The History of String Theory

2min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

I don't see any crisis here. I see a sad situation where we didn't find as many particles yet as we wanted to, but that's different than a crisis. That's not because the physicists themselves have been doing anything wrong. Within professional physics circles, it is still by far the most popular way of thinking about quantum gravity. But there's a different feeling out there in the public than there is within physics departments.

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/

Support Mindscape on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/seanmcarroll

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.