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Theories of Everything with Curt Jaimungal
Peter Woit: Unification, Twistors, and the Death of String Theory
Dec 6, 2023
Peter Woit, Prof. Peter Woit discusses string theory's decline, the motivation behind using twistors in physics, dominance of string theory and Ed Witten's influence, machine learning meets theoretical physics, personal attacks vs. intellectual debate, mathematicians vs. physicists, developing a contrarian view, spacetime is not doomed, graviweak unification and chirality, category theory in physics, and defining a fulfilling life.
03:06:32
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Quick takeaways
- Twister theory offers a powerful way to write conformally invariant wave equations, but its connection to particle physics remains unclear.
- Ed Witten's introduction of twister string theory sparked renewed interest in twister theory and attracted more physicists to explore it.
Deep dives
The Evolution of Twister Theory and String Theory
Twister theory, pioneered by Penrose in the 1960s, gained attention and a following in the 70s and 80s. It offered a powerful and beautiful way of writing down conformally invariant wave equations, but its connection to specific problems in particle physics was not clear. Twister theory focused on Minkowski spacetime, and its attempts to incorporate general relativity were hindered by the chirality of the theory. However, Ed Witten's introduction of twister string theory in the 80s sparked renewed interest in twister theory. The twister string theory allowed for alternative calculations in Yang-Mills theory by describing strings in twister space. Although progress in connecting twister theory to physics was limited, the sociological impact of the twister string theory led more physicists to explore twister theory. Meanwhile, string theory gained popularity as it offered a possible quantum theory of gravity and promised to unify all fundamental forces. String theory was embraced by many high-energy physicists despite its lack of direct experimental evidence and challenges in making testable predictions.
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