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Lorna Mills and Sally McKay
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What do you like better...background dependence, or background independence?
What do you like better...vulnerability or invulnerability?
In case anyone was wondering about the state of string theory today, this review by Sean Carroll of Lee Smolin's new book, The Trouble with Physics: The Rise of String Theory, the Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next, and the subsequent debate in the comment thread (in which Lee Smolin participates) gives a good picture. I gave myself permission to skip over the bits that read like this:
"The correlation function W(x,y) ~ |x-y|^-2h. is clearly not diffeomorphism invariant."and instead attempt to grasp the bits that read like this:
"[A fundamental theory] cannot-by definition-have a more fundamental underpinning. So it must stand up on its own. This means we must be able to formulate it cleanly and precisely and the important properties it enjoys should be theorems. It doesn’t mean physicists should all work at a rigorous level, but that rigorous framework must be there to refer to.
This is not an unrealizable ideal. Classical Newtonian mechanics satisfies it. So does classical statistical mechanics, ordinary non-relativisitic quantum mechanics and general relativity. In each of these cases there is a body of rigorous results and a community of mathematical physicists who work on them.
Is this too much to hope for theories of quantum gravity. No!"
 | I will be giving a free performative lecture at the Agnes Etherington Art Centre in Kingston, Ont. on Sunday, October 15th at 1:30pm, and then Rebecca Diederichs, Gordon Hicks and I, with participation from the Queen's Department of Physics, will be hosting a free workshop/lab at the gallery until 5pm. Please join us for the events and visit our exhibition, Neutrinos They Are Very Small (on display until December 10th). Note: Rumour has it our lovely catalogue designed by the inimitable Lisa Kiss might be delivered in time for the event. Agnes Etherington Art Centre University Avenue at Bader Lane Queen's University, Kingston, ON Tel: 613.533.2190 | Fax: 613.533.6765 Email: aeac@post.queensu.ca |
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