Grand Unified Theories

I was talking to a guy the other day about Grand Unified Theories, and I thought I ought to say something about them. The Wikipedia Grand Unified Theory article gives a fair account. It says a GUT is a model where “at high energy, the three gauge interactions of the Standard Model that define the electromagnetic, weak, and strong interactions, or forces, are merged into a single force”. You’ve doubtless seen the picture: Image from the particle adventure That’s from the particle adventure website. They say this: “one of the major goals of particle physics…

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Quantum physics is cargo cult science

Ethan Siegel wrote a blog post this week called This Is Why Quantum Field Theory Is More Fundamental Than Quantum Mechanics. I read it and sighed, because so much of it is misleading. This sort of thing has been in the air recently, because Lee Smolin gave a lecture on Einstein's unfinished revolution. Smolin said quantum mechanics was incomplete, then doubled down and said it was wrong. I think he's right, only more than he knows. So I thought I'd use Siegel's post to show just…

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Hawking radiation

Everybody knows about Hawking radiation. It’s been on TV. See the YouTube clip from the Channel 4 documentary Stephen Hawking: master of the universe. That’s where Kim Weaver of NASA says black holes offer an ultimate test of the physics of the universe. She says they’re cauldrons of heat and light with jets and particles coming out at half the speed of light, and an enormous amount of stuff going on. She finishes up saying and that’s exciting. I absolutely agree. Because yes, I think black…

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