more than a scientific debate My nineteenth birthday was Wednesday, but it was also the tenth anniversary of the death of Carl Sagan, who can be considered one of the first major popularizers of science. The popularization of science is, as we know, a noble cause, but it does have its problems.
The way some science journalists have portrayed theoretical physics is just one side effect of this popularization. Carl Sagan is not to blame for this, but it is unfortunate that there have been billions and billions of badly-written articles portraying physics as a cutthroat enterprise, where physicists either study string theory or perish.
One thing that no one seems to notice anymore is the difference in political ideology between the authors of "Not Even Wrong" and the Reference Frame. Woit's homepage describes conservative news sources as being run by "right-wing funded self-important creeps" and then gives a link to this blog.
I wouldn't have thought that the debate between pro-string and anti-string theorists had a political side, but maybe it does.
My own political views are nothing at all like Woit's, so it's not difficult to tell which of the two physics blogs I pay more attention to. Although I find Motl's recent postings on "global cooling" somewhat unusual...  ¶ 1:17 PM 0 comments

  I survived quantum physics Yesterday I took the final in quantum physics, which actually wasn't too difficult. (The final, anyway.) I didn't think we'd get to perturbation theory or calculating the average energy of a superposition of eigenstates, but we did.
The energy of an eigenstate psi(n) is (pi^2)(n^2)(hbar^2)/(2mL^2). Each eigenfunction has a (complex) coefficient, and the expectation value of the energy of a wavefunction is equal to (the sum from 1 to n) of (C*C)E(n). C*C is, of course, the magnitude of C^2. The wavefunction 2psi(1) -5psi(2) + 7psi(3) (note that this is not normalized) has the average energy 4(1)+25(4)+49(9) = 545 times E(1).
The equation used in introductory perturbation theory is too complicated to write here without MathML (since it uses bra-ket notation) so I won't include it here in its proper form. (My blog entries are imported onto another site, which is where this blog gets many of its readers). For the mathematically-inclined reader, if we denote a solution c proportional to the integral from 0 to t of dt' times e^-i[E(k)-E(m)]t/hbar times the bra-ket containing psi(k), a z-term, and psi(m), the maximum value of this integral will occur when E(k) - E(m) = hbar*omega. This gives e^-i(omega)t, which is a standard, exponentially-decaying time part of psi.
The exam covered optical transitions, but in an unusual form. An optical transition occurs when l (the angular momentum quantum number) and m(l) (the azimuthal quantum number) change a certain amount. If they do not change by a specific integer amount (for l it is +- 1 and for m(l) it is 0 or +-1), then the probability of an optical transition occurring is zero.
But...
An optical transition may still be observed, at least according to chemists. They have detected these optical transitions, which may signify that there is a flaw in the physicists' integrals of the theta- and phi-dependent parts of the wavefunction.
I've never heard anyone speculate about this; normally I just hear about attempts to prove the theory of relativity wrong. Now what about the state of relativistic quantum mechanics...?  ¶ 12:15 AM 0 comments

  The image of science Mathematical organizations have long been concerned with the perilous state of math education... at least in countries like the US. Not surprisingly, liberal arts math courses (under the euphemism "quantitative literacy" courses) have faced a lot of criticism. And they should.
There are courses akin to those in science, as well. "Physics for Poets", "Physics for Future Presidents," "Great Ideas in Physics", etc. I don't see the point of them. You can't learn a lot of math (or physics) without doing math. Just because one has heard of P vs. NP, or 26-dimensional string theory, etc. doesn't mean one knows anything about them.
Which is why the physics blogs get invaded by crackpots and know-nothings.
Maybe the purpose of quantitative/scientific literacy courses is to deter liberal arts students from even thinking about a career in science. Maybe the physics controversies have dissuaded pessimistic people from wanting to study anything the real way. "If physics is in trouble, why should I learn about it? I can just take a survey course instead, so I can consider myself qualified as a science critic. I can write articles about how these geeky maladjusts can't solve anything, even though they've spent... oh, ten years of their lives studying this stuff. Yet I can take one course and comment on how stupid they are!"
Of course, not all science critics are this simple-minded. The vast majority of them are, but it wasn't always this way.
The Unabomber's Manifesto mentions, in Paragraphs 87-92, that science really isn't concerned with the benefit of humanity... it's just a self-important enterprise. "Thus science marches on blindly...obedient only to the psychological needs of the scientists..." Not surprisingly, the manifesto alarmed a lot of scientists. But this article from New Scientist, published ten years ago, proves that many scientists weren't terribly affected by it. Leon Lederman (who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1988, and founded the "Physics First" movement) was even quoted: "When it comes to moral outrage, we have a great tolerance. Look at the executives of tobacco companies. The Unabomber is an ineffective pipsqueak compared to what they do."
If only more scientists realized that the negative science journalists are just "ineffective pipsqueaks"...
Of course, the Unabomber's Manifesto is a classic example of hypocrisy... isn't it odd how someone who sent mail bombs to universities and killed people to promote an anti-technology agenda could comment on how science doesn't benefit humanity? Isn't it odd that he asks how Edward Teller could have developed the H-bomb if he was concerned about "humanitarian causes"?
Unless Dr. Theodore Kaczynski thought geometric function theory was more beneficial to humanity...  ¶ 2:50 PM 0 comments