Quantum Gravity found?

Cthulhu-chan · Post by **Cthulhu-chan** » 2002-11-26 09:36pm

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articl ... DF&catID=2

I think it's great that they may have found a way to resolve general relativity with quantum theory, but I think it would be premature to stop investigation on M-theory.

Comments?

data_link · Post by **data_link** » 2002-11-26 10:21pm

<Spock>Fascinating</Spock>

Exonerate · Post by **Exonerate** » 2002-11-26 10:35pm

Did anybody here actually understand more than half of the article?

data_link · Post by **data_link** » 2002-11-26 10:46pm

Exonerate wrote:Did anybody here actually understand more than half of the article?

Yeah, I understood most of it. What's really annoying about writing popular articles about theoretical physics is that it's impossible to understand it without looking at the math, but they can't publish the math because it's too complicated for the general public to understand. So, you get a general description of the nearest intuitive equivalent of the theory, even though that doesn't work because intuition has never been valid on the quantum level, so no one understands the article because it doesn't flow logically. But because people don't understand it, they give up on understanding becuase they develop the impression that only a few elite people are physically capable of understanding. That leads to fewer people studying science and more people who "understand" science only through faith because they don't try to analyze it independently. That leads to the impression that science is like any other religion which gives fundies an excuse to say their beliefs are just as valid which leads to people thinking creationism isn't utter bullshit, and so on.

Conclusion: Attempts by scientists to explain what they are doing to people too lazy to study the math are responsible for fundamentalism.

Cthulhu-chan · Post by **Cthulhu-chan** » 2002-11-26 10:51pm

HEATHEN!!! *squeaky mallet to the head* If your going to use a scapegoat, use the educational institutions for allowing people to be lazy about math and science in the first place! At least that way there is a possible solution.

Post by **Sea Skimmer** » 2002-11-26 10:51pm

Exonerate wrote:Did anybody here actually understand more than half of the article?

Think I got around 60%..

data_link · Post by **data_link** » 2002-11-26 11:17pm

Cthulhu-chan wrote:HEATHEN!!! *squeaky mallet to the head* If your going to use a scapegoat, use the educational institutions for allowing people to be lazy about math and science in the first place! At least that way there is a possible solution.

Who says I'm scapegoating? While this isn't exactly the most serious theory I've published (indeed, it relies on a series of reasoning that resembles a slippery slope fallacy), there is indeed a huge problem with people who try to "dumb down" their theories for people who don't understand the math, because without an understanding of the methods involved, any version of the theory essentially becomes a nice little strawman for fundies to strike down. And of course, since the articles don't even make sense to the average person anyway (the average person being too stupid and/or lazy to put it together), they end up believing that the fundie's rebuttals have validity. So yes, dumbing down your theories for the general public really does enable fundamentalism.

Further, this suggests an easy-to-implement solution (as the only people whose cooperation we need are scientists; we don't need to bribe the politicians). Simply don't publish theories without the math. Period. In fact, make sure that you explain as much as possible through the math. If you feel it nessecary to market to a younger/less educated market, explain the math as you feed it to them. This will have the added advantage of being able to use any science book as a math textbook. Not only will this force people trying to refute scientists' work to actually understand it first and increase the accuracy of available scientific texts, but it will also create a much more obvious distinction between scientific and pseudoscientific books, thus making it harder to pass off that bullshit as real science.

GrandMasterTerwynn · Post by **GrandMasterTerwynn** » 2002-11-26 11:44pm

Exonerate wrote:Did anybody here actually understand more than half of the article?

It's reasonably straightforward . . . well as straightforward as theoretical physics can get. But it is interesting, to say the least.

Cthulhu-chan · Post by **Cthulhu-chan** » 2002-11-26 11:54pm

T DATA_LINK:

Er, well, uhh... pfft. Well just take the wind out of my sails, why dontcha?

There is really only a couple problems I see with this.

Firstly, a book just trying to explain the concepts in a particular theory can get pretty big. If you include all the math behind it, as well as explaining the math itself, they would balloon to horrendous sizes. Not only that, but at what point in mathmatics do you start/stop? Calculus? Pre-calc? Trig? Algebra? Moreover, are all "layman's" books going to do this? That's all well and good with scholastic texts, since the material can be broken up according to schooling level without having to retread ground every time, but it would end up being a whole lot of filler for other materials.

Secondly, well it's more of a complaint against the ingnorance of the general populace, really. All that math will scare off the Joe Public with a minor interest in science. The people want something easy to digest, not a math lesson. Bah.

Anywho, your idea has definite merit, but it doesn't address the root of the problem, the atrocious academic standards in the U.S.

data_link · Post by **data_link** » 2002-11-27 12:11am

The U.S. has academic standards?

Where?

And you're right, implementing this idea would be very difficult economically if only for the sole reason that book sales tend to be inversely proportional to the number of equations in the book. While it might work if we could somehow get every single scientist on Earth to disregard personal economic benefit for the greater good, I'm sure you can remember what happened to the last theory that required such perfect cooperation to implement. (Hint: it was communism)

Anyhoo, I suppose this is where I go off into the little fantasy of "if someone could make it work, that would be great." See ya.

Cthulhu-chan · Post by **Cthulhu-chan** » 2002-11-27 12:42am

Wha... Hey! Wait for me! Don't leave me here! NOOOOOooooo....!

Post by **Mr Bean** » 2002-11-27 08:30am

Intresting... However it still does not get to the basies of sub-atomic particulars and the paritcular problems they represent to this theroy, I'd be intrested to read the follow up

Warspite · Post by **Warspite** » 2002-11-27 10:18am

Very interesting... I understood most of the article, although spin networks are still a little bit fuzzy. (No wonder, mathematical abstractions is a realm few dare to enter unprepared)
Basically, what the article say is that the Schrodinger's cat can be a horse from someone else's point of view! And we still don't know if he's alive or not.

The problem with all these unifying theories is that they're all still too complex and abstract, to implement in any useful way.

If anybody is interested to dwell in the Markopoulou's article, go here: http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/gr-qc/9712067. It's downloadable in several formats.
Also, a search in Google with the key words: loop quantumngravity spin networks, yields a lot of sites eplaining this theories, and since they come from universities, most of them are in mathematicalese.