Arcadian Functor

occasional meanderings in physics' brave new world

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Marni D. Sheppeard

Sunday, October 25, 2009

ViXra Video

Thanks to Phil Gibbs for his video on the String Wars. Make sure you watch it right to the end.

9 Comments:

Anonymous Richard Collins said...

Thanks Kea, this is fun. It would be nice to know if someone comes up with a transcript, or makes the text available in some way.

October 26, 2009 9:24 PM  
Anonymous PhilG said...

I have posted the transcript at hyperdeterminacy

October 27, 2009 4:52 AM  
Anonymous Richard Collins said...

thank Phil. Its been a long long time since I was doing undergraduate physics, and its been fun trying to keep up with the deelopments over the decades. One of the reasons I hang around here! Your video seemed to be a nice entertaining summary of some of whats going on these days, so i figured it could be good to have the opportunity to read it through. well done and thanks again.

October 27, 2009 9:44 PM  
Anonymous PhilG said...

Richard, I am glad you liked the video. Of course the style is humor so dont take the physics details too seriously. There is a serious message but it actually says more about what is NOT going on these days than what is. Due to sociological conditions in the physics world there are very few people who now think there could be a strong connection between LQG and string theory as suggested in this video. Anybody who thought along such lines these days would be pushed out of academia and ignored. I fear it may take a few generations of physicists before that changes and we see much progress in quantum gravity, unless some outsider comes up with something. In the meantime the LHC and cosmology will provide new observations to keep fundamental physics moving and who knows where it will lead.

October 28, 2009 8:55 PM  
Blogger Kea said...

PhilG, that is not quite true. There are people in Math Phys and Quantum Gravity who write papers 'in between' strings and LQG. Of course, these papers investigate mathematical structures, and have nothing controversial to say about real physics. Still, there are young people working in promising directions, and I think that things are starting to work out.

Many more people like us will doubtless be slaughtered first ... but progress is progress, and truth is truth.

October 28, 2009 9:28 PM  
Anonymous PhilG said...

I agree that there are plenty of poeple having good ideas and making progress, but whenever I notice them they seem to quietly disappear after a while like dissidents in a police state, never to be heard from again. (Actually it is not that sinister, you will find them safe on Wall Street)

Soemone needs to look at the big picture and help fit these ideas in so that the young people can keep working on them.

October 29, 2009 12:59 AM  
Blogger Kea said...

Phil, it IS a police state ... and like in all police states, the Decent Citizens believe they live in a good and great country. They are brainwashed into thinking that when certain obnoxious individuals disappear ... that that is all OK ... that it's all for the best, to remove their disruptive influence.

October 29, 2009 10:11 AM  
Anonymous PhilG said...

The rebel resistance grows stronger...

October 29, 2009 9:23 PM  
Anonymous PhilG said...

By the way. viXra submissions are on the increase and I have added a discussion feature to the abstracts pages (by popular request)

October 29, 2009 10:19 PM  

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