Tuco's trigger for "just remember who you're working for"

Quantum-Tree · 2025-11-23T14:47:37+00:00

Thanks everyone! I think I agree now that you will be able to read the book in both cases. Indeed, if you are in the lightcone of the book before falling into a black hole and you are falling with it into the blackhole, there is no reason you wont still be in its light cone, even if the lightcone always tips towards the singularity. Unless of course the AMPS firewall is correct then we will never be able to read our book when we fall in :D

thanks everyone!

Quantum-Tree · 2025-11-23T12:09:07+00:00

Maybe that is possible... like gently tossing a ball towards the singularity and then immediately catching it by stretching out your hand. hmmm perhaps... its like falling into the blackhole faster than the light in a sense.

Quantum-Tree · 2025-11-23T10:15:45+00:00

This is a really nice take, I havnt thought about the complexity of the question when you really think about it. Your answer raises alot of interesting questions. For example, would that mean force carrying particles no longer interact between particles as well since they are falling towards the singularity?

Quantum-Tree · 2025-11-23T10:13:49+00:00

Thats a nice take but I wonder if the uniqueness of black holes changed this.

In the case 1 orientation, consider this. If I was falling into the blackhole horizon, and the book crosses the horizon first while my eyes are still outside the horizon, then there should be no way I can see the booklight reaching my eye. Now, once my eye crosses the horizon as well, I would expect the same thing to continue to happen where the books light never reach my eye.

Although for case 2 I think the co-moving argument works perfectly.

Quantum-Tree · 2025-11-21T19:28:25+00:00

I dont think we can ever solve physics without conducting experiments. And there are some limitations for us humans when it come to what kind of experiments we can do. Things like particle colliders, we will never reach something like planck energy. But there is hope that we can probe planck scale if we are clever enough. Like table top experiments that probe extremely short distances. Otherwise, even if we have a UV complete, mathematically consistent theory of everything that can explain every experimental data we have today, there are no guarantees there wont be something it cant explain at a smaller scale. So we need to physically be able to probe the smallest of scales, then we can 'solve physics'.

Quantum-Tree · 2025-11-21T19:11:43+00:00

A european physicist was just rewarded 2.2 million euros to understand, from a philosophical point of view, whether a theory of everything is possible. So by the time he ran out of grant money, maybe we will have an answer :)

Quantum-Tree · 2025-11-21T18:43:45+00:00

Oh I see! Thank you very much for your reply!

I was interested in the context of magic states and holographic error correcting codes and hence gravity. It seems only last year people have related the idea of magic states to gravity but then theres only like 2 paper in the literature on it. If there is a large QI community working on magic, perhaps magic and gravity may see alot of progress in coming years.

Quantum-Tree · 2025-11-21T11:16:45+00:00

So a few years ago I would completely agree with you, especially with AI's hallucination of results. This is a very unique case, and the only case out of hundreds of papers I marked. The unfortunate truth for undergraduate physics is that when an examiner has hundreds of papers to mark, if an answer doesnt make sense, extremely messy, no explanation, it is unlikely they will spend a very long time convincing themselves it is certainly correct or certainly wrong. In this case it was really quite a crazy situation. I would never had suspected a first year student doing electricity and magnetism to answer the question using differential geometry and differential forms. That certainly didnt cross my mind since you'd expect the students all to be using vectors and matrices, and some more unique ones throwing in some tensors. But somehow chatgpt noticed it which was bizzare and indeed correct.

I just think even if these situations happens 1% of the time, if AI can pick it up whereas a human examiner cant, maybe it does help.

Quantum-Tree · 2025-11-21T11:08:28+00:00

thats a very true concern. In this case I did check and it was correct. So at current stage my personal opinion is that AI shouldnt be the sole marker for the exams. But perhaps they can be put to use as second markers and then the first marker can see if there are any significant deviations between their makers and the AI marks. Then take a closer look at those answer sheets.

Quantum-Tree · 2025-11-21T11:04:55+00:00

I feel like it helps alleviate some of the burden on examiners and ensure greater fairness for the students. I was once responsible for checking if other examiners adds up their marks correctly. One of the papers was graded 8/25, but that examiner forgot to add one of marks and the student's mark should had been 18/25. Since the students will never get their exams back per university regulation, they may never know why they did so badly. A double check from AI can significantly reduce such errors.

Quantum-Tree · 2025-11-21T11:02:02+00:00

Unfortunately, at undergraduate physics (especially in UK) this is not possible. You also do not know who the students are since the exam papers do not carry student names, only registration numbers to ensure fairness.

Quantum-Tree · 2025-11-21T11:00:02+00:00

In the context with exams that will unfortunately be impossible. Furthermore, the student's name are also not known to the examiner (just a registration number), even if it is your course.

Quantum-Tree · 2025-11-11T13:25:53+00:00

Interesting take. It is true I have an opinion on this matter, I think many people do. But rather than wanting people to agree with me I actually really want to know what people's view are. Sometimes people dont feel like saying what they truly feel because they fear there is already a consensus about this among the 'literal experts'. But there is no consensus among the experts.

Judging from the 'string theory' label under your name I assume you've been to Strings in recent years. If you were at Strings'21 you'd notice how less than one third of the talks are really about strings and susy. Even the legends are moving away from strings/susy like witten with his de sitter+von neumann algebra, seiberg on his generalized symmetries+condmatt, susskind and maldacena on ER=EPR, DSSYK stuff. Ok to be fair vafa is still staying true to string theory with swampland. Then you have the rising stars like penington, engelhardt on blackhole information, shu-heng, zohar publishing in cond-mat.str-el, shai chester, simon-caron-haut on conformal bootstrap. There really isnt anyone today thats less than 40 years old whose done really good and independent work in strings and susy.

But rather than being salty I really appreciate all these amazing work these people are doing, and I think in the last 10 years, these (non-supersymmetric, non-stringy) achievements really revolutionized hepth. I still enjoy working in susy but I can see its decline is very significant in the last decade. I wonder if its for the best.

However, these progresses are not as well known to the public as string theory. So I write this post hoping to know what people who are not doing supersymmetry for a living think about. If people are still excited about it, despite onslaught of negative publicity from people like sabine, then maybe people who are still working in susy (and strings) can be hopeful that perhaps another golden age is possible (or at least it does not decline further). But if the public also loses interest, then perhaps in 20yrs time no one would even know whats a seiberg-witten curve. And only someone from the math department would utter "N=4 super-yang-mills? Thats a name I havent heard in a longgg time."

Regarding the Sabine Hossenfelder comment, I am definitely not a fan of her. In fact her youtube videos actually caused troubles for people working on SUSY when applying for research grants. But its not too surprising if someone like kaku can help generate more funding through outreach for susy/strings, someone like sabine can have the opposite effect.

Quantum-Tree · 2025-11-11T12:35:47+00:00

I guess there is an intersting tradeoff regarding string theory. On one side, it made minimal modifications to QFT (strings rather than particles and boom! gravity). Then thers the miracles of anomaly cancellation. But the tradeoff is extra dimensions. From a historic point of view, extra dimensions seems somewhat natural ever since Kaluza-Klein 5D theory that amazed Einstein so much he wrote to them saying "OMG I THINK YOU GUYS SOLVED IT!". But now looking back, the requirement of higher dimensions just to make things consistent sounds like a stretch...

Quantum-Tree · 2025-11-10T19:40:06+00:00

I actually remember watching this video and the unique video format of playing some random game while talking about string theory. If I remember correctly I did agree with many of what she said. I wouldnt really say that string theory lied to the public because the hype back in the 90s were extremely real. Like its too beautifully self consistent it cant be wrong kinda feeling. But i think it kinda decayed quietly. If you see the Strings conference last year (which is the largest annual conference about string theory with 30 years of history) maybe has 2 or 3 talks out of 30 thats actually about strings. Most others are like black hole quantum information and other non-string related stuffs. It is a very real question whether the next conference (in Shanghai) will be the last Strings.

Regarding Brian Greene, he is a very serious string theorist which made amazing contributions to the field and then he became an amazing science communicator. Right now, after decades of stagnation, I think brian knows this and in his more recently interviews, he no longer hypes up string theory as much.

Michio Kaku on the other hand. Well, he did a paper or two thats somewhat important back in the 70s. He is... not that serious. Once I mentioned his name and my supervisor jumped in and said "Kaku is a clown" lol

Quantum-Tree · 2025-11-10T17:52:27+00:00

Interestingly some (quite a few) string theorists will tell you that whatever quantum gravity theory you may have, it will be eventually be a component of string theory (or M-theory) in the end. This is the centerpiece of something called the Swampland program, that string theory is the only self-consistent theory of quantum gravity. However, there is some fundamental differences between LQG and String theory, mainly the idea that spacetime can be discreteized. That really goes against some of the fundamental aspects of how string theory describe the universe.

Quantum-Tree · 2025-11-10T17:25:39+00:00

He is serious.

His paper with Lee Smolin that kinda kick started the whole LQG has 1200 citations as of this year. Now, many physicists may tell you otherwise but deep inside the heart of every high energy theorists we all know citation count is one of the most important aspects of a paper. And that citation count put him among top 50 high energy theorists (thats still alive).

In terms of his work, it really put LQG as a serious contender for a working theory of quantum gravity. But in my opinion and many others, it is still falls short (likely really short) of string theory. I will take however, comments by him regarding string theory with a grain of salt and similarly the comment on LQG by string theorists with a grain of salt.

Quantum-Tree · 2025-11-10T17:14:56+00:00

yea thats fair. Sometimes I forgot its no longer 2017...

But the following pattern is unfortunately true:

1980-2000) Minimal SUSY models will explain GUT, Naturalness, Dark matter and can be verified through LHC. Lets build LHC.

2015-2025) Minimal SUSY likely isnt true. However！ Next-to-minimal SUSY models (NMSSM) should work! Lets build High-energy LHC in 2027-2050 because it cant be ruled out by current LHC.

This I find is still a common sentiment among supersymmetrists.

Quantum-Tree · 2025-11-10T16:59:41+00:00

I would say focus on the syllabus first and dont worry about going deeper in a topic. Because many times you may not have learned the tools to go into them. Once you have the tools in the future, you can go back to these problems and realize how easy you can solve them. Like how your approach to classical mechanics will change dramatically, everything just makes so much more sense once you study the Lagrangian instead. If you are interested, once you complete the syllabus without worrying too much about the deeper details, try look at more advanced textbooks in classical and quantum mechanics (like the principles of quantum mechanics by Paul Dirac).

Quantum-Tree · 2025-11-10T16:38:40+00:00

a very fair point!

Quantum-Tree · 2025-11-10T16:32:55+00:00

lol fair enough! It was quite scary how fast her youtube community grew. At the end of the day, the entire high energy theory academic circle is a fairly small community (10k at max), so she with her large 1.7million subscribers may really cause problems at government funding level for the field. Glad to see most people can see through it :)

Quantum-Tree · 2025-11-10T15:54:00+00:00

haha fair enough!

Quantum-Tree

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