RFD: sci.physics.strings moderated
Urs Schreiber
moderated group sci.physics.strings
This is a formal Request For Discussion (RFD) for the creation of a
world-wide moderated Usenet newsgroup sci.physics.strings. This
is not a Call for Votes (CFV); you cannot vote at this time.
Procedural details are below.
Newsgroup line:
sci.physics.strings String theory and related fields. (Moderated)
RATIONALE: sci.physics.strings
Sci.physics.strings is primarily meant to be a forum for discussions
between the mainstream physicists who actively work in high energy
theoretical physics, especially string theory as well as other fields
that interact with the string theory community, including
high-energy phenomenology and high-energy experiments, and the laymen
interested in these questions.
The topics would include theoretical foundations of string theory,
dualities, physics of various backgrounds, quantum gravity,
mathematical methods and fields that are useful to study string
theory, stringy inspired models of particle physics beyond the
Standard Model, and the questions about their experimental
verification.
There are many string theorists who would like to discuss on the
internet such topics as those appearing in scientific papers on the
hep-th, hep-ph, and gr-qc archives at www.arxiv.org and who
currently don't find a suitable online discussion forum.
While several unmoderated online fora dedicated to string theory
do exist and have a large amount of traffic, experience shows
that the lack of moderation hampers the development of a
decent discussion.
The only other moderated newsgroup that offers some room for such
discussions today is sci.physics.research. Recently, however, the
traffic on this newsgroup has become rather large, and the
discussions about string theory are never focused because a
significant fraction of the participants on SPR prefers various
alternative approaches to theoretical physics, and serious
discussions about string theory are usually interrupted by
general critical remarks of the participants who find string
theory uninteresting.
The separation of string theory related issues from
sci.physics.research will hence avoid latent unproductive statements
of disagreement on the general relevance of string theory which was
felt to be unsatisfactory by all parties.
Moderation is clearly necessary and desirable in order
to ensure an interesting, productive, and focused discussion, just as
moderation in comparable newsgroups such as sci.physics.research or
sci.astro.research is generally believed to be beneficial
Please note that followups to this post will appear only in
news.groups, unless you explicitly crosspost to other groups. Keep in
mind that more than 5 crossposts will cause your post to be rejected
by many news servers. Consider subscribing to news.groups to
participate fully in the discussion.
CHARTER: sci.physics.strings
sci.physics.strings is a moderated newsgroup for discussion
of string theory and related fields of high-energy physics.
Posting guidelines:
1) Posts must be related to the discussion of string theory, which
includes all the modern aspects of the theory (such as branes,
dualities, "M-theory"), as well as related fields, but excludes
non-stringy proposals for theories of grand unification, quantum
gravity and high-energy physics, unless a direct relevance for string
theory can be made explicit.
2) The decisions of the moderators whether a posting is
interesting enough and appropriate for the newsgroup will reflect the
views generally held by typical members of the high-energy physics
community. But of course possibly unconventional and even
controversial stringy topics, as far as they are interesting for
physicists, are welcome.
Moderators will however not be responsible for the technical correctness
of accepted posts, though they may reject posts or send the posting
back suggesting revision when they note errors.
3) Posts may be rejected if they contain personal attacks, incitement
to retribution (i.e. flames and obvious trolling), or general hostility.
Clearly inappropriate postings include:
(1) Personal attacks;
(2) Discussion that isn't about or related to string theory
(3) Multiple responses that all say the same things; and
(4) Crackpot postings that are "not even wrong."
4) An article that is rejected will be sent back to the author,
perhaps with the suggestion of a more appropriate newsgroup, or a
suggestion of how to revise it to make it acceptable.
5) Posts may include links to websites or personal pages that
contain relevant and on-topic information about string theory.
Posts that are, in the opinion of the moderator, primarily intended
to solicit business, sell a product, or further some commercial
purpose, will cause the post to be rejected.
6) Posting of binary files is prohibited, except for small binary
files included as personal signatures or electronic business cards.
Short segments of source code or quotes from papers may be posted;
however, large projects and complete papers should be archived
elsewhere, and a link to the download site included in the post.
END CHARTER.
MODERATOR INFO: sci.physics.strings
Moderator: Lubos Motl <mo...@feynman.harvard.edu>
Moderator bio:
Lubos Motl earned his M. Sc. from Charles University, Prague, and
received his Ph.D. from Rutgers University in 2001. He is now a
Harvard Junior Fellow. He is and has been working on nonperturbative
string theory and in particular on Matrix Theory.
Moderator: Arvind Rajaraman <araj...@uci.edu>
Moderator bio:
Arvind Rajaraman earned his M. Sc. from the Indian Institute of
Technology in India and obtained his Ph.D. in 1998 from Stanford
University. He then held a postdoctoral position at Rutgers University
before joining the UCI Physics Department as an assistant professor
in 2001. His research is mainly in the field of string theory. His
research directions include the study of D-branes, the AdS/CFT
correspondence, the Matrix model of M-theory, and the construction
of supergravity solutions for D-branes as well as cosmology.
Moderator: Urs Schreiber <Urs.sc...@uni-essen.de>
Moderator bio:
Urs Schreiber is a graduate student in theoretical physics
at Essen University (Germany) working on string theory
related topics. He is a co-moderator of sci.physics.research.
END MODERATOR INFO.
PROCEDURE:
This is a request for discussion, not a call for votes. In this
phase of the process, any potential problems with the proposed
newsgroups should be raised and resolved. The discussion period
will continue for a minimum of 21 days (starting from when the
first RFD for this proposal is posted to news.announce.newgroups),
after which a Call For Votes (CFV) may be posted by a neutral vote
taker if the discussion warrants it. Please do not attempt to vote
until this happens.
All discussion of this proposal should be posted to news.groups.
This RFD attempts to comply fully with the Usenet newsgroup
creation guidelines outlined in "How to Create a New Usenet
Newsgroup" and "How to Format and Submit a New Group Proposal".
Please refer to these documents (available in
news.announce.newgroups) if you have any questions about the
process.
DISTRIBUTION:
news.announce.newgroups
news.groups
sci.physics.research
sci.physics.relativity
sci.physics.particle
Proponent: Lubos Motl <mo...@feynman.harvard.edu>
Proponent: Arvind Rajaraman <araj...@uci.edu>
Proponent: Urs Schreiber <Urs.sc...@uni-essen.de>
Mentor: Ru Igarashi <r...@nucleus.usask.ca>
KalElFan
couple of comments.
"Urs Schreiber" <Urs.Sc...@uni-essen.de> wrote in message news:10715906...@isc.org...
> 1) Posts must be related to the discussion of string theory, which
> includes all the modern aspects of the theory (such as branes,
> dualities, "M-theory"), as well as related fields, but excludes
> non-stringy proposals for theories of grand unification, quantum
> gravity and high-energy physics, unless a direct relevance for string
> theory can be made explicit.
Just playing devil's advocate here because I'm not sure there's any
established consensus on this, but I get the impression that M-theory
has become the new or umbrella category for strings to some extent,
e.g. see:
http://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/user/gr/public/qg_ss.html
And also in Brian Greene's very popular book and very good book for
the layman, The Elegant Universe, the glossary defines M-theory as:
"Theory emerging from the second superstring revolution that unites
the previous five superstring theories within a single overarching
framework..."
The only other comment I'd have is on what happened with the last
sci.* moderated group I voted for, sci.space.moderated. The original
moderators got disillusioned when the traffic for the group wasn't high
enough, and just announced one day that it was shutting down. I was
quite content to read a low traffic but high signal to noise group, and
I'm sure others were, but I'd be interested to hear what the moderators'
expectations are here in terms of participation and traffic. In particular,
you're going to need well over a hundred Yes votes as you probably
know, and for something as specialized as this I'm wondering if the
votes are there.
--
Anthony Michael Walsh
KalElFan [at] scifipi.com
http://moviescorecard.com
Lubos Motl
> I'd be interested in reading the group and would vote for it, but have a
> couple of comments.
Well, then it's obvious that you are a smart person. ;-)
> Just playing devil's advocate here because I'm not sure there's any
> established consensus on this, but I get the impression that M-theory
> has become the new or umbrella category for strings to some extent,
> e.g. see:
That's right. M-theory can either be explained in the narrow sense - as
the generalization of the 11-dimensional supergravity that works at all
length scales (unlike the supergravity itself) - or it can be explained in
the broad sense - M-theory as the umbrella that unifies all ideas and all
possible spacetimes and objects that string theorists ever studied.
The reason why M-theory has two meanings is that in the early 1995, people
used to believe that these two meanings were actually the same: they
believed that once we would understand how the 11-dimensional theory
works, we would understand how *all* versions of string theory work. This
viewpoint turned out to be quite naive, and today we view the
11-dimensional physics as another limit of string theory that should be
treated on equal footing as all other descriptions of string theory.
M stands for Magic, Mystery, Matrix, Monster, Mother, Master, or upside
down W for Witten (which is Glashow's explanation).
> And also in Brian Greene's very popular book and very good book for
> the layman, The Elegant Universe, the glossary defines M-theory as:
Great that you like it, too. I also like it, otherwise I would not have
translated it to Czech. Even if our proposal for this newsgroup fails,
don't forget to buy and read the new Brian's book in February, ;-)
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0375412883
> The only other comment I'd have is on what happened with the last
> sci.* moderated group I voted for, sci.space.moderated. The original
> moderators got disillusioned when the traffic for the group wasn't high
> enough, and just announced one day that it was shutting down.
Well, it's because people are not making too many exciting new excursion
to space right now. However they are making still a lot of new interesting
discoveries in string theory - for example today, Edward Witten showed in
his new 97-page paper that the old idea of "twistors" by Roger Penrose is
a good one, and it can be used within string theory to describe the
amplitudes of gauge theories and understand a lot of their properties.
A new paper of this sort immediately makes hundreds of people to read it
and think about it, and I am convinced that tens of percent of these
people want to discuss it not only within their research groups, but also
on the internet, and hear what people from outside think about all that -
and perhaps steal some ideas from the newsgroup.
> I was quite content to read a low traffic but high signal to noise
> group, and I'm sure others were, but I'd be interested to hear what
> the moderators' expectations are here in terms of participation and
> traffic.
You're exactly the type of the person that sci.physics.strings is meant to
be good for, I think. Of course, there exist very many reasons why this
newsgroup could fail either immediately, or at some time after it is
created, but we don't want to give up now because this newsgroup might
also become a very important one. ;-)
> In particular, you're going to need well over a hundred Yes votes as
> you probably know, and for something as specialized as this I'm
> wondering if the votes are there.
Yes, it is extremely difficult. This is why we hope that the newsgroup
will get a "YES" vote from you and perhaps your friends and family - and
you should check whether you dog can vote as well! ;-)
All the best,
Lubos
______________________________________________________________________________
E-mail: lu...@matfyz.cz fax: +1-617/496-0110 Web: http://lumo.matfyz.cz/
phone: work: +1-617/496-8199 home: +1-617/868-4487
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Superstring/M-theory is the language in which God wrote the world.
Jesper Harder
> The only other moderated newsgroup that offers some room for such
> discussions today is sci.physics.research. Recently, however, the
> traffic on this newsgroup has become rather large,
In the past three weeks, around 20-30 messages per day on average. I
wouldn't consider that »rather large«.
> The separation of string theory related issues from
> sci.physics.research will hence avoid latent unproductive statements
> of disagreement on the general relevance of string theory which was
> felt to be unsatisfactory by all parties.
I found those discussions interesting.
Peter Woit
I'm probably responsible for some of the "statements of disagreement"
referred
to here, hopefully ones that are being referred to as having been found
interesting.
Personally I don't care much one way or the other whether this new
newsgroup gets created, but there seem to me to be two main problems
with this, ones that those who want to create this should take into account.
1. Recent years have seen a disturbing tendency for string/M-theorists
to circle the wagons and wall themselves off from the rest of the
theoretical physics community. Institutes of string theory are formed,
jobs are advertised for string theorists only, conferences devoted to
string theory only proliferate, etc. This allows string theorists to
avoid having to deal with those who are skeptical about the theory.
They may find this more comfortable, but it has lead to a situation
where a large fraction of them are in deep denial about the extent
and nature of the problems facing the theory. Even if you are
a fervent believer in string theory, this is not very healthy or
likely to promote progress on dealing with these problems.
2. I just noticed that a group blog about string theory
"The String Coffee Table"
has been started at
golem.ph.utexas.edu/string/index.shtml
This appears to be much the same sort of thing as the
proposed newsgroup is intended to be, involving much
the same people. It appears to me that having these
two different but very simlar venues is likely to hurt
both of them, unless someone has a clever way of
integrating the two.
Peter
Urs Schreiber
news:brnv2b$5hkg7$1...@ID-53145.news.uni-berlin.de...
[snip]
> Just playing devil's advocate here because I'm not sure there's any
> established consensus on this, but I get the impression that M-theory
> has become the new or umbrella category for strings to some extent,
Yes, that's perfectly right. I am guessing that you are indirectly asking
why we did not propose a name like "sci.physics.m-theory". I believe that
there is certainly some sense in which this would have been appropriate.
Strictly speaking the term "string theory" is sort of an anachronism today,
where we are really dealing with a theory of p-branes of various sorts.
However, the term "M-theory" in its full sense (note that often people
dealing purely with 11d supergravity will have "M-theory" in the title of
their papers) still rather refers to a research project, since the full
conjectured M-theory, i.e. the full non-perturbative theory that all known
facets of string theory are strongly believed to be different limiting
aspects of, has not been found yet.
For this reason it is that string conferences are still called for instance
"Strings 200y"
http://strings04.lpthe.jussieu.fr/
http://www2.yukawa.kyoto-u.ac.jp/~str2003/
instead of, say "M-theory 2004".
Paraphrasing a well known joke we could have considered proposing a group
called
sci.physics.the-theory-formerly-known-as-strings . :-)
But as this might not have convinced everyone either, "sci.physics.strings"
seems to be a good compromise which is based on generally accepted
terminology.
> The only other comment I'd have is on what happened with the last
> sci.* moderated group I voted for, sci.space.moderated. The original
> moderators got disillusioned when the traffic for the group wasn't high
> enough, and just announced one day that it was shutting down. I was
> quite content to read a low traffic but high signal to noise group, and
> I'm sure others were, but I'd be interested to hear what the moderators'
> expectations are here in terms of participation and traffic. In
particular,
> you're going to need well over a hundred Yes votes as you probably
> know, and for something as specialized as this I'm wondering if the
> votes are there.
While string theory is a specialized topic, it does attract a great deal of
interest from both experts and many laymen. Experience with existing fora
that had discussion of string theory of various sorts shows that lack of
number of contributions to the discussion is not the problem. I think that
if all the people who like to follow online discussions and are interested
in string theory take the time to vote on sci.physics.strings, there should
be sufficient approval. But all these votes are needed, of course.
Urs Schreiber
news:brq045$eek$1...@newsmaster.cc.columbia.edu...
> 2. I just noticed that a group blog about string theory
> "The String Coffee Table"
> has been started at
>
> golem.ph.utexas.edu/string/index.shtml
>
> This appears to be much the same sort of thing as the
> proposed newsgroup is intended to be, involving much
> the same people.
It currently involves the same people because this grew out of a discussion
among these very people on how the things that we would like to discuss
online could be discussed online. Since the parallel existence of, for
instance, sci.physics.research with blogs concerned with physics research
has not hurt either of them, I don't think that this will be true for
discussion of string theory. I would argue that the contrary is true.
Furthermore, I'd rather regard the "Coffe Table" as providing support for
the conjecture stated in the sci.physics.strings RFD that the online
discussion of string theory (and surely other topics, too) profits from
being focused and seperated from topics not directly related.
This does of course not mean that there is not also a need to have a
less-focused, more general discussion from time to time. Fora that allow
this already exist.
> It appears to me that having these
> two different but very simlar venues is likely to hurt
> both of them, unless someone has a clever way of
> integrating the two.
How about the clever idea called hyperlink?! :-) Discussions in different
fora can cross-fertilize.
DickT
I am in favor of the strings group because there can be more detailed
and technical issues discussed. On sci.physics.research such
discussions are always being interrupted by posters with other
interests.
KalElFan
> M stands for Magic, Mystery, Matrix, Monster, Mother, Master, or upside
> down W for Witten (which is Glashow's explanation).
There's also Membrane, though that suggests two dimensions and so
it has the same specific-number-of-dimensions problem that the term
strings does. Personally, I like Multidimensional Theory because it
(i) solves that problem, (ii) gets to what's probably the most conspicuous
aspect of the theory -- that there are more than the four dimensions we
see or (in the case of time) experience, and (iii) the word multidimensional
can also allude to the different ways -- now or in the future -- of looking
at or explaining the theory and different aspects of it. (In a way that also
incorporates the idea of the "M" having more than one meaning.)
[KalElFan wrote]:
> > And also in Brian Greene's very popular book and very good book for
> > the layman, The Elegant Universe, the glossary defines M-theory as:
>
> Great that you like it, too. I also like it, otherwise I would not have
> translated it to Czech. Even if our proposal for this newsgroup fails,
> don't forget to buy and read the new Brian's book in February, ;-)
>
> http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0375412883
Thanks, I'll definitely be getting that.
KalElFan
> "KalElFan" <KalE...@scifipi.com> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
> news:brnv2b$5hkg7$1...@ID-53145.news.uni-berlin.de...
>
> [snip]
>
> > Just playing devil's advocate here because I'm not sure there's any
> > established consensus on this, but I get the impression that M-theory
> > has become the new or umbrella category for strings to some extent,
>
> Yes, that's perfectly right. I am guessing that you are indirectly asking
> why we did not propose a name like "sci.physics.m-theory".
Yes, that's exactly why I mentioned it. If I'd been arguing against it, the
annual conference still using the term strings would have been the main
thing I'd have pointed to just as you did
> Strictly speaking the term "string theory" is sort of an anachronism today,
> where we are really dealing with a theory of p-branes of various sorts.
Yes, and I guess the question is whether the term M-theory has or will be
achieving, figuratively, enough critical mass to replace what's arguably the
established misnomer "string theory". I suspect the biggest drawback of
M-theory is that there's no definitive, accepted meaning for the M word,
but perhaps that's a strength of the term and a reason to believe that it has
or will emerge as the new name.
> However, the term "M-theory" in its full sense (note that often people
> dealing purely with 11d supergravity will have "M-theory" in the title of
> their papers) still rather refers to a research project, since the full
> conjectured M-theory, i.e. the full non-perturbative theory that all known
> facets of string theory are strongly believed to be different limiting
> aspects of, has not been found yet.
But (again playing devil's advocate here, because the safe play may be to
stick with strings), is that problem really linked to the M-theory term? I get
the impression it's much more a reality of mathematics, and the limits of
our capabilities until we get quantum computing perhaps, to "solve" that
problem. We're just not going to get a comprehensive non-pertubative
string theory, or M-theory or anything it's called, because it involves 11
dimensions and there'd be no way, in the foreseeable future, to do a
comprehensive proof of such a theory. (Isn't that inability to prove it,
plus the "convenient" postulated scale of the extra dimensions being
just below our ability to detect, the main criticism of skeptics whether
it's called strings or M-theory?)
ru.ig...@usask.ca
>"Peter Woit" <wo...@math.columbia.edu> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
>news:brq045$eek$1...@newsmaster.cc.columbia.edu...
>> 2. I just noticed that a group blog about string theory
>> "The String Coffee Table"
>> has been started at
>>
>> golem.ph.utexas.edu/string/index.shtml
>>
>> This appears to be much the same sort of thing as the
>> proposed newsgroup is intended to be, involving much
>> the same people.
>It currently involves the same people because this grew out of a discussion
>among these very people on how the things that we would like to discuss
>online could be discussed online. Since the parallel existence of, for
>instance, sci.physics.research with blogs concerned with physics research
>has not hurt either of them, I don't think that this will be true for
>discussion of string theory. I would argue that the contrary is true.
If you can support that argument with what the blog users actually
think, then you don't have much of a problem. However, I point out
that in a more general context, the existence of the blog could
indeed hamper your efforts to create a new newsgroup, as those users
may prefer the blog and encourage potential newsgroup readers to
go there instead of supporting the proposal. The mere mention of
the blog in the RFD discussion may be sufficient to cause that.
My point is, find out what the blog users think of the proposal,
then summarize their comments here as an answer to some of the
criticism you get.
>> It appears to me that having these
>> two different but very simlar venues is likely to hurt
>> both of them, unless someone has a clever way of
>> integrating the two.
>How about the clever idea called hyperlink?! :-) Discussions in different
>fora can cross-fertilize.
Wouldn't work for those who read newsgroups with text readers.
Regardless, the maintainer of the blog would have to set up a
gateway i.e. have usenet access, or run a news server to inject
blog content into the group, or.... Those aren't total show
stoppers, but I think it would tend to be rather imperfect.
Generally, it's best to consider a newsgroup as a separate
discussion forum, and work from that. It really depends on the
nature of the readership; they may easily support both fora.
ru
--
My standard proposals rant:
Quality, usefulness, merit, or non-newsgroups popularity of a topic
is more or less irrelevant in creating a new Big-8 newsgroup.
Usenet popularity is the primary consideration.
Urs Schreiber
> "Lubos Motl" <mo...@feynman.harvard.edu> wrote in message
news:Pine.LNX.4.31.031216...@feynman.harvard.edu...
>
> > M stands for Magic, Mystery, Matrix, Monster, Mother, Master, or upside
> > down W for Witten (which is Glashow's explanation).
>
> There's also Membrane, though that suggests two dimensions and so
> it has the same specific-number-of-dimensions problem that the term
> strings does.
You can look at it from many angles. Super(-2-)Membranes are the fundamental
objects in 11 dimensions. We know that every string is really a rolled-up
membrane. From that point of view Membrane Theory would be the correct name.
But on the other hand you can also regard the fundamental string as an
S-dual D-string. Or you can look at membrane theory as a quantum mechanics
of many D0 branes. And so on. It's a kaleidoscope. :-)
> Personally, I like Multidimensional Theory because it
> (i) solves that problem, (ii) gets to what's probably the most conspicuous
> aspect of the theory -- that there are more than the four dimensions we
> see or (in the case of time) experience, and (iii) the word
multidimensional
> can also allude to the different ways -- now or in the future -- of
looking
> at or explaining the theory and different aspects of it. (In a way that
also
> incorporates the idea of the "M" having more than one meaning.)
Hm, I think that the key aspect of string theory (if one such aspect could
be seperated) is not the fact that it has more than 4-dimensions. That's
more like a consequenc, an afterthought. What you call "Multidimensional
Theory" rather sounds like what is usually called Kaluza-Klein theory, of
which string theory is an example.
Urs Schreiber
<ru.ig...@usask.ca> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news:brqf8c$4dt$1...@tribune.usask.ca...
> >It currently involves the same people because this grew out of a
discussion
> >among these very people on how the things that we would like to discuss
> >online could be discussed online. Since the parallel existence of, for
> >instance, sci.physics.research with blogs concerned with physics research
> >has not hurt either of them, I don't think that this will be true for
> >discussion of string theory. I would argue that the contrary is true.
>
> If you can support that argument with what the blog users actually
> think, then you don't have much of a problem.
One reason why we started the blog was that some of the current members
rightly pointed out the advantages of a more "private" discussion than is
possible on a newsgroup. That's fine. In this sense a blog is somewhat
complementary to a newsgroup.
Compare it to a conference: Half the day you are sitting in the audience,
listening to the talks, part of the day you may give a talk yourself,
another fraction you'll find yourself holding a cup of coffe in the middle
of a large group of people discussing various things, still another fraction
of the day you are in an intensive discussion with a single other person. In
all these situations information is exchanged, and always in a somewhat
different form. Some things are best discussed in a large group, where many
people can chime in and provide comments and input, some things are best
discussed in a tete-a-tete. The results of both forms of information
processing are usually mutually transferred.
> >How about the clever idea called hyperlink?! :-) Discussions in different
> >fora can cross-fertilize.
>
> Wouldn't work for those who read newsgroups with text readers.
Yes, and those who don't even have a text reader cannot participate at all!
Are we hence going to shut down the internet? ;-)
Seriously, a newsgroup is not an isolated island. One of the best examples
of this that I know of is John Baez's website
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/README.html, which contains lots of
interesting examples of things that started out as group projects in
sci.physics.research and then evolved into something else, or the other way
round. Just take the great "Oz and the Wizard" GR tutorial at
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/gr/gr.html and
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/gr/gr.tutorial .
> Regardless, the maintainer of the blog would have to set up a
> gateway i.e. have usenet access, or run a news server to inject
> blog content into the group, or....
I am not sure why you think that is necessary. Anyone who can read a blog
should be able to go to google groups. People can comment on the blog or
post to the group, as desired. This is already happening as I speak, so to
say! :-)
>Those aren't total show
> stoppers, but I think it would tend to be rather imperfect.
> Generally, it's best to consider a newsgroup as a separate
> discussion forum, and work from that.
Yes, sure. I think that sci.physics.strings has a reason to existence all by
itself, as a place where various people interested in string theory can
exchange ideas in a general way that has proven well worthwhile in other
moderated physics groups such as sci.physics.research and
sci.astro.research. This is not affected by the existence of blogs, just
like the usefulness of sci.physics.research is not affected by the existence
of blogs on general physics, I think.
Lubos Motl
> I'm probably responsible for some of the "statements of disagreement"
> referred to here, hopefully ones that are being referred to as having
> been found interesting.
I don't think that the authors of the proposal were thinking about you too
much, especially because you like some things related to string theory,
for example the twistors. ;-)
> 1. Recent years have seen a disturbing tendency for string/M-theorists
> to circle the wagons and wall themselves off from the rest of the
> theoretical physics community.
No way. String theorists' friendship to the rest of the physics community
is much healthier after the duality revolution because string theory has
become much more general, and it really involves very many good ideas. It
is not a theory of strings and nothing else anymore; more or less all
possible objects and fields (and fields of mathematics) that were ever
considered to describe physics are contained within the broad framework of
string theory today.
String theory has absorbed the supergravity community, because we learned
that they studied a limit of string/M-theory (even those who lived in 11
dimensions), and it has also converted many phenomenologists and model
builders into "unconstrained string theorists", because they realized that
most of the good ideas to construct interesting models beyond the Standard
Model are inspired by string theory (large dimensions, warped dimensions,
deconstruction, supersymmetry).
Witten's recent paper should make it obvious to Roger Penrose that he
should be interested in string theory more than he has been so far. And
who knows, maybe the relations of other fields to string theory will be
clarified soon.
> Institutes of string theory are formed, jobs are advertised for string
> theorists only, conferences devoted to string theory only proliferate,
> etc. This allows string theorists to avoid having to deal with those
> who are skeptical about the theory.
Nevertheless, some of us like to deal with you and your friends. But
sometimes it takes too much time. We should not forget to work and discuss
with one another - and the other people who want to contribute something
constructive instead of repeated criticism. ;-) We do so in real life, we
do it formally using the arXiv, but an informal internet place to exchange
ideas would be useful, too.
> They may find this more comfortable, but it has lead to a situation
> where a large fraction of them are in deep denial about the extent
> and nature of the problems facing the theory.
Yes, we might disagree which problems are really the most important and
most frustrating ones. But I think that you know very well that you have
a lot of space to express your concerns...
> This appears to be much the same sort of thing as the
> proposed newsgroup is intended to be, involving much
> the same people.
The set of these people is extremely limited, and the MathML nature of
this forum may keep it permanently limited. Who knows. The rules of this
blog are also different from the rules of a moderated newsgroup.
> It appears to me that having these two different but very simlar
> venues is likely to hurt both of them, unless someone has a clever way
> of integrating the two.
I think that you underestimate how many people are actively thinking about
all these questions. Nevertheless, it is very nice from you that you worry
that string theory forums might be hurt! ;-)
All the best
Lubos Motl
> There's also Membrane, though that suggests two dimensions and so
> it has the same specific-number-of-dimensions problem that the term ...
I apologize, and you are totally right! Membrane is certainly a very
important justification of the letter "M", because people used to think
that membranes were as fundamental in M-theory as strings were in
10-dimensional string theory. Today most of us believe that neither is
*truly* fundamental - they are only good degrees of freedom at weak
coupling, or good BPS objects to expand around. But in general, they
should be treated on equal footing with objects of all other
dimensionalities although a complete coherent mathematical language that
includes all of them is not known yet.
Your proposal to expand "M" indeed captures the spirit and impression that
most of us got by absorbing the insights of the 1990s. Are you a string
theorist?
Lubos Motl
> However, I point out that in a more general context, the existence of
> the blog could indeed hamper your efforts to create a new newsgroup,
> as those users ...
We always appreciate your comments, Ru. Nevertheless it seems that the
coffee table is being used by those five people who received the initial
mail.
However I think that you underestimate how large and active the stringy
community is. Every day, 20 stringy-related technical articles appear at
http://www.arxiv.org/list/hep-th/new
Each of them has about 20 pages in average. This means 400 pages of
technical stuff on string theory per day. Well, it is about 10 times
easier to produce non-technical stuff, and therefore one expects 4,000
pages of text about string theory to be produced every day. ;-) Of course
(or hopefully), only a small portion of string theorists know what USENET
means (and a fraction of them wants to participate), but even after you
divide it by this number, you are left with a large estimate.
I have not counted the people who are intensely interested in the field,
but who can't submit articles to www.arxiv.org. If you sum up all
contributions, I think it is enough for a blog as well as a newsgroup.
The birth of sci.physics.strings is not too likely, but if it is gonna be
passed, I will personally prefer it over a private blog.
eb...@lfa221051.richmond.edu
Urs Schreiber <Urs.Sc...@uni-essen.de> wrote:
The proposed charter includes
>Clearly inappropriate postings include:
> (1) Personal attacks;
> (2) Discussion that isn't about or related to string theory
> (3) Multiple responses that all say the same things; and
> (4) Crackpot postings that are "not even wrong."
which is taken straight from the sci.physics.research charter. As one
of the moderators of sci.physics.research, I can tell you that I've
always wished we had phrased item (4) in a more diplomatic way. When
sending a poster e-mail rejecting a post, it's nice to be able to
quote chapter and verse from the charter to explain why a post is not
acceptable, and it's also nice not to insult people. Item (4) as
written makes those goals incompatible. If I were you, I'd rephrase
it.
-Ted
--
[E-mail me at na...@domain.edu, as opposed to na...@machine.domain.edu.]
Urs Schreiber
> Urs Schreiber <Urs.Sc...@uni-essen.de> wrote:
>
> The proposed charter includes
>
> >Clearly inappropriate postings include:
> > (1) Personal attacks;
> > (2) Discussion that isn't about or related to string theory
> > (3) Multiple responses that all say the same things; and
> > (4) Crackpot postings that are "not even wrong."
>
> which is taken straight from the sci.physics.research charter.
Yes, right. I hope that is ok.
> As one
> of the moderators of sci.physics.research, I can tell you that I've
> always wished we had phrased item (4) in a more diplomatic way. When
> sending a poster e-mail rejecting a post, it's nice to be able to
> quote chapter and verse from the charter to explain why a post is not
> acceptable, and it's also nice not to insult people. Item (4) as
> written makes those goals incompatible. If I were you, I'd rephrase
> it.
Ah, right, I should change that to the expression currently used in
practice. Thanks.
Jacques Distler
<Urs.Sc...@uni-essen.de> wrote:
>> 2. I just noticed that a group blog about string theory
>> "The String Coffee Table"
>> has been started at
>>
>> golem.ph.utexas.edu/string/index.shtml
>>
>> This appears to be much the same sort of thing as the
>> proposed newsgroup is intended to be, involving much
>> the same people.
>
>It currently involves the same people because this grew out of a discussion
>among these very people on how the things that we would like to discuss
>online could be discussed online.
As the fellow who set up the String Coffee Table blog (it is,
technologically, a clone of my own blog,
http://golem.ph.utexas.edu/~distler/blog/ ), I should comment on the
relative features of the blog and the proposed newsgroup.
1) USENET is a low-tech affair. ASCII-only, no pictures, no equations
(except for the occasional crude ASCII rendition of them). On the other
hand, it can be read in an ordinary text-based reader with no loss of
information.
The blog is high-tech affair. MathML equations, figures, hyperlinks,
etc. To get the full effect, you need to view it in Mozilla, with
special fonts installed, etc.
On the one hand, the blog provides a potentially richer
user-experience. On the other hand, the high barrier-to-entry may limit
its audience.
2) The blog has a small number of people who can post articles. While
anyone can post comments on those articles, the dominant voice is that
of its authors.
Anyone can post to the USENET group, so long as their posts satisfy the
moderation criteria.
Thus the blog is likely to be more focussed in its subject matter, the
USENET group more wide-ranging.
3) Moderation takes time. There is always a delay (sometimes measured
in days) between when an article is submitted to the USENET group and
when it finally is approved and posted.
The comment-section of the blog is unmoderated. Comments appear as soon
as they are submitted.
The issue of moderation is relevant to the question raised earlier as
to whether sci.physics.research is a "high" or a "low" traffic group.
The *important* question is whether the traffic is high or low,
relative to the staff of moderators. That is, whether the moderation
process introduces undue delays in the appearance of posts, thus
breaking the "flow" of the conversation.
I think many would agree that that threshold has been reached with
sci.physics.research .
--
PGP public key: http://golem.ph.utexas.edu/~distler/distler.asc
sol
You could probably consider me as the lower scale of knowlegeable
people here in terms of math abilities, but I make up for the spirit
of insight developement trying to figure out what these string
theorists are all about. It's been a interesting journey.
I think sci.M-theory, and resulting membranes journey from strings I
thought would have held some consistent geometrical developements, if
Gr and QM are to be inclusive how would such dynamics be revealed?
Metric to supermetric points?
I hope there would be room for someone like myself.
Good idea
Sol
Buzurg Shagird
> The only other moderated newsgroup that offers some room for such
> discussions today is sci.physics.research. Recently, however, the
> traffic on this newsgroup has become rather large, and the
> discussions about string theory are never focused because a
> significant fraction of the participants on SPR prefers various
> alternative approaches to theoretical physics, and serious
> discussions about string theory are usually interrupted by
> general critical remarks of the participants who find string
> theory uninteresting.
This paragraph is rather peculiar. It is not possible to `interrupt'
a discussion on a newsgroup -- the best anyone can say is that
in any thread about string theory there are some posts which are
made with a critical attitude towards string theory. These posts
don't dominate those threads, and probably won't come to half the
total byte count of those threads. And all these `critical' posts
are about physics, and many about string theory as well.
In any case, this new group is supposed to discuss, among other things,
> stringy inspired models of particle physics beyond the
> Standard Model, and the questions about their experimental
> verification.
Almost all the posts in s.p.r. which are `critical' about string
theory, are centred on the issue that there is no prediction unique
to string theory which has been experimentally verified, or can be
in the foreseeable future. So such posts will also appear in the
new group unless rejected (or unless the posters don't want to
bother with posting in s.p.s.). And that brings up the next paragraph:
> The separation of string theory related issues from
> sci.physics.research will hence avoid latent unproductive statements
> of disagreement on the general relevance of string theory which was
> felt to be unsatisfactory by all parties.
How? The criteria for moderation were included in the charter, how
will it be possible to reject posts which don't contain personal
attacks, which are about string theory, and which are not obviously
crackpot (i.e., aren't in obvious disagreement with any other
established theory or experiment)?
Ah. There seems to be a hidden criterion for moderation, namely,
> 2) The decisions of the moderators whether a posting is
> interesting enough and appropriate for the newsgroup will reflect the
> views generally held by typical members of the high-energy physics
> community.
This is very strange. I have no doubt that members of the HEP community
have a wide spectrum of views when it comes to string theory -- think
Sheldon Glashow and Steven Weinberg. The word `typical' suggests that
many such views will not pass the moderators. Unless the moderators
regularly publish a list of which `views' they have rejected, there
will be no way of knowing a priori if an intended post is in agreement
with the `typical' views.
> Moderators will however not be responsible for the technical correctness
> of accepted posts, though they may reject posts or send the posting
> back suggesting revision when they note errors.
What if the poster doesn't agree that it is an error? What if the
moderator is in error? Or does that possibility not exist? :-)
-S.
Urs Schreiber
news:4adf30fa.03121...@posting.google.com...
> if Gr and QM are to be inclusive how would such dynamics be revealed?
> Metric to supermetric points?
Could you perhaps try to reformulate this question, I am not sure that I
understand what you are asking about.
"Supermetric" is a term that is either used for instance in ADM formulations
of general relativity where we have a metric on the space of all spatial
metric tensors, called the "supermetric" by Wheeler, or, more commonly
today, in the context of supersymmetry, where on superspace one has
supervielbeine and supermetrics.
Indeed, in the Green-Schwarz formulation superstring dynamics is described
by an embedding of the string into the superspace extension of spacetime.
Is that maybe what you are referring to?
Jacques Distler
Shagird <b_sh...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>Almost all the posts in s.p.r. which are `critical' about string
>theory, are centred on the issue that there is no prediction unique
>to string theory which has been experimentally verified, or can be
>in the foreseeable future. So such posts will also appear in the
>new group unless rejected (or unless the posters don't want to
>bother with posting in s.p.s.). And that brings up the next paragraph:
I think you have raised an important point. If the objective of
creating this new group is to insulate it from posts critical of string
theory, the actual effect will be (in my opinion) exactly the opposite.
There is nothing in the charter (nor, IMHO, should there be) which
forbids such posts. Their number will surely only multiply, once the
"distraction" of discussions of other branches of physics are removed.
Of course, I assume that's *not* why this new groups has been proposed.
But I could be wrong ...
Brian Edmonds
> The only other comment I'd have is on what happened with the last
> sci.* moderated group I voted for, sci.space.moderated. The original
> moderators got disillusioned when the traffic for the group wasn't
> high enough, and just announced one day that it was shutting down.
But it didn't, since other interested moderators and hosting facilities
were easily found. It's the moderators that just quietly pack up shop
and disappear that are annoying -- by the time it's obvious the group's
usability is already badly damaged.
Brian (new sci.space.moderated technical moderator).
Aaron Bergman
>
> My point is, find out what the blog users think of the proposal,
> then summarize their comments here as an answer to some of the
> criticism you get.
I don't generally believe that a new group is necessary. While
spr does have times of slow moderation (what moderated group
doesn't?) string traffic certainly isn't overhwelming all traffic
therein. There are certain people therein who are quite hostile
to string theory, but such things can generally be dealt with via
killfiles.
Aaron
--
Aaron Bergman
<http://zippy.ph.utexas.edu/~abergman/>
Eric A. Forgy
I am a regular reader/participant of sci.physics.research (s.p.r.).
Lubos is also a frequent participant of s.p.r. as is Urs. In fact, Urs
has recently become a moderator of s.p.r.
It is always very interesting for me to read the threads that involve
string theory on s.p.r. Lubos is obviously impassioned by it. Almost
too impassioned at times. On the opposite extreme, Urs is much more
level headed. In fact, Urs' objective view of string theory has
contributed to me taking more of an interest in it.
As much as it might be interesting to see a sci.physics.strings
(s.p.s.) materialize, I am fairly certain it will not. Especially, if
it will require more than 100 yes votes as someone else implied. I'm
assuming this means 100 more yes votes than no votes, which seems
impossible to me.
In the likely event that sci.physics.strings does not materialize, I
would encourage all the string theorists who are interested in a
newsgroup forum to reconsider sci.physics.research as an outlet.
Regardless of where you go, you are doubtless going to find detractors
with seemingly valid arguments that should not be characterized as
"crack pot." If handled correctly, this doesn't have to be a bad
thing.
In fact, s.p.r. is not really as unfriendly to strings as this charter
seems to imply. If they were, why would they make Urs (a string
theorist) a moderator? To me, this marks a good step toward making
s.p.r. more string friendly.
> The only other moderated newsgroup that offers some room for such
> discussions today is sci.physics.research. Recently, however, the
> traffic on this newsgroup has become rather large, and the
> discussions about string theory are never focused because a
> significant fraction of the participants on SPR prefers various
> alternative approaches to theoretical physics, and serious
> discussions about string theory are usually interrupted by
> general critical remarks of the participants who find string
> theory uninteresting.
I have found that s.p.r. has historically been welcome to string
discussions. They are even more welcome when the discussion is
objective in nature and does not try to reject any alternatives (e.g.
loop quantum gravity) as being bogus.
There is no doubt that the string theorists outnumber others and I'm
sure if they wanted to discuss string theory on s.p.r. they could
easily increase the "fraction of participants" without objection by
the present moderators.
I guess what I am trying to say is that I would be happy to see more
serious discussions about string theory in a moderated environment. If
the present proposed newsgroup does not materialize, I hope that the
would-be contributors consider taking advantage of the existing
newgroup s.p.r. As far as I'm concerned, they are more than welcome.
Best regards,
Eric Forgy, Ph.D.
Andy Neitzke
good idea -- just because the existence of a more narrowly focused group
might encourage more string theorists to participate. (I don't think
sci.physics.research is an "unfriendly" forum for string theory, but at
least at the moment, the number of string theorists who are posting is
pretty low.)
--
Andy Neitzke
nei...@fas.harvard.edu
Jacques Distler
<nei...@fas.harvard.edu> wrote:
>For whatever it's worth, I think the creation of sci.physics.strings is a
>good idea -- just because the existence of a more narrowly focused group
>might encourage more string theorists to participate.
s.p.r is not exactly a high-traffic group. Do you really think that
potential string theory posters are discouraged by the thought that
their posts might appear alongside posts about cosmology or condensed
matter theory?
This seems to be a key argument for the formation of s.p.s, but no one
has really articulated why it should be true.
Andy Neitzke
> In article <bru56u$2fa$1...@news.fas.harvard.edu>, Andy Neitzke
> <nei...@fas.harvard.edu> wrote:
>
>>For whatever it's worth, I think the creation of sci.physics.strings is a
>>good idea -- just because the existence of a more narrowly focused group
>>might encourage more string theorists to participate.
>
> s.p.r is not exactly a high-traffic group. Do you really think that
> potential string theory posters are discouraged by the thought that
> their posts might appear alongside posts about cosmology or condensed
> matter theory?
No. But on taking a first look at s.p.r (say, by downloading all the
headers currently available on the local news server, or looking at an
archive of the last month's posts) newcomers probably do get the impression
that the effort required to sort through and find the string theory bits
would compare unfavorably with the benefit to be gained by doing so --
particularly for someone who only checks in on the group e.g. once a week.
--
Andy Neitzke
nei...@fas.harvard.edu
Robert C. Helling
> This paragraph is rather peculiar. It is not possible to `interrupt'
> a discussion on a newsgroup -- the best anyone can say is that
> in any thread about string theory there are some posts which are
> made with a critical attitude towards string theory.
I think what was meant is "Some people make critical remarks and then
'serious' people get carried away refuting the criticism".
> Ah. There seems to be a hidden criterion for moderation, namely,
>
>> 2) The decisions of the moderators whether a posting is
>> interesting enough and appropriate for the newsgroup will reflect the
>> views generally held by typical members of the high-energy physics
>> community.
>
> This is very strange. I have no doubt that members of the HEP community
> have a wide spectrum of views when it comes to string theory -- think
> Sheldon Glashow and Steven Weinberg. The word `typical' suggests that
> many such views will not pass the moderators. Unless the moderators
> regularly publish a list of which `views' they have rejected, there
> will be no way of knowing a priori if an intended post is in agreement
> with the `typical' views.
There will be if you know the moderators ;-)
In my opinion (and I have voiced that in other places already at
length) spr is the place to discuss string theory and there is no need
for a new group. The only reason for creating a new group would that
this could attract more string theorists to participate. But I cannot
see how this is going to happen.
Robert
--
.oOo.oOo.oOo.oOo.oOo.oOo.oOo.oOo.oOo.oOo.oOo.oOo.oOo.oOo.oOo.oOo.oOo.oOo.oOo.oO
Robert C. Helling Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics
University of Cambridge
print "Just another Phone: +44/1223/766870
stupid .sig\n"; http://www.aei-potsdam.mpg.de/~helling
Urs Schreiber
news:bru9ji$62p$1...@news.fas.harvard.edu...
> No. But on taking a first look at s.p.r (say, by downloading all the
> headers currently available on the local news server, or looking at an
> archive of the last month's posts) newcomers probably do get the
impression
> that the effort required to sort through and find the string theory bits
> would compare unfavorably with the benefit to be gained by doing so --
> particularly for someone who only checks in on the group e.g. once a week.
I'd very much second this point.
Furthermore, one should perhaps emphasize that the possible existence of a
group sci.physics.strings would be no threat or harm to sci.physics.reserach
at all. Nothing in the charter of s.p.r forbids the discussion of string
theory, even when another group with that title exists.
In fact, sci.physics.research is appropriate for discussing, among other
things,
- relativity
- particle physics
- fusion physics
- electromagnetism
- optics
- plasma physics .
The point is, for all these topics there do exists sepereately special
newsgroups in the sci.physics.* hierarchy. There is hence nothing wrong
with having general discussion fora together with more specialized ones.
Both have a reason of existence and both satisfy complementary needs.
Lubos Motl
> Regardless of where you go, you are doubtless going to find detractors
> with seemingly valid arguments that should not be characterized as
> "crack pot." ...
The main purpose of the new newsgroup is to avoid these disputes whether
someone is a crackpot, or whether he is not a crackpot. You know very well
that it is not only me who will probably always be convinced that the
people that you had in mind *are* crackpots, as far as high-energy physics
goes, and they don't want to learn certain basic material in physics,
which makes their opinions about string theory mostly irrelevant.
You might say it is just my opinion. OK, but it is also the opinion of a
very large group of physicists, and it is a technical opinion that can
hardly be separated from the opinion about many other technical issues in
the field, and not only I think that it is a totally legitimate opinion.
If S.P.S. is created, we won't need to argue about this sensitive issue
anymore. We will be able to divide the people to those who are thinking
like string theorists and who are trying to make progress in this
intellectual framework; and the people who think otherwise - and both
groups will have the opportunity to make some progress in a sort of peace.
> In fact, s.p.r. is not really as unfriendly to strings as this charter
> seems to imply. If they were, why would they make Urs (a string
> theorist) a moderator? To me, this marks a good step toward making
> s.p.r. more string friendly.
Is it OK to treat Urs as a neutral person?
> I have found that s.p.r. has historically been welcome to string
> discussions. They are even more welcome when the discussion is
> objective in nature and does not try to reject any alternatives (e.g.
> loop quantum gravity) as being bogus.
The main reason why most theoretical high-energy physicists study string
theory *is* that string theory seems to be a completely unique and unified
theory of quantum gravity; this uniqueness is also the primary explanation
that essentially every string theorist gives in his or her popular talks,
and I find it amazing why some people find it controversial even today. In
fact, after 35 years it looks much more unique and unified than it did at
the very beginning. If we knew many completely different theories that can
achieve these goals, it would indeed be unreasonable to focus on string
theory only and avoid the alternatives. But the reality is that we don't
know of *any* meaningful alternatives.
The main motivation of the future research in string theory is not to
"reject any alternatives", simply because there aren't any. We have much
more important and urgent things to solve, and it is simply distracting to
read the irrelevant stuff on "alternatives" all the time.
What you call "objective is nature" should be called "physically
incorrect". According to the majority of the leaders (and founders) of our
field today, loop quantum gravity (LQG) *is* bogus. By the leaders (and
founders) I mean Witten, Strominger, Polchinski, Susskind, Gross, and many
others. Is there something wrong with them because they are convinced -
just like me and most others - that loop quantum gravity is bogus?
Certainly, according to many participants and moderators on
sci.physics.research, something is wrong, and string theorists are
permanently criticized there without a rational justification. This, of
course, reflects the warped opinions of the majority of the moderators.
For example, a thread decided to criticize David Gross - a co-founder of
quantum chromodynamics and also an important figure in string theory - for
suggesting that string theory already has achieved many triumphs to be
proud about in the title of one of his impressive public talks.
One post of mine was repeatedly rejected by the moderator called Kevin
Scaldeferri. The justification was that "my post contained the sentence
that David Gross is a leading figure of particle physics which is
unacceptable because it might suggest that David Gross has better
credentials than the participants of the discussion".
Can you imagine that? David Gross, who has more than 20,000 citations and
who is a leading contender for one of the future Nobel prizes (for their
discovery of the asymptotic freedom) is not allowed to look smarter than
these - and I can say it openly on this newsgroup - arrogant crackpots and
pompous fools who only know how to criticize but they don't know almost
anything else. These crackpots think that once they become moderators of a
newsgroup, and they can use this job to brainwash others, which they
certainly do more than successfully, they have the credentials to
criticize David Gross without the necessity to have point. Well, that's
not quite right.
Let me return to the uniqueness of string theory and the proposed
alternatives. The unique character of string theory is our legitimate
opinion, and in their case (of the more senior colleagues) it is based on
decades of very active research and experiences from many areas of
theoretical physics - and especially many miraculous facts derived in more
than 10,000 papers on string theory.
Loop quantum gravity is not a theory of quantum gravity because there
doesn't exist a single piece of evidence that it could agree with the
existence of nearly flat space - and there exists a lot of indirect
evidence that it can't agree with it. It seems that LQG is a proposal that
most likely contradicts most essential insights that we have about nature:
the existence of space itself, special relativity, the existence of
gravitons and their behavior according to Einstein's general relativity,
Newton's gravitational law, the existence of particles such as quarks and
leptons, the existence of electromagnetic, strong and weak forces,
renormalization of the strengths of all forces as a function of distance
scales, the Higgs mechanism, the coefficient in the Bekenstein-Hawking
entropy, holography - I could continue for a very long time because LQG
seems to contradict *everything* that we know about the real world. Let me
just mention that string theory agrees with all these important physical
insights - at least qualitatively.
Moreover, LQG is an artificially constructed framework that does not
exhibit any uniqueness (there are many ways how to modify it and add new
stuff), and there are also no non-trivial checks of its consistency -
which is very different from string/M-theory that offers thousands of such
checks. Many checks and non-trivial numbers that were expected from LQG to
be calculated - such as the coefficient in the black hole entropy formula;
the asymptotic behavior of quasinormal modes; the large "j" scaling of the
10j-symbols; and many others - came out incorrectly.
We are watching very carefully what's going on in the whole theoretical
physics (unlike the people in these very small sects whose main goal is to
avoid learning a single paragraph about string theory and justify that it
is essentially a good thing to do), and we simply have rational reasons to
make whatever conclusions we make. Well, there are people who decide about
the validity of a theory by looking at Urs or someone else how nicely Urs
is he or she smiling and how much silent he or she is - but in my opinion,
it has nothing to do with the search for the truth about Nature, and you
can't expect, Eric, that your explanations what is necessary to make you
believe XY-theory will impress anyone. I don't care whether you believe
the theory because it does not seem to make any difference.
After years of attempts to find something interesting there, I don't think
that there is much to study about LQG, and the physics community seems to
have the same opinion - simply because the traffic (of scientific papers)
in LQG are approximately at the level of 1% of those in string theory even
though the number of people in LQG is closer to 10% of the number of
string theorists (and the inflow of money is probably proportional). The
moderators of sci.physics.research live outside of reality because their
understanding of the "interesting directions in theoretical physics"
stopped somewhere in the 1980s when Ashtekar proposed a new possible
framework to quantize gravity. But too many new things have been found
since, many conjectures have been confirmed and many other conjectures
have been ruled out.
> There is no doubt that the string theorists outnumber others and I'm
> sure if they wanted to discuss string theory on s.p.r. they could
> easily increase the "fraction of participants" without objection by
> the present moderators.
How can we discuss if you want us to say an incorrect sentence about
physics after each correct sentence? I know that all available data
suggest that LQG does not describe the gravitational force, and it is
impossible to discuss seriously about physics if someone expects me to lie
in every individual posting.
You know, I've been brought up in a totalitarian country, and as a kid, I
was used to hear the adult people who were telling me - just like you -
"you are not allowed to say XY even though it is true". Fortunately, this
system belongs to the past, and I don't wish to rebuild it in modern
physics. The difference for the other string theorists is that they really
don't want to sacrifice themselves in any way. They are not used to be
censored because of every sentence that could directly or indirectly
reveal that LQG is bogus.
Best regards
Dr. Lubos Motl
Jacques Distler
<Pine.LNX.4.31.03121...@feynman.harvard.edu>, Lubos
Motl <mo...@feynman.harvard.edu> wrote:
>On 18 Dec 2003, Eric A. Forgy wrote:
>
>> Regardless of where you go, you are doubtless going to find detractors
>> with seemingly valid arguments that should not be characterized as
>> "crack pot." ...
>
>The main purpose of the new newsgroup is to avoid these disputes whether
>someone is a crackpot, or whether he is not a crackpot. You know very well
>that it is not only me who will probably always be convinced that the
>people that you had in mind *are* crackpots, as far as high-energy physics
>goes, and they don't want to learn certain basic material in physics,
>which makes their opinions about string theory mostly irrelevant.
Umh.
So do I take this to mean that you intend to reject posts to s.p.s
which are critical of string theory, regardless of whether they meet
the formal criteria set out in the charter?
Peter Woit
>For example, a thread decided to criticize David Gross - a co-founder of
>quantum chromodynamics and also an important figure in string theory - for
>suggesting that string theory already has achieved many triumphs to be
>proud about in the title of one of his impressive public talks.
>
>One post of mine was repeatedly rejected by the moderator called Kevin
>Scaldeferri. The justification was that "my post contained the sentence
>that David Gross is a leading figure of particle physics which is
>unacceptable because it might suggest that David Gross has better
>credentials than the participants of the discussion".
>
>Can you imagine that? David Gross, who has more than 20,000 citations and
>who is a leading contender for one of the future Nobel prizes (for their
>discovery of the asymptotic freedom) is not allowed to look smarter than
>these - and I can say it openly on this newsgroup - arrogant crackpots and
>pompous fools who only know how to criticize but they don't know almost
>anything else. These crackpots think that once they become moderators of a
>newsgroup, and they can use this job to brainwash others, which they
>certainly do more than successfully, they have the credentials to
>criticize David Gross without the necessity to have point. Well, that's
>not quite right.
>
>
I think this is a reference to a discussion started by my giving as an
example of out-of-control string triumphalism the title of a recent
talk by David Gross; "The Power and the Glory of String Theory"
Motl seems to be of the opinion that this is both a perfectly reasonable
way to refer to string theory and that this was an unacceptable attack
on an accomplished physicist. For the record I think Gross
should long ago have gotten a Nobel prize for his work on
asymptotic freedom and has a huge number of other accomplishments
to his credit. His most recent accomplishment is speaking out against
the complete abandonment of basic scientific principles represented
by the "anthropic" philosophy pursued by prominent string theorists
such as Susskind, Polchinski, Douglas, and much of the Stanford group.
Even the greatest of physicists makes bad judgements. Einstein
famously devoted the last part of his life to a research
program that went nowhere because it was based on ignoring
quantum mechanics. Personally I believe Gross, Witten and many
others have been pursuing a misguided idea about unification.
This doesn't mean that they are not great physicists. Reading
Witten's papers and understanding what he has achieved is a
humbling experience for anyone. But the fact that he's truly a
genius, works very hard and accomplishes ten times more
than anyone else, doesn't mean that he's not made a mistake
about string theory. Unlike Gross, in recent years I haven't
noticed Witten giving talks about how well things are going
in string theory.
Unfortunately Motl's post makes clear what one of his motivations
for creating this newsgroup is: to allow him an uncensored forum
to publicly accuse those who disagree with him of being "arrogant
crackpots and pompous fools". The moderators of s.p.r on a
couple of occasions have refused to accept postings of mine.
In all cases I think they were right, either something I had
written could unintentionally be interpreted in an unfortunate
way, or I was responding to something in a repetitive and
overly personal fashion.
Jacques Distler
<wo...@math.columbia.edu> wrote:
>Unfortunately Motl's post makes clear what one of his motivations
>for creating this newsgroup is: to allow him an uncensored forum
>to publicly accuse those who disagree with him of being "arrogant
>crackpots and pompous fools".
If all Lubos wanted was an "uncensored forum" to make such statements,
we would not be discussing the creation of a *moderated* newsgroup.
The question I want clarified is whether a post by Peter Woit, which
met the moderation criteria of s.p.r, would also meet the moderation
criteria of s.p.s.
The charter seems to indicate "yes" (since the criteria were copied
almost verbatim). Lubos's post here seems to indicate "no".
Buzurg Shagird
news:<181220031233465520%dis...@golem.ph.utexas.edu>...
> There is nothing in the charter (nor, IMHO, should there be) which
> forbids such posts. Their number will surely only multiply, once the
> "distraction" of discussions of other branches of physics are removed.
>
> Of course, I assume that's *not* why this new groups has been proposed.
> But I could be wrong ...
I wish I could believe that. Unfortunately, it seems that the primary
purpose of the new group is to
> avoid latent unproductive statements
> of disagreement on the general relevance of string theory which was
> felt to be unsatisfactory by all parties.
Too many loaded words here -- unproductive, disagreement, `by all' ...
-S.
Buzurg Shagird
> On 18 Dec 2003 10:13:37 -0800, Buzurg Shagird <b_sh...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > many such views will not pass the moderators. Unless the moderators
> > regularly publish a list of which `views' they have rejected, there
> > will be no way of knowing a priori if an intended post is in agreement
> > with the `typical' views.
>
> There will be if you know the moderators ;-)
Yeah. :-) Or people they look up to. :-)
> In my opinion (and I have voiced that in other places already at
Would that be in some usenet posting?
> length) spr is the place to discuss string theory and there is no need
> for a new group. The only reason for creating a new group would that
> this could attract more string theorists to participate. But I cannot
> see how this is going to happen.
Some may show up, but most are too busy doing their own research and
university teaching. But whether they will find the small volume of
s.p.r. too daunting to sift through for string theory posts, or
whether they will be totally turned off by the `atypical' views
occasionally posted there, is highly debatable. :-)
-S.
Buzurg Shagird
news:<Pine.LNX.4.31.03121...@feynman.harvard.edu>...
> founders) I mean Witten, Strominger, Polchinski, Susskind, Gross, and many
> others. Is there something wrong with them because they are convinced -
> just like me and most others - that loop quantum gravity is bogus?
There is something wrong with this argument. See, they are not here
on the newsgroup to argue their position. You are here. To argue yours.
So why bring in their names? Your position becomes weaker if you appeal
to authority, without even an actual published statement from them to
support yours.
> Certainly, according to many participants and moderators on
> sci.physics.research, something is wrong, and string theorists are
> permanently criticized there without a rational justification.
Any post that criticizes a person rather than a statement is the
weaker for that. Most people understand it, so most criticisms are
of statements, conclusions, conjectures, etc. Not of people.
> these - and I can say it openly on this newsgroup - arrogant crackpots and
> pompous fools who only know how to criticize but they don't know almost
> anything else. These crackpots think that once they become moderators of a
> newsgroup, and they can use this job to brainwash others, which they
> certainly do more than successfully, they have the credentials to
While you can say such things openly in many groups, most people expect
more politeness from a would-be moderator. The new group is supposed to
exclude comments like the above, after all.
-S.
Lubos Motl
> I think this is a reference to a discussion started by my giving as an
> example of out-of-control string triumphalism the title of a recent
> talk by David Gross; "The Power and the Glory of String Theory"
well, obviously you would like to start this discussion again. ;-)
> Motl seems to be of the opinion that this is both a perfectly reasonable
> way to refer to string theory
If you ask me whether string theory is powerful and glorious, the answer
is definitely YES - even if it happened not to describe the Universe
around us exactly.
> Even the greatest of physicists makes bad judgements. Einstein
> famously devoted the last part of his life to a research
> program that went nowhere because it was based on ignoring
> quantum mechanics.
I am more than happy to agree with your statement about Einstein,
> Personally I believe Gross, Witten and many
> others have been pursuing a misguided idea about unification.
Which does not imply any agreement about these physicists. ;-)
> Unlike Gross, in recent years I haven't noticed Witten giving talks
> about how well things are going in string theory.
OK, Edward Witten'2003 was not the biggest optimist about string theory in
the world - and there are certainly good reasons behind this fact - but
nevertheless, let me list a couple (a small fraction) of Witten's recent
public talks and papers that are more or less celebrating the beauty of
string/M-theory
http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0212247
http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-ph/0207124
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6TVD-4072VTX-1T&_coverDate=03%2F31%2F1998&_alid=135970606&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_qd=1&_cdi=5532&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000014438&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=209690&md5=02937a1807695d40fa6cae7ce337f1a2
I think it is unreasonable to change the opinions about such a
far-reaching theory based on one year that was a bit less thrilling than
some other years.
All the best,
Lubos
Jacques Distler
<Pine.LNX.4.31.03121...@feynman.harvard.edu>, Lubos
Motl <mo...@feynman.harvard.edu> wrote:
>I think it is unreasonable to change the opinions about such a
>far-reaching theory based on one year that was a bit less thrilling than
>some other years.
The glories of String Theory are irrelevant to the present discussion.
Issues like moderation policy *are* relevant.
So ... will post critical of string theory be summarily rejected?
That's not what's stated in the charter, but your comments here seem to
indicate otherwise.
Lubos Motl
> So ... will post critical of string theory be summarily rejected?
First of all, no one can predict exactly how a moderator will decide in a
particular case, and the opinion below won't necessarily be shared by
every moderator in every case. It is also not certain who will be the
moderators in 3 months or so (even if the newsgroup is created), and
therefore the description below is mostly my personal interpretation of
the charter, and I encourage others to give their answers, too.
According to the charter, whether or not a post is critical of string
theory is not the primary criterion for the moderator to decide whether
the post is appropriate for the newsgroup. But there are related rules.
The appropriate posts are those that address some questions related to
string theory - which of course means the scientific contents of string
theory, not personal attacks on string theorists, for example: the "ban"
for posts containing mainly personal attacks is explicitly mentioned in
the charter.
Which sort of criticism will be supported? For example, can someone use
the newsgroup to criticize string theory for working with the concept of
gravitons propagating in the Minkowski space - because the critic is
either convinced that special relativity is wrong, or he or she is
convinced that the spacetime does not exist (or the theory should be
"background free" in the Machian sense that would imply that gravitons
can't exist)?
I think that the charter answers "NO" because the Machian principle - or
the idea that gravitons don't exist - is certainly a non-stringy approach
to gravitational physics, and such approaches are explicitly listed in the
charter as inappropriate topics for the newsgroup. There are very many
open questions in theoretical physics, but there are also many questions
that have been answered, and ignoring the known answers without a
justification may be a sufficient reason to reject the post according to
the charter, I think.
The participant whose post of similar kind has been rejected at
sci.physics.strings is almost guaranteed that it can be accepted
elsewhere, for example at sci.physics.research - and maybe the moderators
over there will thank him for his or her post! :-) No reason to cry.
A moderator could certainly allow such a post, if he or she finds it
interesting enough, but the charter also does not allow such arguments or
criticisms to appear repeatedly. A post that is critical about the whole
string theory either has a point, or it doesn't. If it doesn't have a
point, then it is probably rejected because of personal attacks or general
hostility, or because the contents of the post has appeared repeatedly.
If it has a point, then the important question is whether the point is a
possible internal contradiction within string theory; or a contradiction
between string theory and an experiment; or whether it is just a
contradiction between string theory and some untestable assumptions or
unverifiable aesthetic criteria. In the first two cases the post obviously
belongs to the stringy newsgroup, while in the latter case it doesn't
because the charter explicitly disfavors non-stringy approaches to solving
these questions - and an approach whose fundamental assumptions differ
from those of string theory is definitely a non-stringy approach.
I hope that this conclusion does not sound surprising, because the
possibility to filter this sort of off-topic hostile postings is one of
the main reasons to create a new newsgroup.
A moderator can decide that the posting is still interesting for the
physicists (and string theorists especially), and accept it, or he/she can
decide that it is not interesting enough, and reject it. In such marginal
cases there is no exact and universal formula to decide whether a post is
gonna be accepted, but in my opinion the charter makes it absolutely clear
that sci.physics.strings is not the right forum for the repeated
discussions about the sentence "string theory is evil", because there is
no string-theoretical contents in this sort of sentence.
Regardless whether the participant is a critic or a fan of string theory
and whether or not his or her idea is good news or bad news for string
theory, it seems obvious that he or she must accept the rules of string
theory - at least at an elementary level - otherwise his or her comment
will likely be rejected because of the newgroup's purpose that is
mentioned in the charter.
Our goal is not to create another copy of sci.physics.research because it
would be a redundant idea, indeed. Our goal is to create a newsgroup whose
content will be focused and that will have the capacity to probe the
questions with a sufficient depth, and such a goal obviously requires
slightly different decisions of the moderators.
Buzurg Shagird
news:<76e6a5ba.0312...@posting.google.com>...
> Jacques Distler <dis...@golem.ph.utexas.edu> wrote in message
> news:<181220031233465520%dis...@golem.ph.utexas.edu>...
>
> > There is nothing in the charter (nor, IMHO, should there be) which
> > forbids such posts. Their number will surely only multiply, once the
> > "distraction" of discussions of other branches of physics are removed.
> >
> > Of course, I assume that's *not* why this new groups has been proposed.
> > But I could be wrong ...
>
> I wish I could believe that.
I am sorry to followup on my own post -- but I wish to clarify that
I don't disbelieve that Jacques Distler is willing to give benefit
of doubt to the proponents/moderators of the new group. I should have
said `I wish I could believe the same thing.' Sorry.
-S.
Serenus Zeitblom
> who is a leading contender for one of the future Nobel prizes (for their
> discovery of the asymptotic freedom) is not allowed to look smarter than
> these - and I can say it openly on this newsgroup - arrogant crackpots and
> pompous fools who only know how to criticize but they don't know almost
> anything else. These crackpots think that once they become moderators of a
> newsgroup, and they can use this job to brainwash others, which they
> certainly do more than successfully, they have the credentials to
> criticize David Gross without the necessity to have point. Well, that's
> not quite right.
So the real point of the new group is to insult the moderators
of sci.physics.research.
Put me down for a definite NO.
sol
If we were to be looking at brane of 300000 years after big bang then
we would see the movement on this brane as dynamical, but smooth.
Condition then of supermetric(supergrvaity) would be what I am
refering too. Would this be a correct asessment?
Arvind Rajaraman
> In article
> <Pine.LNX.4.31.03121...@feynman.harvard.edu>, Lubos
> Motl <mo...@feynman.harvard.edu> wrote:
>
>
> The glories of String Theory are irrelevant to the present discussion.
>
> Issues like moderation policy *are* relevant.
>
> So ... will post critical of string theory be summarily rejected?
>
> That's not what's stated in the charter, but your comments here seem to
> indicate otherwise.
Speaking for myself as a potential moderator, I would say that posts
critical of string theory would not be rejected a priori. The problem
is partly that we all know the usual objections to string theory (no
experimental results, overoptimistic claims in the past etc.) and such
discussions are usually pretty fruitless. But that is not an automatic
reason to reject such posts.
Buzurg Shagird
> On Fri, 19 Dec 2003, Jacques Distler wrote:
>
> > So ... will post critical of string theory be summarily rejected?
>
> First of all, no one can predict exactly how a moderator will decide in a
> particular case, and the opinion below won't necessarily be shared by
> every moderator in every case.
This, and the rest, sounds like a definite maybe.
> It is also not certain who will be the
> moderators in 3 months or so (even if the newsgroup is created), and
It's a very bad idea to start a moderated group when a moderator is not
sure who will be the moderator in three months.
> Which sort of criticism will be supported? For example,
I didn't see an actual example, however contrived, of a post critical
of string theory as a whole, that will be allowed. The only example
given is of one that will be disallowed.
> The participant whose post of similar kind has been rejected at
> sci.physics.strings is almost guaranteed that it can be accepted
> elsewhere, for example at sci.physics.research - and maybe the moderators
> over there will thank him for his or her post! :-) No reason to cry.
Most posters whose posts have been rejected at some moderated newsgroup
don't start calling the moderators names, nor move a RFD for a new group.
> Our goal is not to create another copy of sci.physics.research because it
Then the rejection criteria should be better defined to reflect the
difference with s.p.r. As they stand, the declared criteria are the
same for both groups, yet the moderators claim there is a difference.
-S.
Urs Schreiber
news:76e6a5ba.03122...@posting.google.com...
> Then the rejection criteria should be better defined to reflect the
> difference with s.p.r. As they stand, the declared criteria are the
> same for both groups, yet the moderators claim there is a difference.
The criteria are clearly not the same. For instance in the
sci.physics.strings charter it says
>>>
1) Posts must be related to the discussion of string theory, which
includes all the modern aspects of the theory (such as branes,
dualities, "M-theory"), as well as related fields, but excludes
non-stringy proposals for theories of grand unification, quantum
gravity and high-energy physics, unless a direct relevance for string
theory can be made explicit.
<<<
Certainly this is not what the charter of sci.physics.research says.
Urs Schreiber
news:c7fd6c7a.03121...@posting.google.com...
> So the real point of the new group is to insult the moderators
> of sci.physics.research.
Certainly not. Three moderators of sci.physics.research have voiced their
support for the idea of a new newsgroup sci.physics.strings. The opinion has
been expressed that sci.physics.research will benefit from the existence of
sci.physics.strings.
Let me note that the very strong feelings that are articulated on both sides
pro and contra strings and other approaches, and which have led to (almost)
flame wars on sci.physics.research as well as behind the scenes is precisely
one thing that is supposed to be reduced by the existence of the new group.
Yaakov K
actually going on in whatever field it covers and not as a corrective
to it (as some of the most prolific and hence influential posters at
spr believe).
What's actually going on in high energy theory is that it's being
dominated by string theory, and this together with the sheer sprawl of
stringy research and rapidly growing interest in strings outside of
academia mean that string theory warrants a dedicated moderated forum
which - the results of the upcoming vote notwithstanding - would
probably rapidly become fairly busy.
For me, it's worth posting to a news group only if it's fun. Long
delays in posting messages due to moderation pretty much ruins things
for me so that I don't bother with spr and prefer - despite the
limited sophistication and control of discussions - unmoderated though
otherwise well managed forums like PhysicsForums. (Also, this forum
allows the use mathematical symbology).
I'd like to see a compromise between the way moderated and unmoderated
forums operate. For example, how about posting all messages
immediately, but moderators would flag inappropriate messages and
responses to them and allow visitors to select whether to view only
those messages that the moderators feel are up to snuff, or all
messages. Can this kind of "post-moderation" be done in news groups?
Urs Schreiber
news:3276eb2d.03122...@posting.google.com...
> I'd like to see a compromise between the way moderated and unmoderated
> forums operate. For example, how about posting all messages
> immediately, but moderators would flag inappropriate messages and
> responses to them and allow visitors to select whether to view only
> those messages that the moderators feel are up to snuff, or all
> messages. Can this kind of "post-moderation" be done in news groups?
The best compromise that I see is to have sufficiently many moderators, so
that none of them falls behind and so that a message will usually appear
within at most 24 hours and usually sooner.
A friend of mine told me about a moderated mailing list where all posted
articles are published on the web somewhere but only those that are approved
by the moderators are distributed over the mailing list. This however does
not seem to be practical on usenet.
Jacques Distler
<Urs.Sc...@uni-essen.de> wrote:
*Obviously*, the posts must be on-topic, otherwise they are liable to
be rejected.
But, aside from the narrower focus ("string theory, in all its
aspects," instead of "physics"), is there any way in which the
moderation criteria for s.p.s, as set out in the charter, differ from
those of s.p.r?
And yet, there is the clear intimation that there is some class of
posts *about string theory* which would be rejected by the moderators
of s.p.s, but which would be deemed acceptable under the charter of
s.p.r.
>The participant whose post of similar kind has been rejected at
>sci.physics.strings is almost guaranteed that it can be accepted
>elsewhere, for example at sci.physics.research - and maybe the
>moderators over there will thank him for his or her post! :-)
>No reason to cry.
This is the part that I am trying to understand. If a post is on-topic
and is "almost guaranteed to be accepted" under the nearly identical
charter of s.p.r., why would it be rejected from s.p.s. ?
Lubos has indicated some things he thinks would be grounds for
rejection in s.p.s.:
Posts of a metaphysical nature,
"just a contradiction between string theory and some
untestable assumptions or unverifiable aesthetic criteria."
Generally hostile or repetitious posts:
"...then it is probably rejected because of personal attacks
or general hostility, or because the contents of the post
has appeared repeatedly.
(Personal attack *are* covered in the charter, "general hostility", or
repetitiousness are not.)
If these are to be grounds for rejection (are they?), I think that
should be spelled out in the charter.
Jacques Distler
Distler <dis...@golem.ph.utexas.edu> wrote:
>(Personal attack *are* covered in the charter, "general hostility", or
>repetitiousness are not.)
My bad.
General hostility *is* covered in the charter. Repetitiousness
(multiple posts, all saying the same thing) is sort of covered, but not
in these sense Lubos was using it, ie, "criticisms we've all heard
before."
sol
"Unfortunately, this means that strings are way too small to see by
current or expected particle physics technology (or financing!!) and
so string theorists must devise more clever methods to test the theory
than just looking for little strings in particle experiments. "
http://www.superstringtheory.com/basics/basic4.html
I would say that such discussions can become very productive if minds
could indeed consider the relevance of the model here in strings in
terms of valid methods of experimentation. From the understanding of
high energy how then does one meld weak field measure of gravity(
Table Top ) then into the possibility ( move everything up a scale? ).
"A possible explanation currently gaining ground in theoretical
circles is that the fundamental scale of gravity is not really up at
the Planck scale, it just seems that way. According to this school of
thought, what is actually happening is that gravity, uniquely among
the forces, acts in extra dimensions. This means that much of the
gravitational flux is invisible to us locked into our three dimensions
of space and one of time."
http://cerncourier.com/main/article/40/2/6/1
It is obvious then that such looks to cosmological circumstances
become very interesting propositions for consideration. Why, because
of the energy limitations. So we look for points, supersymmetrical
states...as a measure from the strong to the weak in terms of
dimensional significance. We also look to the blackhole
Quark to Quark measure as a interesting feature for consideration of
the energy involved, and what existed in terms of the relation to the
gravitational curvature in contrast to that energy?
http://dustbunny.physics.indiana.edu/HallD/po3.gif
I apologize if I have hurt the effort of the strings forum idea as a
position I write from, the general public. It has to make sense on
many different levels so what is current in society(strings and
information) must be relayed.
Brian Greene's program did a good job. That's what was needed.
Steinhardt, Turok and others enjoyed the walk and what came out of
this gathering? Colliding branes?
http://www.nature.com/nsu/020422/020422-17.html#
Cheering from the sidelines( not much of a game anymore ), for string
theorists.:) I still think such consideration has been understood by
Smolin( The Perimeter Institute[PI]) to have raised the issue here of
what happens with Penroses picture.
http://cgpg.gravity.psu.edu/online/Html/Seminars/Fall1998/Penrose/Slides/12.gif
Would such a applictaion be relevant to what information is recieved
from ligo as a translator. Cryptology?
Sol
Lubos Motl
> But, aside from the narrower focus ("string theory, in all its
> aspects," instead of "physics"), is there any way in which the
> moderation criteria for s.p.s, as set out in the charter, differ from
> those of s.p.r?
I think that your observation that the deep, systemic policies of the
proposed newsgroup sci.physics.strings (SPS) resemble those of
sci.physics.research (SPR) is a correct observation. I guess that the
proponents will agree that sci.physics.research works well, as far as the
general rules go (well, except for the moderators' delays that can be as
long as a week), and in some sense, SPR can be viewed as a good prototype,
although the content of the newsgroups will be different.
> And yet, there is the clear intimation that there is some class of
> posts *about string theory* which would be rejected by the moderators
> of s.p.s, but which would be deemed acceptable under the charter of
> s.p.r.
It seems that you want us to say something radical, or to transmute the
charter into a totalitarian constitution, but I don't think that you will
achieve it. :-)
The charter of SPS is balanced; it contains sufficient tools for the
moderators to prevent the discussions from becoming meaningless. There
might be some freedom about the interpretation of the words "about string
theory". If someone writes a post about minus 1905 angels on the tip of
the needle who play the violin (that contains strings) and who are undoing
special relativity (published in plus 1905), my opinion is that it is not
a post about string theory, even though it contains the word "string", and
it might happen that such a post will be rejected. In fact, there are
other paragraphs in the charter that suggest that such a post might face
some problems. But the moderator might decide that the post is funny
enough to be interesting for the participants. There is no universal
algorithm to judge whether a posting is OK.
And yes, I can also imagine that such a post might be accepted at SPR but
not SPS. In other words, I personally imagine that a post "about string
theory" is either a post that asks a question about the theory, or a post
that assumes some facts or insights that are believed to be compatible
with string theory (or even its consequence), plus possibly some other
theoretical or experimental facts, and derives some conclusions - and it
does not matter whether the conclusions are good news, or bad news for
(some) physicists.
The posts that want to suggest that people should not even try to study
string theory - such posts simply can't be "about string theory".
In my opinion, a post that - for example - only states that "the whole
string theory is ugly, untestable and asocial" is not a post about string
theory because it is unrelated to a single particular idea or question in
the theory, and even if a moderator happened to accept it for one reason
or another, the charter in its present form would prevent him or her from
accepting a post with such contents many times, especially not in the same
thread. The charter makes it clear, I think, that if a group of people,
e.g. the critics desire to become a majority on SPS, they will have to
become more innovative and creative than how it has been so far. ;-)
> This is the part that I am trying to understand. If a post is on-topic
> and is "almost guaranteed to be accepted" under the nearly identical
> charter of s.p.r., why would it be rejected from s.p.s. ?
We are discussing a totally abstract post that none has really seen :-),
but from your description I think it seemed likely that you were talking
about an off-topic post. Let me articulate it once again: if someone
writes an off-topic post and he or she wants to make it on-topic just by
including some general assessment of string theory (regardless of its
sign) - without discussing any of its "details" - it will still be an
off-topic post.
Imagine that you have a newsgroup about the Hewlett-Packard computers.
People are happily discussing how to solve their problems with the
keyboards, for example, and someone comes there to explain how much he
enjoys Apple, and that Apple is much a better brand than Hewlett-Packard,
because HP sucks. I think that common sense is sufficient to realize that
such a post is not on-topic even though it contains the words
"Hewlett-Packard". Do you agree with this statement? The description makes
it clear that the Apple person was an "intruder", and the charter contains
a reasonable number of democratic policies that are nevertheless capable
to reduce the influence of such "intruders".
The charter is not built in such a way that it will be able to stop any
sort of intruders - even those that are very polite and use very rational
ideas - and it was indeed not one of the charter's goals to get rid of
such postings! ;-)
> (Personal attack *are* covered in the charter, "general hostility", or
> repetitiousness are not.)
You might be reading a different charter. Our real charter is available at
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=g:thl2564383507d&selm=1071590601.19921%40isc.org
It says, among other things:
...
Clearly inappropriate postings include:
(1) Personal attacks;
(2) Discussion that isn't about or related to string theory
(3) Multiple responses that all say the same things; and
(4) Crackpot postings that are "not even wrong."
[We can imagine that [4] will be reformulated
in a more diplomatic language.]
The paragraph (3) protects the group from repetitiousness, and the type
of the postings that you described could violate zero, one, two, three, or
all four rules, depending on the details. ;-) I don't think that it is
necessary for each posting to be absolutely perfect, whatever it means!
The moderators can accept postings that are critical without having too
much to say, for example, and I personally also have no problems with such
postings as far as their number is reasonable and controllable, but the
moderators will have the tools to guarantee that it won't make the
newsgroup meaningless, and tools to increase the information vs. noise
ratio.
ru.ig...@usask.ca
>In article <bs208v$8nf19$1...@ID-168578.news.uni-berlin.de>, Urs Schreiber
><Urs.Sc...@uni-essen.de> wrote:
>>Certainly this is not what the charter of sci.physics.research says.
[snip]
>But, aside from the narrower focus ("string theory, in all its
>aspects," instead of "physics"), is there any way in which the
>moderation criteria for s.p.s, as set out in the charter, differ from
>those of s.p.r?
>And yet, there is the clear intimation that there is some class of
>posts *about string theory* which would be rejected by the moderators
>of s.p.s, but which would be deemed acceptable under the charter of
>s.p.r.
There is a general "policy" in the Big-8 that if a group for a subtopic
exists, postings relevant to that subtopic should only go to the group.
The corollary to that is that postings deemed unsuitable for the subtopic
group belong in the more general group. So in a general sense, there's
no problem with the rejection criterion here.
As a news.groups regular, I sometimes think that the charter of SPS is
a bit too tight for its placement in the Big-8 hiearchy. But then I
realize that the advocacy threads would be rather generalized conceptually,
and thus I can see that the degree of focus could be justified. So my
concerns would lie elsewhere in the moderation policy.
>>The participant whose post of similar kind has been rejected at
>>sci.physics.strings is almost guaranteed that it can be accepted
>>elsewhere, for example at sci.physics.research - and maybe the
>>moderators over there will thank him for his or her post! :-)
>>No reason to cry.
>This is the part that I am trying to understand. If a post is on-topic
>and is "almost guaranteed to be accepted" under the nearly identical
>charter of s.p.r., why would it be rejected from s.p.s. ?
Let me put it this way, in the Big-8, the expectation is s.p.s has
the right of first rejection because it is the specialized group.
Subsequently, anything not belonging in s.p.s. belongs in the more
generalized s.p.r. (unless it is rejected there, too). That is the
role parent and child newsgroups have.
ru
--
My standard proposals rant:
Quality, usefulness, merit, or non-newsgroups popularity of a topic
is more or less irrelevant in creating a new Big-8 newsgroup.
Usenet popularity is the primary consideration.
ru.ig...@usask.ca
>I'd like to see a compromise between the way moderated and unmoderated
>forums operate. For example, how about posting all messages
>immediately, but moderators would flag inappropriate messages and
>responses to them and allow visitors to select whether to view only
>those messages that the moderators feel are up to snuff, or all
>messages. Can this kind of "post-moderation" be done in news groups?
There is a way. Create two groups, one unmoderated and one moderated
covering the same topic: s.p.strings would be unmoderated,
s.p.strings.moderated would be, well, moderated. Postings to
s.p.s.m would be automatically crossposted to s.p.s by the moderation
software. But really, with reasonable moderation practices, this
shouldn't be necessary for most groups unless there is a lot of
controversy about the topic or about the personalities in the group.
Jacques Distler
wrote:
>>This is the part that I am trying to understand. If a post is on-topic
>>and is "almost guaranteed to be accepted" under the nearly identical
>>charter of s.p.r., why would it be rejected from s.p.s. ?
>
>Let me put it this way, in the Big-8, the expectation is s.p.s has
>the right of first rejection because it is the specialized group.
>Subsequently, anything not belonging in s.p.s. belongs in the more
>generalized s.p.r. (unless it is rejected there, too). That is the
>role parent and child newsgroups have.
Fair enough.
But this parent/child relationship between the two groups is a little
less than obvious. If the new group is, indeed, conceived as a child of
s.p.r., shouldn't it be called
sci.physics.research.strings
and shouldn't the charter make mention of this relationship?
Lubos Motl
> But this parent/child relationship between the two groups is a little
> less than obvious. If the new group is, indeed, conceived as a child of
> s.p.r., shouldn't it be called
> sci.physics.research.strings ...
well, I don't quite understand what leads you to this proposal; it doesn't
look constructive to me. SPS is meant to be better than SPR, and it also
needs a sexy and short enough name! We appreciate the tradition of
sci.physics.research, but as far as I understand, we don't propose a
newsgroup that will behave as a derived branch of another newsgroup!
The supporters of the new newsgroup expect a little bit more than what you
propose, I think.
To show how funny your idea is, let me propose that the domain *.edu might
be called *.edu.ac.uk, because the USA are in the same parent-child
relationship with the UK.
Your domain *.utexas.edu should be called *.utexas.harvard.edu.ac.uk,
because your university was founded following the example of Harvard
University, and your last name should be changed to
Weinberg.s.Distler
to clearly indicate the relationship between you and your boss. As soon as
you will be able to change your old e-mail address
into a newer address
weinberg....@golem.ph.utexas.harvard.edu.ac.uk,
we should start to consider a new proposal along the lines that you
suggested. ;-) Before these things will happen, I think that we should
continue to discuss *seriously* our proposal because we have spent many
hours by developing the name sci.physics.strings - and considering
possibilities such as sci.physics.m-theory. I guess that the other
supporters of the new newsgroup, as well as my fellows proponents, share
my belief that sci.physics.strings is a more appropriate name than
sci.physics.research.strings. ;-)
Of course, I might be wrong, and if Jacques' idea has significant support
among some supporters of sci.physics.strings, I will be happy to learn
about it.
All the best
Jacques Distler
<Pine.LNX.4.31.03122...@feynman.harvard.edu>, Lubos
Motl <mo...@feynman.harvard.edu> wrote:
>> But this parent/child relationship between the two groups is a little
>> less than obvious. If the new group is, indeed, conceived as a child of
>> s.p.r., shouldn't it be called
>> sci.physics.research.strings ...
>
>well, I don't quite understand what leads you to this proposal;
Did you read the message I was responding to?
Are you familiar with Usenet hierarchies?
If your answer is "s.p.s is, in no way, intended as a 'child' group of
s.p.r.," then that addresses -- in a negative way -- the assertion of
ru igarashi:
>Let me put it this way, in the Big-8, the expectation is s.p.s has
>the right of first rejection because it is the specialized group.
>Subsequently, anything not belonging in s.p.s. belongs in the more
>generalized s.p.r. (unless it is rejected there, too). That is the
>role parent and child newsgroups have.
Jacques
ru.ig...@usask.ca
>Fair enough.
> sci.physics.research.strings
Aw, nuts, I overlooked that. Yes, the parent/child relationship
concept is void here. However, the right of first rejection still
applies. SPR is still has a generalized topic space while SPS will
be specialized. That entitles SPS to reject topics that SPR can
accept, and SPS to accept topics exclusively that SPR would otherwise
have accepted.
ru.ig...@usask.ca
>Dear Jacques,
>> But this parent/child relationship between the two groups is a little
>> less than obvious. If the new group is, indeed, conceived as a child of
>> s.p.r., shouldn't it be called
>> sci.physics.research.strings ...
>well, I don't quite understand what leads you to this proposal; it doesn't
>look constructive to me. SPS is meant to be better than SPR, and it also
>needs a sexy and short enough name! We appreciate the tradition of
>sci.physics.research, but as far as I understand, we don't propose a
>newsgroup that will behave as a derived branch of another newsgroup!
I don't think the idea is so unreasonable given the rationale for
SPS. SPR is cited as a group commonly used to discuss strings.
That sort of makes SPR the parent group for SPS. If SPS is meant
to discuss the latest in physics research in strings, and SPR is
meant to discuss the latest in physics research in general, that
furthers the notion of the relationship. It sounds like SPS is
a derived branch of SPR to me.
>The supporters of the new newsgroup expect a little bit more than what you
>propose, I think.
You should explain why SPS should be a peer to SPR. Why isn't SPR a
subtopic of SPR or SP.particle? etc. It seems too specialized a
topic to be placed at the 3rd node.
Naming of a group should be from general to specialized going from
left to right, and the placement should try to match the degree of
specialization of its peers. Is strings as broad as the other 3rd
node sci.physics groups, or more specialized?
sci.physics.accelerators
sci.physics.electromag
sci.physics.particle
sci.physics.research
sci.physics.fusion
sci.physics.plasma
sci.physics.cond-matter
If someone proposed a group for superconductivity theories, it could
be s.p.c-m.superconductivity. If someone proposed a group for the
standard model, it probably could be called s.p.particle.standard-model.
If someone proposed a group for laser ignition for fusion, it could
be called s.p.fusion.laser and if it were for theoretical aspects of
it, it might be called s.p.plasma.laser.
Jim Riley
>Yaakov K <yaakov...@sympatico.ca> wrote:
>
>>I'd like to see a compromise between the way moderated and unmoderated
>>forums operate. For example, how about posting all messages
>>immediately, but moderators would flag inappropriate messages and
>>responses to them and allow visitors to select whether to view only
>>those messages that the moderators feel are up to snuff, or all
>>messages. Can this kind of "post-moderation" be done in news groups?
>
>There is a way. Create two groups, one unmoderated and one moderated
>covering the same topic: s.p.strings would be unmoderated,
>s.p.strings.moderated would be, well, moderated. Postings to
>s.p.s.m would be automatically crossposted to s.p.s by the moderation
>software. But really, with reasonable moderation practices, this
>shouldn't be necessary for most groups unless there is a lot of
>controversy about the topic or about the personalities in the group.
This sort of relationship is rare. rec.music.beatles.moderated is
intended for more critical or in depth articles, with less repetitive
discussion about which song is the best, etc. There was some concern
that some posters would move to the moderated group, leaving the
unmoderated group with mostly trivia. In this case, the moderator
adds the unmoderated rec.music.beatles as a cross-post to all approved
messages. The moderated group was created about a year after a
proposal to create a rec.music.artists.beatles.info was defeated, in
part because of its proposed name. The cross-posting policy might be
considered a sweetener to reduce opposition by those who might somehow
think their group was being taken away.
In the case of the moderated sci.space.tech, and sci.space.science,
and the unmoderated sci.space.policy there is the practice of
redirecting unapproved messages from the moderated group to the
unmoderated group. There is a bit of an unusual formation history
here as well. The moderated groups were created to replace an
existing unmoderated group, and sci.space.policy was a rename of a
group from the talk.* hierarchy.
Generally, it is considered inappropriate for a moderator to change
the newsgroups that a submitted message is posted to. Just as the
poster has control over the content and style of his post, he should
be able to choose his audience. The moderator of course can decide
whether the content, style, and audience is appropriate for the forum
he controls. But IMO, it is better to reject the article, and let the
poster decide whether to make changes, rather than the moderator
changing it for him.
--
Jim Riley
Serenus Zeitblom
> "Serenus Zeitblom" <serenusze...@yahoo.com> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
> news:c7fd6c7a.03121...@posting.google.com...
>
> > So the real point of the new group is to insult the moderators
> > of sci.physics.research.
>
> Certainly not. Three moderators of sci.physics.research have voiced their
> support for the idea of a new newsgroup sci.physics.strings.
Were they the ones described by Motl as "arrogant crackpots
and pompous fools"?
The opinion has
> been expressed that sci.physics.research will benefit from the existence of
> sci.physics.strings.
Translation: they want to see the back of LM!
>
> Let me note that the very strong feelings that are articulated on both sides
> pro and contra strings and other approaches, and which have led to (almost)
> flame wars on sci.physics.research as well as behind the scenes is precisely
> one thing that is supposed to be reduced by the existence of the new group.
Come on, you know what is going to happen: eventually one of the
moderators of the new group will have to reject one of LM's
obnoxious posts. Then he will blow yet another fuse and propose
the creation of yet another group. It'll never end!
Jim Riley
<dis...@golem.ph.utexas.edu> wrote:
>In article <bs2sfs$p92$1...@tribune.usask.ca>, <ru.ig...@usask.ca>
>wrote:
>>Let me put it this way, in the Big-8, the expectation is s.p.s has
>>the right of first rejection because it is the specialized group.
>>Subsequently, anything not belonging in s.p.s. belongs in the more
>>generalized s.p.r. (unless it is rejected there, too). That is the
>>role parent and child newsgroups have.
>
>Fair enough.
>
>But this parent/child relationship between the two groups is a little
>less than obvious. If the new group is, indeed, conceived as a child of
>s.p.r., shouldn't it be called
>
> sci.physics.research.strings
>
>and shouldn't the charter make mention of this relationship?
I'm not sure that there is a clear parent/child relationship in this
case. In general, ".research" groups in the sci.* and comp.*
hierarchies has been a way of denoting moderated newsgroup where the
intent has been to keep crackpots and homework problems at bay in
order to encourage the continued participation by scientists and
researchers.
Most of the more specialized sci.physics groups have been created
after sci.physics.research. Most were unmoderated, some were not. I
think it would be reasonable to simply treat them as specialized
groups. At one time there was a proposal to create
sci.physics.fusion.research. But in that case that would have been
the moderated version of the existing unmoderated sci.physics.fusion.
Moderators can come to an agreement to permit cross-approvals (e.g.
the moderator of sci.physics.research could let the moderator of
sci.physics.strings approve messages cross-posted to both groups.)
--
Jim Riley
George William Herbert
>[...]
>In the case of the moderated sci.space.tech, and sci.space.science,
>and the unmoderated sci.space.policy there is the practice of
>redirecting unapproved messages from the moderated group to the
>unmoderated group. There is a bit of an unusual formation history
>here as well. The moderated groups were created to replace an
>existing unmoderated group, and sci.space.policy was a rename of a
>group from the talk.* hierarchy.
Yeah. But that was the only time that's ever been
done in Usenet history, as far as I am aware, and people
who weren't already aware of it sometimes go into fits,
as late as last year.
I think it's probably a safe bet that it shouldn't be
assumed reasonable for future newgrouping.
-george william herbert
gher...@retro.com
Urs Schreiber
news:bs5fhr$1sp$1...@tribune.usask.ca...
> Naming of a group should be from general to specialized going from
> left to right, and the placement should try to match the degree of
> specialization of its peers. Is strings as broad as the other 3rd
> node sci.physics groups, or more specialized?
>
> sci.physics.accelerators
> sci.physics.electromag
> sci.physics.particle
> sci.physics.research
> sci.physics.fusion
> sci.physics.plasma
> sci.physics.cond-matter
It is broader.
Furthermore, I don't recognize a strict hierarchy at the third node:
Imposing such one would have particle>accelerators and plasma>fusion,
probably.
In any case, it seems that the suffix .research is more a modifier
indicating moderation than indicating a specialization. As someone else
pointed out, the growth of the group tree at .reserach nodes seems to be of
the form
sci.xxx (unmoderated)
sci.xxx.reserach (moderated)
sci.xxx.special (unmoderated)
sci.xxx.special.research (moderated) .
Judging from this it seems that we should rather worry about whether
sci.physics.strings
or
sci.physics.strings.research
is appropriate. But then it seems to be unusual to have a .research suffix
when no unmoderated group of the same name exits.
> If someone proposed a group for superconductivity theories, it could
> be s.p.c-m.superconductivity. If someone proposed a group for the
> standard model, it probably could be called s.p.particle.standard-model.
As I said above, I don't see that this rule has been strictly followed in
the course of creating the existing sci.physics.* groups.
ru.ig...@usask.ca
><ru.ig...@usask.ca> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
>news:bs5fhr$1sp$1...@tribune.usask.ca...
>> Naming of a group should be from general to specialized going from
>> left to right, and the placement should try to match the degree of
>> specialization of its peers. Is strings as broad as the other 3rd
>> node sci.physics groups, or more specialized?
>>
>> sci.physics.accelerators
>> sci.physics.electromag
>> sci.physics.particle
>> sci.physics.research
>> sci.physics.fusion
>> sci.physics.plasma
>> sci.physics.cond-matter
>It is broader.
How? For example, it doesn't encompass the topics of most of
the above groups. It might encompass .particle and .electromag.
It is only part of .research. .fusion, .plasma, and .cond-matter
are macroscopically scaled ares of physics to be relevant. Since
string theory is a high-energy field, one could also argue it is
a subtopic of .particle, since that and astronomy/cosmology are
the only places where effects will be observable. The list of
journals/fora in the rationale seem to be specialized similarly.
>Furthermore, I don't recognize a strict hierarchy at the third node:
>Imposing such one would have particle>accelerators and plasma>fusion,
>probably.
That doesn't mean the new group doesn't belong under one of the
existing ones if that is where the discussions are currently taking
place. I agree .accelerators is out of place, but .fusion is not
necessarily a .plasma subtopic.
>In any case, it seems that the suffix .research is more a modifier
>indicating moderation than indicating a specialization. As someone else
>pointed out, the growth of the group tree at .reserach nodes seems to be of
>the form
> sci.xxx (unmoderated)
> sci.xxx.reserach (moderated)
> sci.xxx.special (unmoderated)
> sci.xxx.special.research (moderated) .
>Judging from this it seems that we should rather worry about whether
> sci.physics.strings
Yes, that argument makes sense.
>or
> sci.physics.strings.research
Don't bother with the suffix unless you think there is a chance
that a parallel unmoderated group will be created in the future.
>is appropriate. But then it seems to be unusual to have a .research suffix
>when no unmoderated group of the same name exits.
I don't think that it would be unreasonable if there is a probability
that an unmoderated parallel group will be needed in the future. The
latter isnt't as strong an argument. In general, it is not unusual to
have .moderated groups without unmoderated groups, for example. I
don't see why a s.p.strings.research couldn't exist without s.p.strings
(unmoderated) in that context.
Eric A. Forgy
> <ru.ig...@usask.ca> schrieb:
> In any case, it seems that the suffix .research is more a modifier
> indicating moderation than indicating a specialization. As someone else
> pointed out, the growth of the group tree at .reserach nodes seems to be of
> the form
>
> sci.xxx (unmoderated)
> sci.xxx.reserach (moderated)
> sci.xxx.special (unmoderated)
> sci.xxx.special.research (moderated) .
>
> Judging from this it seems that we should rather worry about whether
>
> sci.physics.strings
>
> or
>
> sci.physics.strings.research
>
> is appropriate. But then it seems to be unusual to have a .research suffix
> when no unmoderated group of the same name exits.
How about "sci.strings.research"? :)
This would protect it from future experiments that might show that
string theory does not even belong in the realm of physics :)
I'm only half kidding. sci.strings.research sounds sexier anyway. This
would also leave open the obvious possibility of having an unmoderated
version somewhere down the road called "sci.strings."
Some people might even argue that string theory transcends mere
physics. If I'm not mistaken, it has also pushed the frontiers in
several areas of mathematics.
Eric
Urs Schreiber
news:bs6vp5$53l$2...@tribune.usask.ca...
> Urs Schreiber <Urs.Sc...@uni-essen.de> wrote:
> ><ru.ig...@usask.ca> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
> >news:bs5fhr$1sp$1...@tribune.usask.ca...
>
> >> Naming of a group should be from general to specialized going from
> >> left to right, and the placement should try to match the degree of
> >> specialization of its peers. Is strings as broad as the other 3rd
> >> node sci.physics groups, or more specialized?
> >>
> >> sci.physics.accelerators
> >> sci.physics.electromag
> >> sci.physics.particle
> >> sci.physics.research
> >> sci.physics.fusion
> >> sci.physics.plasma
> >> sci.physics.cond-matter
>
> >It is broader.
>
> How?
Because, for instance, it cannot be subsumed under "sci.physics.particle"
because it is also about gravity. Similarly it cannot be subsumed under
"sci.physics.relativity" or maybe "sci.astro.research" because it is also
about particles.
> I don't think that it would be unreasonable if there is a probability
> that an unmoderated parallel group will be needed in the future. The
> latter isnt't as strong an argument. In general, it is not unusual to
> have .moderated groups without unmoderated groups, for example. I
> don't see why a s.p.strings.research couldn't exist without s.p.strings
> (unmoderated) in that context.
Hm, maybe it makes sense to now propose _two_ groups, an unmoderated
sci.physics.strings and a moderated sci.physics.strings.research?
Urs Schreiber
"Eric A. Forgy" <fo...@uiuc.edu> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news:3fa8470f.0312...@posting.google.com...
> How about "sci.strings.research"? :)
Heh! We should go one step further and reorganize the complete hierarchy:
strings.physics
strings.physics.research
strings.math
strings.math.research
...
;-)
Joe Bernstein
<nei...@fas.harvard.edu> wrote:
> But on taking a first look at s.p.r (say, by downloading all the
> headers currently available on the local news server, or looking at
> an archive of the last month's posts) newcomers probably do get the
> impression that the effort required to sort through and find the
> string theory bits would compare unfavorably with the benefit to be
> gained by doing so -- particularly for someone who only checks in on
> the group e.g. once a week.
Thank you!
I'm a news.groups regular, and unlikely to vote on this group if it
comes to a vote. I will be posting some comments on the RFD
shortly. Right now I just wanted to note that this paragraph
captures very well one of the main reasons why I think specialised
groups can sometimes succeed *even in the absence* of previously
demonstrated traffic.
I hadn't managed to think that reason through well enough to state
it as well as you did, though.
(This is *not* relevant to this debate. While I have no interest in
judging the more general matter, whether it's a good idea for the
strings group to be created or not, I have no doubt whatever that
there is previously demonstrated traffic. You're just seeing me
make a point internal to news.groups.)
Joe Bernstein
--
Joe Bernstein, writer j...@sfbooks.com
<http://www.panix.com/~josephb/>
Joe Bernstein
proposed group if it's created, though it's not out of the question.
This post begins with some not very technical comments about the
RFD, and then moves to general comments addressed to the group's
supporters, and *NOT* just the proponents/moderator candidates.
In article <10715906...@isc.org>, Urs Schreiber
<Urs.Sc...@uni-essen.de> wrote:
> REQUEST FOR DISCUSSION (RFD)
> moderated group sci.physics.strings
> CHARTER: sci.physics.strings
>
> sci.physics.strings is a moderated newsgroup for discussion
> of string theory and related fields of high-energy physics.
Huh. I always thought string theory was a field of theoretical
physics, and I always thought "high energy" referred to
accelerators, and hence to experimental physics. I am now
confused.
Charters usually include some sort of explanation of what the
groups are about that's a bit longer than this one. I realise
that for professional physicists, the above is probably enough,
but since the stated rationale for the group is to enable discussion
between professionals and laymen, the above is *not* enough for
everyone you're trying to reach.
> Posting guidelines:
> 5) Posts that are, in the opinion of the moderator, primarily
> intended to solicit business, sell a product, or further some
> commercial purpose, will cause the post to be rejected.
Please see my comments in re the sci.physics.discrete RFD, or,
briefly, please remove "cause the post to" and see if you're
happy with the result.
> 6) Posting of binary files is prohibited, except for small binary
> files included as personal signatures or electronic business cards.
Please see my comments in re the sci.physics.discrete RFD.
> MODERATOR INFO: sci.physics.strings
> Moderator: Urs Schreiber <Urs.sc...@uni-essen.de>
>
> Moderator bio:
>
> Urs Schreiber is a graduate student in theoretical physics
> at Essen University (Germany) working on string theory
> related topics. He is a co-moderator of sci.physics.research.
Oops. I should've caught the fact that none of the sp.discrete
folks is an experienced moderator. Darnit, now I have to go back
to that RFD...
Meanwhile, how experienced is Urs Schreiber? Someone in this thread
said "recently" he had become a moderator?
What about the technical side of moderation? You guys got a
moderation host set up, and software in place? Working on it?
Which of you, or who outside the three of you, is familiar with
the innards of the software, and such other relevant topics as
the wonderfully well-written, informative and precise standards
for electronic mail?
(End even remotely technical, proponent-specific, stuff. The rest
of this is for all supporters of the group, not just the proponents.)
I have no dog in the fight over whether this group should exist.
I do want to note that the pessimistic supporters of the group
should not fold too soon. If there's a vote of something like
150-63 and the group isn't created, well and good, there's
significant opposition and maybe next time you won't include a
flamer on the moderation panel or something. But if there's a vote
of something like 75-23, then as far as I'm concerned, that's just
evidence that premature fatalistic premonitions of doom are a Bad
Thing.
You have a *vastly* better-known topic than the sp.discrete folks.
You have an explicit intention of welcoming laymen, as they do not.
If you want this group to exist, you need to be out there publicising
the RFD, so that at voting time when you publicise the vote people
are prepared. I concede that chances are not obviously good, but
I sure don't see any reason to say that and stop there.
Thomas Larsson
> You know, I've been brought up in a totalitarian country, and as a kid, I
> was used to hear the adult people who were telling me - just like you -
> "you are not allowed to say XY even though it is true". Fortunately, this
> system belongs to the past, and I don't wish to rebuild it in modern
> physics
That Klement Gottwald and his henchmen suffered under Nazi rule didn't prevent
them from building a new totalitarian state, did it?
However, you seem to have Vaclav Klaus' (whom I admire, btw, a lot more than
his namesake Havel) talent for making enimies, even within your own ranks.
Peter Woit
is trying to recruit votes on alt.astrology and claiming
that a well-known string theorist is an astrologer.
Any guesses as to who this is? Inquiring minds want
to know....
Urs Schreiber
news:bs7ad9$2rp$1...@reader2.panix.com...
> In article <10715906...@isc.org>, Urs Schreiber
> <Urs.Sc...@uni-essen.de> wrote:
> > sci.physics.strings is a moderated newsgroup for discussion
> > of string theory and related fields of high-energy physics.
>
> Huh. I always thought string theory was a field of theoretical
> physics, and I always thought "high energy" referred to
> accelerators, and hence to experimental physics. I am now
> confused.
That's usual terminology, though. I have once seen the term "formal high
energy physics", but that is not commonly used.
> Charters usually include some sort of explanation of what the
> groups are about that's a bit longer than this one. I realise
> that for professional physicists, the above is probably enough,
> but since the stated rationale for the group is to enable discussion
> between professionals and laymen, the above is *not* enough for
> everyone you're trying to reach.
Ok. So would it be ok if we added a sentence like: "String theory is the
currently most popular candidate for a theory of quantum gravity that
unifies all the known forces of nature."?
> > Posting guidelines:
>
> > 5) Posts that are, in the opinion of the moderator, primarily
> > intended to solicit business, sell a product, or further some
> > commercial purpose, will cause the post to be rejected.
>
> Please see my comments in re the sci.physics.discrete RFD, or,
> briefly, please remove "cause the post to" and see if you're
> happy with the result.
Right. I'd be happy with removing these words.
> > related topics. He is a co-moderator of sci.physics.research.
> Meanwhile, how experienced is Urs Schreiber? Someone in this thread
> said "recently" he had become a moderator?
Yes, recently. Since October, this year.
> What about the technical side of moderation? You guys got a
> moderation host set up, and software in place? Working on it?
> Which of you, or who outside the three of you, is familiar with
> the innards of the software, and such other relevant topics as
> the wonderfully well-written, informative and precise standards
> for electronic mail?
We don't have a moderation host yet, as far as I know, but we are working on
it.
arkadas ozakin
However, I find statements like
Lubos Motl <mo...@feynman.harvard.edu> wrote in message news:<Pine.LNX.4.31.03121...@feynman.harvard.edu>...
> A moderator can decide that the posting is still interesting for the
> physicists (and string theorists especially), and accept it, or he/she can
> decide that it is not interesting enough, and reject it.
particularly vague.
> If it has a point, then the important question is whether the point is a
> possible internal contradiction within string theory; or a contradiction
> between string theory and an experiment; or whether it is just a
> contradiction between string theory and some untestable assumptions or
> unverifiable aesthetic criteria.
So will posts that say "string theory is good" with claims based on
"unverifiable aesthetic criteria" be accepted while posts that say the
opposite based on other "unverifiable aesthetic criteria" be rejected?
If we are going to read statements like "if the idea were any good, it
would have been connected to string theory" on s.p.s., why not allow
some aesthetic arguments against string theory as well? If you think
such arguments are misguided, you can always post and explain your
point of view. Moderation process should not be affected by personal
aesthetic taste.
Also, if a person is not interested in discussions based on
aesthetics, he or she can always read just the technical posts...
Finally, I find the attitude
> The participant whose post of similar kind has been rejected at
> sci.physics.strings is almost guaranteed that it can be accepted
> elsewhere, for example at sci.physics.research - and maybe the moderators
> over there will thank him for his or her post! :-) No reason to cry.
disturbing. I think a bit more maturity is to be expected from the
moderators of a newsgroup that is going to serve the whole world.
AbdulQat
With an eye to the future, perhaps
sci.archaelogy.strings
but then that would be unkind towards archaeology.
--
Ciao,
Gerry T.
______
"I believe that in all its branches, physics is still an experimental
science." -- Philip Anderson.
Lubos Motl
Dear Peter, it's a secret so far, and it will be secret at least until the
newsgroup is founded. ;-) And maybe it will be secret afterwards, too. OK,
let me give you a trial version. Another colleague - who has unfortunately
passed away - used to be an astrologer. His name was Johannes Kepler. :-)
http://www.astrodatabank.com/NM/KeplerJohannes.htm
Joe Bernstein wrote:
> Huh. I always thought string theory was a field of theoretical
> physics, and I always thought "high energy" referred to accelerators,
> and hence to experimental physics. I am now confused.
String theory is a physical theory - i.e. a theory that can at least in
principle be tested by experiments - but one would need to boost the
particles onto huge energies. If your particles had very large energies,
many predictions of string theory might become easily visible in the
experiment. It is this high energy regime where the interactions seem to
unify; it is the realm of very high energies where quantum phenomena start
to affect gravity. Low energy physics is approximately described by the
laws that we have known for some time. We must go to higher energies in
order to see something new!
This is why string theory is a part of the field that is called
high-energy physics. More precisely, it is high-energy physics - theory.
High energy physics consists of the experiments, phenomenology, (lattice
gauge theory,) and theory, and these subfields are increasingly
theoretical. Of course, there are also other fields adjacent to string
theory - such as relativistic physics and certain areas of mathematics -
but it is still fair to count string theory as high energy physics -
theory.
Thomas Larsson wrote:
> That Klement Gottwald and his henchmen suffered under Nazi rule didn't
> prevent them from building a new totalitarian state, did it?
No, it did not! Exactly, good point. The rest of this posting is about
politics, so feel free to skip the next two paragraphs right now.
> However, you seem to have Vaclav Klaus' (whom I admire, btw, a lot more
> than his namesake Havel) talent for making enemies, even within your own
> ranks.
This comparison flatters me, thank you. ;-) By the way, Vaclav Klaus -
after he became the president - improved his approval rate drastically,
and as far as I know he is now more popular in the Czech Republic than
Havel was at the end of his term.
Well, Klaus might have been unpopular because he used to be responsible
for many things - the economic transformation as well as the defense of
democracy (and free market) against various attempts to mix it with the a
leading role of a certain "elite" or with socialism. His main
responsibility today is to protect the "good mood" in the country. He is
successful at doing that, and he also defends some sort of "national
interests". Not surprisingly, when he visited Sweden, Klaus and your Mr.
King had to agree about nearly everything - I mean especially the
questions about the goal of the European unification process.
Arkadas Ozakin wrote:
> So will posts that say "string theory is good" with claims based on
> "unverifiable aesthetic criteria" be accepted while posts that say the
> opposite based on other "unverifiable aesthetic criteria" be rejected?
I don't think so. A posting saying that "string theory is good" (I suppose
that you meant "amazing", not just "good"!) :-) can be as empty as a
posting saying that "string theory is evil", and both of them can be
rejected or accepted, depending on the rest of the content. The rate of
rejected postings will probably also depend on the frequency of the
postings on the newsgroup. The more posts will be sent and the more
nervous atmosphere on the newsgroup will be seen, the more you can expect
that the moderators will reject something. Finally, their job is to
"moderate", much like what the moderators in the nuclear power plants are
doing.
We've stated many times that the newsgroup will welcome - and be
interested in - all interesting ideas about string theory. I am just
saying openly that if I will be the moderator, I will protect the
newsgroup; the technical discussions at the newsgroup; string theory;
string theorists; and string theory's fans on the newsgroup from
unverifiable and uninteresting criticism based on vague, repeated, poorly
justified, and unconstructive emotions. By "unverifiable" I mean those
that are verifiable neither by a real experiment nor by a thought
experiment that relates the critical remark to some other relevant idea,
or whose only purpose is to convey the idea that physics should not be
studied. I know very well what sort of problems occur if this work is not
done.
Vague - and always the same - criticism of string theory can be found at
hundreds of places of the internet, and sci.physics.strings is not meant
to become the 101st place of this kind, I think. If someone asks how can
he get chiral fermions from M-theory on manifolds of G_2 holonomy, and
someone else answers that "M-theory is not a scientific theory" or "we
shouldn't be talking about particular backgrounds or Universes because we
should be background-free", be sure that I will return this "contribution"
to its author because such a post would obviously distract the
participants of the discussion and lower the quality of their
communication about the more serious topics.
All the best,
Suipalucsea
Well, as you know, Motl is a little...ummm...humor-impaired,
shall we say. I think that somebody made a humorous remark
in his presence and he took it literally. Anyway, one
sincerely hopes that if the new group does get approved
with the aid of Motl's astrological friends, he will have
the decency to approve any posts they may want to make to
the new group. And they might feel justified in doing so:
after all, there must be regions of the string theory
"landscape" in which astrology is true, right?
Oh, my aching sides!! And a Harvard Junior Fellow
no less!!
Eric A. Forgy
I used to be a regular on EFNet's #physics. We'd get people coming in
asking for us to tell their future. They thought it was #psychics :)
I've got it!
sci.psychics.strings
:)
Suipalucsea
>
> Heh! We should go one step further and reorganize the complete hierarchy:
>
> strings.physics
> strings.physics.research
> strings.math
> strings.math.research
I would like to raise for discussion the creation of the groups
strings.astrology
strings.astrology.psychology
in recognition of the decisive role that astrologists will
undoubtedly have in assuring the creation of the whole
string hierarchy. We may also RFD
strings.wiccan
strings.alien_encounters
at a later date.....
Yaakov K
>criticism of string theory can be found at
> hundreds of places of the internet, and sci.physics.strings is not meant
> to become the 101st place of this kind, I think. If someone asks how can
> he get chiral fermions from M-theory on manifolds of G_2 holonomy, and
> someone else answers that "M-theory is not a scientific theory" or "we
> shouldn't be talking about particular backgrounds or Universes because we
> should be background-free", be sure that I will return this "contribution"
> to its author because such a post would obviously distract the
> participants of the discussion and lower the quality of their
> communication about the more serious topics.
Whatever the ultimate status of string theory as a scientific theory,
the fact is that - rightly or wrongly - it currently dominates
research in high energy theory, which is for me sufficient
justification for sps.
ba...@dmcom.net
> string hierarchy. We may also RFD
> strings.wiccan
Well I would vote against this.
--
news:alt.pagan FAQ at http://www.dmcom.net/bard/altpag.txt
news:alt.religion.wicca FAQ at http://www.dmcom.net/bard/arwfaq2.txt
news:news.groups FAQ at http://www.dmcom.net/bard/ngfaq.txt
Want a new group FAQs http://web.presby.edu/~nnqadmin/nnq/ncreate.html
car...@no-dirac-spam.ucdavis.edu
> REQUEST FOR DISCUSSION (RFD)
> moderated group sci.physics.strings
While I have no objection to a sci.physics.strings newsgroup,
one paragraph in the proposed charter troubles me:
> 2) The decisions of the moderators whether a posting is
> interesting enough and appropriate for the newsgroup
> will reflect the views generally held by typical members of
> the high-energy physics community.
First of all, the ``typical member of the high-energy physics
community'' is an experimentalist. But even if you restrict to
theorists, string theorists -- or more generally, people with
enough knowledge of string theory to judge whether any
given posting is ``interesting enough'' -- are still a rather
small minority.
If you look at the sessions sponsored by the American Physical
Society's Division of Particles and Fields in the last April meeting,
for instance (http://www.aps.org/meet/APR03/baps/Program.html),
you will find 33 sessions, of which two were focused on string theory
and perhaps six others included string-related talks. Most high
energy theorists think about things like ``CKM, Semi-Leptonic
and Leptonic B Decays'' or ``Higgs Physics'' or ``Neutrinos: Future
Projects and Cross Sections,'' and while one might hope that string
theory will some day have something to say about these topics,
right now it clearly doesn't.
I'm not just quibbling here. I object to the idea that a poster might
be told, ``Typical members of the high-energy physics community
don't think your post is interesting'' when what is meant is, ``The
string theorists who currently moderate this newsgroup don't think
your post is interesting.''
A little more modesty, please.
Steve Carlip
Serenus Zeitblom
> Suipalucsea wrote:
>
> > string hierarchy. We may also RFD
> > strings.wiccan
>
> Well I would vote against this.
But why? I'm sure there are several famous string
theorists who are wiccans, though I'm afraid I
can't release their names unless sci.strings.wiccan
is created.
Lubo? Motl
thank you for your comment. The particular sentence should probably have
included the word "theoretical": "typical members of high-energy
theoretical physics". However the word "theory" or "theoretical" appears
almost on every line of the proposal and it was natural for us to simplify
the formulation, especially because the meaning of the words is obvious
from the context, I think.
Incidentally, I also believe that we are typical members of the
high-energy physics community even *without* the word "theoretical",
especially if the meaning of the word "typical" is determined by some sort
of reasonable measure that reflects the amount of information that the
person needs (and wants) to share with the world.
It is easy to compare the roughly 15 articles per day on
http://arxiv.org/list/hep-th/new
with roughly 2 articles per day on
http://arxiv.org/list/hep-ex/new
to get a slightly different idea about the ratio than what your example
suggests. We have also never excluded the experimentalists from the
possibility to become moderators. Indeed, I know that several people
outside string theory are interested in the field (of string theory) and
who would be able and happy to become moderators sometime in the future.
It is absolutely healthy that the experimentalists are interested in
theory - at least at a general level - and vice versa.
> If you look at the sessions sponsored by the American Physical
> Society's Division of Particles and Fields in the last April meeting,
> for instance (http://www.aps.org/meet/APR03/baps/Program.html), ...
Well, the distribution of these sessions reflects the amount of money that
is flowing to these subfields rather than the amount of interesting
results coming from these subfields of physics. Yes, the experiments are
still more expensive than the theory, and there are also many people who
continue to work in various fields like that - sometimes because they
were trained to work in these fields.
I hope that high-energy physics experiments will become more interesting
than the theory in near future, but unfortunately it's not the case of the
present. You can see how exciting the high-energy experiments seem to be
today for a broader public if you open the sci.physics.accelerators
newsgroup
http://groups.google.com/groups?group=sci.physics.accelerators
After Urs Schreiber posted the proposal for sci.physics.strings on that
newsgroup, there has been one article (posted twice) about "the quantum
bomb at such a magnitude that ... would give us the ability to read the
mind of God". This says something about the amount of excitement about the
actual experiments that are running today.
Well, yes, it's not too easy to work in high energy experiments today, and
I admire the people for doing so anyway. Everyone there is a part of a big
team, and the results of the team for many years sometimes don't seem to
be enough to make even one person sufficiently proud. Be sure that if
their number is higher than the number of theorists, the typical
experimentalists today would prefer not to publish this fact... The theory
has its own problems, too, but it's still on a different level.
I am a big believer that the LHC will totally change the atmosphere in
experimental high-energy physics, and it will start passionate competition
between Europe, America, and perhaps Japan that will lead to many new and
profound discoveries.
> energy theorists think about things like ``CKM, Semi-Leptonic
> and Leptonic B Decays'' or ``Higgs Physics'' or ``Neutrinos: Future
> Projects and Cross Sections,''
No one has found the Higgs yet. Various possibilities for "what exactly
will be found" exist, and of course it remains an extremely interesting
topic for all of us - I mean for all typical members of high-energy
physics community, both theoretical as well as experimental. Concerning
the other experiments, let me be open. The best possible outcome of these
expensive experiments involving the CKM matrix, semileptonic decays, and
B-physics is that we will be able to say "Yes, indeed, the Standard Model
is really correct, and the only CP-violating effect comes from the phase
in the CKM matrix". In a similar fashion, the best possible outcome of the
neutrino experiments is to resolve the ordering of the masses, and to
measure the mass matrix with bigger accuracy. Is this really the type of
progress that we need so much? Once we know the numbers in the neutrino
mass matrix, will it make us feel that we understand the Universe better?
Or do you really believe that there is nothing more important beyond these
numbers to be discovered?
There is a lot of money flowing to various experiments of this type. In my
opinion, we should focus on the experiments that have a sufficient chance
to reveal something really new. Is not it better to admit that the words
"experimental physics" can't be the ultimate justification to spend an
arbitrary amount of money?
> and while one might hope that string theory will some day have
> something to say about these topics, right now it clearly doesn't.
And vice versa - which I think is more serious. ;-) The experiments that
are running today just don't seem to be telling us something that we need
to know, i.e. something important enough that we don't know yet. There is
probably no simple enough theoretical calculation of the fermion mass
matrices, and therefore we - neither string theorists nor other theorists
- have not been able to calculate them so far. On the other hand, the
theories beyond the Standard Model seem to imply a lot of exciting and
straightforward physics, but the current experiments are not able to
measure these phenomena yet.
I hope that it will change in the near future, but once again, the current
era in high energy physics experiments is certainly not the most exciting
era in history. In the 1990s, we've finally discovered the top quark (we =
our civilization, to be sure) - whose existence was clear since the 1970s
- and in the last couple of years we confirmed that the solar and
atmospheric neutrino anomalies are explained by the oscillations, indeed.
What the typical members of the high-energy physics community - both
theoretical and experimental - would count as a truly astonishing
discovery would be the superpartners or some nontrivial structure
underlying the Higgs or even extra dimensions or excited strings or mini
black holes, but unfortunately we need much more powerful machines to do
it.
> I'm not just quibbling here. I object to the idea that a poster might
> be told, ``Typical members of the high-energy physics community
> don't think your post is interesting''
OK, let me conclude that if you have justified this objection i.e. the
statement that we are not typical members of the high-energy physics
community, I have not understood the justification.
> A little more modesty, please.
Do you want us to say that *string theory* (as opposed to some people) is
not amazing and we should be modest when we talk about it? Well, I am not
a liar! ;-) You know, this is not a personal question. String theory was
not invented - all of us feel that we are discovering it. Moreover, I am
not Lenny Susskind :-) who discovered it, so this admiration is an
admiration of an incredible structure invented by God or Nature and
discovered mostly by other physicists. String theory is, at least, an
astonishing part of the world of mathematics with very deep relations with
essentially all important and useful concepts in theoretical physics.
Merry Christmas!
George William Herbert
>Heh! We should go one step further and reorganize the complete hierarchy:
> strings.physics
> strings.physics.research
> strings.math
> strings.math.research
> ...
Great Renaming II: The Big One
Of course, 'strings' are so fundamental that we
should really just leave them as assumed and implied
as a root, so that would be .physics and .physics.research
and .math and .math.research and so on...
-george william herbert
gher...@retro.com
(ducking)
Buzurg Shagird
news:<bsb4b4$lug$1...@gw.retro.com>...
> Urs Schreiber <Urs.Sc...@uni-essen.de> wrote:
> >Heh! We should go one step further and reorganize the complete hierarchy:
> > strings.physics
> > strings.physics.research
> > strings.math
> > strings.math.research
> > ...
>
> Great Renaming II: The Big One
>
> Of course, 'strings' are so fundamental that we
> should really just leave them as assumed and implied
> as a root, so that would be .physics and .physics.research
> and .math and .math.research and so on...
No, no, no! That `.' is a point and stands for a particle!
We should have 0physics and 0physics0research for closed strings,
()physics and ()physics()research for open strings, or maybe
{]physics for superstrings and {]physics{]research for super
research in superstrings. ophysics might be little strings. :-)
-S
Nori Otaku
strings.favoritethings
strings.thread
strings.yarn
strings.arefun
The word "strings" is a bit general...
--
NoriOtaku :: Change 'spam' to 'com' to send mail
KalElFan
"Lubos Motl" <mo...@feynman.harvard.edu> wrote in message
news:Pine.LNX.4.31.03121...@feynman.harvard.edu...
[re strings vs. membranes]
> Today most of us believe that neither is *truly* fundamental
Agreed, but since m-theory doesn't require "membrane" as the meaning
of m (as I said, I prefer multidimensional, others can think of it as the
upside-down W to honor Witten, or Master Theory or Mother of All
Theories or however anyone wants to think of it), it doesn't speak to
sci.physics.m-theory vs. sci.physics.strings as the naming alternatives.
Your observation does speak to that vis-a-vis strings though. To the
extent it is generally accepted that strings are no longer fundamental,
or indeed no longer correct, and to the extent M-Theory has gained
widespread usage and awareness and allows for various meanings that
together appropriately describe what it's all about... well, the fact the
strings conference folks still haven't got around to throwing in the towel
is a good reason to call it strings. :-) The more I think about it, though,
the more I think you Usenetizens should perhaps be bold and go for
sci.physics.m-theory. The conference will probably follow you any
year now.
> ... they should be treated on equal footing with objects of all other
> dimensionalities although a complete coherent mathematical language that
> includes all of them is not known yet.
>
> Your proposal to expand "M" indeed captures the spirit and impression that
> most of us got by absorbing the insights of the 1990s. Are you a string
> theorist?
No, but it's flattering you should ask... I guess. :-) I do have a two-year
degree in Pure & Applied Science (in Quebec, after high school you go
two years of college and then three in university) and a lifelong interest in
science especially astronomy and physics. I'm also an ex-accountant,
and it's an accountant's job to make order out of chaos. :-) That skill
fits both categorizing or naming things (like this group), as well the quest
to make sense out of it all (which M-Theory aspires to), and even doing
the New Math if you insist. :-) I also have an interest in science fiction
and Usenet.
So you can see that Destiny brought me here Lubos. :-) I even have the
conceptual basis of M-Theory***... (at least in the SF sense, because I
haven't had the time to see if the New Math for it works. :-))
Just another comment on the contentiousness that's emerged. As it
relates to news.groups and the newsgroup creation process, I don't
think it's necessarily a bad thing. There are some newsgroupies with
sticks stuck far enough up their butt that they'll wield and threaten to
wield the No vote (the existence of which is a continuing shame on
all those associated with this process). But it's not where the proposal
is most vulnerable. If it fails, it would most likely do so for lack of the
minimum 100+ votes like many proposals do, and an "interesting" RFD
thread will tend to minimize the chances of that because it promotes
awareness (in this case, of something that already has some inherent
appeal).
No votes from sci.physics.research readers/posters might be a bigger
problem if those were forthcoming. I wasn't subscribed to that group
but took a look at it when it was mentioned here, so technically I am
a subscriber now. I would still vote yes to the new group because I
have a specific interest in m-theory that I don't have (to the same extent)
in physics generally. However I like the fact that s.p.research is a
moderated group and relatively free of noise, and I'll probably stay
subscribed to it even if the new group is formed.
*** Ask for it! :-)
--
Anthony Michael Walsh
KalElFan [at] scifipi.com
http://moviescorecard.com
KalElFan
> "KalElFan" <KalE...@scifipi.com> writes:
> > The only other comment I'd have is on what happened with the last
> > sci.* moderated group I voted for, sci.space.moderated. The original
> > moderators got disillusioned when the traffic for the group wasn't
> > high enough, and just announced one day that it was shutting down.
>
> But it didn't, since other interested moderators and hosting facilities
> were easily found. It's the moderators that just quietly pack up shop
> and disappear that are annoying -- by the time it's obvious the group's
> usability is already badly damaged.
>
> Brian (new sci.space.moderated technical moderator).
Thanks for stepping in to keep the group operating, but I think interest
and traffic on s.s.m was hurt by the announcement. IIRC, it was literally
"we're closing up shop tomorrow" or some very short warning period.
They were using a pure whitelist system (not sure if you still are) so
there wasn't a lot of time investment and posts went through quickly.
So apparently the dissatisfaction of the moderators was very much
that the group hadn't attracted a lot of traffic from the unmoderated
groups like sci.space.policy.
With sci.physics.strings (or sci.physics.m-theory :-)), I don't see the
same all-encompassing desire to get traffic from the physics groups
the way the s.s.moderated group's moderators may have envisaged
it for their group. If anything, Lubos seems to be championing the
idea of a place where those interested in strings can go without the
same criticisms being raised again and again by skeptics of it.
KalElFan
> "KalElFan" <KalE...@scifipi.com> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
> news:brqe8b$6fd2t$1...@ID-53145.news.uni-berlin.de...
> > "Lubos Motl" <mo...@feynman.harvard.edu> wrote in message
> news:Pine.LNX.4.31.031216...@feynman.harvard.edu...
> >
> > > M stands for Magic, Mystery, Matrix, Monster, Mother, Master, or upside
> > > down W for Witten (which is Glashow's explanation).
> >
> > There's also Membrane, though that suggests two dimensions and so
> > it has the same specific-number-of-dimensions problem that the term
> > strings does.
>
> You can look at it from many angles.
That's the great thing about this stuff. :-)
> ... you can also regard the fundamental string as an S-dual D-string.
> Or you can look at membrane theory as a quantum mechanics of
> many D0 branes. And so on. It's a kaleidoscope. :-)
Okay, but I think the only way to "save" the string term is to basically
fudge it conceptually or semantically in that way. Once the 11D was
revealed in the math, it was ball game over for strings as a term. To
continue using it is akin to a (hypothetical) 0-dimensional theory that
is referred to as "point theory". Then along comes the line, a new
geometric discovery. Instead of throwing in the towel and agreeing
that "geometry" or some other term is now more appropriate than
"point theory", the point theorists keep using it because a line is just
an infinite series of points.
Having read the discussion here -- in particular a post that I think
Lubos made that mentioned you had all considered m-theory as a
name -- I think inertia may be all that kept you with strings. Arguably,
the same thing has kept the string conference name and M-Theory
is where it will all end up (if we aren't there yet).
> > Personally, I like Multidimensional Theory because it
> > (i) solves that problem, (ii) gets to what's probably the most conspicuous
> > aspect of the theory -- that there are more than the four dimensions we
> > see or (in the case of time) experience, and (iii) the word
> > multidimensional can also allude to the different ways -- now or in
> > the future -- of looking at or explaining the theory and different
> > aspects of it. (In a way that also incorporates the idea of the "M"
> > having more than one meaning.)
>
> Hm, I think that the key aspect of string theory (if one such aspect could
> be seperated) is not the fact that it has more than 4-dimensions. That's
> more like a consequence, an afterthought.
Well, it's a consequence and an afterthought that's very much the elephant
in the room when it comes to conveying this theory to the layman, and I
think it also gets to one of the main criticisms of other physicists. It's not
quite as bad as these other dimensions being shielded from experimental
verification as much as creationism would, but it may as well be if the
God of The New Math is all there is or ever will be to hang the theory on.
(Or so the argument goes -- I'm a fan of M-Theory and I think it will be
what gets us to Gr/QM unification or a theory of everything.)
> What you call "Multidimensional Theory" rather sounds like what is
> usually called Kaluza-Klein theory, of which string theory is an example.
The "dimensional" part of the word could be construed that way, which
is one reason why I wouldn't argue Multidimensional should be the definitive
meaning of M. But I didn't mean it in just the math or geometry sense.
Calabi-Yau spaces interest me as a concept, in the sense that the math
seems to require them as opposed to an infinite number of possible
arrangements of the extra dimensions. But I see the term M-Theory as
very much a specific sub-category within physics, and logical progression
in a way from classical or Newtonian physics, to quantum physics and
relativity, to M-Theory which aspires to unite or finish it all based on a
theory that was *originally* known as strings. :-)
George William Herbert
>>[sci.space.moderated death predicted; resurrected before film made CNN]
>
>So apparently the dissatisfaction of the moderators was very much
>that the group hadn't attracted a lot of traffic from the unmoderated
>groups like sci.space.policy.
Pretty much since we split the old sci.space, the largest chunk
of the traffic was in sci.space.policy .
Not always, every day or every week, but predominantly.
Without running numbers, my impression is that there was
more traffic in s.s.moderated than in s.s.science but
less than s.s.tech . We consider those successful.
Well, ok, *I* consider those successful, but obviously
I'm right and can speak for the whole world bwhahahah *thud*.
-george william herbert
gher...@retro.com
George William Herbert
>gher...@gw.retro.com (George William Herbert) wrote:
>> Of course, 'strings' are so fundamental that we
>> should really just leave them as assumed and implied
>> as a root, so that would be .physics and .physics.research
>> and .math and .math.research and so on...
>
>No, no, no! That `.' is a point and stands for a particle!
>We should have 0physics and 0physics0research for closed strings,
>()physics and ()physics()research for open strings, or maybe
>{]physics for superstrings and {]physics{]research for super
>research in superstrings. ophysics might be little strings. :-)
We have a defined separator for Usenet groupnames and it's '.'
Anything that's structure based would either need to be updated
to the new separators, or would simply act as if the names suddenly
stopped having any separators. Fine for some things, but would
make putting heirarchy spools on different filesystems hard.
You are welcome to submit patches to trn, inn, cnews, bnews,
etc so that all the various servers can handle alternative
namespace-spacing...
-george william herbert
gher...@retro.com
[Doesn't anyone read the net.legends FAQ anymore?]
ru.ig...@usask.ca
>In article <10715906...@isc.org>, Urs Schreiber
><Urs.Sc...@uni-essen.de> wrote:
>> REQUEST FOR DISCUSSION (RFD)
>> moderated group sci.physics.strings
>> CHARTER: sci.physics.strings
>>
>> sci.physics.strings is a moderated newsgroup for discussion
>> of string theory and related fields of high-energy physics.
>Huh. I always thought string theory was a field of theoretical
>physics, and I always thought "high energy" referred to
>accelerators, and hence to experimental physics. I am now
>confused.
You could sort of think of string theory as something that involves
things at very small length scales. In quantum theory,
small length scale -> large momentum scales -> large energy scales.
The two concepts of smaller length scale and large energy scale are
usually considered synonymously. Hence, the concept of "high energy"
is not necessarily an accelerator one, and hence, not necessarily
an experimental one. Furthermore, the theories do tend to be organized
by energy scales (for pretty much the same scaling reason), paralleling
the organization of experiments (one could easily argue experiment
discussions are actually organized by the energy strata imposed by
theory). You can even say that folks working at lower energies
couldn't give a rat's *ss about what string theorists are cooking
up, and you probably wouldn't get strange looks from them.
ru
--
My standard proposals rant:
Quality, usefulness, merit, or non-newsgroups popularity of a topic
is more or less irrelevant in creating a new Big-8 newsgroup.
Usenet popularity is the primary consideration.
Nori Otaku
> Newsgroup line:
> sci.physics.strings String theory and related fields. (Moderated)
There have been several gripes about heirarchy placement, so here's
another. :)
"strings" is rather vague in the 'sci.physics' context. I suggest either:
sci.physics.toe.string (string theory as a Theory of Everything)
sci.physics.unified.string (same idea as above, more pedantic)
sci.physics.string (discussion of "string physics", not "strings")
The first and second leave room for other unified theories in the same
parent heirarchy.
The latter is pedantic, perhaps, but my understanding is this group is
intended for 'string physics' not a discussion of 'strings'.
Urs Schreiber
news:pan.2003.12.28....@noriotaku.usenet...
> Urs Schreiber wrote on Tue, 16 Dec 2003 16:03:21 +0000:
>
> > Newsgroup line:
> > sci.physics.strings String theory and related fields. (Moderated)
>
> There have been several gripes about heirarchy placement, so here's
> another. :)
>
> "strings" is rather vague in the 'sci.physics' context.
I am not sure why you think so. Do you believe there is the danger that
people will believe sci.physics.strings is about the discussion of violin
strings or maybe of Dirac strings or cosmic strings (of course the latter
two may be on-topic in appropriate context)?
> The latter is pedantic, perhaps, but my understanding is this group is
> intended for 'string physics' not a discussion of 'strings'.
Sure, but it is very common to say 'strings' and to mean 'the physical
theory of fundamental relativistic strings as opposed to point particles'.
I think that a certain conciseness of the group's name is desireable.
ru.ig...@usask.ca
>"Nori Otaku" <nori_...@yahoo.spam> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
>news:pan.2003.12.28....@noriotaku.usenet...
>> Urs Schreiber wrote on Tue, 16 Dec 2003 16:03:21 +0000:
>>
>> > Newsgroup line:
>> > sci.physics.strings String theory and related fields. (Moderated)
>>
>> There have been several gripes about heirarchy placement, so here's
>> another. :)
>>
>> "strings" is rather vague in the 'sci.physics' context.
>I am not sure why you think so. Do you believe there is the danger that
>people will believe sci.physics.strings is about the discussion of violin
>strings
Classical mechanics. I guess it wouldn't be out of the question,
given that the proposed group placement is only one node below
general physics. sci.physics hypothetically ought to be structured
more along the lines of:
sci.physics.classical[.*]
sci.physics.subatomic[.*]
sci.physics.cond-matter[.*]
...
to address the issue properly.
[snip]
>> The latter is pedantic, perhaps, but my understanding is this group is
>> intended for 'string physics' not a discussion of 'strings'.
>Sure, but it is very common to say 'strings' and to mean 'the physical
>theory of fundamental relativistic strings as opposed to point particles'.
Sure, in the subatomic physics community. But what about the other
physics or Mathematical Physics communities?
>I think that a certain conciseness of the group's name is desireable.
It's still not clear to me that the group is placed well for the
(high) degree of specialization of the topic, or that the group name
is suggestive enough for the topic.
Brian Edmonds
> IIRC, it was literally "we're closing up shop tomorrow" or some very
> short warning period.
Yeah, that was a bit unfortunate, but thanks to quick action on Graham
Drabble's part, we kept the group operating without a hitch.
> They were using a pure whitelist system (not sure if you still are) so
> there wasn't a lot of time investment and posts went through quickly.
Still are. We preserved the old whitelist too, so for the regular
posters, the group continued with no sign of a change, apart from an
admin post or two.
Brian.
Nori Otaku
> "Nori Otaku" <nori_...@yahoo.spam> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
> news:pan.2003.12.28....@noriotaku.usenet...
>> Urs Schreiber wrote on Tue, 16 Dec 2003 16:03:21 +0000:
>>
>> > Newsgroup line:
>> > sci.physics.strings String theory and related fields. (Moderated)
>>
>> There have been several gripes about heirarchy placement, so here's
>> another. :)
>>
>> "strings" is rather vague in the 'sci.physics' context.
>
> I am not sure why you think so. Do you believe there is the danger that
> people will believe sci.physics.strings is about the discussion of violin
> strings or maybe of Dirac strings or cosmic strings (of course the latter
> two may be on-topic in appropriate context)?
Well, one can have "strings" of many types within the vast realm of
physics. There are electron strings, atom strings, strings of galaxies,
things like violin strings (vibrational rates, tuning, etc).
While most of those are admittedly a stretch, I do think it would be more
clear to indicate that the "string" newsgroup is designed to dicsuss
unified field theory of "strings" or "superstrings" or "membranes" or
whatever the term is this week.
>> The latter is pedantic, perhaps, but my understanding is this group is
>> intended for 'string physics' not a discussion of 'strings'.
>
> Sure, but it is very common to say 'strings' and to mean 'the physical
> theory of fundamental relativistic strings as opposed to point particles'.
True, but someone hunting without a predisposition to (or knowledge of)
string theory might not understand that. I can see that generating a bit
more noise on such a group.
> I think that a certain conciseness of the group's name is desireable.
Since Usenet is heirachical (sp?), being concise is less important than
accurately categorizing the group. To add one more layer (as in
'sci.physics.unified.strings') would place this group more cleanly
alongside other unified theories. This would be especially useful if a
competing theory (say, 'm-theory') divirges from string theory
sufficiently to merit a complimetary group.
One could then have
sci.physics.unified.strings
sci.physics.unified.m-theory
for example.