On Wed, Sep 18, 2013 at 5:10 PM, Warren D Smith <warren.wds@gmail.com> wrote:
From: Ray Tayek <rtayek@ca.rr.com> Subject: [math-fun] A Jewel at the Heart of Quantum Physics
https://www.simonsfoundation.org/quanta/20130917-a-jewel-at-the-heart-of-qua...
Physicists have discovered a jewel-like geometric object that dramatically simplifies calculations of particle interactions and challenges the notion that space and time are fundamental components of reality.
--the underlying huge (about 140 pages) paper this came from appears to be http://arxiv.org/abs/1212.5605
it is difficult for me to tell quickly whether this paper is worthless, or worth a lot.
It's worth a lot.
They only did their stuff in unphysical fake quantum field theories in lower-than-actual dimensions. Can it be made to work for field theories anybody actually cares about?
There's work to do, but as far as they can tell, there's no reason why it shouldn't.
Are their underlying profundities really profound and useful?
Absolutely. Watch Arkani-Hamed's Messenger lectures for a wonderfully clear exposition of the problems and the ideas leading up to this paper. http://www.sns.ias.edu/~arkani/
Can they quantify their quality by using computational complexity?
Yes, if they cared to. -- Mike Stay - metaweta@gmail.com http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~mike http://reperiendi.wordpress.com