String Theory Meets Loop Quantum Gravity (2016)(quantamagazine.org)
quantamagazine.org
String Theory Meets Loop Quantum Gravity (2016)
https://www.quantamagazine.org/string-theory-meets-loop-quantum-gravity-20160112
4 comments
Hey, here is some research experience in Quantum Gravity: Don't do it, or if it's to late for that, get out.
The field is oversaturated with good people. Conceptual questions are either well explored or hinge on technical questions far beyond our ability to understand. Yet everyone still puts out two papers a year, and claiming to solve physics questions, rather than mathematics questions is good for funding/positions. Hence there's a lot of bullshit.
This applies to much of HEP, too. We have gone more than 50 years since the Standard Model was written down. More work has gone into HEP/QG Theory since then, than in it's entire history before. Not all of that was wrong/wasted, we did learn about properties of the standard model, and some brilliant mathematical work has been done. But still, this is a terrible field to work in, we're 2-3 academic generations in since the last time a new model that corresponds to reality was found. It's extremely self-referential.
P.S.: If you want to talk more about this stuff, feel free to message me.
The field is oversaturated with good people. Conceptual questions are either well explored or hinge on technical questions far beyond our ability to understand. Yet everyone still puts out two papers a year, and claiming to solve physics questions, rather than mathematics questions is good for funding/positions. Hence there's a lot of bullshit.
This applies to much of HEP, too. We have gone more than 50 years since the Standard Model was written down. More work has gone into HEP/QG Theory since then, than in it's entire history before. Not all of that was wrong/wasted, we did learn about properties of the standard model, and some brilliant mathematical work has been done. But still, this is a terrible field to work in, we're 2-3 academic generations in since the last time a new model that corresponds to reality was found. It's extremely self-referential.
P.S.: If you want to talk more about this stuff, feel free to message me.
Not sure about the far reaching implications of this, but it does potentially mean that Sheldon Cooper and Leslie Winkle can finally be friends...!
Code this up in Python, sprinkle in some ML, and we can resolve these pesky theoretical discrepancies.
I don't really have much of a point in sharing this other than excitement, but if anyone has research experience with loop quantum gravity I'd certainly like to hear whatever you have to say!