The Problem With the Massless Gauge Bosons

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In the 1950s they didn't see any massless particles popping out of the nucleus. This turns out not to be a weird quirky thing, this turns out to be apparently a necessary feature of gauge theories. For the weak nuclear force and the strong nuclear force, it solves the problem because the gluons, which are the gauge bosons of the strong force, interact with each other very strongly.

Physics is in crisis, what else is new? That's what we hear in certain corners, anyway, usually pointed at "fundamental" physics of particles and fields. (Condensed matter and biophysics etc. are just fine.) In this solo podcast I ruminate on the unusual situation fundamental physics finds itself in, where we have a theoretical understanding that fits almost all the data, but which nobody believes to be the final answer. I talk about how we got here, and argue that it's not really a "crisis" in any real sense. But there are ways I think the academic community could handle the problem better, especially by making more space for respectable but minority approaches to deep puzzles.

Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2023/07/31/245-solo-the-crisis-in-physics/

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