Genius or Crackpot?

[Dave2042 (Dave)]

Fascinating article today in the Guardian.

Summary:

Mathematician claims to have a new theory weaving Relativity and the Standard Model together into a coherent new model.

On the plus side:

• Some credible people think he's on the right track
• He is intending to publish it properly
• It supposedly makes concrete testable predictions
• He has a credible academic background followed by a respectable commercial career

On the negative side:

• Some credible people think he's not on the right track
• Most people claiming this kind of thing turn out to be wrong at best, or crackpots at worst
• He hasn't actually published it yet
• His limited academic background was followed by a career in finance

Will be interesting either way.

Link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/20...ysics-problems

[Draco (Draco)]

Nice read.. guess one thing that works for him really well is his name. Weinstein .. would be nice if someone changes our view of the universe and topples all the foundations that have been laid so far. will make things really interesting and open possibilities that we have only dreamed about.

[rustigsmed (Russell)]

thanks for the link Dave, a nice read, although in parts feels like its written by a politician's spin doctor (too harsh?).

is this right?

"There have already been feelings within the physics community that the Higgs boson we are seeing in the LHC might not be quite what we think it is. Weinstein's perspective might help us articulate what it is we are actually seeing."

its the first i've heard about it, although i haven't heard much on it since the first few months since the announcement.

I do hope that a unified theory comes to the fore in my lifetime.

cheers

[Dave2042 (Dave)]

Originally Posted by rustigsmed

thanks for the link Dave, a nice read, although in parts feels like its written by a politician's spin doctor (too harsh?).

is this right?

"There have already been feelings within the physics community that the Higgs boson we are seeing in the LHC might not be quite what we think it is. Weinstein's perspective might help us articulate what it is we are actually seeing."

its the first i've heard about it, although i haven't heard much on it since the first few months since the announcement.

I do hope that a unified theory comes to the fore in my lifetime.

cheers

That's exactly the kind of thing that sets off alarm bells for me. Now it's 20 years since I was even a junior 'member of the physics community', but I had the distinct impression that the general feeling was simply that the Higgs had been found more or less as expected. It does sound very 'spinny'.

[multiweb (Marc)]

There's an emoticon for that... hang on a sec.... got it!

[bojan]

This is another attempt, also looks credible:
http://arxiv.org/abs/1303.1782v2

There will be colloquium at Monash:

*********************************** ****

Please note the following particle physics seminar next week - all welcome!


Thursday May 30th at 1 pm in 27/208.

The unification of all fundamental forces: A spectral approach.
Shane Farnsworth

Perimeter Institute

One major outstanding quest of modern day physics is the complete unification of all known forces. In this talk I will describe one possible approach to unification: that of ‘Non-commutative Geometry’, in which all forces are described as resulting from gravitational interactions on a ‘non-commutative’ space-time. Using this approach it is indeed possible to describe Einstein gravity coupled to the standard particle model in all of its detail. The ultimate goal of the talk is to introduce my own research, in which Non-Commutative geometry is extended to describe non-associative spacetimes. arXiv:1303.1782v2

[sjastro]

I don't consider Weinstein to being a crackpot.

Although the article doesn't go into detail about Weinstein's work, it appears Weinstein is working within mainstream concepts.
Since the 1930s physicists have been using mathematical symmetry to come up with various scientific theories.
The most spectacular was the development of QE (quantum electrodynamics) in 1940s -1950s which is part of the Standard Model. A technological outcome of QE is the development of the microprocessor.

It should be noted the article was written by a mathematician Marcus Du Sautoy and it clearly shows.
Mathematicians have never liked the theory behind the Higgs boson claiming it is ad-hoc and not mathematically rigorous.
While many physicists were popping the champagne bottles on discovering the Higgs boson there were a few that were disappointed on the basis the theory didn't seem right.

Regards

Steven

[Dave2042 (Dave)]

Originally Posted by sjastro

I don't consider Weinstein to being a crackpot.

Although the article doesn't go into detail about Weinstein's work, it appears Weinstein is working within mainstream concepts.
Since the 1930s physicists have been using mathematical symmetry to come up with various scientific theories.
The most spectacular was the development of QE (quantum electrodynamics) in 1940s -1950s which is part of the Standard Model. A technological outcome of QE is the development of the microprocessor.

It should be noted the article was written by a mathematician Marcus Du Sautoy and it clearly shows.
Mathematicians have never liked the theory behind the Higgs boson claiming it is ad-hoc and not mathematically rigorous.
While many physicists were popping the champagne bottles on discovering the Higgs boson there were a few that were disappointed on the basis the theory didn't seem right.

Regards

Steven

Sounds fair enough. To be clear, I was not suggesting I thought he was a crackpot - more that my maths and physics are not at a level to be able to tell.

[sjastro]

An interesting response from a cosmologist on Weinstein in NewScientist.

If he is genius or crackpot could depend on whether the comment is made by a mathematician or a physicist.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/...y-nothing.html

Regards

Steven

[multiweb (Marc)]

This is certainly to be very interesting in the months to come when it goes through the proper channels, peer reviews, etc... . Is this the next big thing?

[sjastro]

Originally Posted by multiweb

This is certainly to be very interesting in the months to come when it goes through the proper channels, peer reviews, etc... . Is this the next big thing?

Not a good start as the Science community has been put offside.

Did you read the comment from this "Einstein".

Weinstein's theory of everything is wrong because it is based on mathematics. Mathematicians are effeminate:

Sometimes the comments make more interesting reading.

Steven

[multiweb (Marc)]

Weinstein's theory of everything is wrong because it is based on mathematics. Mathematicians are effeminate

wtf? Effeminate? They got the wrong guy. Brian Cox is a physicist...
All this because all the particle physicists were in the room next door when the talk happened and they couldn't be in two places at the same time.
Still everybody's going to talk about it and have an opinion now it's in the open.

[Shiraz (Ray)]

another take on it.

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/...e-been-played/

Nobody is disputing the work itself because it seems that few (only two maybe?) people are fully aware of what it is.

ps I love the picture of the skeptical cat

[Dave2042 (Dave)]

Originally Posted by Shiraz

another take on it.

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/...e-been-played/

Nobody is disputing the work itself because it seems that few (only two maybe?) people are fully aware of what it is.

ps I love the picture of the skeptical cat

I think this article sets out the 'issues' quite well. It might turn out to be legit and important, but it's certainly giving off a funny smell at the moment.

[Dave2042 (Dave)]

Originally Posted by sjastro

An interesting response from a cosmologist on Weinstein in NewScientist.

If he is genius or crackpot could depend on whether the comment is made by a mathematician or a physicist.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/...y-nothing.html

Regards

Steven

This seems a good example of a strange separation between mathematicians and physicists. For no good reason I can see, they seem to not interact terribly much. I remember lecturers discussing this phenomenon at university.

I particularly remember a lunchtime talk I attended at the School of Physics. They had invited a researcher from the School of Maths (Applied) to talk about his work, which was developing a detailed model of stellar oscillations. The thing that struck me was that what he was doing was very obviously astrophysics, however I'd never heard of him or any of his colleagues, the physicists clearly thought it was a very big deal to invite him, and nothing like it ever happened again.