The AI tsunami
A little over two weeks ago, I wrote about “the AI apocalypse”. On that very same day, a collection of 10000 AI agents was set to work on the Clay Millenium Problems, a set of 7 horrendously difficult...
View ArticleThe curious incident of the dog in the night-time
Way back in April 2015 I had a long discussion with Marni Sheppeard, during which she told me about the Koide formula, relating the masses of the three generations of electron, and I told her about my...
View ArticleHot air
The metaphor “hot air”, I suppose, derives from a euphemism for a four-letter Anglo-Saxon word, that is nowadays rarely considered worthy of euphemising, so that the nature of this euphemism is lost...
View ArticleNon-determinism
Classical Newtonian physics is deterministic, and works with real numbers. Classical electromagnetism is deterministic, and works with complex numbers. The weak force is non-deterministic, because it...
View ArticleThe AI apocalypse
Yesterday I was busy editing my latest paper on the group-theoretical foundations of physics. Today, I realise it is all too little, too late. The AI tsunami has hit us. There is no longer any point...
View ArticleGauge groups from finite groups
My last post seems to have been misinterpreted as saying that I throw everything away except the finite group. Far from it. The point is to deduce the gauge groups from the finite groups, instead of...
View ArticleThe double cover of the Weyl group
The “gauge group” of the Standard Model of Particle Physics is a Lie group U(1) x SU(2) x SU(3), modulo Z_6 to get rid of unwanted central elements. As far as I can tell, the only mathematical content...
View ArticleA chorus of frogs
According to Aristophanes, ancient Greek frogs used to say “brekekekex koax koax”. I am fairly sure that “koax” is simply the ancient Greek spelling of “quarks”, and the frogs he was talking about...
View ArticleThe last of the mixing angles
For years I have struggled to find any ideas at all for explaining the mixing angle between the down and bottom quarks. It is measured experimentally at around .201 degrees, which is so small it gets...
View ArticleThe Dirac model of quantum antigravity
It is well known that Dirac predicted antiparticles. It is also well known that the properties he predicted for them turned out not to be correct. It is well known that his theory of the electron does...
View ArticleThe myth of intrinsic spin
The phrase “intrinsic spin” is, of course, an oxymoron. Spin is always relative, always measured with respect to something else, and can never be intrinsic. Nevertheless, “intrinsic spin” is an...
View ArticleGroundhog Day
Back in the Good Old Days of E8 theories, when I first met Corinne Manogue and Tevian Dray, they began their construction of a model by putting the Lorentz group (in the form Spin(3,1)) in the middle...
View ArticleI am a hoarder
Or, to put it another way, I am a pure mathematician. You see, that’s what pure mathematicians do. They hoard interesting things, in the hope that they might come in useful one day. Pure...
View ArticleQuantisation of SL(4,R)
If it really is true that the group SL(4,R) describes the symmetries of spacetime on all scales, then it is necessary to quantise SL(4,R). Certainly not everyone agrees with me that it is possible to...
View ArticleConventions
I have a lot of trouble with conventions. In mathematics and in physics “convention” means a decision that was taken at some point about a notation or a definition, that people generally adhere to in...
View ArticleSparrows and dunnocks
At a young age, perhaps around 10, my brother got interested in bird-watching. Two specific memories that stay with me are these two exchanges (they may not be verbatim): Mother: Oh, look, a blue tit!...
View ArticleWeyl groups
Weyl groups are the standard method in physics of relating continuous and discrete groups. They are named after Hermann Weyl, whose work in the first half of the 20th century was of enormous...
View ArticleQuantum field theory
The special theory of relativity established the principle that a unified force field could in at least one case (electromagnetism) be represented by a Lie algebra, that is the adjoint representation...
View ArticleThe trouble with quantum mechanics
The trouble with quantum mechanics, as I have had occasion to remark before, lies in the identification of SU(2) with Spin(3). It is undeniable that these two groups are mathematically equivalent, but...
View ArticleThe generalized Poincare group
I have rarely, if ever, talked about the Poincare group on this blog, generally taking the view that the Lorentz group is good enough for most purposes. But this is not really true, so I suppose I had...
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