What is research?
Over the course of a career involved in research in mathematics, I have often been confronted by people who cannot conceive of the concept of research in mathematics. Somehow it seems to be assumed...
View ArticleRobbing Peter to pay Paul
In an email today I was accused of “robbing Peter to pay Paul”. Guilty as charged, Your Honour. That is the WHOLE FUCKING POINT. Peter and Paul represent the theories of particle physics and gravity,...
View ArticleLooking in the mirror
One of the big problems of theoretical/mathematical physics is to explain the chirality of elementary particles – specifically, the left-handed nature of the weak interaction. Most models find it...
View ArticleThe mysteries of spin
Peter Woit has a new post with this title, in which his main point seems to be that the tensor product of two spinors is a complex scalar plus vector, whereas it represents a physically real scalar...
View ArticleLost in physical intuition
There is a fascinating discussion on “Not even wrong”, about a post a couple of days ago concerning the differences between “physical intuition” and “math”, and their relative contributions to...
View ArticleThree generations in E8
In Garrett Lisi’s original paper on “An exceptionally simple theory of everything” from 2007, one of the loose ends he left was a full description of the three generations of fermions, in particular...
View ArticleChange is possible
Wow! What a night! For the UK, anyway. After 14 years of failed ideas and utter incompetence, turning lately to utter irrelevance, the Tories have lost almost two thirds of their seats, leaving Labour...
View ArticleMore Standard Model parameters
One of the ways I judge whether my models are heading in the right direction is whether they explain any more of the Standard Model parameters. There are 20 or more of these parameters, so explaining...
View ArticleTwistors
Twistors were introduced by Roger Penrose as an extension of the idea of spinors. Spinors are the basic concept of the quantum mechanics of electrons, and twistors were supposed to generalise quantum...
View ArticleWhere’s the beef?
The trouble with physics is, that there are too many sacred cows. Things like the Lorentz group, the Equivalence Principle, the Coleman-Mandula Theorem, etc etc etc. It really doesn’t matter what they...
View ArticleIt’s not just a phase
My paper on the SU(7,2) model has appeared on the arXiv today, so you can download it from https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.18279 if you want. I’m busy adding to it and correcting it, of course, so an...
View ArticleOf mice and straw men
I’m not sure whether to start with Burns or Steinbeck, but perhaps Steinbeck’s exhortation to “Try to understand men, if you understand each other you will be kind to each other” is a good place to...
View ArticleGeneration symmetry in GUTs
Let me start by saying that I don’t believe in GUT. Or Grand Unified Theory to give Him His full title. But I do believe in the Holy Trinity of three generations of elementary fermions. In particular,...
View ArticleQuantum gravity in E8
I’ve shown how the generation symmetry on elementary fermions leads more or less immediately to a canonical embedding of the Standard Model of Particle Physics (SMPP) in E8, but I’ve said very little...
View ArticleThe definition of mass
I may have said this before, but the real problem of theoretical physics is that we haven’t got a definition of mass. This point was emphasised very strongly in Basil Hiley’s OSMU24 talk. Basil Hiley...
View ArticleUnification of Georgi-Glashow-Penrose with Pati-Salam-Einstein
For a few weeks now I’ve been talking mainly about a Georgi-Glashow-Penrose model of physics inside E8, that first splits Spin(12,4) into Spin(10)xSpin(2,4), then restricts from Spin(10) to SU(5) and...
View ArticleGauge bosons
The Standard Model of Particle Physics is based on the Yang-Mills paradigm, in which there are (unitary) “gauge groups”, whose adjoint representation contains “gauge bosons” that mediate the forces....
View ArticlePerestroika
The Marxist-Leninist (not to say Stalinist) orthodoxy of theoretical physics is, as you know, starting to show some serious strain. The economy built on counting fictitious super-tractors is on the...
View ArticleGGP-EPS model update
I’ve submitted an update to the paper describing this model, which should appear on the arXiv on Wednesday (Tuesday in the US, a day later than normal due to the Labor Day holiday). For those of you...
View ArticleThe unreasonable arrogance of theoretical physicists
I was reminded again today of the utter contempt that theoretical physicists have for mathematicians, and their unreasonable belief that they understand mathematics better than mathematicians do. And...
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