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| Fairytale of New Physics | Fairytale of New Physics |
| (4 months later) | |
| I've been sent a few books to read on the subject, and I started last week on BBC Radio 4's Start the Week, discussing the topic with Jim Baggott, Stephen Minger, Hilary Rose and Alan Little. | I've been sent a few books to read on the subject, and I started last week on BBC Radio 4's Start the Week, discussing the topic with Jim Baggott, Stephen Minger, Hilary Rose and Alan Little. |
| Much of the ire is really directed at particle physics, so it seems a bit harsh to tar all science with the same brush. The fact that string theory hasn't made any testable predictions might be a fault of the whole of science, but it seems a fairly minor crime when stacked against longer life expectancy and the fact the we no longer think thunderstorms are gods getting cross. Oh well. | Much of the ire is really directed at particle physics, so it seems a bit harsh to tar all science with the same brush. The fact that string theory hasn't made any testable predictions might be a fault of the whole of science, but it seems a fairly minor crime when stacked against longer life expectancy and the fact the we no longer think thunderstorms are gods getting cross. Oh well. |
| Particle physics should, I suppose, take it on the chin. I presume the phenomenon is partly a backlash against the excitement generated by the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) over the past few years. | Particle physics should, I suppose, take it on the chin. I presume the phenomenon is partly a backlash against the excitement generated by the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) over the past few years. |
| Jim Baggott is at the milder end of the polemical spectrum. He wrote a very prompt book on the Higgs discovery, and has followed up with "Farewell to Reality", subtitle: "How fairytale physics betrays the search for scientific truth". | Jim Baggott is at the milder end of the polemical spectrum. He wrote a very prompt book on the Higgs discovery, and has followed up with "Farewell to Reality", subtitle: "How fairytale physics betrays the search for scientific truth". |
| Baggott knows his physics pretty well. The first part of the book is a decent enough run through of the current state of physics and cosmology - the "Authorized Version", as he describes it. He isn't afraid to take on philosophy of science either, and discusses "the scientific method" in a way which makes sense to me*. | Baggott knows his physics pretty well. The first part of the book is a decent enough run through of the current state of physics and cosmology - the "Authorized Version", as he describes it. He isn't afraid to take on philosophy of science either, and discusses "the scientific method" in a way which makes sense to me*. |
| Baggott's second part - The Grand Delusion - takes string (or, these days, brane and M) theory to task for not being scientific, and for leading us into a land of vague metaphysical speculation populated by enough holographic multiversery to make your head spin. This part owes something to "The Trouble with Physics" by Lee Smolin, though Smolin is more focussed on criticising what he sees as a dangerous monoculture in theoretical physics - the dominance of string theory over other approaches - and is deeper and more technical in his criticisms. Baggott echoes some of this but he ranges more broadly too. | Baggott's second part - The Grand Delusion - takes string (or, these days, brane and M) theory to task for not being scientific, and for leading us into a land of vague metaphysical speculation populated by enough holographic multiversery to make your head spin. This part owes something to "The Trouble with Physics" by Lee Smolin, though Smolin is more focussed on criticising what he sees as a dangerous monoculture in theoretical physics - the dominance of string theory over other approaches - and is deeper and more technical in his criticisms. Baggott echoes some of this but he ranges more broadly too. |
| Another book on the way is "Bankrupting Physics" by Alexander Unzicker and Sheila Jones. Again, the provocative subtitle - "How today's top scientists are gambling away their credibility". Note, "top scientists" not "some physicists". Chemists arise! You are being blamed for our failings! As well as making criticisms of theory similar to those of Smolin and Baggott, this book vents spleen on experiment (including astronomical observations). One moment experimentalists are mocked for being too cautious and incremental in their approach, the next for overstating hints which later went away. Or teased for pointlessly measuring boring things while a few pages away being lectured to "expect the unexpected". The overall impression is of an incoherent rant. Apparently we need "real physics", though the authors don't say what that is, and they appear in a number of places to fundamentally misunderstand the real physics we do have. Unzicker says it was fun to write, so at least someone got something out of it. | Another book on the way is "Bankrupting Physics" by Alexander Unzicker and Sheila Jones. Again, the provocative subtitle - "How today's top scientists are gambling away their credibility". Note, "top scientists" not "some physicists". Chemists arise! You are being blamed for our failings! As well as making criticisms of theory similar to those of Smolin and Baggott, this book vents spleen on experiment (including astronomical observations). One moment experimentalists are mocked for being too cautious and incremental in their approach, the next for overstating hints which later went away. Or teased for pointlessly measuring boring things while a few pages away being lectured to "expect the unexpected". The overall impression is of an incoherent rant. Apparently we need "real physics", though the authors don't say what that is, and they appear in a number of places to fundamentally misunderstand the real physics we do have. Unzicker says it was fun to write, so at least someone got something out of it. |
| All the physics-bashing would probably have been even more intense if we hadn't found a Higgs boson. Either way it seems bit ironic. The LHC is one of the higher profile science stories of the past few years, and is presumably one reason particle physics is seen as a marketable target for attack. But it is also supreme example of how a new experimental fact, even one long anticipated, can change a whole field more or less overnight. | All the physics-bashing would probably have been even more intense if we hadn't found a Higgs boson. Either way it seems bit ironic. The LHC is one of the higher profile science stories of the past few years, and is presumably one reason particle physics is seen as a marketable target for attack. But it is also supreme example of how a new experimental fact, even one long anticipated, can change a whole field more or less overnight. |
| Since the Radio 4 discussion, I've been halfway up a mountain in Les Houches, discussing, well, mainly physics. Most of the discussion was about detailed theory calculations of things we are actually measuring, have measured, or may measure, at the LHC. There was also discussion of a number of recent papers which use the Higgs mass we have just measured to extrapolate the Standard Model up to higher energies, arguing for example that supersymmetry is in fact not really needed and that perhaps we can even explain the "inflation" of the universe which is present in the standard cosmological model using the physics behind the Standard Model. | Since the Radio 4 discussion, I've been halfway up a mountain in Les Houches, discussing, well, mainly physics. Most of the discussion was about detailed theory calculations of things we are actually measuring, have measured, or may measure, at the LHC. There was also discussion of a number of recent papers which use the Higgs mass we have just measured to extrapolate the Standard Model up to higher energies, arguing for example that supersymmetry is in fact not really needed and that perhaps we can even explain the "inflation" of the universe which is present in the standard cosmological model using the physics behind the Standard Model. |
| These papers may or may not be right, and either way there may be new physics just around the corner which will scatter the pigeons again. We still have several anomalies to explain, things which don't fit the current "authorised version". But the point is that measuring a new fact - a Higgs boson mass, or indeed the newly precise cosmic microwave background from the Planck satellite - does change physics, and does refocus theoretical efforts to understand new data, which is where the best action always is. | These papers may or may not be right, and either way there may be new physics just around the corner which will scatter the pigeons again. We still have several anomalies to explain, things which don't fit the current "authorised version". But the point is that measuring a new fact - a Higgs boson mass, or indeed the newly precise cosmic microwave background from the Planck satellite - does change physics, and does refocus theoretical efforts to understand new data, which is where the best action always is. |
| The LHC is also an illustration of why theorists go wandering sometimes. The Higgs boson was postulated nearly fifty years ago, and the LHC took more than ten years to build - more like twenty if you include the R&D that was needed before construction could even start. That's a long time to wait. If some people go and do some wild mathematical speculation in the meantime, that doesn't do any harm and may well do a lot of good. | The LHC is also an illustration of why theorists go wandering sometimes. The Higgs boson was postulated nearly fifty years ago, and the LHC took more than ten years to build - more like twenty if you include the R&D that was needed before construction could even start. That's a long time to wait. If some people go and do some wild mathematical speculation in the meantime, that doesn't do any harm and may well do a lot of good. |
| Where I think Baggott and Smolin do have a point is that particle theory probably became too focussed on a single track - in this case string theory and its descendents. Such things have happened before. As the Guardian's Ian Sample describes in "Massive", S-matrix theory was all the rage when Brout, Englert, Higgs and the rest were coming up with their ideas, and quantum field theory was something of an unfashionable backwater. They were outside the mainstream, but gradually data drove the mainstream their way. There should always be some people branching out, but it is important they don't all take the same branch - unless the data drive them there. | Where I think Baggott and Smolin do have a point is that particle theory probably became too focussed on a single track - in this case string theory and its descendents. Such things have happened before. As the Guardian's Ian Sample describes in "Massive", S-matrix theory was all the rage when Brout, Englert, Higgs and the rest were coming up with their ideas, and quantum field theory was something of an unfashionable backwater. They were outside the mainstream, but gradually data drove the mainstream their way. There should always be some people branching out, but it is important they don't all take the same branch - unless the data drive them there. |
| In general, I am more interested in the branches that try to solve real observational problems, of which there are many, rather than those that strive for a theory of everything. I wouldn't ban any of them, but I'm a lot more interested in trying to understand this universe than speculating about multiverses. | In general, I am more interested in the branches that try to solve real observational problems, of which there are many, rather than those that strive for a theory of everything. I wouldn't ban any of them, but I'm a lot more interested in trying to understand this universe than speculating about multiverses. |
| The criticism that such things are "unscientific" is not very convincing though. Of course there is some overlap with Mathematics and Philosophy - in a university, some interdisciplinarity is usually seen as desirable. And science needs speculation and wild guesses as well as tough experimental work. The concern arises if everyone makes the same wild guess, and the experiments to confirm or deny it are out of reach. | The criticism that such things are "unscientific" is not very convincing though. Of course there is some overlap with Mathematics and Philosophy - in a university, some interdisciplinarity is usually seen as desirable. And science needs speculation and wild guesses as well as tough experimental work. The concern arises if everyone makes the same wild guess, and the experiments to confirm or deny it are out of reach. |
| On the way back from the Les Houches meeting I passed through CERN in time to attend part of an international event launching the technical design report for an international linear collider. This is a machine which could make precise measurements of the Higgs boson and other key parameters of our current theory, complementary to those which can be carried out at the LHC, and guide us toward solutions to some of the puzzles and omissions in our current understanding. It is a costly multinational project which the Japanese are proposing to lead, with international collaboration. It is the most realistic project of several major particle physics colliders under discussion - indeed, it is the only one we really know how to build at present. There will be many arguments to come about the economic costs and benefits (the Japanese see it potentially as an economic boost to Tsunami-damaged regions) as well as the scientific alternatives. | On the way back from the Les Houches meeting I passed through CERN in time to attend part of an international event launching the technical design report for an international linear collider. This is a machine which could make precise measurements of the Higgs boson and other key parameters of our current theory, complementary to those which can be carried out at the LHC, and guide us toward solutions to some of the puzzles and omissions in our current understanding. It is a costly multinational project which the Japanese are proposing to lead, with international collaboration. It is the most realistic project of several major particle physics colliders under discussion - indeed, it is the only one we really know how to build at present. There will be many arguments to come about the economic costs and benefits (the Japanese see it potentially as an economic boost to Tsunami-damaged regions) as well as the scientific alternatives. |
| Far from losing touch, the political and technical challenges of such machines force us into daily contact with reality; and the data give us access to more of it. | Far from losing touch, the political and technical challenges of such machines force us into daily contact with reality; and the data give us access to more of it. |
| PS Jim Baggott debates some of this with an actual string theorist (Mike Duff) here. | PS Jim Baggott debates some of this with an actual string theorist (Mike Duff) here. |
* Even if using the definite article there risks the ridicule of professional philosophers, as Brian Cox and Robin Ince found out from the response to this article. Majikthise and Vroomfondel are still fuming, I suspect. | * Even if using the definite article there risks the ridicule of professional philosophers, as Brian Cox and Robin Ince found out from the response to this article. Majikthise and Vroomfondel are still fuming, I suspect. |
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