Lee Smolin: String Theory Is Still Wrong (152)

Lee Smolin is a physicist at the Perimeter Institute who Is a vocal critic of string theory. He is fascinated by quantum gravity, contributing to two major theories, loop quantum gravity and deformed special relativity. He proposed ‘cosmological natural selection’: a falsifiable mechanism to explain the choice of the laws of physics.

He has also contributed to quantum field theory, the foundations of quantum mechanics, theoretical biology, the philosophy of science and economics. He is the author of more than 150 scientific papers and numerous essays and writings for the public on science.

He also has written four books which explore philosophical issues raised by contemporary physics and cosmology. These are Life of the Cosmos (1997), Three Roads to Quantum Gravity (2001), The Trouble with Physics (2006) and Time Reborn (2013). Most recently, he coauthored The Singular Universe and The Reality of Time with Roberto Mangabeira Unger.

00:00:00 Intro
00:01:17 Is physics still in trouble after 40 years?
00:01:42 Quantum materials is a bright spot
00:04:00 String Theory is still wrong!
00:05:58 Loop Quauntum Gravity’s origins
00:21:30 Emergent Spacetime
00:35:37 The cosmic microwave background and the advent of chirality in quantum physics
00:46:32 Thoughts on the multiverse
00:57:50 Can creativity be taught?
01:00:00 The Thrilling Three™: Existential Questions I ask all my Guests

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Artwork: Sloan Sobie

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[DrBrianKeating]

Is string theory still our best hope for a Theory of Everything?

[trax]

Brian plzzz the sound in the background does not go well the voice and speech. You can have the audio but it has to be different. You can hire an audio engineer for cheap and they will pick out the type of music that does go well and mix it so it all sounds right. Please I love your work but this makes it unbearable to listen.

[JasonMacKenzie]

First of all, I absolutely love your interviews and your deep knowledge in so many areas.

My only request is: please, please, please lose that random background music that shows up in the podcast lately. It makes the interviews unlistenable to me. Am I the only one? It wouldn’t be the first time I’m an army of one :)

[Joniversity]

The background music is distracting and annoying. Why the hell mix that in to a

[parva]

Background music is painfull to my ears (much to lood)... Specialy with such an interesting subject !

[JaskoonerSingh]

Great fan of your but please lose this background music esp when someone like Lee Smolin is speaking. We want to concentrate on what the man is saying when is already very frail and faint of voice.

[pascalbercker]

I'm just echoing what others have already said, namely that the random music not only adds nothing - but detracts.

[deplant]

Had to stop watching due to the DUMB BACKGROUND MUSIC.

[Wilson-Jr]

The string theory offers a solution to a problem created by the string theory itself.

[chriskennedy]

Lee is a great thinker. He is always honest with himself and always honest with the rest of us as well. Physics needs more of that.

[sirilandgren]

Brian, it's so fantastic how you keep expressing your deep personal admiration for your guests, even though they sometimes hold deeply contradictory views. That gratitude for people's work and commitment (also shared by Lee) is in my mind what a field needs in order to be as good as it can be - both in terms of technical results, but also in terms of value to humanity. And this is also one of the reasons why I (from my amateur's point of view) hold Lee as one of the most important people to his field.

[pdcoates]

I started to watch this then I thought, WTF life is too short to waste it on proven dead ends. RI(not in peace) string theory.

[kosmos]

If you’re to interview serious thinkers, you should focus on the content and drop the random shiny clips and poor design choices… Its just not your strength.

[williambunting]

If Einstein was right with E=MC^2 then there is only one building block of the Universe, and that is Energy. The first question has to be what is the nature of the actual energy itself. Energy as we experience it is confined by a field, the Higgs Field. So that is a second building block which by Einstein’s theory must be energy in a different form to that of Matter Energy. Consider for a moment what properties Energy without a constraint field would have? It is logical that energy without constraint is infinite and therefore dimensionless for both space and time. Space and Time are emergent properties of spontaneous transition of infinite energy to energy with two properties which I suggest could be thought of as Dynamic Energy and Static Energy where Static Energy is the Higgs Field. Energy as we observe it is either moving (photons, electrons, quarks, neutrinos, gluons, etc) or static in the form of fields that mediate the nature of the dynamic energy passing through it. If you look at the universe from that perspective every thing we experience are emergent properties of the confinement of the dynamic form of energy which I perceive to be string like in nature and everything we know are clues as to how dynamic energy is contained within the field. So string theory is the only solution consistent with the fundamentals.

[seionne]

To everyone complaining about the background music, I think that was on Dr. Smolin's end. Because it seems to only play while he is speaking. He may have had his rebellious teenage grandson's garage band practicing downstairs 😂😂

[mxbishop]

I really like Lee Smolin. I've read his books including, "The Trouble with Physics." He was objecting to String Theory long before others had joined the chorus. When I think about physics, I see an elephant in the room. And that elephant is quantum entanglement. How can it be that two particles can seemingly communicate faster than the speed of light? To me, this is the big clue that's winking at everyone in the physics community. It's telling us that Einstein's relativity is incomplete. Perhaps there is more to reality than our classical 4D spacetime? QE suggests a broader theory that includes higher dimensions and/or more exotic geometries that allows quantum entangled particles to communicate without violating special relativity - when viewed in this new framework. Of course, the broader theory will have to recover special and general relativity in our familiar 4D spacetime. QE is imploring us to find a better theory of spacetime. I also suspect that once this new theory is discovered that explains how QE actually works, then quantum gravity may likely fall out of the equations as well. I'm not a theoretical physicist, but I am a mathematician, and this is what I think.

[schmetterling]

It's much worse than that. String theory is still not even wrong.

[worththewatch]

I only like him because I always believed string theory is wrong.

[Achrononmaster]

LQG people have missed something big, because they've tried to quantize an already quantized theory[^]. Rovelli infected them all with unviable quantization. If they go back to the gauge picture, then formulate the GR sector in terms of geometric algebra (Lasenby & Doran's work) you get most of relativistic wave-mechanics for "free" (so to speak) with the rotors in the _real_ geometric (Clifford) algebra (David Hestenes work), then add non-trivial spacetime topology (wormholes --- Lenny Susskind & Maldacena's work) then use that to raise the _effective_ degrees of freedom so you get an "effective" extra pair of space dimensions (c.f. Dixon, Baylis and others), hence 6+1 d.o.f then with the geometric algebra you get octonions (Dixon, Baez) and the full standard model group with chirality (Cohl Furey's work). I cannot be certain but I also think you will not get superstring anomalies, and you do not need supersymmetry, since spacetime topology tames modes (and the graviton is not really a thing), you just have ordinary gravity waves and solitons, or wormhole vibrational modes. On the scale where wormholes persist (Planck scale) you'll get CTC"s and hence "time loops" which "explains" all the rest of quantum mechanics --- decoherence or "collapse" is a macro consequence of the fact big things cannot travel trough these CTC's, and so quantum effects must fade naturally the more fundamental topological geons have to coherently jump around the wormholes (whihc is what quantum foam is).
I know this is a broad brush I'm painting with, by hey, it's only a youtube comment. Feel free to "steal" this patchwork quilt, but drop me a line if you do. I have more pressing humanitarian problems to solve, trying to get a job guarantee program into New Zealand law, switching career from physic to activist macroeconomics.

[^] the "already quantized theory" is GR!!! (Mark Hadley's work) --- and Susskind & Maldacena have also cracked into this piece of the puzzle, the key to that bit is "ER=EPR, " and more recently Susskind has even been writing about "QM=GR". The laboratory for studying QG will be on the desktop, the quantum computer (wormholes (GR) _are_ entanglement (EPR => quantum computing)). Susskind's missing all this because he is biased, he thinks GR emerges from entanglement, but it's the other way around! One can appreciate GR => QM when you listen to Feynman: all the weird shit like Pauli exclusion arises from spacetime symmetry and exchange (via what?... via wormholes, hello!!!) Sum over histories too and the "fractal" and acausal Feynman--Hibbs trajectories --- what's all that from?... from the non-time oriented statistics of topological geons jumping around through Lorentzian wormhole CTC's on the Planck scale or thereabouts (probably a quite broad scale of length and time, say sub-atomic, I don't know how extremal wormholes persist, not sure anyone does for sure, but the hint is at least as long as entanglement of one quibit persists).

In a sort of very "macro" picture what's happening is gravity is what other forces "push off" --- topologically. The "EM-motor metaphor" is like gravity is the "stator" for the universe, and the gauge boson forces the "rotor" --- I got this off an engineer friend who's also an economist, Warren Mosler of MMT fame, of all people. It's only a metaphor but I kinda' like it.

[adraffy]

I rarely comment. Brian, this was one of your best podcasts. You got Smolin to braindump and you let him talk uninterrupted.