The Spacetime Metric

spherical harmonics

2007-05-14T14:48:00.000-04:00

It's hard to become a physicist. If it were easy, everyone would do it. You have to take several years of math- and understand it almost viscerally- plus many years of required and then specialized physics courses, and then everything else. The "everything else" is the easy part; there's a popular list entitled "You Know You're a Physics Major If..." which contains the entry: "You consider any non-science course 'easy.'"
In order to reverse the contemporary downward spiral of physics knowledge, we need more physics majors. We need physicists who can tell the difference between string theory and everything else, between science and pseudo-scientific fads (like global warming theories). The "problem", the trouble with physics, is that there aren't enough of us, not that there are too many of us.
There's a shortage of people with any technical knowledge, but physicists have been hit the hardest. Graduate students are being forced to work long hours at CERN; even the largest physics lab in the world has had its share of problems. I hope the LHC's startup date doesn't get pushed until next year. With all of the problems in experimental (not to mention theoretical) physics, many physicists are advising their students to leave the field. And I'm afraid a lot of them will.
The future physicists who remain will need support. Not only financial support from NSF grants, but support from people who know what they're talking about. People who know that R(nl)Y(lm) is not only a solution to a spherical-coordinate PDE, but a wavefunction... for example. (R is proportional to r^l, where l is the quantum number corresponding to s, p, d, f, etc. Y(lm) is a Legendre function with a somewhat complicated generating formula. For example, Y(00), which has l=m=0, is (1/4*pi)^1/2.) The general public needs more than an extremely vague knowledge of what physics is.
I was the first student from my high school (at least in the last five years) who took a year of quantum physics. That should not have happened. Knowledge of advanced physics is becoming scarce, and I hope scientists never actually reach the point- asymptotically or not- where no one can understand each other.

the end of the postmodern era

2007-04-30T20:56:00.000-04:00

Those who convey misinformation (according to Lubos Motl) about theoretical physics have, unfortunately, fallen victim to postmodernism. In fact, The Trouble with Physics is now described as a postmodernist book.
If the final theory is unknowable, it doesn't make sense to become a theoretical physicist anymore. The final theory is THE FINAL THEORY. Once it is formulated entirely into physical law, that's it. The end. What will happen once we achieve "physics nirvana"? I don't know, and it doesn't do any good to speculate.
Postmodernists, on the other hand, like to think that we can't achieve that state. They attack science for the usual unintelligent reasons. The worst thing about it is that most postmodernists are too lazy to learn anything about science; hence they created their own depressing field of study. Most of them chose majors that had no practical purpose, anyway.
Postmodernists are the reason why science (and a whole lot of other things) are suffering now. They create confusion so that people who try to end confusion (e.g., scientists) will become rather annoyed with them. Postmodernists are the scourge of academia.
The postmodern era, however, may have just ended. Or at least it will end this year, when the LHC starts up. We shall return to the modern era again. Physics, space exploration, legitimate climate science (not global warming "theories") should return to the way they were about 35 years ago, when all of the above were thriving.
And that's the memo.

chemistry is physics

2007-04-19T20:08:00.000-04:00

I haven't posted on here in more than a month, but that's because I didn't think anything particularly interesting was going on in physics. Now there is.
I remembered this article and realized that the word "stupid" is loaded and inaccurate, but there are many other things in the article that are true. Are physicists unable to observe complexity, if complexity even exists (or is another loaded word)?
The tone of this article suggests that physics might be an "easy way out", to avoid seemingly more challenging problems. Umm... physics is not the easy way out; it never has been. It's actually the hardest way out.
What Prof. Rancourt probably meant to say was that physicists spend too much time on very complicated problems, causing them not to be able to solve easier ones. I know a lot of mathematically gifted people who have to constantly double-check their arithmetic, because it's the arithmetic (not the calculus or higher-level math) that they might mess up. I've had a lot of experience with that in every physics course I've taken here. It's not the professors' faults; it's just that really smart people make a ton of errors (particularly in arithmetic)!
To circumvent that difficulty- if I ever become a professor- I want to know absolutely everything that I will teach the students before I teach the first class in a course. I don't want to make those errors, or try to remember what the form of such-and-such wavefunction is. I don't want to write a textbook and then clean up my own mess by writing a 40-page "errata" appendix.
This symptom of physicists and other mathematically-inclined people has led some physics departments to offer "more practical" courses like Physics for Future Presidents. You don't have to know what a Green's function is; you just have to know how to calculate square roots. No calculus or even algebra is assumed.
Why do we need courses like this? I don't know, but if you can offer the correct answer, I'll nominate you for the Nobel Prize (assuming I ever get to do that).
This disease of being unable to do "easier" calculations has led some physicists into the dark realms of anti-string theory propaganda and "stop global warming" thoughts. In trying to uncover the ultimate secrets of the universe, you're glossing over the more obvious truths, e.g.:
1. Global warming on a macroscopic scale is a myth.
2. The anthropic principle is a sensible addition to any grand unified theory.
3. String theory is the best candidate for a GUT.
4. In order for there to be a scientific consensus, 100% of scientists have to agree on something. Not 80% or whatever the politricks claim the global warming consensus is.
5. Climatology and LQG are two fields of science that started out attractive but rapidly turned ugly (well, climatology is far worse). At least LQG is based on quantum theory, whereas climatology is hardly better than alchemy.
The point is that even physicists are being seduced by bad ideas. Some of them ignore the more obvious facets of reality.
I think physicists should be required to take more biology and chemistry than they usually have to. Not because biology and chemistry will get you closer to the GUT (they don't) but because they're not so abstract. Physicists should know how chemists use simpler approximations to solve "more complicated" problems, e.g. atoms with atomic number Z > 1. Solving the helium atom using perturbation theory/ the variational method can get awfully tedious, unless you use chemistry.
To study covalent bonding in the hydrogen molecule ion (which isn't "complex" at all) you have to diagonalize the Hamiltonian matrix with components <1|h|1>, <1|h|2>, etc. (the kets can be in an n-dimensional basis, although typically you'll just use 2 and create a 2x2 matrix). The elements <1|2> and <2|1> do not give 0, so you end up with a matrix that can't be diagonalized very easily. After a lot of handwaving (and only then) you end up with energy eigenvalues (H11 plus/minus H12)/[1 plus/minus <1|2>]. Even a relatively simple problem like that takes a long time to solve, particularly if you're using a 5-dimensional basis to get a 5x5 matrix, for example.
I just think physicists would do better if they knew easier methods. Solving problems the ridiculously hard way is "the trouble with physics."

when the detractors are away

2007-03-09T15:38:00.000-05:00

Now that one detractor is away for the next week and a half, a lot more pro-string blog posts will be written. This, obviously, is one of them.
I explored the physics department at Rutgers yesterday in order to find out about their graduate programs in high energy/string and condensed matter physics. Apparently they only have about a dozen professors and just slightly more graduate students in high energy theory, with only around half of the aforementioned concentrating in string theory. The numbers in condensed matter theory and experiment (each) are about the same as in high energy theory. Even at a very large university with a lot of physics professors, clearly not "everyone" is concentrating in string theory.
So, what is groupthink? I think it's evident that groupthink is a Lie group (additional meaning intended). Not everyone is dropping what they're doing in order to concentrate on some untestable figment of pseudo-mathematicians' collective imagination.
After the LHC is completed, theoretical physics will become more data-driven. The high-energy physicists I talked to seemed very excited over this (understandably) since phenomenology will play a greater role. After the success of the Standard Model and the (electroweak) unification of electromagnetism with the weak nuclear force earned three physicists the Nobel Prize in 1979, there really haven't been too many exciting breakthroughs in experimental physics. Phenomenology- connecting theory with experiment- will become more vital than ever once the LHC is finished, particularly if the Higgs boson or extra dimensions are discovered. The high-energy physicists I talked to considered the "extra dimensions" part highly unlikely, but not impossible. Hopefully the physics job market will prosper with more data coming in... more "phenomenologists" will be required.
So, will the LHC discover anything about "loop quantum gravity"? It was evident- from talking to string theorists yesterday- that they were in fact string theorists; LQG to them was "not serious physics" and "bad for young physicists to get involved in" as opposed to "good quantum gravity" or something more serious like AdS/CFT. I got the impression that the reason why more physicists weren't working on LQG was that it was rife with problems. That didn't surprise me at all. Is string theorists' view of LQG disparaging or reflective of "groupthink", or is it a correct, honest view? I would have to agree with the latter.
String theory is based on the foundations of quantum field theory. If you don't know QFT, you can't do very much string theory. (If you don't know math, you can't learn very much physics, even of the classical variety.) QFT extends beyond quantum mechanics, which is based on linear algebra. I am only an undergrad, so I haven't taken a field theory course yet. However, the problems with LQG are obvious even for someone who hasn't taken QFT or who hasn't been "brainwashed" by pro-string PhD advisors yet :)
Quantum mechanics is the study of quantum states. The wavefunction |psi> is the most important of these (the Schrodinger equation equates E|psi> to H|psi>). A wavefunction evolves in time by the equation e^(-iHt/hbar)|psi(0)> = |psi(t)>. Nothing too complicated there (once you get used to bra-ket notation). But QFT is much harder and requires more abstract mathematical techniques. And string theory is based on this, making it harder still. It is an extension of our present knowledge, not something completely "out there" or "not even science anymore." Its critics (especially the bad science journalists whom I've discussed before) don't see this connection.
I hope the LHC will change that.

the truth won't set you free

2007-03-07T15:54:00.000-05:00

"That man is anti-SUV, and he's pro-terrorist."
Not Even Wrong has reported that Billy Cottrell, a physicist from Caltech, is being mistreated in prison. He was arrested for acts of "ecoterrorism" in March 2004 after destroying SUV's and pulling various other pranks.
It's quite rare that a physicist gets arrested, so one would think that it would cause a stir in the physics community. Cottrell was actually arrested three years ago, but I didn't hear about this until today. The really bizarre (not to mention extremely unjust) thing about this is that he's not permitted to study physics or Chinese in prison, or even to teach the other prisoners calculus. Even Mumia Abu-Jamal was allowed to continue his education in prison, back when he was still on Death Row.
Apparently Cottrell has been victimized for years; he submitted a paper on quantum physics to his sixth-grade teacher but still got an F because the teacher thought it was plagiarized. He had a lot of other problems in high school as well. The cruelty and injustice done to him is unbelievable and unacceptable.
I think he did humankind a great service by destroying those SUV's. No one was inside them; it's not like he killed anyone. Effectively, he destroyed them so that their drivers wouldn't waste their money on those gas-guzzling tanks, or that they wouldn't die when the SUV's flipped over into a ditch.
Maybe it's just my anti-SUV bias...
Anyway, I'm going to explore the graduate physics department at Rutgers tomorrow (where the writer of The Reference Frame got his PhD). They must have an excellent high-energy/ string theory program if string theory's ultimate advocate came from there.

the road less traveled

2007-02-23T18:29:00.000-05:00

What is the "trouble with physics"?
A. Too many theories to choose from
B. Not enough real physics jobs
C. Having to compete with stamp collectors (people in other fields)
D. All of the above
The correct answer is (D), and not surprisingly so. As graduation gets closer and closer for many of the physics majors I know, I'm starting to sense an atmosphere of overwhelming despair. Many of them are wondering what they're going to do after graduation; the question, "What do you do with a physics degree?" is getting thrown around a lot. The obvious answer is "go to grad school", but since only about 15 percent of RPI graduates (all majors included) go to grad school, I don't think we're really prepared for it.
These people think- erroneously- that physics should be very similar to engineering. Since there are a lot more engineers than physicists (about 100 times more in America), and since engineers tend to be very specialized even if they just hold a bachelor's degree, people know a lot more about engineers than they do about physicists. Which is ironic, because high schoolers (i.e., those who are trying to figure out their future careers) don't take engineering courses before they go to college. There are very few books for the general public that really delve into the details of what engineers do. So why are there so many times as many engineering majors as there are physics majors?
I don't think the answer is because of job opportunities. The opportunities for engineers certainly aren't perfect, especially because so many jobs are being outsourced. The Capital District of Upstate New York is a perfect example of an area where there had been almost limitless engineering jobs a few decades ago, but over time, everything changed for the worse, contributing to the overall decay of the area.
So what's the answer? Why is physics less popular? The physics majors who lament over the lack of job opportunities obviously haven't heard the laments of liberal arts majors, whose condition is far more pitiful. Physicists may have to go to grad school, but at least we're basically guaranteed to get a skilled job :) (although not necessarily physics-related).

on pseudoscience

2007-02-07T16:44:00.000-05:00

I've noticed, since the temperatures have consistently remained below freezing here, that there has been somewhat less talk of "global warming." By "somewhat less" I am implying that some people have been going outside for a change. The temperature got up to 293 K at the beginning of January throughout much of the northeast, even in upstate New York, so the usual alarmists went crazy. Now the temperatures have fallen dramatically.
I was quite disgusted to discover that Columbia University is now offering a somewhat new master's program. Not in loop quantum gravity, physics blogging, or anti-string policy... but in "climate and society."
I didn't know it was possible to major in pseudoscience, let alone get a master's in it, but here we go. This example of "groupthink" is far more frightening than anything theoretical physicists could ever come up with. :) Indeed, climatology is an actual example of groupthink, and an alarming one at that.
Fortunately, not everyone is buying this global warming garbage, not even in the climatology community. As the Reference Frame tells us, there have been quite a few papers recently (and a lot more to come) which are trying to convince the groupthinkers that "global warming", if it actually did exist, would not result merely from human activity. It is the opinion of this blogger that anthropogenic global warming theories were developed by Luddites who want to make people feel guilty for wrecking the planet through CO2-emitting technology.
It gets even sadder when you realize that the Kyoto Protocol is costing untold billions of dollars, all of which are being thrown away. If only that money could have gone to legitimate science, to physics research, to something perhaps even more powerful than the LHC (like the ill-fated SSC). I am not as optimistic as Dr. Motl that the LHC will find evidence for supersymmetry a few hours after it starts up, but we desperately need the LHC to continue actual scientific research. The "trouble with physics" is that it doesn't get enough funding and has to resort to less-powerful accelerators. (The SSC would've been about twice as powerful as the LHC.)
If only pseudoscience would make way for real science...

the trouble with physics... blogs

2007-01-11T12:54:00.000-05:00

I've noticed that the two big physics blogs have been... changing.
Not Even Wrong is getting somewhat self-deprecating; why should physicists feel embarrassed about having "geeky" interests in astronomy? Or jealous of astronomers?
Is there really that much new in astronomy to warrant jealousy? Astronomers have had difficulties in getting funding also. It really upsets me when physicists despair and start getting jealous of people in other fields.
"Other fields." Isn't astronomy very closely related to physics... astrophysics and cosmology? Why should physicists start talking about other fields when the laws of astronomy result from the laws of physics? When the laws of biology, chemistry, psychology... everything... result from the laws of physics? Why can't we think of the other sciences as the "physics of living systems", or "chemical physics", or "psychological physics"? I'm starting to think that the only reason why physics isn't the only department in universities is because most physicists don't realize this!
The Reference Frame is somewhat better, although I got an annoying pop-up ad for distance education on there earlier today that I couldn't get rid of. I really don't understand why he spends so much of his time writing about the "bell curve", considering how pseudo-scientific it seems. (Of course, LQG is unequivocally pseudo-scientific, at least in his mind.) However, I do like how he points out that global warming is a pseudo-scientific hoax (which it probably is) and that global warming in one area signifies global cooling in another.
I just hope the LHC finds a cosmic string so that physics bloggers can blog about physics again.

more than a scientific debate

2006-12-23T13:17:00.000-05:00

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...

I survived quantum physics

2006-12-14T00:15:00.000-05:00

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...?

The image of science

2006-12-02T14:50:00.000-05:00

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...

too much noise

2006-11-28T22:41:00.000-05:00

The most recent episode of Numb3rs featured the phrase "anthropic imbecile." It was spoken by the physicist on the show, Dr. Larry Fleinhardt, in reference to another physicist who had an unusual article published in an eminent- fictional- science journal.
I almost threw a fit, but... a few minutes later, Dr. Fleinhardt endorsed the article and announced that he would be "leaving the planet" on a mission to the International Space Station.
I suspect that most physicists who refer to their colleagues as "anthropic imbeciles" don't vacillate like that too often. The anthropic principle wasn't exactly the most popular subject at the cosmology colloquium. If nothing else, the anthropic principle doesn't make any less sense than multiverse theories or anything similar. The multiverse theories are what are "untestable", not string theory.
Here is a counterexample to a lie that gets circulated throughout physics:
I recently learned that if Q(psi) = q(psi), where capital Q is an operator acting on the wavefunction psi, and lowercase q is an eigenvalue... the ensemble average (expectation value) of capital Q is ALWAYS the same value. This is what it means to be in an eigenstate. Thus, the uncertainty in capital Q is 0. Thus also the idea of uncertainty in one quantity NECESSARILY changing the uncertainty in another gets... thrown out the window.

How long before another idea that's thought to always apply to everything (e.g. the uncertainty principle) gets counterexemplified?
Here's one: the constancy of the speed of light. Why does c have to be constant in vacuum? We know that optical pulses can be accelerated, or even brought to rest, without moving into a medium of a different index of refraction. The speed of light does not have to have one particular value for one particular medium, whether it's air, vacuum, or diamond. If VSL theory is correct (read Faster than the Speed of Light to learn the details), it will cause quite a paradigm shift. We already know that the other elementary constants aren't always constant; H (in cosmology) for example, while not known to great accuracy, has been changing, since the universe is expanding.
Who can say that the speed of light is the same in all reference frames? As odd as this may sound, it's not. From the reference frame of light itself, nothing is happening. Due to the equations of special relativity, which contain the denominator (1- v^2/c^2)^(1/2), if v=c, the denominator reaches 0. Time is not defined for photons. An observer standing on a photon (hypothetically) wouldn't notice anything, because time wouldn't exist for the observer. The observer couldn't measure the speed of everything outside the photon relative to the photon.
If you think that's hard to grasp, start thinking of tachyons. If they even exist, they would go backward in time and propagate with an imaginary velocity. Can we detect them? Probably not.
"THE THEORY OF TACHYONS IS UNTESTABLE! IT'S SO BAD, IT'S NOT EVEN WRONG!"
The Trouble with Tachyons: The Rise of the Imaginary, The Fall of 'Future', And What Comes Previous.
I can see the headlines and book titles right now...

end (er's?) game

2006-11-01T17:00:00.000-05:00

I recently discovered this article, written by a famous science fiction author.
If you think postmodernism doesn't exist, you're absolutely wrong. This article is an epic of postmodernism.
If you write science fiction but haven't studied "science fact", are you entitled to criticize science?
I agree with Card that a lot of disciplines in the humanities are in trouble. Severe trouble. He asserts that some professors in these departments "...could sound really smart without ever having to check their ideas against the real world." I don't think that the various "studies" departments are worthless, though; the developers of "women's studies", "gender studies", and various race studies were trying to prevent discrimination. He says that a lot of professors in those departments go too far by trying to indoctrinate people. I personally haven't been indoctrinated (or had the chance to be indoctrinated), so I can't comment on that.
However, his discussion of "groupthink" in physics sounds all too familiar. Groupthink is an overused, excessively hyped term. Unlike what a lot of people would have you believe, string theory is not taking over every physics department. RPI has one of the largest departments in the country, but no one here works on string theory. No professor in the department went to the Mensa colloquium, which was only a few miles away. I think it's very obvious that Card's statements are exaggerated, just based on what I see here.
Hey, even the blogger at Angry Physics thinks that the "string wars" are settling down, so hopefully all the negative "attack articles" will cease.

scientific literacy

2006-10-25T16:15:00.000-04:00

Those who have seen the new "Electronic Secretary" here will, of course, want to include one on their own site. The problem with Site Pal, though, is that in order to use the 15-day free trial, you have to select a payment package first!
It will be interesting to predict what will happen to traffic on "The Reference Frame" during the next few weeks. Will the new secretary annoy a lot of people, or will she have a positive affect? I think the former is more likely.
"The best physics blog", as well as all the others, have really made esoteric concepts in science a lot more accessible. This has been a plus, but... it has also had negative consequences, like the infamous Slate article. The author of the aforementioned article thought he knew more than he actually did about modern science; either that, or he was just trying to throw a wrench in the works (or an infinity in the equation)! Too often, those who are interested in advanced scientific concepts won't actually investigate them. If they do investigate them, they do it badly. Reading a popular physics book doesn't qualify you as a physicist; that alone doesn't qualify you to be a science journalist, either. I wish more people knew that.
At the Mensa conference two weeks ago, I heard numerous conversations that went something like this:
"What brought you to this conference?"
"Well, I was really interested in physics and stuff. I read The Elegant Universe and thought that was cool, although I could never understand all those extra dimensions."
"Yeah, me neither."
Wow. What a profound conversation.
Unfortunately, I heard a lot of those. I ran into only a handful of physicists and physics students; the majority of people didn't have much of a scientific background. I know that because of the questions people asked the speakers. Some of them (I'm not referring to the speakers here) really flaunted their ignorance. It's a good thing the scientists were patient; I wouldn't have answered most of the questions.
If more science journalists were scientifically literate, scientists wouldn't have so many problems. They'd have a better chance of getting grants, and... perhaps the barrier between the "two cultures" would fall. No one likes that barrier anyway.

an inconvenient falsehood?

2006-10-22T17:33:00.000-04:00

Does global warming really exist?
If so, is it going to affect the earth's climate adversely by 2025?

I find it highly unusual that global warming is such a popular "scientific" topic these days. How much has the earth's temperature increased in the last five years? The answer depends on a given region of the earth. Some areas are getting hotter; others are getting colder, and some have remained at about the same temperature. It doesn't take a scientist to figure that out.
Stephen Hawking has been quite concerned about global warming... so concerned that he mentioned it at a string theory conference. I think he should have another bet with Kip Thorne and John Preskill about it...
Of course, Lubos Motl has a counter on his site that shows how critical he is of the Kyoto Protocol. It's hard to imagine that it's cost the world $250 trillion, considering it's done nothing at all.
It's even harder to imagine that the IPCC is trying to predict the world's temperature gain for the next 90+ years!
I'm from the state that's first in chemical production (New Jersey). The carbon emissions from all the factories in Union and Essex Counties must be enormous. They used to be worse; now factories are more heavily regulated. Has the climate in North Jersey changed since those factories were built? No! And they've been there for a long time!
That's just one example. The global warming "crisis" has received far too much attention. Is there going to be a divide between climate scientists who are researching global warming and those who aren't, similar to the "divide" between LQG theorists and string theorists? I think a book called "The Trouble with Climatology" is in order.

what's the confidence level of THIS measurement?

2006-10-19T16:48:00.000-04:00

The Reference Frame's latest posting deals with the connection between students' levels of confidence and their actual performance in math. I read this article yesterday also, but I was not convinced at all by its arguments.
In case anyone had no idea, I really like math. And I have liked math since before I was in school. I even played with a calculator on just about every car trip I took as a toddler. Seriously. In eighth grade, I tried developing my own number systems, such as the "extreme number" system (a set of numbers that were all divisible by 0) along with another system based on the idea that for every number v, v + (any integer) = v. I also found a really unusual relation between the numbers pi and phi, which I have not seen written up anywhere. I've thought about turning it into a paper.
Anyway, the CNN article essentially states that American students don't perform as well in math because they're too confident. While that may seem like an oversimplification (it is), I will argue that American students don't perform as well because they don't see math as a language. A typical college-level calculus book could be 1000 pages or more, and last a student three semesters. Yet a lot of much older books are a lot smaller, and I've found them to be just as useful in explaining the material. (I have a fairly large collection of them.) One of my favorite old math books, Elements of the Differential and Integral Calculus, contains several topics one would RARELY see in a calc book these days, such as applications of the gudermannian function. In case anyone didn't know, it's the arctan of the hyperbolic sine. It's a powerful function, but how many people have heard of it?
Math textbooks rely too much on examples and illustrations, which are necessary to some extent, but not on every page. The Schaum's outlines, not regular textbooks, are better-suited for that purpose. Perhaps the enormous size of most textbooks is a push to increase the price of the books, which equals... more money for the authors and a lot less money for the students who have to pay $100+ for a book they're required to have. Or it's just an intimidation factor for not-so-mathematically-inclined students, who don't have much interest in epsilon-delta definitions or Riemann sums...
But calculus books aren't even the big problem. The multitude of courses for liberal arts majors- who are (falsely) presumed not to have as much interest in math as the science/engineering majors- are... frought with problems. "Modern Mathematical Concepts" or "Finite Math" are just euphemisms for "Liberal Arts, General Education Math Courses." I might be too demanding here, but I think everyone in college should have a working knowledge of some calculus at the end of their freshman year. Students aren't going to get much out of math if they learn "modern concepts" that aren't even as modern as calculus! The same goes for science courses; I'm appalled by the extremely qualitative (read: non-technical) nature of so many of them. You won't learn much about quantum physics or relativity if you can't do the calculations.
End of rant.
I've decided to change the layout of this site... to some extent. I removed my "I am Pro-Victory" banner, even though I am pro-victory, because it is somewhat of an ambiguous statement. I also can't make this site look too much like the Reference Frame, either. I'd experimented with the NeoCounter earlier, but when only 2 visitors showed up on it (even though there have been close to 200 visits since September 3), I got rid of that immediately.

not even silent

2006-10-17T22:25:00.000-04:00

"Not Even Wrong" hasn't been updated in five days...
That really strikes me as odd. The Reference Frame is updated almost every day, usually several times a day. Have the anti-string bloggers fled the scene...?
No, of course not.
Now that the fall semester is more than half-over, we've gotten to the real details in quantum physics. Like the different terms in the wavefunction if a particle goes through a barrier: reflection and transmission coefficients, the wavevector k versus the kappa reflecting term, etc. We're starting three-dimensional problems next week, which are beyond the scope of Volume 1 of Understanding Quantum Physics.
For those who aren't familiar with this textbook... you're not missing much. I think the book's title is its worst problem; it makes quantum physics out to be understandable. Does it clarify quantum physics? Not much. Is it useful in giving someone the sense of calculational difficulties in quantum physics? Absolutely. Are the problems ridiculously long, even if they're not difficult? Absolutely.
I do enjoy the various literary quotes at the beginning of each lesson, though. Understanding Quantum Physics does prove that one of the "two cultures" is... more advanced than the other... for the most part.

the REAL trouble with physics

2006-10-14T16:37:00.000-04:00

The problems with unification, string theory, etc. are nothing compared to the real trouble with physics.
Here are several assertions:
1. The anthropic principle needs a lot more support than it gets. I've already talked about this. It's not "giving up" or "metaphysics." It's not philosophy.
2. Whatever happened to physics education? Why are there courses like "Physics for Poets" or "Physics for Future Presidents"? Because liberal arts students can't handle physics? I'm sure a lot of them can... and I'm not talking about the aforementioned watered-down courses.
3. Why don't engineers have to take more physics? Why are there separate "physics-related" courses like the ones here, when there are similar courses taught at physics departments? If AEP is trying to "apply these disciplines to technical problems without regard to formal or historical boundaries between various fields of engineering and physics", then why do they have to take far more engineering than physics courses?

There are serious problems with math education, too. At my local county college, there are engineering and physics programs, but very few sections of higher-level math classes. Take a look at this and sift through the thirty-some sections of Algebra 1 before you finally get to the two sections of Calculus II and III. Scroll down more; as of Fall '06, there is only ONE section of General Physics II. Nothing higher than that is listed.

I've got nothing more to say.

Physics: A Universal Discipline?

2006-10-11T22:20:00.000-04:00

Since physicists often complain about the lack of jobs, funding, etc. in academic physics, I am going to proclaim the following truths:
According to Georgetown's physics department website (http://www.physics.georgetown.edu/premed.htm ), "...physics majors are more likely to be accepted into medical school than majors from all biological sciences or chemistry." Now that's incredible. Who would have thought that biology or chemistry wouldn't be as helpful as physics in preparing students for medical school? (That question is mine alone.) Isn't physics just some ivory-tower subject that lazy people take if they don't like the complexity that the other sciences stress? (I've actually heard that question more times than I want to remember.) Don't the "emergent properties" of biology cause a macroscopic system to be more than the sum of its parts? (I've heard that many times also.)
My answer to those last two questions would be, "Physics is the easiest and hardest science." Granted, the chemical properties of nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate are harder to study than, say, the motion of a ball on a frictionless straight line with no external forces. Much harder. But...
Understanding Lagrangian and Hamiltonian formalism is harder than understanding NADP, or the evolution of beak shapes of Galapagos finches, or the movements of mRNA. Studying SU(3) Lie groups in the strong interaction is... well... HARD! Even a usually-not-too-difficult-to-solve equation like -hbar^2[(del^2)psi]/(2m)+V(psi)=i*hbar*d(psi)/dt (the time-dependent Schrodinger equation, of course) can be really difficult to solve in certain physical situations. Just understanding how a particle behaves in an infinite square well is... complicated. Systems in physics that look simple contain a lot of complexity. Those who have taken more than intro courses in physics have realized that complexity increases as you go down to more fundamental levels. That's quite shocking, but it's the way the universe works.
With the lack of funding and jobs in physics, a lot more physicists are entering other professions, like law, economics, engineering, management, and... just about everything else. Economics and physics coalesced to form econophysics, which is designed to give more accurate models in economic theory. (Economics would be useless without accurate mathematical descriptions of what is actually happening; you can't draw just any aggregate demand curve, for example. Who would have thought that partial differential equations could be just as useful in economics as physics? Econophysicists would.)
I hope everyone will realize that physics really is a universal subject. "Complexity" can't get in its way. When the unified theory is discovered (which will only happen if scientists see the value of the anthropic principle), physics really will explain everything.
Of course, that will only happen if there really is a unified theory.

more about the colloquium

2006-10-10T22:16:00.000-04:00

I will backtrack now.
Right after I checked in at the Albany Marriott, and then at the colloquium registration area, I looked around for famous physicists, Nobel Prize-winners, science journalists (good or bad), etc. I saw no one. I couldn't believe that there were only a handful of scientists at this event. From all the conversations I heard, most people were Mensans who were (somewhat) interested in physics; I heard a lot of statements like:
"Well, I read The Elegant Universe and thought that was cool."
"I still can't get over that idea of extra dimensions, anyway."
"Aren't dark matter and dark energy the same thing?"
Needless to say, I was quite worried. Were these people going to ask stupid questions that the proverbial "average person on the street" could answer? Some did. So as to avoid libeling anyone, I will not reprint the questions here.
I have to admit that some people's disdain for the anthropic principle was irksome. At least two of the speakers referred to the anthropic principle as "giving up." All of the speakers mentioned the principle, but they didn't say anything about the entropic interpretation or other more advanced versions of the principle. I don't think the anthropic principle is a deference to metaphysics at all. It is a serious scientific argument, and should be treated as such.
If it weren't for those two factors, the colloquium certainly would have lived up to its title. I almost thought it would be a "revolution in cosmology", considering the hot debate that occurred after Brian Greene's talk.
Dr. Greene's lecture was by far the longest. I'd heard rumors that some people were trying to crash the lecture; those people had not registered for the colloquium but had intended just to hear that lecture. At the beginning, he asked, "Are there any Yankees fans here?" A few brave people raised their hands. He continued, "Drink more wine; it's over." This resulted in cries of anguish from Yankee fans and applause from Red Sox fans like myself. :)
Then he said, "This lecture's called 'The State of String Theory.' It sounds a lot like the State of the Union address, but there are three big differences:
1. I'm not the President.
2. I will describe the developments in string theory.
3. I will tell you the truth."
I'd never heard an audience applaud so enthusiastically before.
His lecture was quite technical; he described how extra dimensions were curled up in a Kahler manifold, how one must solve a system of differential equations to find string energies, etc. He also showed most of the animations from the series The Elegant Universe and tried to describe those, but most people were already too confused to understand even the animations.
After the lecture (and after he answered questions from the audience), there was a panel discussion. Surprisingly, Dr. Smolin was in the panel; I knew right away that this would be a heated discussion. Greene asserted that Smolin's statement about string theory "falling away from the scientific method" was very wrong, and that The Trouble with Physics was very damaging. Smolin went through a long, long explanation of his statements, in order to provide a counterexample. He tried, but all he actually did was dodge the question. I saw Dr. Greene roll his eyes once.
To add more energy to this thermodynamic system, Dr. Jeremiah Ostriker (who gave a lecture about dark matter on Saturday) said his wife claimed that string theory was a "thinking person's version of intelligent design." The audience made a few interesting noises, but Dr. Greene told the panel something like, "Unless we can corroborate string theory, we cannot claim that it is right." More discussions followed, but they came to an end just before Marc Millis was going to say something.
I got Dr. Greene's autograph afterwards, and I praised the technical nature of his lecture. Other people told him that as well, and he thanked us.

7 lectures for a revolution

2006-10-08T21:45:00.000-04:00

This was an incredible colloquium, and it was an incredible weekend for physics.
Oddly enough, there have not been any mentions of it on the two most-widely-linked-to physics blogs... so I will explain what happened... over the next few days. There's too much to write in just one posting.
I had intended to blog from the conference, but since hotels charge for Internet access, I decided against it.
I think everyone was quite starstruck this weekend; I know I was. These lecturers are some of the biggest names in physics, in part because of their ability to clarify arcane subjects, but also because of their debates. And there certainly was QUITE A DEBATE last night.
Dr. Smolin's talk was by far the most astonishing of the seven. I'd expected it to be a diatribe of string theory. But even The Trouble with Physics wasn't much of a diatribe. In his lecture, he stated that he'd switched his focus in research from LQG to string theory and back... not once, not twice, but THREE TIMES. He said LQG was practiced by "a few weirdos" like himself.
The most interesting (and funniest) part was when he showed a slide of successes and failures in theoretical physics. He had decided that most of the recent efforts in theoretical physics were failures, including... (be prepared for this) "my PhD thesis and the project after my PhD thesis."
What really shocked me was when he described all the other fringe theories his friends are working on. One was DSR, which I think stands for "double special relativity." One of the ideas in DSR is that spacetime can be quantized, which really isn't that new of an idea. But then... he described one theory that treats the universe as a superconductor.
It really makes string theory look good, doesn't it?
His lecture was excellent, though, and I told him that. He asked me what I was studying, so I told him physics, and I was shocked that he was happy about that. You wouldn't expect someone who wrote a book called The Trouble with Physics to want someone to go into physics. In fact, his autograph reads: "To Alexander, Best of Luck with Physics." He was very different in real life from the way the media (and many other physicists) have portrayed him.
I will discuss the other lectures in subsequent blogs.

oh well...

2006-10-05T17:42:00.000-04:00

I'm really excited about tomorrow.
But...
I went into the science center today and asked a few of the other physics professors if they knew about the "Revolutions in Cosmology" conference and/or were going to it. They hadn't even heard of it. Even the astrophysics department at RPI didn't know about it. It's shocking enough that an astrophysics department at a top 50 university wouldn't know about this conference, but it's even more shocking if you consider that it's taking place only about four miles away!
What's weird about RPI is that although it's a world leader in physics education (one of the authors of "Fundamentals of Physics"- the most-widely used undergrad physics textbook- is an emeritus professor here), we don't have ANY researchers in string theory or cosmology. We have one of the largest departments in the country, but we don't have string theory or cosmology, the areas of physics that are getting the most coverage these days. One gets the impression from the leading physics bloggers (well, at least the dissenters) that if you're not a postdoc in string theory, you won't get a faculty position. It's absolute nonsense. We have NO ONE in string theory here. NO ONE in cosmology, but some astronomers and astrophysicists. We have a lot of professors in more applied areas like optics, photonics, terahertz research, and condensed matter. We have some experimental physicists and particle theorists (but not LQG/ string people). We have a class or two in general relativity, but those are only 4000-level (mainly for advanced undergrads). We don't have "string theory for undergraduates" (or grad students). We don't have a whole lot of astronomy courses; general relativity is the most advanced one.
You would get the impression from physics bloggers and people who write pro-string (or anti-string) books that the string theory controversy is what physics is all about. Not so! I haven't heard anyone, in the two and a half semesters I've been here, talking about "the trouble with physics". (I'm not referring to the book.) "Anyone" refers to students (in any department) and professors (in any department.) You would get the impression that physics is a subject you could study for... well, about ten years or so, then do research in as a postdoc, and then end up unemployed. Sometimes that happens, but eventually you will find a job, not necessarily in physics, but one that you could apply your advanced knowledge in. The Columbia University math department contains such an example.
I think the trouble with physics is enormously exaggerated, mainly by the horrible coverage that physics has gotten in the past few months. I still think physics is the most exciting thing you could possibly study, and I don't think anyone should be discouraged from studying it. Here's a discouraging essay: http://www.physics.wustl.edu/~katz/scientist.html
I think that essay is self-explanatory, but if you look at the other essays on his site, you'll probably find them even more alarming. I'm sure he's an excellent professor, but I'm shocked that some of those writings haven't gotten him in major trouble.

Incidentally, I got "The Trouble with Physics" in the mail today, just before the colloquium. I'm very anxious to read it, since I will meet the author this weekend.

And that's the memo.

Go, Lubos, Go!

2006-10-04T20:06:00.000-04:00

The "Reference Frame" has its best posting yet: http://motls.blogspot.com/2006/10/curricular-anti-academic-coup.html
Wow. I really do not want to see Harvard adopt this. Check out the proposed "core curriculum" and you'll understand.
I couldn't imagine Harvard with a core like this. The one at Columbia is ridiculous enough, but this one is even worse. First of all, why is there just ONE physical science course? Even a math course isn't required! Students at arguably (if you're insane enough to argue) the most elite university in the world aren't even required to take calculus? Or physics (physical science could be chemistry or geology instead)? What kind of "elite" university would Harvard become?
Here are the requirements of some of the TECHNOLOGICAL universities:
RPI requires a year of calculus (of some variety.) There's the standard Calc 1 and 2 sequence, and there's the Calc for Management/HSS with Contemporary Math Ideas sequence. If you're an engineer, you have to take diff eq (unless you're an EE, in which case you need multivariable). If you're a physics major, you take diff eq, multivariable, and advanced calc (I'm in advanced calc right now). I'm not sure what the science requirements are for all the majors, but everyone has to take a good amount of science...
MIT requires 8.01 and 8.02, which have the famous video lectures that I loved to watch in Physics C in high school. They also require 18.01 and 18.02 (or calculus with theory). They manage to compress single-variable calculus in one semester; Cornell's engineering program does the same.
Caltech requires FIVE quarters of math (single-variable calc, linear algebra, multivariable, diff eq, and probability) and FIVE of physics, in addition to biology and chemistry. For every student.

Harvard may have lost its "elite" status...

Now for good news: the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded yesterday to TWO physicists who worked on projects measuring the anisotropy of the CMBR.
Congratulations.

conference

2006-10-02T20:51:00.000-04:00

I have a temporary schedule of events at this cosmology conference. There are lectures Friday night, all day Saturday, and Sunday morning. Surprisingly, it ends on Sunday; maybe the organizers figured they should give everyone time to go home on Columbus Day. While a lot of my college friends will be going home that weekend, I will be attending my first physics conference with some of the biggest names in the world.
I'm amazed that they're having a cocktail hour Friday night; they probably figure that everyone's 21 and over. (I'm not even 19 yet.) I won't turn 21 until after college, hopefully during my first semester of grad school.
Anyway... the Reference Frame has a LONG posting: http://motls.blogspot.com/2006/10/falsifiability-in-physics.html
on how string theory can be... falsified?! Actually, the beginning of the posting states that string theory can't be falsified... but then it can? I didn't think it made much sense, and since it got only about two comments, virtually everyone else didn't understand it, either.
I hope that whoever wins the Nobel Prize tomorrow will understand it. Who knows, maybe one of the Nobelists had signed up for the physics conference... too bad he or she wouldn't be able to go to the ceremonies and the conference!

revolution in cosmology

2006-09-29T20:52:00.000-04:00

The physics conference is only one week away now.
This morning I was quite worried because I discovered that I had an advanced calc test on Friday, October 6. I thought the test was going to be at night, but it turns out that it will be during the day (which is rare for RPI). So I won't have to reschedule my test... not that I could, because I have two OTHER big tests next week. There's no way I would miss out on this conference.
Strangely enough, I don't know anyone else from RPI who's going to this. None of my undergrad friends even knew about it. I think the educational-level distribution will look very similar to a delta function: virtually no undergrads, and almost all eminent PhDs. The integral over all people will equal 1, anyway (at least I hope). Seriously, though, I hope there will be other undergrads or grad students there... after all, who knows when another physics conference of this magnitude will occur? (Mensa's colloquium next year is all about humor, in case anyone's wondering: http://colloq07.us.mensa.org//AM/Template.cfm?Section=Home3 ). I would only go if they told jokes like the ones here: (http://www.math.ualberta.ca/~runde/jokes.html ).
The authors of "Not Even Wrong" and "The Reference Frame" haven't mentioned anything about the conference yet, but it would be REALLY interesting if they went. It would be a lot more than just a revolution in cosmology...

next week...

2006-09-28T20:26:00.000-04:00

I read island's latest post, and I thought the opening paragraph (quoted from http://observer.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,1873989,00.html ) really DID take two or three times to read. Island's post mentions that extraterrestrial communications are indeed testable, although such communications have not YET reached earth. Certainly the discovery of extraterrestrial life would greatly enhance the anthropic principle. Some physicists, such as John Wheeler (at least according to http://us.imdb.com/name/nm0923868/bio ) think that sentient life only exists on earth. We don't know that, but we can test it; SETI has been trying to disprove that for quite some time. I wonder how many physicists favor a human-centered anthropic principle, or an anthropic principle for the existence of any life form.
Next week... is Mensa's "Revolution in Cosmology", held in Colonie, NY. I was glad I booked it four months in advance; it became full rather quickly. A LOT of big names will be there: http://colloq06.us.mensa.org/AM/Template.cfm?Section=Program1
And those are just the speakers. I think a lot of Nobelists, pro-string physicists, pro-LQG physicists (and hopefully other undergrads like myself) will show up. I may even meet my future thesis advisor (I intend to enter grad school in the fall of 2008). I'm extremely excited about this, and I will blog from the conference so everyone is posted.

just sickening

2006-09-26T19:56:00.000-04:00

Yet another hideous article emerged today in Wired:
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,71828-0.html?tw=wn_index_1
Just when you thought science articles couldn't get any dumber, along comes this one. (Searching for more articles by this author will bring up several stories about the imminent dangers of global warming, so you can probably tell what sort of science journalist he is.)
Anyway, what makes this excuse of an article so extreme is its unconventionality. It actually states that alternatives to string theory are AS PROMISING as string theory itself. I don't think even the most adamant critics of string theory would say anything THAT outlandish. Before anyone says that the quality of being "promising" is in the eye of the beholder, let me offer a less-fatalistic opinion.
I think that some parts of LQG will turn out to be right. I don't think it's as promising as string theory... for too many reasons to list here. I think that twistor (that's right, twistor, not "twister") theory is a great breakthrough in mathematics; as any reader of "The Emperor's New Mind" should recall, twistors are really bizarre constructions. I imagine that some physicists don't think twistors are too useful in the PHYSICAL sense, but that's what a lot of them thought about fractals. Now, of course, we know that fractals are useful in some areas of physics. Since Penrose doesn't yet have a unified theory of twistors, how can the twistor approach be as promising as other approaches to string theory (at the present time)?
The article gets into CDT and non-commutative geometry, which are too complicated to cram into a few paragraphs each (of course, the author doesn't care)... but then, in a fatalistic flourish, it mentions that there may be NO final theory. Well, if we're to accept that argument, we might as well quit physics now and commit mass suicide. What a ridiculous article!
I'm really sick and tired of these anti-string articles; most people have already heard about criticisms of string theory, anyway. We don't need these kinds of articles anymore. If people want to criticize it, they should post on "Not Even Wrong" and see if they can write something that 5,674,234,459 other people haven't already written a variation of.

insert expletive here

2006-09-25T23:08:00.000-04:00

I found a link (from Not Even Wrong) to this HIDEOUS article:
http://www.newyorker.com/critics/atlarge/articles/061002crat_atlarge
This article is beyond hideous. "Not a single new testable prediction has been made" [from string theory]? "This theory will come in such a bewildering number of versions that it will be of no practical use: a Theory of Nothing"?
Okay, tell us something that the idiots HAVEN'T (erroneously) told us already!
First of all, does a theory HAVE to make testable predictions? Absolutely not. Don't look surprised; there are quite a few physicists who are developing theories of wormholes, or white holes, or other cosmological oddities. Can we test the existence of wormholes? Can we prove that there are white holes? Not currently. Yet that doesn't mean that the work of cosmologists is garbage. Just because we can't prove their existence doesn't mean they're not there, or that those theories aren't plausible.
Think of the physicists who work with theories of time travel. Or who theorize the existence of tachyons (faster-than-light particles) or preons (particles inside electrons). Now for a more mainstream question: What about the Higgs boson? We may find it when the LHC becomes operational, but... we may not. If we don't find it, does that mean that Peter Higgs wasted his time? No. It means that we just haven't found it yet.
All this nonsense about untestability is EXTREMELY annoying. The untestability stigma has been put on all sorts of theories now. Multiverses, M-theory... some people would argue the anthropic principle. I do not for a minute think that the argument of untestability should be thrown around by scientifically-illiterate people. I don't think that string theory is the downfall of modern physics. I don't think that LQG, Dr. Woit, or even the Bogdanoffs are the downfalls of modern physics, either. The "trouble with physics" is that morons are criticizing it. These are morons who refuse to think, who just want to ignite controversy.
A lot of people want to discredit or berate the intelligent. They do this out of jealousy. I'm not saying that all the bad science journalists are jealous, or that jealousy is obvious in their articles. But it's very likely. If you're jealous of someone, don't you want to bring them down? Why are smart people more likely to get bullied than others? Jealousy. Bullies don't like to feel inferior.
The scientifically illiterate are quite similar. They have physics envy, and they're doing everything in their power to attack whatever they feel they can attack... and get away with. I feel bad for the good science journalists who have to put up with these morons.
Of course, the authors of "Manifold Destiny" didn't get away with it :) (But that's more of a math article.)

on the interpretation of quantum physics

2006-09-24T15:50:00.000-04:00

Everyone (well, almost everyone) at RPI is afraid of quantum physics. I think they've heard about how difficult it is (or how difficult it sounds) and they always give me strange looks when I tell them I'm taking it. The course IS a lot of work, but it's very rewarding. I think a lot of people are afraid of advanced physics because they don't see it as rewarding, just as a ton of work. Of course, most of RPI's courses require a lot of work, but not as much abstraction as quantum physics.
I've heard so many times (from the uninitiated) that the Uncertainty Principle necessarily signifies that measurement of one quantity greatly changes another quantity's value. This is vague, imprecise, and not at all satisfying. (It's only partly right.) There are so many interpretations of quantum mechanics (good, bad, ugly, and outright misguided) that aren't satisfying. Crackpots love weird interpretations; some in fact think that if they make up their own interpretations, they're qualified to write bad science articles!
There are even some physicists who interpret quantum mechanics in bizarre ways. Some of them want to alter it in order to make it less mathematical. Smolin is very philosophical in his approach to quantum gravity; he thinks that physics should rely less on mathematics. I don't think that's possible, but it's an interesting idea nonetheless. Wolfram's book "A New Kind of Science" also advocates a less mathematical approach to "complexity theory"... which is bizarre because he created MATHematica and MATHworld!
More recently, some physicists have commented on the anthropic principle without really understanding it. Island's blog talks about that in great detail; his last several posts have defended the entropic interpretation, which many physicists don't understand. If you want more info on the entropic interpretation, I suggest you look there.

physics blogging

2006-09-21T22:21:00.000-04:00

I don't know who originally developed the theoretical construct of a physics blog, but this construct seems to parallel string theory a lot. My apologies to "Not Even Wrong" and other dissenting blogs.
Just as string theory is an attempt to resolve the incompatibilities between quantum theory and general relativity, physics blogs could be attempts to resolve the incompatibilities between LQG people and string people. "Could be." Of course, that isn't really happening, although I hope this blog will do that.
I wonder how many physics bloggers are actually- personally- in contact with each other (by that I mean they don't just know each other through the blogging culture). I'd like to know if non-string (not necessarily contra-string) bloggers and pro-string bloggers have real discussions in real time.
I don't think too many of them do. I don't think too many people know the real identities of Angry Physics (http://angryphysics.blogspot.com/)or Absinthe (http://radio.weblogs.com/0151290/), either. If we don't know their identities, we can't really judge them, can we?
Unfortunately, I think that physics blogging (as a whole) is discouraging a lot of people from becoming physicists. (I say "as a whole" to avoid hypocrisy.) If so many people portray the physics culture as a bleak, impersonal culture... is that going to inspire people? Is that an honest portrayal? I say a resounding "no" to both questions.

science vs. inaccurate coverage of science

2006-09-18T19:14:00.000-04:00

[I wrote this as an editorial for a class called "Electronic Arts Theory", sometimes known as "Media Watch." It could've been an editorial on any topic, but I chose one that was related to my major]:

The majority of contemporary scientific ideas are very difficult to truly understand. This is why- in many fields- one must earn a PhD and conduct years of research in order to really understand the latest developments in that field.
Yet most science writers do not have these credentials; they write about science because there is a popular demand for stories about astronomy, evolution, criticisms of evolution, and many other topics. Unfortunately, many of these stories have little to do with science itself. In fact, some of them are nothing more than diatribes. With the increasing popularity of physics blogs, the subject of string theory- the most popular candidate for a grand unified theory of physics- has also become a target of some science journalists.
An article in the August 21st issue of Time Magazine, “The Unraveling of String Theory” (http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1226142-1,00.html), is extraordinarily biased. It mentions that “Any university that doesn't have at least one string theorist on the payroll is considered a scientific backwater”, even though most universities do not have active researchers in string theory. RPI, for example, is far from being a scientific backwater. The article states little about string theory itself; it merely asserts that the theory is enormously flawed and too complex to be effective.
A more hostile article appeared in the September 14th edition of the online magazine Slate. “The Trouble with String Theory” (http://www.slate.com/id/2149598/) is an attack not only on string theory, but on all of physics. Its extremely informal style and anti-intellectual stance sensationalized the controversies in physics and most likely appealed to those who dislike science, but it was very hotly received by physicists. Both string theorists, such as Harvard physicist Lubos Motl, and critics of string theory, such as Columbia physicist Peter Woit, agreed that it was a poorly-written and misleading article. Dr. Woit wrote in his blog, “I started to remember who [Gregg] Easterbrook is, and how stupid some of his previous writings on physics were.” (http://www.math.columbia.edu/%7Ewoit/wordpress/?p=61) Easterbrook had even become involved in a scandal when he wrote in The New Republic that the majority of executives in Hollywood who promoted excessive violence in films were Jewish. (http://www.tnr.com/easterbrook.mhtml?week=2003-10-07)
Dr. Woit’s blog, “Not Even Wrong”, provides links to many articles and reviews either in favor of or against string theory. It is generally critical of string theory, but it acknowledges that journalistic coverage of physics can be quite embarrassing. His September 15th entry mentions that, “One sometimes depressing aspect of being on this side of the string theory controversy is seeing who some of one’s allies are.” (http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=459) It also states that some journalists specifically criticize him for using “technical jargon.” (Ibid) Yet such jargon must be used to give more than a superficial explanation of why string theory is or is not a truly scientific, or worthwhile, idea to pursue. While scientific articles would be accessible to more people if they were more qualitative, they would all be very similar and would not explain scientific principles well. Thus, the reader would most likely feel unsatisfied and would not have gained much knowledge.
One physicist decided to write a deliberately fake paper that was filled with equations and physics jargon, and submitted it to the humanities journal Social Text. Alan Sokal, a physics professor at NYU, wrote “Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity” (http://physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/transgress_v2/transgress_v2_singlefile.html), which looked serious due to the number of technical words it used. Social Text had no reviewers, so it was published without immediate opposition. Once it was exposed- by physicists- that this paper was a hoax, Sokal stated, “I confess to amusement that one Social Text editor still doesn't believe my piece was a parody.” (http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/reply.html) Surprisingly, the media overlooked this incident until two physicists, Igor and Grichka Bogdanov, published several papers in scientific journals that were just as nonsensical. The media took notice of the Bogdanovs immediately; The Chronicle of Higher Education reported that their papers “exposed potentially wide cracks in how theoretical physicists judge one another's work.” (http://chronicle.com/free/2002/11/2002110501n.htm) Standards in peer review were thus exposed, and many physicists felt that following these incidents, it would be difficult to determine the legitimacy of any scientific paper.
The media generally focuses on scientific controversies, but it does not explain why theories or incidents are controversial very well. Since many science journalists lack scientific knowledge themselves, they often convey biases rather than honest, objective coverage of contemporary issues.

a consensus?

2006-09-15T19:16:00.000-04:00

I was quite amazed by the latest posting in "Not Even Wrong."
For the first time in quite a while, both ends of the theoretical physics spectrum agree on something: Gregg Easterbrook is an ignoramus and a moron.
And it shows. http://www.slate.com/id/2149598/
This isn't the first time he's come out against physics, either. See excerpts from one of his previous articles here: http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/2004_archives/001258.html
The amazing thing is that these articles don't just attack string theory; they attack ALL OF PHYSICS. He greatly enjoys the word "mumbo-jumbo" and uses it so many times that you can tell his originality is severely lacking. Perhaps the worst thing about these articles is that he attacks physics because HE DOESN'T UNDERSTAND IT. None of it makes any sense to him. How did he ever become a science writer, anyway?
Theories of black holes are untestable, he implies, therefore they must be flawed. He doesn't like how physical theories are counterintuitive. Well, guess what... even beginning physics is counterintuitive. Intuition would tell you that something exerts a force on something else, but that something else doesn't push back. Intuition is very wrong in this case. Never mind action at a distance, particle-antiparticle annihilations, etc., etc.
It's very sad that so many science writers know so little. But ignorance can be overcome more easily than overt hatred.
"Electric Universe: The Shocking True Story of Electricity" is a book that really shows the dark side of science journalism. David Bodanis evidently doesn't know much about electricity; the most complex illustrations of electricity deal with electrons moving rapidly through wires, or electrons being portrayed as bits that get ripped off solid, ball bearing-like atoms. These are very poor illustrations; massive streams of electrons don't shoot through wires, anyway (they move from atom to atom, and the drift speed of an electron is much smaller than the speed of light). And the concept of electrons getting plucked off hard atoms isn't even the right HISTORICAL concept of electricity, anyway. In most of the book, Bodanis tries to make the scientists who studied electricity look like total jerks. Some of them weren't exactly the most agreeable people, but when you read that Thomas Edison was "a creep and a liar", you know that you're reading a very biased, out-of-mainstream-opinion book.
Off-topic: There are many, many repetitions in "Electric Universe" of a line that goes something like this: "Without electricity, there would be no telephones, no radios, no televisions, no Internet, no CD's or DVD players, no phonographs, no light bulbs, no computers. Why, without electricity, life, the earth, or even this book would not exist." WOW.
I gave "Electric Universe" as an example because it's one of the worst examples of shoddy scientific journalism. I'm afraid that we'll see a lot more of this garbage in the next few years.

Symmetry (or lack thereof)

2006-09-13T20:05:00.000-04:00

The well-known physicist and popularizer of mathematics, Dr. Mario Livio, just gave a lecture at RPI about the ideas in his latest book: The Equation that Couldn't Be Solved. I was quite surprised by how many people showed up, considering he isn't quite as famous as many of the other annual lecturers at RPI. His book isn't really about an equation at all, but about symmetry itself.
Of course, a lecture on symmetry could present a lot of intuitive and obvious ideas, and this one was no exception. But what isn't obvious (to many non-scientists) is how important symmetry BREAKING is. There are many forms of symmetry breaking in nature, but he didn't delve into those, because this was a lecture intended for general audiences.
The latest post on "Not Even Wrong" mentions a physics opera. What could be more amazing than a physics opera, with a cast of Nobel Prize-winners? (Many people believe that science should not be integrated into the arts, but such people are extroardinarily mistaken. In high school, I wrote a mathematical opera called "Angle of Innocence", which had characters named after various mathematical ideas. I wrote the libretto and about half of the actual score, but I never finished it.)
The concepts of science can greatly benefit and enrich the arts. Symmetry is a classic example of a concept with mathematical, scientific, and artistic appeal. I predict that in a few years, someone will write an opera or an epic poem based on string theory, the anthropic principle, or some other contemporary scientific idea.
That is what I hope for, anyway. It's quite difficult, though, to teach advanced scientific concepts to many liberal arts students. "Physics for Poets" courses come to mind. Villanova has a course (actually two courses, with labs) called "Great Ideas in Physics" that doesn't use math beyond ALGEBRA. And (make sure you don't fall off your chair) there is even a course at Berkeley called "Physics for Future Presidents": http://lsdiscovery.berkeley.edu/2006spring/c70v.html
The description of PfFP includes the somewhat disturbing sentence, "The beauty of physics may lie in the math, but future presidents don't have time for that." Why shouldn't they have time for that? Of course, they don't need to know tensor calculus, although that certainly helps :) But why shouldn't they really get a sense of what they're doing, which can only be achieved through a certain degree of mathematical sophistication? Wouldn't everyone benefit enormously if future presidents knew something about physics, anyway?
I hope someone can answer those questions seriously.

Intelligence?

2006-09-11T17:01:00.000-04:00

Today, of course, is the fifth anniversary of 9/11. In today's post on "The Reference Frame" there is a link to a post (right after the London bombings), that is absolutely incredible: http://motls.blogspot.com/2005/07/bombings.html
Dr. Motl's statement at the end is extroardinarily profound and inspiring: "The terrorists and their ideas and ideals simply cannot be dominating over the world of the 3rd millenium." I hope that's true. I hope more people will realize that they don't have to live in fear, because living in fear is submitting to terrorism.
Threats to human safety can come from anywhere, but how many people realize that? Why are most people more afraid of flying than driving, for example? Why is the level of security higher at certain low-traffic airports than at many high-traffic airports? For example, I've noticed that some Canadian airports (particularly Quebec City), use much more sensitive metal detectors than, say, Newark or JFK.
Another example: Last year, Kip Thorne of Caltech lectured at my college about black holes and experiments to test general relativity (such as the LIGO project). He used a bowling ball as a (rather unusual) prop to illustrate a black hole. The security at LAX almost didn't allow him to bring A BOWLING BALL on the plane!
Before the conference, I got invited to sit in on a conference that the other RPI physics professors had with him. He's an extremely modest scientist (he introduced himself to me by his first name), so it's hard to imagine airport security giving someone like him a hard time... unless you go back to reality and understand that anyone can get stopped for any reason.
I hope everyone realizes that although "the front line is everywhere", we as humans have better things to do than live in fear. We have to seek truth. And then we will understand that our problems are not unique, that difficult times have happened before. We know a lot more about the natural world now than we did several thousand years ago, when thunderstorms, earthquakes, etc. were thought of as the wrath of Jupiter or Poseidon. Yet although we know more, we still have to know why our theories work so well. Few scientists, even the most famous ones- if you've read my previous postings- really understand their theories. There are many ways to use science for purposes other than science. Supporters of creationism abuse the anthropic principle, but so do a lot of evolution supporters.

Endnote: The Mensa cosmology colloquium is now totally full. It's a good thing I booked it about four months in advance :)

taking the implications honestly

2006-09-09T13:33:00.000-04:00

Island mentioned yesterday that scientists don't take the implications of their work honestly, which is a very interesting comment on the status of science. Looking at the opinions of physicists (and people who misunderstand physics), it appears that people are very defensive of their theories (or lack thereof), and thus cannot- due to their bias- notice all of the implications resulting from those theories.
Probably the clearest way to illustrate this idea is to talk about the interpretations of quantum mechanics. The Elegant Universe states, "Many find it fatuous and downright repugnant to claim that the wonders of life and the universe are mere reflections of microscopic particles engaged in a pointless dance fully choreographed by the laws of physics." (Chapter 1, page 16 of the 2003 edition) If one is to favor a reductionist approach to quantum mechanics, one must accept that everything we experience is nothing more than what happens on the quantum level. (More precisely, there are several different types of reductionism; this interpretation mostly resembles the ontological variety.)
How is one to interpret quantum mechanics, string theory, etc.? We don't know. Many people are put off by reductionism for obvious reasons, so they won't think that way. We need a unified interpretation of science, and we need one now.

More theories

2006-09-08T15:18:00.000-04:00

I learned earlier today (read the comments on yesterday's post) about the entropic interpretation of the anthropic principle. The entropic interpretation is very fascinating in its own right, from the little I've read about it so far. It appears that there are different ways to interpret the interpretation, which makes the entropic idea more complicated than the regular anthropic principle. You can read more about island's interpretation at evolutionarydesign.blogspot.com
Island says that "a true anthropic constraint on the forces of the universe will necessarily include the human evolutionary process." This is a powerful idea, and if it is correct, it will tremendously elevate the status of human evolution. By "elevate the status" I mean "make the theory of evolution more convincing for those who do not accept it."
The theory of evolution came under fire (and still is under fire) because many people believe that humans- not apes, other land mammals, algae, etc.- are made in the image of God, and therefore humans are not descended from more primitive life forms. Well, that's one reason. But probably the main reason is that intelligent design is a much easier idea. If you believe that God created the universe and all life forms in six days, then that's a much more concise thing to remember. You don't have to worry about studies of Galapagos finches or biochemical reactions or the skeletons of Australopithecus afarensis, never mind particle physics, relativity, and extrapolations of cosmological models to the early seconds of the universe. (Although religion, as long as it does not take intelligent design seriously, does not have to conflict with science. For example, the Vatican has many observatories, as well as a lot of astronomers and planetary scientists who are not afraid to do their job.) :)
Science takes into account all of those things. The entropic interpretation is a framework on which they can be unified. For one thing, it's a far more scientific anthropic interpretation than, say, Tipler's Omega Point theory. (Although I like the Omega Point theory a lot, I highly doubt that artificial intelligence will ever become THAT powerful.)

is this true?

2006-09-07T20:54:00.000-04:00

The Centre for Research on Globalization, an organization in Quebec, featured a rather interesting article two days ago:
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=20060904&articleId=3140
By "interesting" I mean "not meant to be taken seriously." This article- written by a physicist- claims that 80% of physicists work for the military.
Okay, so... where did that number come from? And why is this- if it were actually true- such a big deal?
Physicists are sometimes stereotyped as being militantly apathetic people, but this article suggests otherwise... except for the militant part :) While some physicists have no interest in politics or the military, this article completely shatters that stereotype. Physics evidently is far from some ivory-tower activity that no one will ever actually use; the ivory-tower image comes from ignorant people who criticize science because they can't grasp even the basic concepts. Many of those people post comments on "Not Even Wrong."
The article does far more than denigrate the military, though. It states that physicists are DUMB.
That's right, dumb. "How many unified field theorists does it take to screw in a light bulb?" jokes come to mind.
Everyone knows (or maybe they don't) that physicists are not dumb. Some of them are misguided, but none of them are dumb. Some of them came up with bizarre dissertations (e.g. the Bogdanov brothers), but none of them are dumb. Some of them have tried to make their data more convincing than it should be, but none of them are dumb. What other people have such a grasp of underlying phenomena in the physical world? What other people burden themselves with advanced calculus, PDE's, integral equations, computational methods of solving problems, AND physics?
The fact that the article was written by a physicist is what should trouble everyone. Or not. Complexity is physics, and physics is complexity. Physics is not stamp collecting. Introductory-level physics is made accessible to other people so they won't run away in horror. That is why I've heard several people claim that chemistry, biology, engineering, etc. are harder than physics. Such statements are blatant lies. While chemistry, biology, engineering, and other related disciplines are hard, they are just applications.
That does not mean that everything other than physics is worthless; it just means that every other discipline can be traced (albeit in a convoluted way) to the underlying principles of physics. If you support the Anthropic Principle, the universe has just the correct parameters that enable us to survive. If we weren't alive, we wouldn't be able to study why the universe is the way it is, etc., etc. That's just one connection to philosophy, and biology. As well as all of the humanities disciplines, because without our existence, the humanities would have no meaning. Axioms, lemmas (or lemmata), theorems, etc. in mathematics wouldn't have been developed, but... mathematics is special. It is special because academics are divided as to its underlying origins. To some, math is embedded in nature, as something physically realizable. To others, it is a human construction. As Leopold Kronecker stated, "God created the natural numbers; everything else is the work of man." Of course, this further suggests that God exists, and any such discussion is far more debatable (other than in a group consisting entirely of either very religious or atheistic people) than the Grand Unified Theory (at least at the present time).
Anyway, are physicists dumb and unable to perceive complexity? I hope you can deduce the answer from my above arguments.

Interesting

2006-09-04T20:37:00.000-04:00

Yesterday's post at the "Reference Frame" takes notice of the fact that string theory, and criticisms of it, are the most unusual topics for blog discussions. Physics is an unusual topic because very few people really understand it. Many of the people who post on "Not Even Wrong" and the "Reference Frame" like to THINK they know a lot about physics, when in fact they probably haven't even had a high school physics education.
The problem with "Not Even Wrong" is that too many know-it-alls (who really know nothing) decide to offer their ignorant opinions in comments. The problem is not Dr. Woit's criticism; he is entitled to his opinions, even they aren't the opinions of the majority.
The "Reference Frame" has the same problem of being overrun by crackpots. Although Dr. Motl's beliefs are controversial, they don't seem wrong (or "not even wrong") :) Just because they don't seem wrong doesn't mean they necessarily are right. Not every idea in contemporary string theory is right, either, although string theory certainly has a lot more potential than its alternatives.
This potential is mostly exemplified by its strength in numbers. If loop quantum gravity were mainstream and string theory were considered a "fringe" idea, LQG would have more potential. This is not the case, though.
Nevertheless, I have often found it amazing that string theory is more popular than LQG. String theory requires extra dimensions and bizarre mathematical constructs, and it seems incredibly counter-intuitive (unless you're a string theorist.) Why would so many people take on a task that is extroardinarily difficult and counter-intuitive?
The fact that so many people do this IS indeed mysterious, if you consider the difficulty of the material alone. I find it very hard to believe that string theory will be an empty effort, considering its popularity.
During the late 19th century, classical mechanics was the most popular framework for explaining the universe. It was far from being "not even wrong", even though it was very incomplete. Anyone who worked on theories of phlogiston, for example, couldn't be taken seriously, because- well- there is no such thing as phlogiston!
Quantum mechanics refined classical mechanics, but it didn't entirely supplant it. (The two disciplines are related through the Correspondence Principle.) Some famous physicists, including Einstein himself, didn't like it. They thought it was ugly and counter-intuitive. But Einstein had actually won the Nobel Prize in 1921 for the photoelectric effect, which... guess what... is a quantum phenomenon!
The critics of string theory think exactly the same way. They think it's ugly and counter-intuitive. These physicists are very intelligent, and, like Einstein, many of them have worked on the theory that they criticize :) So why would they be against it?
I have to draw a conclusion from this, one that has several meanings:

STRING THEORY IS THE NEW QUANTUM MECHANICS.

Navigating Physics

2006-09-03T22:57:00.000-04:00

There are two extraordinarily popular blogs that have made a tremendous impact on theoretical physics. They are known as "Not Even Wrong" and "Lubos Motl's Reference Frame."
"Not Even Wrong" argues that string theory- a theory that requires extra dimensions and regards elementary particles as strings- is a theory of anything rather than a theory of everything. Because it cannot be experimentally verified, it may be a trap for theoretical physicists... at least according to Dr. Peter Woit, a professor in Columbia University's math department.
"Lubos Motl's Reference Frame" takes the opposite point of view and states that string theory is- by far- the best candidate for a Grand Unified Theory. (A Grand Unified Theory is one that will unite general relativity and quantum mechanics, and thus all four forces of nature.) While experimental verification of the theory is unlikely, string theory is a very popular development, far more popular than its alternatives.
To someone not well-versed in physics, the concepts discussed in these blogs look like gibberish. This is exactly why so many crackpots post off-topic comments on "Not Even Wrong" and the "Reference Frame." These comments are extremely dangerous because they are nothing more than empty attacks. Most of them are made by people who know nothing about science and who just want to see great physicists get angry.
Unfortunately, a lot of these comments do nothing more than criticize Lubos Motl, who is a professor of physics at Harvard. They usually do not criticize him for developing string theory (rather than loop quantum gravity or other alternative theories); they criticize him for his political views.
For example, Dr. Motl believes that most women have little interest in math and science. Well, that's true. Of course, the same could be said of most men. (How many people- of either gender- were in your high school calculus class?) I know a lot of men who can barely add, let alone take a triple integral to find the volume of a sphere. Why is this belief so controversial, even though it's true?
Why is string theory so controversial, if so many famous physicists are trying to develop it?
There are no definite answers as of yet. This blogger is determined to find them.
It might turn out that string theory won't be the final theory. But it will certainly take many, many years for alternative theories to make as much progress (or gather as many followers) as string theory has. Both string theory and loop quantum gravity have created new mathematical ideas that will undoubtedly prove useful to other physicists and mathematicians, so everyone is benefiting.
Mensa is holding a cosmology colloquium from October 6-8. You can find it here: www.colloquium.us.mensa.org
I have already signed up to go to it. This colloquium will allow physicists (and physics students like myself) to see everything that is going on. Both loop quantum gravity and string theory will be represented, so no one will go away unsatisfied.