On a lake in southern Germany

Comments (6)

• 1 Cormac O Raifeartaigh July 3, 2008 8:53 PM

  You lucky thing! It looks like a great conference.

  Luckily, they've put almost all the talks online at
  http://www.lindau-nobel.de/LecturesOnline.AxCMS?ActiveID=1173

  I've listened to two so far - David Gross's lecture on what may be found at the LHC, which is a superb introduction to the theory of particle physics, and Matin Veltman's lecture on the history of experimental particle physics...

  This is such a fantastic resource I'm busy writing mini-reviews of each talk on my blog.

  Wish I was there, what a perk...

• 2 Andrei Kirilyuk July 4, 2008 2:10 PM

  "One should let the physicists do their work instead of pressuring the scientists for results." This cited attitude of the physics Nobel Prize winner (Carlo Rubbia) wouldn't even need further comment to clarify the current state of fundamental science. No need to expect its results, just pay them their high salaries and invest in so complicated experimental factories that their professional operators cannot cope with them, in years. It's evident that what's being said about LHC perspectives by the top-level CERN experimentalist Rubbia ("this is a very complex machine, and presumably, it will take years before we understand it properly"), rather than by far-from-reality theoreticians, is but a preparation for the expected failure of the whole enterprise permitting its personal beneficiaries to hide the scandalous fact of evidently wasted billions behind various "complexities", their "infinitely fine" interpretations and other "accommodating" word plays.

  It's fascinating, Joao, this your nice adventure in top-level pleasure environment of absolutely fruitless official science. So we'll be waiting impatiently for your further reports from the event, all details including. If knowledge progress as measured by explicit problem solutions is evidently not the purpose of huge investment of tax-payer money in modern science, then there should be something else, equally exciting, like top receptions, luxury hotels, and all other elements of golden celebrity life, to account for regularly spent billions of pounds, euros, dollars... If we can't see even this kind of "result", then it would follow that those huge amounts of public funds are simply stolen?! Oh, horrible, it can never happen in that polite and well-educated society! So you'd better tell us all the relevant details of the great life of our officially best scientists and their devoted courts (science managers and public relations, journalists and writers, new generations of professional parasites, etc.). After all, a society that regularly spends billions - even in the middle of the "world crisis" - just for pure luxury of all those show-business celebrities (with their "great contribution" to the progress of humanity) certainly has the right to spend even more for pure luxury of its officially best intellectual elites, even irrespective of their results (all those machines become so complicated, you know...). The more so that the difference between official science and show business becomes now so vanishingly small...

  And, please, Joao, don't forget to describe the impact of particularly novel, surprising approaches at the meeting, such as
  that of the famous Nobel Prize winner Brian Josephson who apparently insists on an opening completely new way of physics. After entering into details of his presentation, you (or anyone else) may even be able to see objectively whether other similar, but already realised approach revealing
  unreduced dynamic complexity in fundamental physics (now intrinsically unified),
  explicitly solving existing problems and showing why exactly that standard-theory LHC experimentation is an impasse goes in the same direction or should be corrected or thrown off entirely. After all, it's a unique opportunity, that extraordinary meeting between officially great and other scientists, and it's not easy to get there for the latter, especially if one does propose problem solutions (how would you justify then all those crazy billions spent for nothing?)... Have a nice time, Joao, and keep us informed.

• 3 Cormac O'Raifeartaigh July 4, 2008 6:03 PM

  Still enjoying the online talks at that conference

  That said, I don't think George Smoot�s talk was in the same class as the others I've seen so far.. Entitled � The beginning and development of the Universe�, it promised a lot more than it delivered. Everything was probably there somewhere, but not in any order I could make much sense of.

  Smoot mentions the acceleration of the universe early on, without any discussion of the universe expansion, or Hubble�s law. Similarly, he launches into a description of measurements of the cosmic microwave background without giving any explanation of why it is a snapshot of the early universe. Finally, while there was plenty of talk of both the COBE and WMAP satellite experiments, there is no mention of the �why� - i.e. the advantages of satellite measurements over ground-based observation.

  In fact, the talk was strangely reminiscent of a talk given by Smoot�s co-laureate John Mather at Trinity College Dublin last year. There should be a law for public speakers - if you�re going to give a talk about your area (cosmology), you need to spend a few minutes on the basics (univ. expansion, nucleosynthesis, backgound radiation and inflation models etc)

  I�m fairly sure any members of the audience not familiar with BB theory left that lecture no wiser than before�

• 4 Dr Juan Klopper July 4, 2008 9:21 PM

  Warning: A bit of a psychological monologue. As I have not been accredited and have not posted here I am unsure whether this comment will be posted. To clarify, I am a Specialist and Trauma Surgeon and certainly no physicist. Contemplating my life at the eve of my 39th birthday (28 July) I must confess that my first love has always been physics. Medicine was my parents dream and medicine has the unfortunate way of consuming your whole life. When you come up for air, you realize it is perhaps to late to follow your dreams. So whenever I have a small break and I am not collapsing from mental and physical exhaustion, I read physics textbooks and journals and whatever I can get my hands on.
  So, to the matter at hand and that is the nature of the human species. I see the stupidity of human nature all day, I put together bodies broken through utter stupidity. And so it is with physicists. Now, please don't misunderstand me. The presenters in Lindau are the best minds in the world. They represent the best our species has to offer. But as a species I think we greatly overestimate our intelligence. Andrei (one of only two posters on this thread as I write this), you might see these professors as somehow famous and living the high life. Ask any 'stupid' human being watching soap operas and more interested in the newest Hollywood gossip who these physicist are and they won't know. There simply is not enough intelligence on this planet. There is death, starvation, war, economic crises and more, and physics always stays behind.
  It is the nature of humanity that our progress in physics is so painfully slow. How long has it taken us to get here (LHC)? How many mistakes have been made? Plenty. But it is all we have. And most importantly it will get us there. Eventually.
  And from someone sitting on the outside, allow me so say that all physicists should be utterly excited in these times. Step back for once and count your blessings. Your work is the epitomy of what we can strive for.
  To all at Lindau and all physicists involved at the LHC, I compliment you. Take our species forward. Whether the LHC is a massive loss, whether new physics are born, whether string theorists turn out to be correct, physicists are involved in the most fundamental reason for our existence. Embrace your opportunities, turn as many young minds to physics and mathematics as possible, and please, please hurry up, we are all getting older and we need to know as much as possible.
  Dr Juan H Klopper
  MBChB(UP) MMed(Surg)(UFS)Cum Laude

• 5 Andrei Kirilyuk July 9, 2008 1:28 PM

  Thank you for an inspired comment, Juan. At this time especially, one should not be afraid of any "inexact" feelings, hopes and premonitions, irrespective of professional and private experience. The world is living a very deep change epoch, and such "psychological" reflexions may well contain a great deal of objectively necessary evolution. What would be a big mistake indeed is to follow passively the collapsing, outdated "system" imitations, in science and beyond. It is this one, which is the source of the "utter stupidity" you refer to (physics including, alas!) and of the resulting "world crisis". But as it always happens, the deep crisis of the ending old reality contains also the potential for and appearing first signs of a superior level of life and intelligence; one should only not miss an always narrow path leading upwards (while the typically broad avenue leading downwards is quite visible and very well lit, as usually!).

  Physics and science in the whole is in a very deep crisis today, with all its characteristic features: the luxurious feasts of the corrupt "elites" persecuting any attempts to find the new, consistent truth, on the background of catastrophically accumulating, "unsolvable" problems, evident knowledge deficiencies and related human ruptures, etc. (evidence is not missing, see e.g. a recent collection of papers and references therein). It could be quite different indeed at a new, intrinsically creative knowledge level, and it is the "infinitely big" contrast between today's sad reality and that "superior intelligence" possibility which should not remain hidden from all interested people, on the background of senseless official celebrations on the top deck of the sinking Titanic.

  One difference of the intrinsically creative knowledge system from today's unitary system manipulations is that the former, contrary to the latter, doesn't create borders between "professional science", with it "very special" caste of "high priests", and "lay-people " interest reduced to a possibility to be graciously informed about " another great success" of "our great science" (even when it's actually in a surrealistically deep crisis). At the superior level of knowledge you wouldn't need to regret for your "unfortunate" position "outside" of professional physics which you like: you could directly participate instead in any level of professional creative work itself, beyond any misleading "information" from the formally dominating oligarchy (first hints on such new interaction level may already be appearing on this blog). And vice versa, physics, in its unreduced version of genuine understanding of unreduced interaction processes, can make nontrivial contributions to e. g. biology and medical sciences. There should be no borders between "disciplines" but only a permanently progressing border between less complete and more complete understanding of everything naturally open to everybody's participation. This is the true level of "future physics" and you can compare it with the now imposed reign of over-simplified, abstract "models" that cannot establish any real-system understanding and unity already at the level of elementary particles, the simplest objects of the universe (while being also so esoteric that they cannot be properly estimated even by professional colleagues)... But all the world's resources, including super-expensive "verifying" experiments, go just to that kind of objectively fruitless but "officially accepted" science and nothing to well-specified attempts to ascend to a superior, intrinsically complete and unified knowledge. Taking also into account the related and peaking problems of "hot", urgently needed science applications (new energy sources, reliable genetics, integral medicine, efficient ecology, intelligent machines, etc.), you would understand the "heat of the moment"... Another, much more intelligent world is possible but only at a superior level of organisation and practice, in science and elsewhere. Those who want it should then remain in contact and try to move in that direction, by all accessible means. Others will join, hopefully, even before your 390th birthday!

• 6 TOSHIBA August 13, 2008 9:55 AM

  Satellite positions are described as the longitude of the place
  on the equator that the satellite hovers above. 19e means 19.2
  degrees east, which finds some Astra satellites about 35000km
  above the Congo basin, with many FTA German broadcasts.