Summer is Here II
David Gross's closing talk for Strings 07 is now available at the Strings 07 blog. It's a great talk. He criticises the Landscape by simply pointing out that the solution might not be a vacuum but rather a new kind of cosmology. He did not speculate at all on what this cosmology might look like, but referred to a wonderful poem in which all the people (observers) hide from their universe in a game of hide and seek.
This is a beautiful image. Gross points out that the so-called Dark Energy might represent some balance between observers and their universe. In M Theory the Dark Energy is replaced by a tower of quantizations, and the balance principle swims throughout the categorical heirarchy in a web of n-alities that stretch across a cosmos of possible observations.
Presumably 20th century human observations are a very limited class of observation types. Only in 1897 did J. J. Thomson find that the electron was a subatomic particle, and the neutron was not discovered until 1932. The particle zoo of the Standard Model accounts for everything we know how to look at, but that doesn't seem to be very much. Wouldn't it be nice to see dark matter, other than gravitationally? What other quantum numbers can we attach to it then? If they exist, they arise from the heirarchy, from outside the realm of the forces we know. And if we do get to see something more, we are no longer what we were, and our universe can smile and offer us that cup of tea.
This is a beautiful image. Gross points out that the so-called Dark Energy might represent some balance between observers and their universe. In M Theory the Dark Energy is replaced by a tower of quantizations, and the balance principle swims throughout the categorical heirarchy in a web of n-alities that stretch across a cosmos of possible observations.
Presumably 20th century human observations are a very limited class of observation types. Only in 1897 did J. J. Thomson find that the electron was a subatomic particle, and the neutron was not discovered until 1932. The particle zoo of the Standard Model accounts for everything we know how to look at, but that doesn't seem to be very much. Wouldn't it be nice to see dark matter, other than gravitationally? What other quantum numbers can we attach to it then? If they exist, they arise from the heirarchy, from outside the realm of the forces we know. And if we do get to see something more, we are no longer what we were, and our universe can smile and offer us that cup of tea.
posted by Kea | 3:35 PM
2 Comments:
It seems that TGD ideas about dark matter and cosmology are slowly diffusing to the general consciousness. I bet that within year or two New Scientist tells about some brave thoretical physicist from US conjecturing that dark matter is responsible for the special properties of living matter;-)!
Hi Matti. I agree that the public consciousness is changing in an interesting way. People have fast access now to ideas coming from all areas of academia, and they are keen to see where cross-fertilisation takes us.
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