The Implications of Feynman's Laws

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Feynman diagrams are ways of representing individual numerical contributions to the final answer that you are trying to get. In quantum field theory or in quantum mechanics more generally, high momentum and high energy correspond to short distances. And so when Wilson tried to put his quantum field theory on the lattice in order to do a computer simulation, all the infinities went away because he was not including arbitrarily short distances.

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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