"There’s this avalanche of experimental numbers you have to put in by hand. But in string theory the Standard Model just pops right out. With just a few assumptions you get the entire Standard Model. "
People, as I have said many times before, if string theory was actually really simpler than the Standard Model, then physicists would actually USE IT to make predictions for the LHC. They don't. Why? Because it's useless.
It's the same with supersymmetry. People who work on it claim it solves problems and it improves the standard model. But no one who actually makes predictions for the standard model expectations uses supersymmetry. Why? Because it's useless.
Same with the multiverse. Supposedly it simplifies something. But no one who makes predictions for structure formation or the CMB starts with a probability distribution over the multiverse. They just use the concordance model. Why? Because the multiverse is useless.
The same goes for literally hundreds of additional fields and particles and stories for the beginning of the universe. They're useless. They don't explain anything we observe.
The bottomline is this: Look at what scientists DO, not at what they say. If a hypothesis is really a good explanation, they will use it. String theory doesn't explain the standard model. Supersymmetry doesn't explain the Higgs mass. And the multiverse explains nothing. /end rant
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Everybody who is quoting the total number of thromboses in people vaccinated with #AstraZeneca to brag with their statistic skills needs to wake up. We're talking about an accumulation of recent cases of a specific type in close temporal order after vaccination.
Look, I am not saying that this is something to worry about -- I don't have any data. But maybe consider that the people who made this decision are not entirely stupid.
And since I am ranting already, let me point out that we'd be well advised to keep in mind the most important principle in all of science: Shit happens.
No, I am saying the black hole information loss problem cannot be solved with existing methods, so throwing money at it is a waste of time. Look at the literature of the past 40 years to see that what I say is correct.
I have said this many times before, but since this is twitter, let me repeat it again: Physics is not math. There are several mathematically consistent solution to the problem. We would need observations to find out which one correctly describes nature. There are no observations.
And there will not be observations because the Hawking temperature of the known black holes is too low to see them evaporating. And even if we did see them evaporating, this would not tell us anything about information loss.
Here is something that should worry you. Each time I give a public lecture people come up to me and say they agree with me that building a bigger collider is currently a nonsense idea. It's a huge investment with little scientific benefit and basically no societal relevance 1/
I mostly get this from physicists of other disciplines (condensed matter physicists seem to feature prominently, but maybe just because there are many of them) but also from particle physicists who have left the field, both theoreticians and experimentalists 2/
Yet, there is not a single one of them on the public record willing to speak out. The reason I keep getting quoted by newspapers and magazines is simply THAT THEY CAN'T FIND ANYONE ELSE WILLING TO SPEAK OUT. 3/
While I agree that religion and science don't have to conflict with each other and can indeed complement each other, using male circumcision as an example for how religious practices have been "proven to be scientifically effective" is most unfortunate.
First, you don't need to circumcise boys at birth to prevent them from contracting sexually transmitted diseases much later in life (for the effectiveness of which the evidence is not particularly good).
Second, it ignores that the boys in question had no chance to consent on what is a mutilation of their body and that most of these circumcisions are done without pain control because that was (and to some extent still is) considered unnecessary, possibly leaving permanent trauma.
Curious find: A Google image search for "futuristic" returns almost exclusively images with blue/black color themes. How is that? Why isn't the future orange? Very puzzled about this.
Same thing if you search for "tech". Mostly black/blue (with the occasional blob of contrast color).