This is actually not that far off. The main European Strings conference (EuroStrings 2024) had to take place in Stockholm but is cancelled because all hotels are fully booked due to a Taylor Swift concert
High school teachers can have much bigger impact on young people's lives than university professors. We forget that sometimes. I just received a photo of my geology teacher in high school. I never went to study geology, but this man has been a great inspiration to me.
A tough pill to swallow:
PhDs have spent a decade in post-secondary education for a degree that is essentially meaningless in the business world.
It is completely valid to feel regret, anger, and/or despair about this. Don't let it paralyze you.
Als ik lees hoe Marc Van Ranst collega
@TijlDeBie
aanpakt op Twitter, kan ik niet anders dan teleurgesteld zijn in de houding van een wetenschapper en diens publieke verantwoordelijkheid.
Sometimes I get a bit tired explaining what the problem is with the rhetoric of Sabine Hossenfelder. Let me summarize it briefly, so I can point to this later. She has a history of attacking subfields of physics: string theory, then black hole information, now PP physics. 1/8
Ik beschouw mijzelf als groen, progressief-links en zal nooit NVA stemmen. Toch vind ik de uitspraken van Bert Wollants veel meer steek houden dan die van minister Van der Straeten. Mag dat? Of past dit niet binnen onze gepolariseerde wereld van 2 kampen?
Surprising to read these Israeli scholars are worried about academic freedom. They were deadly silent when all universities in Gaza were destroyed or during the so many examples of educide against Palestinians over decades. Stop playing the victim here. It is so embarrassing.
Statement against the Boycott of Israeli Academics.
Launched by a doctoral student at the Hebrew University, the list of signatories is very distinguished, and growing by the day.
It is often claimed that string theory has caught so much attention because it is mathematically appealing. If so, that is not per se a good argument for it being a useful physics theory. Yet, this is not why strings get so much attention. The real reasons are: 1/12
Er is een reden waarom wiskunde een aparte plaats inneemt binnen het onderwijs en niet zomaar een vak is zoals er andere vakken zijn. Wiskunde is de basis van ons logisch denken. Vaak wordt wiskunde verward met rekenen, terwijl dat slechts een klein aspect is van de wiskunde. 1/6
If I did the counting correctly then at my university there are about 80 profs in total doing research in philosophy & religion, but 5 profs in total in theoretical/math physics. Yet, who is blamed for working on things with no obvious direct measurable/technological impact? 1/4
Prof. R. Devliegher tijdens VRT journaal geeft expliciet toe dat de lockdown, mondmaskers, isolatie,...slecht waren voor algemene immuniteit en toename infectieziekten kan verklaren. Wie dat verkondigde, of zelfs gewoon in vraag stelde tijdens de coronacrisis werd weggelachen.
We often explain general relativity to the public using a curved sheet so they get the impression that the moon revolves around the Earth because space is curved. We say the weakness of the analogy is the dimension: we can visualise curvature in 2d not in higher d. Wrong. 1/3
295 candidates for a PhD position in our group. It grows every year. Not sure what to say. Great that people are so interested, on the other hand it shows how there is a lack of positions in abstract theoretical physics given the interest of young people.
David Tong will at some point have covered all topics of physics in his lecture notes. Now his notes on Standard Model physics are online!
Kudos, for doing this and keeping it freely available.
To all curious minds out there: don't focus on the negativity. If you are curious about fundamental physics questions, study theoretical physics, particle physics, cosmology,...and enjoy! These fields do have a great future. But observational and theoretical progress can be slow
The physics behind relativity is the difficult bit, not the mathematics. Maybe the math was considered hard 100 years ago, today it is very standard. Yet students mostly fight with the math (and perhaps dont find the time to see the depth of the physics).
What Hamas did was not an act of heroic Palestinian resistance; it was the cowardice killing of young people partying, the killing of civilians in their homes. Palestinians undeniably must have the right to self-defense, the right to organise themselves as a military, 1/4
Hey people: it is possible to strongly condemn the attack of Hamas on civilians and to support Palestinian resistance at the same time. I wish opinions in the world were not always so simplistic.
On hot summer days the office door and windows remain open for some airflow. That is when nuclear physics actually finds it use and prevents the door from closing.
The reason many talks at high energy theory conferences are so difficult to follow, is probably because we massively suffer from the imposter syndrome in our field and believe the talks should be as technical as the others....or it is just me not being smart enough?
Finishing a grant proposal with a very concrete schedule, milestones, working packages and risk analysis,.... Because, clearly, this is how research in theoretical physics happens.
Impressive book from
@HaroldErbin
made freely available on arxiv on a topic we always tell ourselves we should learn, but it never happens somehow. Please consider buying the book as well.
This song about string theory not making measurable predictions, is getting so boring and yet keeps on being played. For the last(?) time:
THIS IS SIMPLY A CONSEQUENCE OF GRAVITY BEING SO WEAK.
If other quantum gravity theories exist, they will share this property.
I received many compliments for this paper on the history of Quantum Gravity as an EFT, & beyond. I want to emphasize I'm just a contributing author (wrote section 4). Alessio is the knowledgeable person here who did a great job digging into the history.
Ik blijf het moeilijk vinden hoe iemand als Van Ranst in deze post-pandemie tijden nog steeds wordt gelauwerd en de kritische maar wetenschappelijke stemmen als
@TijlDeBie
nog steeds worden afgedaan als non-experts met irrelevante mening. 1/3
Western media today:
'4 hostages freed by Israeli army'.
Sorry. The news should be:
'Over 200 Palestinians killed in Israeli action' .
Stop this disproportionate news coverage revealing your racist views.
Some people need to hear this: not all scientists (especially PhD students) need to be science communicators. Neither does a (PhD) grant paid from tax money imply they all have the moral duty to explain the lay man what they do.
Ik heb sympathie voor links gedachtengoed, maar ecologisten die pas tevreden zijn met klimaatbeleid als het ook anti-kapitalistisch is, maken veel kapot. Ik vrees dat hun anti-nucleaire dogmas voortkomen uit de schrik dat technologische ingrepen wel degelijk kunnen helpen.
The common theme in Sabine's posts is that one cannot be curious about constants in Nature. To all young people out there: be curious! Things are not just what they are. This is what the history of physics has taught us. But sometimes one needs patience.
Nu dat de data duidelijkheid schept in het feit dat de solidariteit van vaccinaties vooral in ontlasting zorg zit en niet zozeer in reductie transmissie, kunnen we dan terug niet-gevaccineerde zorgverleners hun werk laten doen?
The "quantum leaps" in the history of science did not come from people who regarded research as a 9-5 job, neither from workaholics who work as much as they can, but from people who were passionately curious.
@Kaju_Nut
@ErikHofvander
Yes, that's exactly the string theory speak that I am used to, bla bla lessons bla bla any universe is good. It's time that you wake up. Mice at least exist. AdS does not.
I just learned that Jim Hartle unfortunately passed away. You can learn more about him here
He visited us a few times in Leuven and I remember him being a very pleasant and friendly person to talk to.
The curvature of space, which is *extremely weak* around the Earth, gives deviations from Newtons predicted motion which are not measurable for the Moon. So, no, the motion around the Earth is not due to curvature of space as in the picture. It is due to warped time.
Interesting suggestion, but the title is misleading. Gravity can be quantised. String theory made that explicit. Whether that means strings describe our reality is something else. But gravity can definitely be quantised in a uv complete manner.
Since the Big Bang is a hot topic these days, a reminder to all. Nothing, but literally nothing in physics points to the Big Bang being the "beginning of time". It only points to a moment in history where understanding the laws of nature require full blown quantum gravity.
Student encampment started today at
@KU_Leuven
. Much love to these students who stand up to injustice! One of their demands is that we immediately stop all institutional collaboration with the Apartheid regime.
Helping one of the children with math homework. They learn that (-a). (-b) = a.b. But not why. They have seen the distributive law as a rule. Why not explain one follows from the other? Math should not appear as a bunch of rules that need to be applied.
Met statements als deze is mijn beslissing nu zeker.
@Groen
heeft mijn stem niet meer. Ik ben op zoek naar een progressieve partij die staat voor een solidaire, moderne, multiculturele samenleving die de uitdagingen van de toekomst met open blik wil aangaan. Please help.
"If it cannot be measured it is not science". Is an intellectually lazy and populist slogan especially when applied to modern high energy physics.
First, the critics lump non-measurable features of say multi-verse ideas with say string theory. Wrong. String theory is measurable.
The picture (analogy) is misleading on a elementary level. The moon would revolve around the Earth in almost exactly the same way if 3d space is completely flat. It is the warping of time instead that causes the elliptic motion.
Some students at my university and some colleagues in our field whom I appreciate much, have expressed disappointment regarding my opinion on what is happening in Gaza.
Sometimes pure theoretical consistency is extremely constraining. You cannot just invent theories of quantum gravity. Almost nothing works. Unfortunately she is unable or unwilling to communicate this to the general public and she is damaging many young and eager minds.
Each time the criticism relies on the same mechanism, analogues to populism in politics. She focuses on an issue which people in the field agree on is an issue, and then magnifies it & projects it to the whole field. (There is a corrupt politician --> all politicians are corrupt)
Guess what: this is how observational science works. You exclude regions of parameter space by measurements. Even in absence of a theoretical model, this can be useful. Keep on measuring! Keep on learning about Nature!
A🧵about a fundamental question in holography that recently gained attention and which I consider to be profound.
One way to think of AdS/CFT is to say that a conformal field theory in d dimensions can be seen as describing gravity (Einstein's equations) in d+1 dimensions.
Discussions over the years about string theory makes it clear to me that, despite excellent books like
@WhyStringTheory
, there is a significant misunderstanding by the public, probably due to Hossenfelder& co. I am tempted to write a small book, 50 pages should be sufficient.
If the meme would be true, physics would have never happened and still be in the parking spot with the driver pondering whether the road is well defined.
I am so disappointed by this tweet (thread). It is too easy to use a sadly (wrongly?) formulated version of a deep physics problem to dismiss it entirely and then get all the likes from non-experts who love a good Hollywood story of one person fighting the system. Please don't.
The alleged "fine-tuning problems" are not scientific problems. They are aesthetic problems. High energy physicists still don't understand that the laws of nature are under no obligation to be pretty.
The layman of course loves this, because they can only follow these discussions from a larger distance, and then it makes easy clickbait or makes one sell books well. Yet, all the issues she tries to raise are highly complicated and nuance is key.
Ik ben die anti-kern buikgevoelens zo moe. Wil je klimaatverandering serieus nemen gaat het om hoeveel fossiel we NU verbranden, niet binnen 10 of 20 of 30 jaar
@TinneVdS
IDF shooting at people gathering near food trucks because they were desperate for food:
>100 killed and >700 wounded.
Still people get angry when you mention the word genocide. Still people insist on condemning Hamas in every conversation about Palestine.
More students want to obtain a double masters physics/math, because they believe it is necessary or better for conducting research at the PhD level in theory. It is not. The whole point of research is learning while doing. You do not study first and then do research.
Israel is attacking Rafah now, even despite the statement by Hamas to accept the cease fire deal of Qatar and co. Israel wants death and destruction. Nobody can and should accept this violence based on deep rooted racism. Time for change, permanent change.