The Larson Research Center

If the public at large knew what a frenzied state the theoretical physics world is in, maybe the media like the History Channel wouldn’t be able to make so much money retelling its make-believe stories in a series such as the popular Universe episodes currently being aired. As it is, they present the most outlandish theories, as if they were established fact, complete with sophisticated animations, interspersed with sound bytes of scientists talking about the big bang, black holes, dark matter, dark energy, the birth and death of stars, etc. with an air of sagacity and perspicacity that no doubt commands silent awe from the rapt lay audience.

The truth is, however, theoretical physicists are so confused that they are calling each other out like kids on a playground, for advancing wild and crazy speculation, on the one hand, or for refusing to embrace it, on the other. As we have discussed in this blog, Lee Smolin and Peter Woit recently published the controversial books, The Trouble with Physics, and Not Even Wrong, trying to explain why the legacy system of physics (LST) is in so much trouble.

This month, a Physics Today article, published online, entitled “String theory in the era of the Large Hadron Collider”, by Michael Dine, offers a detailed outline of the state of theoretical physics, from the perspective of an optimistic string theorist. However, the article isn’t so much about applying string theory to experiments at the LHC, as the title might suggest. Instead, it is an apparent attempt to associate controversial aspects of string theory research (“Landscapeology”) with the real science of the LHC, which is something Peter Woit characterizes as “jumping the shark,” referring to a concept of creative desperation, originating in Hollywood, which he borrowed from John Horgan and George Johnson, of bloggingheads.tv.

As Smolin and Woit explain in their books, and as Chad Orzel explains on his blog, Uncertain Principles:

[T]he “landscape” issue … refers to a problem that comes out of the process of trying to use string theory to unify the fundamental forces and account for the fundamental particles…observed in physics using a model that is mathematically identical to that which describes the vibrations of a piece of elastic string. Different vibrations correspond to different types of particles, and this allows you to describe everything that we see in terms of a single mathematical object.

Of course the problem is that more than three dimensions of space are required to do this. In fact, a total of 10 dimensions are required (in m-theory), and to get the extra dimensions, the theorists invent mathematical ways to “roll up” the extra dimensions at very small scales, so that the extra dimensions aren’t detectable. The problem is, there are so many ways to roll them up, mathematically, that, in Orzel’s words:

…different formulations of string theory each give slightly different values of the physical constants, and slightly different sets of extra particles that haven’t been detected yet. Which means that, while string theory lets you describe all the particles we see in terms of a single mathematical object, it doesn’t give you a unique description of the universe that we see, but rather a whole set of different possible descriptions.

Indeed, the number of ways to hide the extra dimensions is enormous, which leads to the idea of an immense “landscape” of solutions, dealing a death blow to string theory, in Woit’s adamant opinion, but not to a small community of string theorists such as Lenny Susskind and Michael Dine, who, like software engineers, insist on viewing this “bug” in the “software,” as a “feature.” The trouble is that this view has lead to some wild ideas that garners so much of the media’s attention that it causes problems within the LST community. Orzel explains:

This is where Dine, and Leonard Susskind, and a bunch of other people attempt to turn the Landscape problem from a bug into a feature. It’s great that there are all these bazillions of possible models, they say, because we can imagine that they’re all out there somewhere as different universes. And if they all exist, it’s inevitable that there should be one that happens to be just like ours, which is good, because we know we exist.

As if this weren’t enough to launch the likes of Woit off the map, now Dine, in his article, is taking it even further. He’s making “lemonade out of the Landscape,” so-to-speak, by proposing that the “Landscape business might be the key to making predictions that will be confirmed by the LHC,” says Orzel. Whether this is a Hollywood tactic like making “lemonade out of the landscape,” or “jumping the shark,” or not, is a matter of opinion, of course, but the fact is that, for many physicists, it’s very disconcerting. Orzel explains why:

[T]his ends up getting more press than areas in which actual progress is being made. And, for that matter, more popular attention than whole fields of physics that are producing fascinating and concrete results all the time. It’s kind of maddening, really.

Meanwhile, far from this “Madding Crowd,” we are quietly focusing on the basics, using Larson Reciprocal System of Physical Theory (RST).

For instance, we simply note that from Newton’s famous third law of motion, “for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction,” we can deduce that for every direction there must be an opposite direction, and, in three dimensions, there are therefore 2³ = 8 directions. Larson illustrated these eight directions in what we now refer to as Larson’s cube, a 2x2x2 = 8 stack of one-unit cubes, with four diagonal lines connecting the eight corners of the stack:

Figure 1. The Eight Directions in Larson’s Cube 

Of course, the cube may be divided into two planes of four directions each, and each plane, in turn, may be divided into two lines, of two directions each. Thus, the cube is a set of eight 3D directions, or two sets of 4 2D directions, or four sets of 2 1D directions, and counting the common intersection of all these, as a set of no directions, we get another version of the four vector spaces of the octonions, where Hestenes’ has focused his career, and where string theorists focus their attention, albeit bedeviled by the Landscape:

2³ = 1 + 4 + 2 + 1 = 8.

John Baez is fascinated by the mystery of these numbers too, but, being in the midst of the “Madding Crowd,” he can’t see these eight 3D directions, as we are seeing them now. He sees them as Clifford first saw them,

2³ = 1 + 3 + 3 + 1 = 8

where the first set contains the real numbers, the second set the complex numbers, the third set the quaternion numbers, and the fourth set the octonion numbers. Mathematicians came up with the ad hoc inventions of negatives and imaginaries to make these different types of numbers possible, and the physicists were able to use them to good effect for a while, but now theoretical confusion reigns in their midst.

Hestene’s has notably contributed to clarifying the language of physics, through his work, even though it’s acceptance has been slow in coming. However, his great simplification of the equations of physics, equations based for the most part on complex numbers, comes from replacing the negatives and imaginaries of these number systems with another ad hoc invention, the geometric product. Unfortunately, he too fails to recognize that the four linear spaces of his geometric algebra are not necessarily confined to a space of scalars, a space of three vectors, a space of three bivectors, and a space of trivectors.

Only in the work of Larson does the insight emerge that there is another possibility. This is too bad, because if these really smart people could be persuaded to leave the madding crowd, and take up this new approach, I’m sure that they would be able to readily construct the simple scalar algebra (and the scalar calculus) that is needed to move forward. As it is, without understanding Hamilton’s early work and Larson’s obscure work extending it, such an idea would clearly appear absurd to these intellectual hunks, even if they knew about it.  So, for good or ill, it is left to us scrawny intellects, weak but with relatively strong faith, to keep on keeping on, as best we can, far from the madding crowd.