Brouhaha Brewing—Part 2

So what about Dr. Weinstein's major ground-breaking Geometric Unity announcement? Is he for real, or is he a back-room crackpot? At this point, no one knows... no one can tell. And that's the source of the brouhaha that's been brewing: right now, he can neither be validated nor refuted.

Science has methodically progressed over the centuries by a process wherein scientists collaborate with one another. Science has made its outstanding advances by dint of numerous individuals communicating and cooperating with each other. No scientist has ever generated any result, in any way other than by having access to the work of those who went before, as well as by keeping in touch with their peers in the field. Even Isaac Newton—regarded by many as the greatest scientific mind ever (who also mostly worked in solitude)—said that his greatest accomplishments were made by “standing on the shoulders of giants.” Even in isolation, long before email, Newton kept in contact with his cohorts.

Modern science usually advances when its practitioners publish their results in scientific journals. Submitted papers are reviewed by peers and approved of, before being published. These journals are crucial resources for all scientists—the means by which they become aware of others' progress, in order to redirect or reinvigorate their own work, as well as to confirm each other's results. Science has often progressed by means of showing that some proposed theory contains an error—because it can first be falsified and then improved on. It's a fine method of checks and balances.

This is the problem with Weinstein's approach. For 20 years he has labored in isolation—publishing nothing. Now he emerges into the limelight with a full-blown theory that promises to solve most every conundrum of physics. He may be right, but no one can yet verify or disprove his claims. He hits the streets with a fait accompli. He has caught fellow scientists off guard. They can't make an informed comment on the validity of Weinstein's work until he publishes—if he publishes! Some of them are understandably pissed off. He is splashing his scientific ideas around in a very unscientific manner!

Don't hold your breath on the resolution of this brouhaha. It'll be months (even years) before the verdict is in. In the meantime, tempers flare and skepticism abounds. Mainstream physicists have been thrust into an uncomfortable spot, as the pushy media pepper them with questions about the “breakthrough.” I don't expect the media to follow the course of the potentially lengthy debate that will ensue; it's not sensational enough... unless Weinstein is right. Then expect a blockbuster movie, with the trailer headlines, “Lone mathematician puts entire scientific world to shame.” Starring, of course: Leonardo DiCaprio as the intrepid scientist and Kate Winslet as his mathematically brilliant assistant and lover.

Brouhaha Brewing—Part 1

Physicists in recent years have been confronted with a number of intractable problems that just keep mocking their attempts to resolve them. Some of the brightest researchers (count Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking among them) have unsuccessfully banged their heads against a brick wall of seemingly insoluble problems for much of their careers.

Here are a few examples: Why can't scientists get Einstein's theory of relativity and quantum mechanics to agree? What the hell is all the mysterious “dark matter” and “dark energy” that constitutes some 96% of the universe, and why can't we find it? Why can't a single unified theory describing and relating all the fundamental forces of the universe be found? How can the confusing soup of fundamental particles be sorted out and finalized? Why is it that string theory—which appears to be an elegant “theory of everything”—started out so promising a few decades ago, but has gotten bogged down in the last few years, such that all attempts to resolve it have either led to a dead end or even more puzzling mysteries? What is the nature of the bizarre mechanism that causes “quantum entanglement,” in which information seems to travel faster than light—in fact, instantaneously? (That last one really bugged Einstein.)

Now comes a mathematician who claims to have solved all these quandaries (and more) by taking a completely new approach. His theory, which he's dubbed “Geometric Unity,” is a work that he's devoted his last 20 years to developing. This remarkable announcement has been issued by one Eric Weinstein. He has a PhD in mathematical physics, but dropped out of academia 20 years ago to pursue his dream as a lone wolf.

It's both a startling and a romantic story: an unknown genius toiling away for two decades in the shadows, eclipsing what legions of physicists and mathematicians have failed to do for a couple of generations. Weinstein was invited this past May to give a lecture at Oxford University, to describe his theory and its implications. He says there is no missing dark matter in his calculations; it's all present and accounted for. His model is apparently straightforward and elegant, and it makes many new predictions about particle physics.

This is an amazing development—one fit for sensational press headlines; and it's gotten a few, though the topic is a bit too complicated for your typical tabloid sound bite shrieks. Has Dr. Weinstein truly made the work of countless scientists futile? Some non-scientists may jump on this announcement and get carried away with its implications, but let's hold on a minute here.

This situation is reminiscent of the sensational news a year or so ago, that Italian experimentalists had measured neutrinos exceeding the speed of light. Gracious! Einstein was wrong! The speed of light is not an absolute limit, after all! What furious sound-bite reporting zinged around the world's cyber lanes at the time! A few months later, however, further investigation showed that they had made an experimental error. So Einstein was right after all! I doubt that even one of all those newspapers and TV “news” shows—those that had earlier trumpeted the amazing “discovery”—even noticed the retraction. If they did, they'd certainly not regard it as news worthy.

More on the brouhaha next time...