文档介绍：ing Revolutions in Fundamental Physics ITP Teachers' Conference
ING
REVOLUTIONS IN
FUNDAMENTAL PHYSICS
David Gross
Institute For Theoretical Physics, Santa Barbara
High School Teachers Conference
May 5, 2001
Hannibal
By Thomas Harris
(Sequel to The Silence of the Lambs)
LATE IN THE NOVEL:
“ Lecter sits in his armchair with a big pad of butcher
paper doing calculations. The pages are filled with the
symbols both of astrophysics and particle physics. There
are repeated efforts with the symbols of string theory.
The few mathematicians who could follow him might say his
equations begin brilliantly and then decline, doomed by
wishful thinking.”
Dr. David Gross, Director (ITP 5/5/01) 1
ing Revolutions in Fundamental Physics ITP Teachers' Conference
OUOUTLTLIINNEE
THE TEN TOP QUESTIONS
THREE POSSIBLE
CONCEPTUAL REVOLUTIONS
CAN WE CONSTRUCT A
THEORY OF EVERYTHING?
THE TOP TEN QUESTIONS
Chosen at STRINGS 2000 by
M. Duff, E. Witten and D. Gross
EXCLUDED QUESTIONS:
• Important, Fundamental Questions in other
Fields of Physics: Condensed Matter, Astrophysics, Biophysics
• Personal Questions:
• How does one get tenure?
Dr. David Gross, Director (ITP 5/5/01) 2
ing Revolutions in Fundamental Physics ITP Teachers' Conference
THE TOP TEN QUESTIONS
1) Are all the (measurable) dimensionless parameters that
characterize the physical universe calculable in principle
or are some merely determined by historical or quantum
mechanical accident and uncalculable ?
2) How can quantum gravity help explain the origin of
the universe ?
3) What is the lifetime of the proton and how do we
understand it ?
4) Is Nature supersymmetric, and if so,
how is supersymmetry broken ?
5) Why does the universe appear to have one time
and three space dimensions ?
THE INITIAL CONDITIONS OF
THE UNIVERSE
Traditional Physics States: Given the state of the system at t=0,
Initial Conditions, & the L