Fashion, Faith, and Fantasy in the New Physics of the Universe
S omething is rotten in the state of physics. In spite of all the smug talk about the amazingly authentic predictions made by modern models of the most primal forces, things go terribly awry if these theories are used to estimate the free energy of empty space. A perfectly reasonable back-of-an-envelope calculation that theoreticians take been making for decades overestimates the observed energy by no less than a trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion. This may be the most inaccurate estimate made by conventional theories in the entire history of scientific discipline.
The eminent mathematician and physicist Roger Penrose identifies several possible sources of the rot. Style, Organized religion and Fantasy in the New Physics of the Universe is based on a series of lectures with the same title that he gave 13 years agone in Princeton. With his usual modesty, he tells u.s.a. that he was "apprehensive" about presenting his nonconformist ideas there, as that New Jersey town is home to several of the world'southward leading theoreticians, many of whom are unsympathetic to his perspective. Some of these leading physicists are amongst the pioneers of string theory, the merely candidate for a unified and primal clarification of nature at the deepest level. This fashionable and mathematically cute theory has attracted a global following over the past three decades, but has however to make a prediction that has been verified by experiment.
String theory is the focus of Penrose'south start affiliate. He begins by reminding us of kindergarten scientific discipline, before putting his foot firmly on the accelerator. A little over a hundred pages later on, we are contemplating "branes", the exotic entities that may exist in the deeply subnuclear earth, and pondering whether the mathematical forms of nature's laws accept something called "supersymmetry", which has not shown its face up in the most recent experiments at Cern's Big Hadron Collider, to the great thwarting of many physicists. Readers who are allergic to mathematical symbols and equations might need a stiff drinkable to tackle this, though it is clear that Penrose does not expect us to follow the technical details – it is possible to glide past the hieroglyphics and still learn enough about parts of modern fundamental physics to qualify as 1 of its better-informed refuseniks.
The feature of conventional cord theory that most irks Penrose is its framework: it cannot exist gear up out in the usual iv dimensions of infinite and fourth dimension merely merely in higher dimensions. In his view, these college dimensions are implausible and give excessive "functional freedom" to its mathematical developers. Very few string specialists agree with him, simply he is not one to be intimidated past an overwhelming majority, no affair how illustrious and vocal it is. He sets out his objections politely and with exemplary patience towards the keepers of physics orthodoxy.
String theory is based partly on breakthrough theory, which was starting time presented nearly 90 years agone to describe the diminutive and subatomic and is the most accurately tested theory in the history of science. Although Penrose admires the theory, he worries that some of his colleagues misuse it by applying it beyond its originally intended domain. He takes issue with the commodity of organized religion "that all the phenomena of nature must adhere to information technology" particularly when "this principle of religion is applied to everyday experience". This is probably the least controversial of Penrose'south fears near the direction of modern physics. Some aspects of quantum theory disturb many leading experts, though their principal concerns are not the ones Penrose sets out here.
He is even more unhappy almost the country of modern cosmology, the scientific discipline of the origin and development of the universe. He was one of the subject's great pioneers in the 1960s, when he and others – notably Stephen Hawking – practical relativity theory to black holes, objects and then dense that not fifty-fifty light tin escape them. Only he has since get increasingly mistrustful of the way his peers have practical relativity and quantum theory to the cosmos. He rejects many of the widely accepted ideas in mod cosmology equally "fantasy", especially the theory that the universe very briefly inflated at an increasingly rapid rate before settling down to a slower rate of expansion. Although the basic thought and many of its offspring have survived some observational tests, Penrose is having none of information technology. The theory is utterly implausible, he says, like many other modernistic cosmological ideas that still look direct observational confirmation.
No doubt wanting to end on a positive note, Penrose concludes with several constructive suggestions for the fashion frontward. Foremost amongst them is his theory of "twistors", mathematical objects that he invented (or discovered?) virtually half a century ago. "My baby," as he touchingly describes the theory, has never entered mainstream physics, and he is plainly frustrated that then few physicists have engaged with the bones ideas, although they are widely admired for their ingenuity.
In an amusing twist of fate, while Penrose was in delivering his talks in Princeton in 2003, the town's pre-eminent luminary of string theory, Edward Witten, was completing a new version of cord theory that featured twistors. Penrose's "infant" suddenly became fashionable and, through developments of Witten'south theory and Penrose's original ideas, led to deep new quantum insights into how cardinal particles scatter off each other. These and other successes that stemmed from string theory seem to cutting footling ice with Penrose, for whom the whole edifice appears simply fantastical.
Information technology seems from Faith, Style and Fantasy that Penrose has not felt comfortable with whatsoever of the radical new ideas in primal physics that take been set out in the past 40 years. I suspect that near leading research physicists will refuse Penrose's criticisms of the country of physics, and that they will empathize with the distinguished Stanford Academy theorist Leonard Susskind, who told Penrose after attending one of his lectures on string theory: "You are quite correct, of course, but totally misguided." For the urbane Penrose, comments like that fall like water off a duck'south dorsum and he appears content to be semi-detached from the mainstream. Fourth dimension will tell whether any of his judgments are right. In the concurrently, his critics would do well to remember George Bernard Shaw'southward warning: "The minority is sometimes right; the majority is always incorrect."
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