Visions of Future Physics

https://www.quantamagazine.org/20150922-nima-arkani-hamed-collider-physics/#top

by Bootvis • 11 years ago

38 22 11 years ago

rubidium• 11 years ago

The naturalness questions seems outside the realm of importance for physics and over-hyped by this article (and perhaps by Arkani-Hamed).

A much more sober approach was put forth by David Gross in the article "And Gross, who considers naturalness a murky concept, simply wants a last-ditch search for new physics. “We need more hints from nature,” he said. “She’s got to tell us where to go.”

This is the reality of particle physics right now: we have a theory that works for pretty much all the measurements we've made, but it's not particularly elegant. There are big questions certainly (like dark matter) but we have no particle physics data to really study there. Particle physicists like elegant theories (b/c they learned and loved Maxwells equations) and therefore aren't satisfied with correct physics.

pcmaffey• 11 years ago

Seems like the question of naturalness or "knowability" speaks more to the nature and limits of the human mind than of the universe itself.

Definitely agree with Gross. It's why the loss of species, destruction of our environment, etc--replaced with mechanisms that are a reflection of ourselves--is all so disturbing. We are depriving ourselves of the potential to learn from the unique diverse world around us.

jsprogrammer• 11 years ago

Seems like the question of naturalness or "knowability" speaks more to the nature and limits of the human mind than of the universe itself.

Certainly, the apparent fact that we can only know our own perceptions (images of observations) severely limits what we can know about the larger universe that may contain our perceptions. It would be foolish to believe that you know the ultimate reality; we already know that it is impossible to know since we can only ever access perceptions of the projections of "reality". Either all that exists is our perceptions, or we can never know the ultimate reality.

JabavuAdams3• 11 years ago

How likely is a plan to build a new accelerator, over 30 years, to succeed?

If we look at the technological changes of the preceding 30 years, anything we started in 1985 and finished in 2015 would likely be eclipsed by modern capabilities.

Should I work on Physics, or General AI, or IA? It seems that GAI or IA solve the other two.

mariusz794• 11 years ago

And how will GAI solve physics? AI is not god.

adwn3• 11 years ago

Indeed. This is a common fallacy among believers of bootstrapping, superintelligent AI: In order to understand and master the real world (and humans, for that matter), you first have to interact with the real world – i.e., you have to run experiments. Thinking really, really hard about a physical problem will not solve that problem. Ancient philosophers tried it, without much success.[1]

[1] e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristotelian_physics

T-A• 11 years ago

Here is the timeline of the largest accelerator ever built to date: http://timeline.web.cern.ch/timelines/The-Large-Hadron-Colli... Approved in 1994, completed in 2008, only recently ramped up to full design energy. And that does not include the many years of planning and design which preceded it (it was being worked on already in the 80s).

Let's say you are 23 now and contemplating going to grad school to do particle physics. The hypothetical 100 TeV collider is not even at the stage the LHC was in the late 80s, but let's be very optimistic and assume that it will be ready to light up in only 25 years. You'll be 48 by then, and most likely long gone from academia (since there are next to no jobs). That should answer your question.

eli_gottlieb• 11 years ago

Should I work on Physics, or General AI, or IA? It seems that GAI or IA solve the other two.

Implying you're going to make single-handed advances on any of those things?

ixtli• 11 years ago

I'm pretty sure Nima was featured in the fantastic documentary Particle Fever ( http://particlefever.com/ )

astrodust• 11 years ago

He basically took over the movie, but not in a bad way. Very engaging.

qnaal• 11 years ago

fluid dynamics is hard, let's smash particles!

Visions of Future Physics

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