Thanks for the detailed responses, Philip!
Your words bring to mind the thoughts of a Nobel Laureate physicist: "The master antitheory of the age is the idea that there is no fundamental thing left to discover, so that the world we inhabit is simply a swarm of detail that belongs to no one and thus can be legitimately handled by business tactics-resource management, competitive advertising, survival of the fittest, and so forth. A corollary is that there is no absolute truth, but only products, like shirts or hamburgers, that one throws away when their usefulness is exhausted. Antitheories are dangerous ideologies not only because they impede inquiry but because they lull one into ignoring threats that one's opponents can exploit to their advantage." -A Different Universe, Reinventing Physics From The Bottom Down, Robert B. Laughlin, Winner of the Nobel Prize in physics for his work on the fractional quantum Hall effect.
Yes--string theory and loop quantum gravity are in many ways anti-theories that depend on "survival of the fittest" in a marketing/media-manipulation perspective, and thus make progress in theoretical physics impossible, resulting in the undeniable empirical evidence of zero progress in the last thirty years, at the cost of hundreds of millions of dollars.
One of the reasons MDT has received violent opposition from anonymous postdocs and professors is that it makes vast progress--both in asking and answering foundational questions. And such questions have generally been outlawed by those exploring Quantum Gravity, who tend to favor progressless physics and groupthink, as opposed to the honest exploration of foundational questions.
"Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices, but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence and fulfills the duty to express the results of his thought in clear form. --Albert Einstein"
For instance, String Theorists and Quantum Gravitationists generally ban you from quoting Nobel Laureates in physics and talking about physics and physical reality. They do not like you talking about time, space, and causality, as they insist that such things are not real, while tiny, vibrating strings, ten to forty additional dimensions, and atoms of spacetime and "bouncing" universes *are* real. Basically it's an entire program of replacing physical reality, sceince, and physics with groupthink, mysticism, tyranny, PR hype, and well-funded bureaucracies--it's a cash-driven conquest. Today success is considered having one's anti-theory hyped on Fox News, while perhaps signing a book deal before one's fifteen minutes of fame expires--even though their theories state that time does not flow and isn't real. The math never adds up, and even the great John Baez has finally given up, and is jumping off the train after riding it for ten years in the block universe that MDT has freed us from:
http://www.edge.org/q2008/q08_5.html
"Loop quantum gravity was less ambitious than string theory. Instead of a "theory of everything", it only sought to be a theory of something: namely, a theory of quantum gravity.
So, I jumped aboard this train, and for about a decade I was very happy with the progress we were making. A beautiful picture emerged, in which spacetime resembles a random "foam" at very short distance scales, following the laws of quantum mechanics.
We can write down lots of theories of this general sort. However, we have never yet found one for which we can show that General Relativity emerges as a good approximation at large distance scales -- the quantum soap suds approximating a smooth surface when viewed from afar, as it were.
I helped my colleagues Dan Christensen and Greg Egan do a lot of computer simulations to study this problem. Most of our results went completely against what everyone had expected. But worse, the more work we did, the more I realized I didn't know what questions we should be asking! It's hard to know what to compute to check that a quantum foam is doing its best to mimic General Relativity.
Around this time, string theorists took note of loop quantum gravity people and other critics -- in part thanks to Peter Woit's blog, his book Not Even Wrong, and Lee Smolin's book The Trouble with Physics. String theorists weren't used to criticism like this. A kind of "string-loop war" began. There was a lot of pressure for physicists to take sides for one theory or the other. Tempers ran high. . .
I realized I didn't have enough confidence in either theory to engage in these heated debates. I also realized that there were other questions to work on: questions where I could actually tell when I was on the right track, questions where researchers cooperate more and fight less. So, I eventually decided to quit working on quantum gravity.
It was very painful to do this, since quantum gravity had been my holy grail for decades. After you've convinced yourself that some problem is the one you want to spend your life working on, it's hard to change your mind. But when I finally did, it was tremendously liberating."--John Baez: http://www.edge.org/q2008/q08_5.html
Yes--string theory and quantum gravity seem to be on their way out, after thirty years of absorbing hundreds of millions of dollars, with nothing to show for it, but snarky groupthink regimes fighting for their version of unreality, non-theories, and mythology.
Now I agree that it is good to fund science, such as the artificial retina I worked on for my dissertation: http://elliotmcgucken.com/dissertation.html (where the first treatment of MDT appeared in the appendix)
But too, we ought ask ourselves, how much NSF funding did Einstein recieve when he revolutionized physics with five papers in 1905, while working as a patent clerk? How mush NSF funding did the Wright Brothers receive for developing powered flight in their bicycle shop? If young physicists are generally the most creative, why should today's old physicists, who never really advanced physics, be given funding to hire sycophantic postdocs and professors, who must destroy and defund the indie physicists?
"A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it" --Max Planck
The problem unique to our times is that now MDT is facing not an aging regime of physicists with successful theories, but an aging regime of non-physicisists and their anti-theories.
Perhaps the overfunding of quantum gravity programs, and other non-theory, non-physics, social endeavors, has lead to snarky groupthink regimes which Lee Smolin characterizes in "How does one Fight Sociology?" in The Trouble With Physics.
For the past thirty years, hundreds of millions of dollars have gone into snarky theories which have basically banned asking, and thus answering, foundational questions. The funniest thing about the String-LQG wars is that they are all based on a questionable premise, as the great Freeman Dyson reminds us in THE SCIENTIST AS REBEL. On page 219 Freeman Dyson writes,
"(Brian) Greene takes it for granted, and here the great majority of physicists agree with him, that the division of physics into seperate theories for large and small objects is unacceptable. General relativity is based on the idea that space-time is a flexible structure pulled and pushed by material objects. Quantum mechanics is based on the idea that space-time is a rigid framework within which observations are made. Greene believes there is an urgent need to find a theory of quantum gravity that works for large and small objects alike. . . As a conservative, I do not agree that a division of physics into separate theories for large and small is unacceptable. I am happy with the situation in which we have lived for the last eighty years . . . The question I am asking is if there is conceivable way we could detect the existence of individual gravitons. I propose as an hypothesis that it is impossible in principle to observe the existence of individual gravitons." --Freeman Dyson, THE SCIENTIST AS REBEL, pp 219-220
One of the problems with all the String Theorists and LQGers is that they begin with the premise that, "ALL PROGRESS MUST GO THROUGH US. WE ARE THE WAY, THE PATH, THE TRUTH." They get a few hundred million dollars, hire a few thousand grad-students, and select the snarkiest to award with tenure-track positions, so as to serve the anti-theory regime, squash all indie physicists and natural curiosity, and shore up funding for non-physics. And hence progress in physics grinds to a halt.
MDT predicts all of relativity from a simple postulate and equation that also provides *physical* model for entropy, time, and all its arrows, quantum entanglement and nonlocality, and all the dualities--space/time, energy/mass, and wave/particle. Not bad for one small equation: dx4/dt = ic, which offers a *physical* unification across all realms of physics, tying together entities as diverse as quantum entanglement and the timelessness of the photon, while presenting insight into a novel physical facet of our universe--the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions.
Science is more of an art than a science, and it always seems to advance in manners never before anticipated by the establishment, as Planck stated. One cannot legislate, nor vote on, nor dictate the advancement of science by fiat. "One cannot pray a lie," as Mark Twain once said.
"New scientific ideas never spring from a communal body, however organized, but rather from the head of an individually inspired researcher who struggles with his problems in lonely thought and unites all his thought on one single point which is his whole world for the moment." --Max Planck
And again we see the primacy of the honest individual in the classic, epic hero's journey!
"A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man." --Joseph Campbell
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monomyth
And the Nobel Laureate eocnomist F.A. Hayek agrees!
"The tragedy of collectivist thought is that, while it starts out to make reason supreme, it ends by destroying reason because it misconceives the process on which the growth of reason depends. It may indeed be said that it is the paradox of all collectivist doctrine and its demands for "conscious" control or "conscious" planning that they necessarily lead to the demand that the mind of some individual should rule supreme--while only the individualist approach to social phenomena makes us recognize the superindividual forces which guide the growth of reason. Individualism is thus an attitude of humility before this social process and of tolerance to other opinions and is the exact opposite of that intellectual hubris which is at the root of the demand for comprehensive direction of social purpose." -F.A. Hayek, The End of Truth, The Road to Serfdom
Peter Woit blogs about the sycophancy in American Academia:
http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=894
But yet, I asked my own foundational questions, far beyond the sycophancy and anti-theory regimes--questions based on a *physical* reality all to many ignore, and I ended up unfreezing time and liberating us from the block universe.
Einstein's Relativity may be derived from dx4/dt= ic, which represents a more fundamental invariance of this universe--the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions. Einstein introduced relativity as a principle--as a law of nature not deduced from anything else, and well, I guess I was dumb enough to ask, 'why relativity?' And I found the answer in a more fundamental invariance--the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions, or dx4/dt = ic.
And not only can all of relativity be derived from this, but suddenly we are liberated from the block universe and time and progress in theoretical physics are unfrozen. And change is seen in a most fundamental equation that weaves change into the very fabric of space-time, where it needs to be, as change pervades every realm of physics and all acts of *physical* measurement. And suddenly we have a *physical* model for entropy, time and its arrows and assymetries in all realms, free will, and quantum mechanics' nonlocality, entanglement, and wave-particle duality. The fourth expanding dimension distributes locality, fathering time. MDT accounts for the constant speed of light c--both its independence of the source and its independence of the velocity of the observer, while establishing c as the fastest, slowest, and only velocity for all entities and objects moving through space-time, as well as the maximum velocity that anything is measured to move. And suddenly we see a physical basis for the dualities--for space/time, wave/matter, and energy/mass or E=mc^2. Energy and mass are the same thing--it's just that energy is mass caught upon the fourth expanding dimension, and thus it surfs along at "c."
Well, I would call all of this a massive unification--all based on a simple *physical* model and equation. I imagine this is just the tip of the iceberg of everything implied by this new physical model--this hitherto unsung feature of the universe--the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions: dx4/dt=ic.
And it all began with *why length contraction?" "Why relativity?" "Why nonlocality?" "Why entanglement?"
I know it is a crime to ask such foundational questions, another crime to answer them, and yet another crime to answer them with a simple postualte and equation, as simple postualtes and equations have benn banned by the anti-theory regimes, along with simple postualtes and equations represeting hitherto unsung *physical* realties have been outlawed, and the top grad students and postdocs are regularly sent forth to detroy them, while wearing masks, in the dark of night, for all sycophants must eventually transform into anonymous cowards,as the Nobel Laureate economist F.A. Hayek hints at in his two chapters "The End of Truth," and "Why The Worst Get on Top."
(It is also against the law, generally, to quote Nobel Laureates, as you shall see at the end of this post)
But, yet, the fourth dimension moves. "E pur si muove!" as Galileo atated. We have been liberated from frozen time and the block universe! Ergo I have free will, and I shall use it to both ask and answer foundational questions in physics via MDT's simple elgance and beauty.
Below are some of the questions that are answered with Moving Dimensions Theory's simple postulate and equation: "because the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions: dx4/dt = ic."
0. Why time? Why time's arrows and asymmetries?
0.1 Why relativity? Why the principle of relativity? What deeper physical reality underlies relativity?
0.2 Why entanglement and nonlocality?
1. Why is light's velocity a constant c? Why relativity's postulates?
2. Why is light's velocity c independent of its source?
3. Why is it that nothing can travel faster than c?
4. Why does a photon, which travels at c, not age?
5. Why does a photon's spherically-symmetric probablistic wavefront define simultaneity--a locality in the fourth dimension?
6. Why are energy and mass equivalent? Why E=mc^2?
7. Why do all of time's arrows point in the same direction--towards dissipation, decoherence, and entropy?
8. Why do so many physicists say time is the fourth dimension, when Einstein never said x4 is time, but instead said x4 = ict?
9. Why can matter can appear as energy or mass?
10. Why is it that when matter appears as pure energy, it propagates at c through space?
11. Why does all matter have particle--local--and wave--nonlocal--properties?
12. Why does all energy have particle--local--and wave--nonlocal--properties?
13. Why is it that when matter appears as stationary mass it propagates at c through the fourth dimension?
14. Why is it that when matter appears as energy, it propagates at c through the three spatial dimensions?
15. Why is it that to move at c through space is to stand still in the fourth dimension?
16. Why is it that to move at c through the fourth dimension is to stand still in space?
17. Why is it that all objects move at but one speed through space-time--c?
18. Why is the universe expanding?
19. Why does radiation expand outwards, but not inwards?
20. Why do we see retarded waves, but not advanced?
21. Why is it that entropy imitates the general motion of all radiation and the universe's expansion--a spherically-symmetric expanding wave?
22. Why is it that Huygens' Principle, which underlies all reality ranging from QED to Feynman's many-paths, to classical physics, state that every point of a spherically-expanding wavefront is in turn a spherically-expanding wavefront?
23. Why are all photons described by a spherically-expanding wavefront propagating at c?
24. Why is it that two initially-interacting photons remain entangled, no matter how far they travel apart?
25. Why is it that two initially-interacting photons remain the exact same age, no matter how far they travel apart?
26. Why is it that Young's double-slit experiments show that both mass and energy have nonlocal wave properties?
27. Why is it that the collapse of the wave function is immediate in the photoelectric effect, and all other experiments?
28. Why is there no way for an object to gain velocity without being reduced in length via relativistic length contraction?
29. Why does a photon trace out a null vector through space-time? How can movement across the universe describe a path of zero length?
30. Why does time's arrow point in a definitive direction?
21. Why does entropy increase?
32. Why do moving clocks run slow?
33. Why is time travel into the past impossible?
34. Why does free will exist?
35. Why is it that time is not frozen---how come the block universe does not exist? Why do we have free will?
36. Why does a photon's probabilistic wavefront travel at c?
37. Why is the velocity of quantum entanglement c? Why is it that only initially interacting particles can yet be entangled? Why is it that they must first share a common locality or origin, in order to share an entangled nonlocality when they are separated?
38. Why is it that in Schrodinger's equation, the first derivative with respect to the fourth dimension is proportional to the second derivative with the respect to the three spatial dimensions? Any change in position in the fourth expanding dimension is an acceleration in the three spatial dimensions.
39. Why is it that a photon emitted from the sun is red-shifted as it travels away? It's wavelength appears longer as it is measured against space that is less-stretched. A photon inherits the local geometry of the space-time where it was emitted.
40. Why do clocks in gravitational fields run slow?
41. Why are photons red-shifted as they move away from massive objects, and blue-shifted as they move towards them?
42. Why the conservation laws? Why does an object maintain its rotation in space-time, unless acted upon by an exterior force?
43. Why is the velocity of every object through space-time c?
44. Why is it that the only way to stay stationary in the fourth dimension is to move at c through the three spatial dimensions?
45. Why is it that the only way to remain stationary in the three spatial dimensions is to move at c relative to the fourth dimension?
46. Why does a photon have zero rest mass, and how does zero rest mass imply the velocity of light? None of the object's matter exists in the three spatial dimensions, but only in the fourth expanding dimension.
47. Why time's arrows?
48. Why time's asymmetries?
49. Why entropy?
50. Why is there an i in x4=ict?
51. Why is the velocity of light both independent of the velocity of the source and the velocity of the observer?
52. Why are light, time, and measurement so fundamentally related?
53. Why the - sign in-front of x4 in the space-time metric? What is different about x4?
Well, MDT answers all theses questions, and more, with a simple physical postulate and equation: "The fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions or dx4/dt = ic."
Over the years, MDT has provided a *physical* model that answered these and other questions, unifying diverse fields and physical phenomena in a common, simple principle.
Now as MDT unfreezes both time and progress in theoretical physics, it will be opposed by many. Furthmore, as MDT explains away wormholes and time travel into the past, which have never been seen but yet form the foundations of many modern religions adhered to by geometric mystics and soothsayers, it will be opposed even more. As MDT provides a simple equation and postulate that hearken on back to the heroic age of physics, instead of presenting indecipherable math that can be used to raise massive funding for some groupthink Matrix/corporate-state/MTV show, it will be opposed even more, by those in The Matrix who have nothing to gain by simple truth and beauty, and so much to lose--their illusions of grandeur.
MDT's great uniter and unifier is a fundamental invariant of the universe that has hitherto been unsung--the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions, or dx4/dt = ic.
Too, too many postmodern theories suggest that we should get rid of time, free will, nonlocality, causality, change, and even space! Yes--too, too many modern theories suggest that we should get rid of *physics* and *physical reality*, so that we can keep funding bureuacracies! Too, too many postmodern physicists have long ago given up trying to explain entanglement, nonlocality, entropy, and time and all its arrows and assymetries with a *physical* model. Too, too many physicists have chosen to ignore Godel's problems with the block universe and time, while losing the sense of wonderment when considering action-at-distance, nonlocality, and the EPR Paradox.
"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed." --Albert Einstein
Yes--entanglement, entropy, time, nonlocality, Huygens' Principle, relativity--how mysterious are all these! And yet if you ask foundational questions such as *why* entanglement, *why* entropy, *why* time, *why* nonlocality, *why* Huygens' Principle, *why* relativity, the richest, wealthiest establishment in the history of physics, which also happens to be the establishment which has contributed the least (perhaps money cannot buy physics and philosophy?), sends forth anonymous postdocs and grad students to launch the snarky, ad-hominem attacks they perfect under the guidance of their pseudo-physicist political mentors.
Yes--the typical view held by contemporary physicists is that of the block universe. In fact, up until now and MDT, I think pretty much everyone who has embraced Einstein's relativity has embraced the block universe, which pretty much denies free will. How strange that physicists, who strive and work for Truth each day, have renounced free will! Perhaps that is why there has been so little progress in theoretical physics over the past thirty years. Everyone is just reasoning that it's all fate anyway, and time is frozen, so why try that hard? Why not just write coffeee-table physics books about wormholes/time travel into the past (even though without free will, how could we choose to build a time machine?). Why not just build vast empires out of postmodern math, and hire grad students and postdocs (who get a tiny portion of the funds) to laugh at/snark true theoretical physicists and their free will, logic, and reason?
The great thing about Moving Dimensions Theory is that it allows us to keep all of relativity while also granting us free will and liberating us from the block universe.
Wish I could buy everyone a beer to celebrate our newfound free will! Perhaps now they can no longer argue that string theory and loop quantum gravity are our fate for the next four thousand years, as they are pre-embedded in the future of our block universe.
And too, in addition to exploding the block universe myth and unfreezing time, MDT provides a *physical* model accounting for change, entropy, relativity, quantum mechanics' nonlocality and entanglement, and time and all its arrows and assymetries across all realms. Furthermore, Huygens' principle, which manifests itself in all realms from classical waves to Feynman's many-paths interpretations of quantum mechanics, is given a deeper foundation--a raison d'etre--a fundamental source--and this is the same fundamental source underlying relativity and quantum mechanics' nonlocality and thus QM's probabilistic nature, as the fourth expanding dimension distributes locality.
Behold MDT--the great unifier and invariant source underlying all these *physical* phenomena--in relativity and quantum emchanics--in statistical mechanics and entropy.
For the first time in the history of relativity, *change* has been *physically* woven into the fundamental fabric of spacetime, with dx4/dt = ic. And that's where change needs to be! For can you name any branch of physics in which change, and time, do not exist? Without change, no measurement can be made.
MDT is unique in that it offers a *physical* model underlying entropy, entanglement, and nonlocality, and too, all of relativity can be immediately derived from its simple postulate and equation.
I expect MDT to bring additional boons for years to come!
It is certainly a greater theroy, with far more ranging consequences, than String Theory and LQG.
The first page of String Theory in a Nutshell states in a footnoted sentence:
THE CASE FOR STRING THEORY:
String Theory has been the leading candidate over the past two decades for a theory that consistently unifies all the fundamental forces of nature, including gravity. It gained popularity because it provides a theory that is UV finite.(1)
The footnote (1) reads: "Although there is no rigorous proff to all orders that the theory is UV finite, there are several all-orders arguments as well as rigorous results at low-loop-order. In closed string theory, amplitudes must be carefully defined via analytic continuation, standard in S-matrix theory. When open strings are present, there are diveregences. However, they are interpreted as IR divergences (due to the exchange of massless tsates) in the dual closed string channel. They are subtracted in the "Wilsonian" S-matrix elements."
So you see, String Theory is not a finite theory, but this is generally kept to the footnotes, when mentioned at all.
A lot of Nobel Laureates have problems with String Theory:
""WE DON'T know what we are talking about." That was Nobel laureate David Gross at the 23rd Solvay Conference in Physics in Brussels, Belgium, during his concluding remarks on Saturday. He was referring to string theory. . ." --http://www.newscientist.com/channel/fundamentals/mg18825293.700
It is anomalous to replace the four-dimensional continuum by a five-dimensional one and then subsequently to tie up artificially one of those five dimensions in order to account for the fact that it does not manifest itself." -Einstein to Paul Ehrenfest
String theorists don't make predictions, they make excuses. -Richard Feynman, Noble Laureate
String theory is like a 50 year old woman wearing too much lipstick. -Robert Laughlin, Nobel Laureate
Actually, I would not even be prepared to call string theory a "theory" rather a "model" or not even that: just a hunch. After all, a theory should come together with instructions on how to deal with it to identify the things one wishes to describe, in our case the elementary particles, and one should, at least in principle, be able to formulate the rules for calculating the properties of these particles, and how to make new predictions for them. Imagine that I give you a chair, while explaining that the legs are still missing, and that the seat, back and armrest will perhaps be delivered soon; whatever I did give you, can I still call it a chair? -Gerard `t Hooft, Nobel Laureate in String Theory
"It is tragic, but now, we have the string theorists, thousands of them, that also dream of explaining all the features of nature. They just celebrated the 20th anniversary of superstring theory. So when one person spends 30 years, it's a waste, but when thousands waste 20 years in modern day, they celebrate with champagne. I find that curious." -Sheldon Glashow, Nobel Laureate
"I don't like that they're not calculating anything. I don't like that they don't check their ideas. I don't like that for anything that disagrees with a n experiment, they cook up an explanation-a fix-up to say, "Well, it might be true." For example, the theory requires ten dimensions. Well, maybe there's a way of wrapping up six of the dimensions. Yes, that's all possible mathematically, but why not seven? When they write their equation, the equation should decide how many of these things get wrapped up, not the desire to agree with experiment. In other words, there's no reason whatsoever in superstring theory that it isn't eight out of the ten dimensions that get wrapped up and that the result is only two dimensions, which would be completely in disagreement with experience. So the fact that it might disagree with experience is very tenuous, it doesn't produce anything; it has to be excused most of the time. It doesn't look right." -Richard Feynman, Nobel Laureate in Physics
"But superstring physicists have not yet shown that theory really works. They cannot demonstrate that the standard theory is a logical outcome of string theory. They cannot even be sure that their formalism includes a description of such things as protons and electrons. And they have not yet made even one teeny-tiny experimental prediction. Worst of all, superstring theory does not follow as a logical consequence of some appealing set of hypotheses about nature. Why, you may ask, do the string theorists insist space is none-dimensional? Simply because string theory doesn't make sense in any other kind of space." --Sheldon Glashow, Nobel Laureate in Physics
Even String Theory's founder, Michio Kaku, has problems with the theory: "The great irony of string theory, however, is that the theory itself is not unified. To someone learning the theory for the first time, it is often a frustrating collection of folklore, rules of thumb, and intuition. (IN OTHER WORDS IT IS NOT PHYSICS!!!) At times, there seems to be no rhyme or reason for many of the conventions of the model. For a theory that makes the claim of providing a unifying framework for all physical laws, it is the supreme irony that the theory itself appears so disunited!!"
Chapter 1. Path Integrals and Point Particles: Why Strings?
" --"Introduction to Superstrings and M-Theory," page 5. -Michio Kaku
"If Einstein were alive today, he would be horrified at this state of affairs. He would upbraid the profession for allowing this mess to develop and fly into a blind rage over the transformation of his beautiful creations into ideologies and the resulting proliferation of logical inconsistencies. Einstein was an artist and a scholar but above all he was a revolutionary. His approach to physics might be summarized as hypothesizing minimally. Never arguing with experiment, demanding total logical consistency, and mistrusting unsubstantiated beliefs. The unsubstantial belief of his day was ether, or more precisely the naïve version of ether that preceded relativity. The unsubstantiated belief of our day is relativity itself. It would be perfectly in character for him to reexamine the facts, toss them over in his mind, and conclude that his beloved principle of relativity was not fundamental at all but emergent-a collective property of the matter constituting space-time that becomes increasingly exact at long length scales but fails at short ones. This is a different idea from his original one but something fully compatible with it logically, and even more exciting and potentially important. It would mean that the fabric of space-time was not simply the stage on which life played out but an organizational phenomenon, and that there might be something beyond." -A Different Universe, Reinventing Physics From The Bottom Down, Robert B. Laughlin, Winner of the Nobel Prize in physics for his work on the fractional quantum Hall effect.
"[String Theory] has no practical utility, however, other than to sustain the myth of the ultimate theory. There is no experimental evidence for the existence of strings in nature, nor does the special mathematics of string theory enable known experimental behavior to be calculated or predicted more easily. Moreover, the complex spectroscopic properties of space accessible with today's mighty accelerators are accountable in only as "low-energy phenomenology"-a pejorative term for transcendent emergent properties of matter impossible to calculate from first principles. String theory is, in fact, a textbook case of Deceitful Turkey, a beautiful set of ideas that will always remain just barely out of reach. Far from a wonderful technological hope for a greater tomorrow, it is instead the tragic consequence of an obsolete belief system-in which emergence plays no role and dark law does not exist."
-A Different Universe, Reinventing Physics From The Bottom Down, Robert B. Laughlin, Winner of the Nobel Prize in physics for his work on the fractional quantum Hall effect.
MDT delivers an ultimate theory, whereas Loop Quantum Gravity and Sring Theory only sustain a myth of an ultimate theory. And thus we are commanded from on high--from the pinnacles of the ani-theory regimes--to ignore MDT and Nobel Laureates such as Robert Laughlin, F.A. Hayek, Feynman, Einstein, Planck, and others I quote above. Welcome to the dark ages.
I apologize for the length of this post, but I am working on a book: HERO'S JOURNEY PHYSICS: FROM BRUNO, TO GALILEO, TO EINSTEIN--AND YET IT MOVES!
Best,
Dr. E (The Real McCoy)