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Surfer-Physicist's Unified Theory Leads to Fame, Backlash
- mixmax 19y ago"Surfing is simply the most fun I know how to have on this planet. And physics, and science in general, is the best way of understanding how everything works. So this is what I spend my time doing. I do what I love, and follow my interests. Shouldn't everyone?" Now that is truly insightful.
- curi 19y agohow is that insightful? do what you love? everyone says that. it's well known and lacking detail. good advice is different from insightful advice.
- ashu 19y agoIt's more inspiring than insightful, probably.
- mixmax 19y agoYeah, that might be the word I was looking for. See the above comment :-)
- vsingh 19y agoDoes he really claim to have a complete unified theory of physics, or is that just media hype?
- rms 19y agoNo, he doesn't, it's just media hype. He claims that the E8 is probably significant to the fundamental forces. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E8_polytope http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E8_polytope
- ashu 19y agoHuh? He indeed does claim that his model unifies all the forces. The title of his paper was: "An exceptionally simple theory of everything". From: http://arxiv.org/abs/0711.0770 http://arxiv.org/abs/0711.0770 All fields of the standard model and gravity are unified as an E8 principal bundle connection.
- rms 19y agoI have recalled my own incomplete recollection here. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=81332 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=81332
- ardit33 19y agoPhysics is like it's own religion with it's own priests, and a social caste. Ideas matter only depending who they come from. This guy, is basically nobody, hence he will face a lot of this backlash from the estabilishment. There are so many theories out there, that are just madeup mathematic formulas with lot's of wholes, and new concepts being invented just to fill those gapping wholes, from which those theories wouldn't make sense. Gravitron, dark mass, dark energy, gravitational waves, all made up. They may or may not exist. Until there if concrete proof, they just exist just as god exist for religious people. You can't prove they exist, but you can't really prove they don't exist. I am still counting the number of "dimensions" comming out from the string theorists, from 9 to 10, to 11, and now the brane theory...things that just we cannot test with our current technology. This guy's theory, should be partially testable, especially with the new particle accelerator comming out of Cern. But the problem, he is not in the establishment. He is not an insider of the religion.
- curi 19y agoThe problem with this theory is that it's factually false. Physicists simply do not behave that way. A handful do, but physicists in general are much more principled than most other specialists in other fields, which is why physics has been so successful. PS you don't have to attack science to defend religion
- ashu 19y agoIs string theory also 'factually false' according your definition?
- curi 19y agoi wouldn't call string theory factually false yet -- that's too controversial, and one shouldn't use the word 'fact' except when it's quite clear. the data about whether physicists act like priests is not controversial so using 'fact' is ok there. further, i was emphasizing the problem with the 'physicists are like priests' theory is not the explanation -- it's plausible in the abstract and has a certain kind of appeal -- the only problem is that the factual data doesn't support it. FYI my best theory is that string theory is false.
- pfedor 19y agohttp://zunger.livejournal.com/160426.html http://zunger.livejournal.com/160426.html "The non-technical version is that it makes for a great news story and all, but this is the sort of idea that most high-energy physicists come up with sometime during grad school, think about for a few minutes, and then realize why it doesn't work."
- wallflower 19y agoI read about Kerry Black in Wired a while back. Another fascinating surfer-physicist who is well on his way to delivering perfect surf waves on demand to bored teens at indoor land-locked malls. "It's evening, and Black is hosting a dinner party with his girlfriend and a few guests at his house just blocks from ASR. As he throws a couple of fresh red snapper on the grill, Black talks about his quest to decipher the physics of surfing. It's one that's taken him more than 30 years, most of which had more to do with mundane coastal dynamics and oceanography than with surfing per se."Before you can understand surfing reefs," he says, "there's so much other knowledge you need. Wave dynamics. Sediment transport. Computer modeling. I was really in a long process to get those things before I could start on surf breaks." http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.05/surfing_pr.html http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.05/surfing_pr.html