The Next Einstein? --"Radical New Theory Answers Unsolved Mysteries of Physics"
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June 03, 2013



In late May, mathematician Eric Weinstein gave a talk at Oxford University about his ideas about “Geometric Unity,” a mathematical theory that purports to explain why the universe works the way it does. Weinstein He earned a 1992 Ph.D [in Mathematical Physics from Harvard University and has since held a Lady Davis Fellowship in the Racah Institute of Physics at Hebrew University, an NSF fellowship in the mathematics Department of MIT.

As Marcus du Sautoy, the Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science and a Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford, reported in The Guardian, the geometry around the symmetry that Weinstein is proposing "gives us an explanation of another of the big mysteries of physics: what dark matter is and why we can't see it. Our current theory of gravity predicts that there is a lot more matter in the universe than the stuff we can see. This hidden matter has been dubbed dark matter because none of the other forces of nature seem to interact with it."

When the symmetry in Weinstein's model breaks into pieces, du Sautoy adds, "there is one half that gets separated in the mathematics from the piece we interact with. The particles corresponding to this bit of the symmetry-breaking might account for a piece that has an impact on gravity but mathematically can't interact with the other fields, such as electromagnetism, making it 'dark'."

But Weinstein's symmetry group doesn't just appear out of nowhere according to dy Sautoy, rather it naturally emerges from his primary goal, which is to reconcile Einstein's Field Equations with the Yang-Mills equations and the Dirac equation. The Field Equations control the curvature of space-time and represent our theory of gravity, while the Yang-Mills and Dirac equations represent the theory of particle interactions on a quantum level.

Weinstein's theory is also the first major challenge to the validity of Einstein's Field Equations, revealing that "just as Newton's equations were an approximation to nature so too are Einstein's. One of the intriguing things to emerge from the mathematics that Weinstein weaves while combining these theories is a solution to one of the other enduring mysteries of physics: dark energy and the cosmological constant."

Du Sautoy reports that When Einstein produced his Field Equations, the prevailing wisdom was that "the universe was stationary – neither expanding nor contracting. To make his equations work he arbitrarily had to stick in an extra term called the cosmological constant to ensure the universe stood still. When it was later discovered that in fact the universe was expanding he removed the term and dubbed it 'biggest blunder of my life'."

But we have recently discovered, du Sautoy reports that "not only is the universe expanding, that expansion is accelerating, being pushed by some unknown source we have dubbed dark energy. One proposal for the source of this push involves reintroducing the cosmological constant into Einstein's Field Equations. But this cosmological constant has always seemed very arbitrary and a retrospective fix. Weinstein's new theory gives rise to equations that provide a coherent mathematical justification for why this extra term should be there. And contrary to what people have thought, it is not constant. Rather, it varies with the curvature of the universe. We are in a relatively flat piece of the universe, which explains why the cosmological constant is so small."

Additionally according to du Sautoy, without the Higgs field boson, certain particles in the Standrad Model would be massless. So this the Higgs boson "was added to fix the fact that we know that particles like the W and Z particles that control the weak force do have mass. Again, one of the beautiful insights to emerge from Weinstein's unification theory is a mass term that doesn't need to be added artificially. It emerges naturally from the theory."

Du Sautoy concludes his Guardian report observing that Weinstein's radical theory is a major project spanning huge stretches of mathematics and physics that "just as Einstein's general theory of relativity took some years to stabilise there are likely to be modifications to the theory before it is complete. But for me what is so appealing about Weinstein's ideas is the naturalness of the story, the way things aren't arbitrarily inserted to make the theory fit the data but instead emerge as a necessary part of the mathematics."

But, as Columbia University mathematician, Peter Woit writes in this blog, Not Even Wrong, that if Weinstein "wants to be taken seriously, Eric needs to disseminate the details of his ideas about this, as a paper, slides of a talk, multimedia web-site, or whatever. As one physicist put it here succinctly: 'Paper, or it didn’t happen."

The image at the top of the page illustrates dark matter particles in galaxy clusters. Dark matter is the invisible and unknown material that constitutes about 80% of the matter in the Universe. Credit: NASA/SAO/CXC.

The Daily Galaxy via The Gurdian and Not Even Wrong Blog



Interesting. But, since the theory is incomplete, Weinstein's theory is not the correct model of reality.

Most, if not all, scientific theories are wrong.

But don't take my word for it, Ethan Siegel wrote about this several days ago: http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2013/05/31/most-scientific-theories-are-wrong/

"Eric Weinstein’s Amazing New Theory That Solves Every Puzzling Conundrum in Theoretical Physics, Only He Hasn’t Written An Actual Paper Yet So Physicists Can’t Check All Those Hard Mathematical Details, But Trust Us, It’s Gonna Be Awesome!" Editor's Note: Well, Jim, Marcus du Sautoy, the Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science and a Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford thinks it's a pretty important new theory. We'll put our money on him.

It worries me when Physicists refer to Mathematical proofs.
Einstein was not a Mathematician, he was a Philosopher. A new model of Reality will probably be defined by such an Amateur.

Really, Einstein wasn't a mathematian? This would be news to all the mathematicians and physicists that are still trying to comprehend his equations. Not to mention all those still trying to fault his equations/theories, which by the way no lay man can understand without a degree in mechanics at least. But hey, im sure all philosophers understand calculus and other advanced math and physic subjects.

Someone at the Guardian can't count the number of fermions and bosons. The seem to list 12 each. Maybe the neutrinos are and there's half an extra boson per boson somewhere... :)

Du Sautoy deserves an Ig Nobel for the way he hyped Weinstein's work.

No, Francis Higgins, Einstein was not a mathematician. He had to enlist help from mathematicians to help him get his ideas into math form. And his equations are not that complex as far as complex math goes. If one is actually a "mathematician" they are not having any difficulty studying Einsteins formulas. You need to settle down.

Actually Einstein was a accomplished musician as well as a poet. His curious observation of nature operated in tandem with his artistic side to create the power for his ideas. A physicist operating solely on the rules of deduction does not have this creative trait and is no better at understanding the universe than a computer. Many who fall short of Einsteins thinking process are sadly the fellows that are currently the heads of mainstream science.

Einstein was a physicist. He developed a disdain for mathematics which earned him the nickname "lazy dog" from his teacher Hermann Minkowski. It was Minkowski who set the Special Theory in its now common mathematical format. This comes from "A World Without Time", a book about the friendship between Einstein and Gödel written by Palle Yourgrau. This is a fascinating book, parts of which I'm still trying to follow, with minimal success.

I thought Einstein worked out the mathematical facet of his theories himself...?

Einstein turned to mathematics more and more as the years progressed; but did not start out as the greatest during the times that his theory of relatively was being thought out and presented.

Dear Oxford people,

Let me explain my idea and experiment to you as the quite important article for you and Cern people.

Michelson & Morley made the experiment to detect the speed of earth using their interferometer, however, they missed to detect the speed of earth. Einstein explained the result of experiment through Relativity Theory.

Michelson & Morley made the great mistake in their experiment by
offsetting the distance of light by reflecting the light by mirror. Accordingly the Relativity Theory did not have any good base material to insist E=mc2, concept of Time and Space, nothing can run than the speed of light, etc.

Please refer the following URL.

URL http://www.sakemi-einstein2.com/

The alternative interferometer I made can detect the speed of earth quite well as shown in the paper and demonstration in YouTube.

Your comment would be highly appreciated.

Best regards,
Hiroyuki Sakemi
from Japan

The real discussion about reality is about the nature of energy. As long as that stone is unexplained then the rest of the discussion is on shaky ground.

The theories have no problems. It's the assumptions made to allege facts that are the problem. Scientists say the universe is missing matter, because the gravity forces are stronger that the "found" matter. Try to think logically. We know black holes (BH) exist in large numbers and only a small percentage have been spotted. Couldn't the BH be swallowing matter giving the impression it is missing? You see how the scientists ignore the obvious. And BTW, some scientists state they can estimate the amount of matter in a BH. Nonsense!
Total nonsense, they have no idea how much matter is in any particular BH.

Not being theoretical scientist, I can only say. Starting with what was at first called philosophy, we keep moving forward two steps at a time. Then one step back to question. Then another two steps forward........

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