December 29, 2009
Discovering the Mathematical Laws of Nature
Claudia Dreifus interviews Frank A. Wilczek in the New York Times:
He is good-natured, funny and thought to be among the smartest men in physics: Frank A. Wilczek, 58, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who was one of three winners of the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physics. The award came for work Dr. Wilczek had done in his 20s, with David Gross of Princeton, on quantum chromodynamics, a theoretical advance that is part of the foundation of modern physics. Here is an edited version of two conversations with Dr. Wilczek, in October and this month.
Q. THE DISCOVERY THAT YOU WON THE NOBEL PRIZE FOR — YOU DID THAT AT THE AGE OF 21, RIGHT?
A. It was my doctoral thesis. In the early 1970s, I was doing graduate work in mathematics at Princeton, and I wasn’t sure that I wanted to be a mathematician. Luckily, their math building is connected to the physics building. And I somehow drifted over there and met David Gross.
There were a lot of really interesting things happening in physics at that time. Once I started in that direction, there was no looking back. I discovered I was really good at theoretical physics and that there were all sorts of things I could do. One idea came after another.
More here.
Posted by Abbas Raza at 04:59 AM | Permalink
Comments
Here are a few questions Dr. Wilczek was not asked and therefore did not provide answers to in addition to totally failing to provide an intelligent answer to the question about explaining what he and his supervisor did in a simple way.
1. Has any particle ever been observed or demonstrated to exist since the Millikan Oil Drop Experiment about 100 years ago proving the existence of any elementary particle having a fractional electric charge different from the integral charge in integral multiples of the charge on an electron as proved by that experiment first conceived and performed by Robert Andrews Millikan about a century ago at the University of Chicago and for which he received the Nobel Prize in 1923? Answer: No.
2. Has a so-called "quark" ever been observed? Answer: No.
3. Has any calculation been performed, from first principles, calculating the proton or neutron from any combination of so-called "quarks", as they are speculated to be composed of, to the same precision as one has calculated the hydrogen atom from electron, proton, Maxwell's equations, the principles of relativity and quantum mechanics and to the same degree of precision and no arbitrary parameters? Answer: No.
The bottom line of all this is that the physics orthodoxy did not want to admit defeat from the dismal failure to observe any quark anywhere after numerous failed attempts to do so. The so-called "principle of asymptotic freedom" was an ad hoc effort to cook up a theory that would save the day so they could claim successes in their lifetime only to be disproved later, after they are long gone, when the sordid details could never be calculated in a thousand lifetimes. No one likes to spend a lifetime working on a problem and end up empty handed do they?
By the way, what are the so-called speculated "quarks" made of anyway? More quarks? More speculated particles "observed" by the only machine in the world capable of "observing" them, in patent violation of the Scientific Method as elucidated by professor Oscar M. Stewart in his book "Physics A Textbook for Colleges", Fourth Edition, Ginn & Co., 1944, pp. 756-760, and reviewed by Robert A. Millikan himself!
All this propaganda proves is that the physicists have degenerated to little more than the cancer generals of the failed war on cancer and the standards for the Nobel Prize in Physics have been similarly reduced as the standards for the Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology. Obviously the Nobel Committee of the 21st century is easily fooled, as a gullible and unwitting public is easily fooled by theoretical physicists just like they are fooled by the cancer generals of the failed war on cancer too, by secret letters to the Nobel Committee, as they were fooled into giving the Peace Prize last year with no, zero justification at all, to essentially the lowest person in the class who has just ordered more troops for more war when he has the power to end both the meaningless and expensive and failed wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with the stroke of a pen. Why even the Nobel Committee is now a corrupt failure like most of our other institutions. And if it isn’t corrupt, why isn’t it?
Winfield J. Abbe
A.B., Physics, UC Berkeley, 1961
M.S., Physics, California State University at Los Angeles, 1962
Ph.D., Physics, UC Riverside, 1966
Posted by: Winfield J. Abbe | Jan 1, 2010 12:55:34 AM
Winfield, what do you mean by "observed"? For instance, what exactly was observed in the oil-drop experiment?
Posted by: Sagredo | Jan 1, 2010 8:01:40 PM
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