3 ms·

People with an interest in cosmology and bleeding edge physics can do worse than follow Sabine Hossenfelders blog or Youtube channel. Maybe everyone already doe

People with an interest in cosmology and bleeding edge physics can do worse than follow Sabine Hossenfelders blog or Youtube channel. Maybe everyone already does, but personally I discovered it just a few months ago. She is the kind of specialist that we expected to find more of in the early days of the internet: deep knowledge and an interest in and capability for explaining things clearly to non-experts. We need more people like her, if only to be able to evaluate if she is right or not in some key questions (like her opposition to still more powerful particle accelerators). In this case I find her explanation of Einstein's famous phrase regarding quantum mechanics quite rational, which is a novel experience for me when it comes to quantum mechanics.

jasonwatkinspdx 5y ago
I'd add a disclaimer that Hossenfelder has some very strongly held negative views on how resources in the physics community should be allocated, particularly theoretical particle physics. This stack overflow answer is a pretty charitable explanation of why the overwhelming majority of the physics world disagrees with her on these specific meta issues: https://www.quora.com/How-do-theoretical-particle-physicists-respond-to-Sabine-Hossenfelders-How-Popper-Killed-Particle-Physics https://www.quora.com/How-do-theoretical-particle-physicists...
- RedShift1 5y ago
  Why the disclaimer?
  - jasonwatkinspdx 5y ago
    The bulk of her audience are folks without enough exposure to the physics world to understand that while she is very much an expert on physics itself, her meta views on how the community should conduct themselves are fringe.
- tsimionescu 5y ago
  To be fair, it seems that that blog post and the Quora responses are older than her book, where she clarified her position significantly more, though your claim about the majority of particle physicists disagreeing with her is likely still correct. The important difference between now and when the answer was written is that she has given her own alternatives: she believes that only theories that resolve an explicit contradiction or open problem in current physics should be considered, such as quantum gravity or dark matter or the measurement problem; while theories that simply fix 'ugliness' should be ignored, such as grand unification. Furthermore, she believes that theories with open parameters whose range exceeds possible near future possible colliders should not be tested, even if the lower bounds on the parameter could be testable - this is true for supersimmetry or WIMPs. Since ruling out supersimmetry entirely requires a planet-sized accelerator, there's no reason to keep building slightly larger ones just in case. Finally, she makes a concrete recommendation: shifting focus to astronomy as a better way to observe high energy particle physics occurring in the universe, investing in much more advanced telescopes instead of bigger particle colliders.
  - irthomasthomas 5y ago
    " she makes a concrete recommendation: shifting focus to astronomy as a better way to observe high energy particle physics " Each starlink launch makes this task harder and more expensive. They have chosen a military satellite grid over scientific research :(
    - ghusbands 5y ago
      Inside the atmosphere is a terrible place to use telescopes, anyway, so we should use those launches to also get more telescopes into space.
      - jasonwatkinspdx 5y ago
        This is overly simplistic. Adaptive optics solves a lot atmospheric issues. There are also entire categories of telescopes that it simply makes more sense to keep on earth. Space telescopes are cool and all, but making a space version of something isn't necessarily better, even in a future with rapidly declining launch costs.
- bawolff 5y ago
  Unless her views are unfairly colouring her presentation of info in her vlogs, it seems a bit unfair for that to need a disclaimer. People can have strong opinions and still present the issue fairly. I'd even go as far to say, you're probably not a very good expert if every view you have exactly mirrors the status quo.
- sampo 5y ago
  > Hossenfelder has some very strongly held negative views on how resources in the physics community should be allocated If you advocate that A (for example, a large telescope) should be funded instead of B (for example, a particle collider), because you estimate A to be more fruitful, it's not a negative view. It's just a view. You must be pretty strongly in the particle collider camp, if you view funding telescopes as a negative view.
TeeMassive 5y ago
I've been a huge fan of Sabine for a while. Not only her explanations are rational, well informed and well presented, but she also has very nice dresses!

jasonwatkinspdx 5y ago

I'd add a disclaimer that Hossenfelder has some very strongly held negative views on how resources in the physics community should be allocated, particularly theoretical particle physics. This stack overflow answer is a pretty charitable explanation of why the overwhelming majority of the physics world disagrees with her on these specific meta issues: https://www.quora.com/How-do-theoretical-particle-physicists-respond-to-Sabine-Hossenfelders-How-Popper-Killed-Particle-Physics https://www.quora.com/How-do-theoretical-particle-physicists...

RedShift1 5y ago
Why the disclaimer?
- jasonwatkinspdx 5y ago
  The bulk of her audience are folks without enough exposure to the physics world to understand that while she is very much an expert on physics itself, her meta views on how the community should conduct themselves are fringe.
tsimionescu 5y ago
To be fair, it seems that that blog post and the Quora responses are older than her book, where she clarified her position significantly more, though your claim about the majority of particle physicists disagreeing with her is likely still correct. The important difference between now and when the answer was written is that she has given her own alternatives: she believes that only theories that resolve an explicit contradiction or open problem in current physics should be considered, such as quantum gravity or dark matter or the measurement problem; while theories that simply fix 'ugliness' should be ignored, such as grand unification. Furthermore, she believes that theories with open parameters whose range exceeds possible near future possible colliders should not be tested, even if the lower bounds on the parameter could be testable - this is true for supersimmetry or WIMPs. Since ruling out supersimmetry entirely requires a planet-sized accelerator, there's no reason to keep building slightly larger ones just in case. Finally, she makes a concrete recommendation: shifting focus to astronomy as a better way to observe high energy particle physics occurring in the universe, investing in much more advanced telescopes instead of bigger particle colliders.
- irthomasthomas 5y ago
  " she makes a concrete recommendation: shifting focus to astronomy as a better way to observe high energy particle physics " Each starlink launch makes this task harder and more expensive. They have chosen a military satellite grid over scientific research :(
  - ghusbands 5y ago
    Inside the atmosphere is a terrible place to use telescopes, anyway, so we should use those launches to also get more telescopes into space.
    - jasonwatkinspdx 5y ago
      This is overly simplistic. Adaptive optics solves a lot atmospheric issues. There are also entire categories of telescopes that it simply makes more sense to keep on earth. Space telescopes are cool and all, but making a space version of something isn't necessarily better, even in a future with rapidly declining launch costs.
bawolff 5y ago
Unless her views are unfairly colouring her presentation of info in her vlogs, it seems a bit unfair for that to need a disclaimer. People can have strong opinions and still present the issue fairly. I'd even go as far to say, you're probably not a very good expert if every view you have exactly mirrors the status quo.
sampo 5y ago
> Hossenfelder has some very strongly held negative views on how resources in the physics community should be allocated If you advocate that A (for example, a large telescope) should be funded instead of B (for example, a particle collider), because you estimate A to be more fruitful, it's not a negative view. It's just a view. You must be pretty strongly in the particle collider camp, if you view funding telescopes as a negative view.

TeeMassive 5y ago

I've been a huge fan of Sabine for a while. Not only her explanations are rational, well informed and well presented, but she also has very nice dresses!