton seems infinitely stable. Why are they infinitely stable when they have a mass and a charge? What makes them infinitely stable?

I have a question. What do you mean "infinitely stable" for the proton, the 1-H-1 isotope of hydrogen ? Are you saying this isotope is more stable than say 2-He-4, the alpha, or any of the many other stable isotopes of elements ? Are you suggesting there are two classes of isotopes, some infinitely and some finitely stable ?

[FrankM]

Because it is difficult to get research funds to determine if what is considered settled science is wrong. Additionally, even if you have research evidence that contradicts settled science it is difficult to get the results published.

 

It is periodically demonstrated that settled science can be wrong. Daniel Schecthman, the 2011 Nobel Prize winner in chemistry, found that identifying the structural form of quasicrystals, which he discovered in 1982, was the easy part. The hard part was overturning the crystal structure paradigm, the assumption taught in textbooks for almost a century, all crystals had to conform to specific forms.

 

I prepared and submitted a paper to the 2012 FQXi essay contest, challenging a basic assumption, that used the quasicrystal issue to illustrate how an observed scientific observation that challenged long established settled science had difficulty in getting published and then being fully accepted after publication.

 

http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/essay-download/1294/__details/Makinson_UnchallengedAssump_1.pdf

 

Now comes MIT research that should unsettle many of those who have taught and written text books stating that quantum states are always whole numbers; the researchers believe they have observed fractionalized states.

 

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/12/21/quantum_spin_liquid_mit_research/

 

The research was directed at magnetic states, and what they identified is interesting in itself.

 

In the new state of magnetism, the magnetic orientation of particles is unable to settle into an ordered state. Instead, they fluctuate constantly, driven by quantum interactions between particles.

[Aethelwulf]

I have a question. What do you mean "infinitely stable" for the proton, the 1-H-1 isotope of hydrogen ? Are you saying this isotope is more stable than say 2-He-4, the alpha, or any of the many other stable isotopes of elements ? Are you suggesting there are two classes of isotopes, some infinitely and some finitely stable ?

 

A proton has never been seen to decay... some unified field theories actually have a decay rate for these particles... some physicists believe they might actually be infinitely stable.

[CraigD]

I prepared and submitted a paper to the 2012 FQXi essay contest, challenging a basic assumption, that used the quasicrystal issue to illustrate how an observed scientific observation that challenged long established settled science had difficulty in getting published and then being fully accepted after publication.

 

http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/essay-download/1294/__details/Makinson_UnchallengedAssump_1.pdf

First, Frank, complements on your FQXi “Questioning the Foundations: Which of Our Basic Physical Assumptions Are Wrong?” essay contest entry, and condolences on not winning a prize. You were facing tough completion from a crowd of scientists and professional essayists. Still, you’ve at least increased the exposure of your ideas.

 

Next, thanks for calling attention to these FQXi essays – I look forward to browsing and reading many of them, especially those from the previous, 2010 “Is reality Digital or Analog”, a subject near and dear to me. You’ve pointed me, and I hope many of our readers, toward months at least of enjoyable science reading! :thumbs_up

 

Though I found it careful and well written, I think your essay suffers because it only tangentially addressed the contest's theme, "which of Our Basic Physical Assumptions Are Wrong?" It seems more of a vehicle for your long advocacy for “mathematically defined units of measure”, which we’ve discussed in threads such as Mathematical constant or physical constant and Mathematically defined units - benefits.

 

I still don’t agree with you, or understand well you motivation. From my perspective, all that’s important for a system of units is that they be sufficiently precisely and well defined that all their users agree on how to use them, while mathematical (numeric) constants, such as [imath]\pi[/imath], are a subset of the set of physical constants distinguished by their having no dimension (units). Thus, your campaign to reject the SI and all other common unit systems seem to me a search for a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist. That you don’t explicitly define a system of units to replace all other systems, only urge that one be defined, makes it difficult for the reader to consider how such a system would be an improvement.

 

Returning to Aethelwulf’s title question, “What Is Stopping A Unified Theory Of Physics?”, and Frank’s answer

Because it is difficult to get research funds to determine if what is considered settled science is wrong. Additionally, even if you have research evidence that contradicts settled science it is difficult to get the results published.

I find a semantic flaw. The question asks “what is stopping” a thing, while Frank’s answer describes, and gives a good example,

It is periodically demonstrated that settled science can be wrong. Daniel Schecthman, the 2011 Nobel Prize winner in chemistry, found that identifying the structural form of quasicrystals, which he discovered in 1982, was the easy part. The hard part was overturning the crystal structure paradigm, the assumption taught in textbooks for almost a century, all crystals had to conform to specific forms.

of things that arguable slow things. Slowing and stopping, however, are not synonyms. To the contrary, slowing implies not stopping.

 

Science is, I think, in large a consensus-forming activity, necessarily elevating some theories to preferred, mainstream status, focusing a greater share of people’s attention on them. This status is occasionally and eventually usually undone as theories formerly given less preferred status come to replace the preferred ones. However, the overall rate of progress of science is not retarded by the scientific consensus-forming and changing process, because there are far more non-mainstream theories that prove of little value than ones that prove of great value, eventually becoming mainstream.

 

To conclude from the ongoing process of once mainstream theories being replaced that the process that makes the mainstream stops or slow scientific progress is, I think, very wrong.

 

Further, your use of the phrase “settled science”, Frank, vs. for example my use of “mainstream science”, is I think something of a straw man. Few if any scientists, I think, believe that any scientific theory has ultimately “settled” any large collection of scientific questions. While the term “settled science” has a well-understood meaning (eg: “cigarette smoking causes lung cancer. That’s settled science.”), it applies to specific questions answered by applied science, not to fundamental scientific theories. The Standard Model, for example, though near universally accepted, mainstream science, is not settled.

 

Now comes MIT research that should unsettle many of those who have taught and written text books stating that quantum states are always whole numbers; the researchers believe they have observed fractionalized states.

 

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/12/21/quantum_spin_liquid_mit_research/

Frank, I think you, and the Register’s Richard Chadwick, mischaracterizing quantum mechanics. While my grasp of spinon and holon quasiparticles is tenuous, I understand that for as long the “fractionalized spin state” Lee and others describe has long been theoretically predicted. Although both the Register article and the MIT news release make statements like

While most matter has discrete quantum states whose changes are expressed as whole numbers, this QSL material exhibits fractional quantum states.

I don’t think this should lead one to conclude that “quantum states are always whole numbers”, or that text books state this. I recall my textbooks described mixed states, which are not represented by tuples of integers (whole numbers), at great length.

 

I don’t understand Lee’s work of spinons in general well enough to know if their theoretical formalism requires pure quantum states be represented by fractional values, or whether they are describing mixed quantum states. I suspect the latter.

 

Finally, my own opinion on the title question “What Is Stopping A Unfied Theory Of Physics?”

 

I think the blame can best be laid on nature (physical reality, not the magazine ;)) for having gravity be so much weaker, on a per-interaction basis, than the other fundamental forces.

 

For example, suppose that a simple extension of the Standard Model to include an ordinary gauge boson that caries the gravitational interaction (the graviton) is correct Unlike the other fundamental bosons, there appears to be no apparatus that could be reasonably built to detect the interaction of a single graviton with another particle. Papers like Rothman and Boughn’s 2006 Can Gravitons Be Detected? suggest that it may not be possible, regardless of technological resources, to experimentally confirm or refute the existence of gravitons experimentally.

 

For me, this is a deeply vexing state of affairs. :(

[Erasmus00]

I'd say- funding. The lack of growth in scientific funding, and the resulting pyramidal structure in the scientific workforce (something like 7/10 physics phds are forced out of 'STEM' all together within 5 years of getting a phd) makes pursuing hard problems a career killer. The average phd time is up above 6 years, and then the average time from postdoc to faculty position is right at 6 years. During this time career uncertainty is huge- without a steady stream of published results you will lose your job.

 

So we take physicists during their most creative years and 1. tie their funding to a different investigator (during your postdoc you don't do YOUR research,you do the project of whoever hired you). 2. force them to focus on short term vs. long term projects, and 3. pay them about as much as a manager of a mid-sized fast food restaurant (but with less job security)- this last one dramatically increases overall stress level.

 

Its not a surprise we don't make much progress- its a surprise we make any at all. Incentives matter- and the scientific labor market seems crafted to push talent away from the field, rather to draw it in and retain it.

[Aethelwulf]

 

I think the blame can best be laid on nature (physical reality, not the magazine ;)) for having gravity be so much weaker, on a per-interaction basis, than the other fundamental forces.

 

For example, suppose that a simple extension of the Standard Model to include an ordinary gauge boson that caries the gravitational interaction (the graviton) is correct Unlike the other fundamental bosons, there appears to be no apparatus that could be reasonably built to detect the interaction of a single graviton with another particle. Papers like Rothman and Boughn’s 2006 Can Gravitons Be Detected? suggest that it may not be possible, regardless of technological resources, to experimentally confirm or refute the existence of gravitons experimentally.

 

For me, this is a deeply vexing state of affairs. :(

 

It is good you mention gravity - I think universally-speaking, when someone says ''unified theories of physics'' most people tend to think of problems dealing with gravity - it is certainly the main problem when articles often talk about unifying physics.

 

We have made little headway understanding gravity with any deeper understanding than what Einstein described it. With the lack of gravitons being observed as well posits a problem with the nature of gravity - why hasn't one been observed? Is it because gravity is a psuedoforce... one that is not a true physical force and therefore does not have a mediator?

 

Does gravity even unify with the other fundamental forces at high enough temperatures?

[Erasmus00]

why hasn't one been observed? Is it because gravity is a psuedoforce... one that is not a true physical force and therefore does not have a mediator?

 

The very theory that predicts the graviton predicts that its coupling is INCREDIBLY weak. We simply have no data where we expect to see gravitons. Hell, we have no direct data where we observe gravitational waves, which are easier to observe by a factor of hbar.

[tetrahedron]

If fundamental spin of S.M. units (I don't want to say particles) is linked to dimensionality, then gravitons could be intimately associated with warping spacetime in the presence of energymass. But gravitons wouldn't be 'particles' as we know them (primarily 1/2 spin Fermions, with some ambiguous 2/2 bosons added in for good measure).

 

Jess Tauber

[FrankM]

CraigD, You did considerable research before you penned your reply. The FQXi essay contest puts one into an interactive environment where your essay can be directly challenged by many readers, and it is, and it allows the ultimate reviewers to read damning weaknesses in a paper that even the author may not have been aware of. Some of the most interesting papers are those that didn't win an award.

 

I had three subjects that I would have like to have addressed and put in front of the FQXi readers, but having the proper units of measure is basic to any scientific inquiry, so I went with that. You are correct, a manuscript subject that challenges SI units isn't going to win any awards, but it did exactly what you stated was my intent, it was read by a diverse group of readers.

 

From my perspective, all that’s important for a system of units is that they be sufficiently precisely and well defined that all their users agree on how to use them, ...

That is the problem with SI units, they were created to get a diverse set of users to agree to their use, which included commerce. As far back as 2005, the IUPAP Consultative Committee on Units stated they should all be based upon fundamental physical constants. They are not going to get anywhere if they keep the meter and the second, which are terrestrial units.

 

http://www.iupap.org/commissions/interunion/iu1/u1-2005.pdf

 

I had considered putting forth a set of units that were based upon the physical law concepts put forth in my published IEEE paper, but I found it required more science knowledge than I possessed.

 

I used the term settled science because it was used in a number of the published reports describing the Schechtman winning the 2011 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. I cited the most comprehensive article I could find about Schechtman's achievement at the time I prepared my FQXi paper. The RSC article cited in the URL below did not use the term settled science, but it did use the term blasphemy.

 

http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/Issues/2011/November/QuasicrystalsScoopPrize.asp

 

The term mainstream science is sort of a generic term. I prefer to use the term scientific authority structure, a Prof. Kuhn term, to describe those that determine what is generally accepted. I cited Prof. Kuhn in my FQXi paper submission.

[Guest MacPhee]

Perhaps we don't yet know enough, to fully grasp how the Universe really operates.

 

We have some good working theories, like Newtonian physics, which enables us to send spacecraft successfully to Mars, and achieve pin-point landings.

 

And Quantum Mechanics, and Relativity - even though no-one understands them - give beautifully accurate results.

 

Shouldn't we just be satisfied with that, for the time being? Let future generations of scientists gain more knowledge, and penetrate deeper into truth. We don't want to be like Isaac Newton attempting to understand how a radio set works. For all his genius, he wouldn't have a clue. Not his fault. He just didn't have the benefit of later research.

 

So can't we restrain our enthusiasm for a Unified Theory for a little while, and concentrate on gathering data?

[FrankM]

MacPHee, We definitely do not know how the universe works.

 

You are touching on an interesting issue. What did the principle theorist(s) know when a theory was developed and presented it to the scientific authority structure (SAS) of a particular era for acceptance? The inquiry into what the theorists knew and why the theory was accepted by the SAS should extend to the instruments that were available at a given time to prove or disprove a theory, and were the instruments used? You also have to determine whether the instruments available at the time a theory was presented for acceptance were suitable to prove or disprove the theory.

 

Our education institutions gloss over the "what did they know then" versus "what do we know now" issues. It would take considerable time to go into the text books to determine what information was known to Einstein, and those around him, in the early 1900s when he developed and published his theories, and then compare that to what is known now.

 

One of the interesting papers written for the FQXi 2012 essay contest was by Georgina Parry, "Which of Our Basic Physical Assumptions Are Wrong?" (Essay 1316) In her essay she described how people tend to draw conclusions from incomplete information. She used that term just three time in one sub-paragraph of her essay, but I cited it many times in responding to material in other essays that I commented on. We do it all the time, we draw conclusions based upon what we know at a given time. I changed my concepts on how the energy of ionizing radiation is transferred to certain cellular structures after I learned two days ago how those particular structures are arranged within our bodies.

 

You can really make stupid conclusions if you have incomplete information, but we don't know they are wrong at the time we make them. Feynman was aware of the phenomena of how easy we can be fooled.