Roger Penrose: Fashion, Faith and Fantasy in the New Physics of the Universe
About | Information | History | Online | Facts | Discovery
Sir Roger Penrose presenting his newest book "Fashion, Faith and Fantasy in the New Physics of the Universe" at the University of Oslo, Norway. What can fashionable ideas, blind faith, or pure fantasy possibly have to do with the scientific quest to understand the universe? Surely, theoretical physicists are immune to mere trends, dogmatic beliefs, or flights of fancy? In fact, acclaimed physicist and bestselling author Roger Penrose argues that researchers working at the extreme frontiers of physics are just as susceptible to these forces as anyone else. Penrose argues that fashion, faith, and fantasy, while sometimes productive and even essential in physics, may be leading today's researchers astray in three of the field's most important areas--string theory, quantum mechanics, and cosmology. Arguing that string theory has veered away from physical reality by positing six extra hidden dimensions, Penrose cautions that the fashionable nature of a theory can cloud our judgment of its plausibility. In the case of quantum mechanics, its stunning success in explaining the atomic universe has led to an uncritical faith that it must also apply to reasonably massive objects, and Penrose responds by suggesting possible changes in quantum theory. Turning to cosmology, he argues that most of the current fantastical ideas about the origins of the universe cannot be true, but that an even wilder reality may lie behind them. Finally, Penrose describes how fashion, faith, and fantasy have ironically also shaped his own work, from twistor theory, a possible alternative to string theory that is beginning to acquire a fashionable status, to "conformal cyclic cosmology," an idea so fantastic that it could be called "conformal crazy cosmology." http://www.ub.uio.no/kurs-arrangement/arrangementer/ureal/2016/161024RogerPenrose.html
Comments
-
Realfagsbiblioteket...?
-
l agree with Roger that the number of functions in a larger dimensional space swamps those in a lower dimensional space. For example, in 3-space {x,y,z } you may have; f(x), f(y), f(z). In 4-space {x,y,z,w } the same function can act on; f(x), f(y), f(z), and on the fourth dimension f(w).
My point however is that if f(w) =0 for all values of w, then perhaps, in effect, one can be forgiven for thinking that our 4-space is effectively a 3-space. Second, if f(w) = f(z) and both behave similarly, e.g commute?, then again one is in effect constrained to 3-space even in a 4-space.
Off the top of my head, the problems l can see are that...if a field lives on z, that is f(z), then it has a potential on z. But it must also be spread over w. So, where does all that potential on w disappear to?
Furthermore, why is f(w) = 0? Why is w so special compared to the other dimensions? And already we depart from our initial implicit premise that {x,y,z,w } are similar dimensions.
Anyway, l enjoy listening to Sir Penrose. -
Poor Roger. His lectures are always completely incomprehensible to me. His books on the other hand, I love.
-
Roger's picture showing a transition from quantum state to the classical state captures the essence of our knowledge of reality. How do you accommodate a dead and alive cat into what is called a unitary evolution. Mathematically it is called the truth value of the 'lying paradox', in which an opposite is incorporated into the proposition whose truth value is to be determined, leading to undecidable/uncertainty theorem of Godel. 'Unity of the opposites', is the ubiquitous formula.
So if you have faith in a benevolent intelligent designer (God) the package comes with evil (Devil).
It is simple, reality is probabilistic not deterministic. -
And yet another retarded cunt of a cameraman who can't keep the slides in view. Fucking idiot.
-
https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Nonstandard_physics/Vortex_Science#How_many_dimensions_are_there.3F Just use entropy and observed phenomena to understand other dimensions. A single vector space with more than three dimensions would ot generate a long lived universe. The number of possible vectors for diffusion and other entropic evets is too vast. However, multiple vector spaces can be carved up out of the total number as energy settles to its lowest sustainable energy state, which is three dimensions. Interaction of spacetime between these seperate vector spaces is what leads to physical effects that can be observed directly.
-
Nice graphics!
0m 0sLenght
29Rating