The big event of the moment in physics, at least on the high energy/ theory side, is the Strings 2006 meeting in Beijing, which will feature the usual suspects talking about the usual topics in string theory. This comes on the heels of the SUSY06 meeting, which was extensively blogged by Clifford and others.
This would probably be a good time to post a long entry about how string theory is all a bunch of crap, as that’s been a reliable way to generate traffic in the past, but I just don’t really have the heart for it. From my outsider’s perspective, the big issues seem to be exactly the same as they were when I last wrote about them back in January or whatever, and any alleged “discussion” of these topics seems to involve the same people shouting the same slogans at one another, with no actual intellectual engagement to be found.
I could cynically attempt to exploit this for personal gain (some might say that’s what this post is doing), but I’m really not that interested. I don’t really have a dog in this fight (other than finding the behavior of a certain subset of string theorists to be absolutely reprehensible), and I don’t really see the “landscape” issue as being worth the investment of emotional energy that others do.
But, I wouldn’t be much of a physics blogger if I didn’t at least mention that the meeting is happening, so if you’re interested, go take a look at the meeting, or check out the blogs commenting on it at Mixed States. Or, if you’re a contrarian sort, go hang out with Peter Woit, or go send Christine Dantas some good vibes.
Update:: Sean Carroll hasn’t lost interest, and has a nice post about the past and present of string theory.
Hello Chad: At least they get a trip to China. All the arguing over Silly String is fascinating to watch. If one does not believe, then people devoting careers to Strings removes them from the competition to discover something really useful. (Disclaimer: I took Theoretical Physics from Lenny Susskind an he gave me an A)
My Chinese travels described this week revealed a vibrant society hungry for new science, especially energy. If one of these theorists can sell the Chinese a new source of energy, then funding will not be a problem. Any ideas out there?
Does anyone still believe the RHIC fireball was a micro black hole? I read that some of the constants were oversimplified, but I haven’t been able to locate a response to the criticism.
No one ever claimed that the RHIC fireball was a black hole. What was claimed was that one could do a calculation involving a black hole in five dimensions and interpret that result as saying something about the RHIC results. (This is the essence of dualities where one can interpret the results of one theory as a different set of results about another seemingly different theory.
1. No, there were claims for creating black holes at RHIC, e.g. http://www.bnl.gov/rhic/black_holes.htm. It’s just that they turned out to be “the sky is falling” type things (there’s a better reference on the arxiv but I can’t remember it right now). This is completely separate from AdS/CFT.
2. Chad: Blog about whatever the !@#$ you like. You’re my favorite ScienceBlogger and it’s what I like about you. 10^{500} my behind.
String yawn: A research program zombifies when it stops attracting bright fresh idealists. Hate is not antithesis of love – indifference is.
As you say, before RHIC turned on, there were worries about it doing all sorts of bad things including creating a black hole. The only claim I know of that a black whole was actually created, however, was a misinterpretation of Nastase’s work which is what I thought the original poster was referring to.
Since it’s come up here, can anybody point to a decent (and reasonably accessible) summary of what’s been going on with RHIC? The early results I heard sounded really fascinating, but if there’s been any follow-up, it’s sort of been lost in the “Won’t LHC be cool?” hype.
There’s actually quite a bit going on at RHIC. In general, they’ve decided that it’s a strongly-interacting quark-gluon liquid, and they’re interested in probing the properties of that liquid.
I think right now they’re doing “spin-physics” – looking at polarized p-p collisions. There was talk about RHIC II, and using cooling to increase the energy, etc., but I think the funding for that is very up in the air. There’s also an interesting idea to go down in energies, to look for the critical point in the quark-hadron phase diagram. This last point is especially interesting for the lattice people, who have been madly trying to compute where the critical point is.
Then again, there are a fair number of people moving to the LHC…
This is all probably mostly correct…but I’m not necessarily completely up to date…