from Hacker News

The symmetry and simplicity of the laws of physics and the Higgs boson (2015)

by nocoder on 11/24/18, 4:36 AM with 44 comments

• by semi-extrinsic on 11/24/18, 7:54 AM

  Since his name is not as widely known outside the physics community, I'll just point out that Juan Maldacena (the author of this) is the guy who discovered the gauge/gravity duality (aka AdS/CFT correspondence), which is what people are on about when you hear the phrase "holographic universe". His original 1997 paper on it has been cited 17,000+ times, more than any other paper in the history of high energy physics.

• by bfirsh on 11/24/18, 8:40 AM

  If you're on a phone, here's an HTML version: https://www.arxiv-vanity.com/papers/1410.6753/

• by natch on 11/24/18, 7:19 AM

  Delightful presentation. I love how they used approachable analogies with things like currency exchange, and pushed the math off to an appendix.

• by mickrussom on 11/24/18, 12:46 PM

  higgs landed almost exactly in the middle of the range between supersymmetry and multiverse - first, the higgs is in the metastable range - a middling result. second - Higgs above the max of 115 GEV needed for supersymmetry to work and less than the 140-145 that make the multiverse theories work out.

  Its exactly where none of the theoretical physicists wanted it to be.

  back to the drawing board.

• by nyc111 on 11/24/18, 4:05 PM

  > Beauty represents the forces of nature: electromagnetism, the weak force, the strong force and gravity.

  The point of General Relativity is that gravity is not a force. I'm familar with standard argument that Newtonian force is a suitable approximation. But he is being careless with a very fundamental concept. Gravity is either a force or it is not. In physics it looks like it is a force when the author needs a force and it is not a force when the author feels like it.

• by nyc111 on 11/24/18, 3:46 PM

  Since he described symmetry in terms of rotations, I would expect that the object labeled (g) in the first figure would be symmetric under 360 degrees rotation. He says it's not symmetric.

• by dschuetz on 11/24/18, 8:46 AM

  If the number of citations is a measurement for achievement then perhaps we should put more value to the Like buttons we so frequently use. But, I'm sure he's good in what he does since so many people agree on his thoughts.

• by dschuetz on 11/24/18, 8:37 AM

  "The Beauty and The Beast" Seriously? Also, they initially make the bold statement that all four fundamental forces follow the gauge symmetry only to say later that it's just another way to look at electromagnetism, through the lens of Gauge Theory. What is it then? Why not just say that the forces follow an underlying symmetry which is described best by the Gauge Theory? Then I have to read several pages of analogy without any explanation and correspondence to the real thing. No, sorry, didn't help. Next, please!

• by Avshalom on 11/24/18, 8:13 AM

  "Symmetry" is reflective not rotational. Currency exchange is a map not a graph.

  "we" is "i".

  if physics is simpler than economics than using economics as a metaphor for physics is the exact fucking opposite of useful.

  There is no cited proof that "An extra dimension is not a necessary assumption, only the symmetry is."

  The Maxwell equations bare no resemblance to exchange rates.

  It turns out that the mass of the particle is related to the energy cost to excite a very long wavelength wave. This is related to the famous formula E = mc 2 . Unfortunately I have not found a short way to explain this, so you will have to trust me on this. In our economic analogy we have not talked about energy. Let us simply say that the energy increases as the gain available to speculators increases. This makes intuitive sense, the more the speculators can earn, the harder it is for the banks!

  Okay I admit this analogy makes no sense but lets keep going...?

    3.1 Apologizing for one oversimplification
  

  ONE?!