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The nature of time

If you want to understand the nature of time, you need to talk to musicians. It is no good talking to physicists, because they do not understand the nature of time. To be fair, relativists do at least...

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Linear algebra

All theoretical physics is based on linear algebra. Without linear algebra you can do nothing in theoretical physics. Linear algebra comes in three flavours: real, complex and quaternionic. Classical...

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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...

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The 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...

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Hot 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...

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Non-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...

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The 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...

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Gauge 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...

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The 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...

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A 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...

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The 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...

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The 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...

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The 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...

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Groundhog 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...

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I 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...

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Quantisation 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...

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Conventions

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...

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Sparrows 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!...

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Weyl 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...

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Quantum 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...

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