Prof. Peter Woit discusses string theory, its decline, and introduces his graviweak unification theory using Euclidean twistor in Euclidean spacetime.
TIMESTAMPS:
– 00:00:00 Introduction
– 00:00:00 String theory’s fundamental issues | Mathematicians’ challenges
– 00:02:20 Spacetime and twistor theory insights
– 00:20:00 Bundles & diffeomorphism groups
– 00:38:34 Spinors as a spacetime point
– 00:46:57 Dominance of string theory & Ed Witten’s influence
– 00:54:17 Quest for quantum gravity
– 01:03:22 String theory’s lack of predictive power
– 01:09:33 Machine learning meets theoretical physics
– 01:18:56 Personal attacks vs. intellectual debate
– 01:24:49 Mathematicians vs. Physicists | Academic silos
– 01:37:15 Developing a contrarian view & the origin of ‘Not Even Wrong’
– 01:40:54 Langlands & representation theory
– 01:48:51 Spacetime is NOT doomed
– 01:58:47 Sean Carroll’s crisis in physics (odd responses to criticism)
– 02:13:21 Differentiable structures by dimension
– 02:26:10 Gravi-weak unification & chirality
– 02:32:57 Chern-Simons theory
– 02:42:20 Gravity as torsion or curvature
– 02:50:07 Category theory in physics
– 02:56:43 Defining a fulfilling life
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– Subreddit r/TheoriesOfEverything: https://reddit.com/r/theoriesofeverything
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LINKS MENTIONED:
– Not Even Wrong (Peter Woit’s Blog): https://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress
– Not Even Wrong (Peter Woit’s Book): https://amzn.to/40NFeaK
– Spacetime is Right-Handed (Peter Woit’s Article): https://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/righthanded.pdf | https://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress
– Podcast w/ Edward Frankel: https://youtu.be/n_oPMcvHbAc
– The Elegant Universe (Brian Greene): https://amzn.to/3sNmk7x
– The Trouble With Physics (Lee Smolin): https://amzn.to/47lCCUj
– Podcast w/ Sabina Hossenfelder on TOE: https://youtu.be/walaNM7KiYA
– Podcast w/ Stephon Alexander Part 1: https://youtu.be/VETxb96a3qk
– Podcast w/ Stephon Alexander Λ Sal Pais: https://youtu.be/PE4C7OI7Frg
– Podcast w/ Eric Weinstein: https://youtu.be/KElq_MLO1kw
– Podcast w/ Stephen Wolfram Part 1: https://youtu.be/1sXrRc3Bhrs
– Podcast w/ Stephen Wolfram Part 2: https://youtu.be/xHPQ_oSsJgg
– Podcast w/ Jonathan Oppenheim: https://youtu.be/NKOd8imBa2s
22 Comments
1:35:00
we'll probably all die before another major breakthrough comparable to the standard model
In grad school in the late 1970s, looking at this stuff, I didn't for a split second think that in another four and a half decades, while lots of math has happened, no physics has!! Beyond 'just so' stories of fabled realms. I seem also to remember about the same time, Penrose's group was having difficulty getting actual testable numbers out of beautiful math. 'I think I'd better think it out again!' – Fagin, contemplating career change, in Oliver!, the musical.
One simple humble suggestion:
Leave alone the Einstein with its spaces (Minkovsky and all) and the Quantum Theory (which is so nice so far). What is the human nature greedy and desperate to unite everything into TOE??? Can’t these two entities go on together along without you trying mix it together as a rapist. Bringing benefits to humankind without your “super intelligent” interference.. Not to be offensive, just as a discussion..
R.I.P string theory! Relativity is next.
String theory is a religion, Witten is the high priest, and Kaku, Greene and Susskind his acolytes.
As a fun sidenote, I did a search on google for most prominent string theorists, and Google lined up Peter Woit as one of them hahaha(But if you click on it, it will highligt he is a critic.).
Interesting, I like that twisters are chiral, this has been one of those things that I have thought was wrong in theory – to find an issue with chirality, is an error in theory, theory needs to explain this. Supersymetry as well is in error, complexity is needed here. I have been wondering if twisters can be used to describe particles in a quantized gravity where gravity (Dirac's Large Number Hypothesis) is not the curvature (though this is a fine way to model it) of space but the inertial light-cone of a flat, open, unbounded holographic universe described as a resonant medium. The twister being a topological description of the history of the particle. Just a thought that has been hanging around in my grey matter.
I think that there is a difference between saying that "Spacetime" being doomed and what is Space and Time – Minkowski Spacetime is doomed, not space or time, they need to be defined better is all, Time is just the Change of what is in Space, space like matter are emergent properties of Mind (a Medium).
I like professor Woit, you can see him struggling not to get pulled down his own rabbit hole and failing as it draws him in. I cannot help but cheer him on to come out the other side into a new place. Order and chaos pulling him into their spiraling dance.
The crisis is not in physics but math, where behaviorally complex classical concepts such as point-like locations, limitless spaces, and rotations are extrapolated to their infinitely costly limits and treated as axioms. Try starting simpler than points and orthogonality.
The hydrodynamics of a thixotropic dielectric super fluid will evolve all QFT out of brownian motion.
Understand the fluid I describe, no I don't have Reynolds specifics, I don't have the tech to model it but in my mind and read the paper in my pinned Twitter
What a waste of time for physicists to spend all their effort at mathematical physics, but have no clue what spacetime is made of, no clue how to develop a spacetime technology like warp drive physics.
I wish there was a Donald Trump physicist who would fire all the string theorists.
Students will say we heard there's imagination about it? Remember turn your headlights On! For many gets lost in their own imagination! Remember not here to deny! But shared the OLIVER JAMITO BORN DECEMBER 29 1976 SIGNITURE! But HIERS and Angels who persevere knows commands given since…Heirs innocents little ones will say WHO ARE YE ALL? WHO LOVE WITH PATIENCE, MERCY, AND GRACE! OUR INNOCENTS LITTLE ONES THY I AM. Some will say why REVEALED THY NAME? Students, Hosts, and our Beautiful will say "EVEN A NAME CAN'T EXIST "! IF THE TRUE OWNER COMES UNTO THEE ALL! THE OLIVE…WILL SAY "WHO ARE YOU"? Innocents little ones carrying MANY "NAMES"! YET…. who ENVY? WILL SAY who is this little child "i" 1k in HIS account? Don't say a word! Let ALL NOISES TO COME FORTH! What is anxious? Students will say same with these principalities same minds. Who am I from once born, to crawling, to walking, and TILL NOW THY FEET RESTING UPON WITH WHO'S FEET? Students what is WHO? Thy
I love P. Woit's podcasts and lectures. He gives off a real OG vibe. This guys respects his own work and himself, plus he's a big brain! A real leader of humanity.
I come as a thief some will say which all Indeed will say!
An astute, politically correct, toe-the-line, honest state of physics discussion.
I know many named in this discussion will soon clarify their stances.
Sitting upon the NEW Table made from a hand without blood stains upon HIS hand. Given ABLE! KNOWS BELONGS? AS TIME GIVEN WILL ACCOMPLISH AS INTENDED. Is like touch THY "FEET"! TAKE CARE OF "MY FEET"! Don't MIND THE "RAT TO MANY"! FOR THEM! Students will say comes with comfort and to remind. Comes with Rest! Rest while moving forward…what is digital? Students, Hosts, and our Beautiful don't say a WORD. LET ALL NOISES TO COME FORTH. TILL..EVEN WANTS TO CREATE SPACESHIP! INTENT BECAME MANY "INTENTIONS"?
Have Woit debate Michio Kaku, co-founder of string theory, who is still an unabashed salesman for it.
Great and interesting conversation. Curt, you are doing good work.
15:43 sounds like you have to put yourself on the field you are searching in order to decide which way a spinner is moving from your position. If your position is lower than the other guy working in your department, then you have to decide if the position others have compared to your own is either more or less. This way, you will decide which ones will most likely effect the inside of your position and which one will most likely effect the outside of your position. Finally you will only be interested in observing one spin pattern at a time. 🤔 I know its not exactly the conventional approach for thinking about that tiny particle size spinner.
24:25 yay the lattice! I spose it makes sense not to put spinners on the lattice if your not even on the field as a position.
I am a proponent of string theory, but as with Eric Weinstein's theory, I think Peter Woit's specific proposals deserve more engagement than they are receiving – both critical and creative engagement.
One thing that's unclear to me, is his approach to particle statistics. In "Euclidean Twistor Unification", he says he finds something with the same transformation properties as a generation of standard model fermions, but the degrees of freedom in question would appear to be bosonic. It seems to me he'd need his twistors to be supertwistors, to actually get a fermionic generation in this way… And then, in the latest paper ("Space-time is Right-handed"), he says the usual Euclidean continuation of spinor fields is doubled (chirally symmetric), then you take the diagonal, while he proposes a chirally asymmetric version. But doesn't all that refer to fermions? Whereas he's talking about constructing general relativity from bosonic spinors.
Unfortunately I am, myself, guilty of only spending a short amount of time with these papers. So these questions come from a somewhat superficial reading. If I had more time, I'd try to answer these questions for myself…
Another intriguing thing, is that Peter Scholze informed him about the use of twistor-like vector bundles in number theory. I see how this came about – "Not Even Wrong" focuses on string theory, but also has many posts on Mochizuki's claimed proof of the abc conjecture, regarding which Scholze has become the leading critic. Peter Woit certainly takes Peter Scholze's side (which also seems to be the side of the majority of western number theorists)… The ironic thing is that some of Mochizuki's technical concepts are analogous to concepts in string theory, speicifically the "arithmetic Teichmuller space" which describes the deformation of number systems, just as usual Teichmuller space describes string histories of a given topology. The mathematician Kirti Joshi could say more about this analogy.
Query: Hi Curt. Can you ask Mr Peter "Do electrons exist?" 😊😊
Jokes apart
The real question is….
When we are thinking of Electrons as Spinors in Euclidian space, do we have to assume existence of the electrons… Do we have to assume that they have a specific location at a time? Do we then have to necessarily assume that Quantum superposition or uncertainty principles have a loop hole or are flawed?
When we are talking about right handed or left handed electrons, are we assuming their existence at a location with coordinates?
What are the Spinors or Twistors made of? (I think you asked this question in the video.) Are they made up of bent or twisted space?
Do we have to assume fixed time of Euclidean space or variable space time of Minkowski's space?
I assume the answer to all of these is yes. That we assume they exist and have a location. And we need Euclidean fixed time fixed time.
As a lay person, not actively engaged in physics research, I saw an animation of a spinor that is commonly available in Wikipedia. It shows a sphere with multiple wire-like cylindrical things projecting spirally outwards towards infinity and attached outwards with the sphere spinning around and thus coming back to original location after two turns instead of one, like the Dirac's belt trick. I am not sure if that is a representative but I assume it is close.
What is this sphere made of and what are these cylindrical projections made up of? Are they just mathematical alone or do they exist in reality representing the topology of space?
Do they represent bent twisted space?
Are they really moving? Are they moving outwards, I.e. Changing location (like rays of light emanating from the Sun)
Do they have anything to do with electric Flux or magnetic flux? Do they hv anything to do with electric or magnetic field?
What is the status of time within these cylindrical projections?
Can these movements of cylindrical projections reverberate back and forth between two extremes giving rise to something like a vibrating twisted actively moving space (preferably not space-time)….
If we assume that they do represent twisted moving reverberating space (/space-time) and their twists depend on multiple factors, each factor representing a dimension or a variable or a co ordinate, do they not look like strings vibrating in higher dimensions?
You may have got a feeling I kind of know answers to all these questions and I am trying to thrust my TOE.
No I am not. (Although my TOE, the DGR, does attempt to kind-of answer these questions.
Rohit Kale