Sabine Hossenfelder, Hilary Lawson, and Tim Maudlin discuss the existence of particles, quantum field theory, and ultimate reality.
Are particles just an invention of the human mind?
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From Democritus to Einstein, we have assumed the world is made of tiny building blocks of matter. But the more we’ve looked for them, the more they’ve disappeared. Our best theory now proposes the world is better described by ‘fields’ that don’t have the familiar properties of physical bits, things, or particles. Yet physicists still refer to particles, though few seem to agree on their nature. Some say they ‘approximately exist’ and others say that they don’t exist at all. Stranger still, there are ‘quasiparticles’, phenomena that we can treat as particles and enable us to solve equations, but which we know aren't fundamentally real.
Will we give up thinking that the world is made of particles at all, and instead embrace a world of fields and relationships alone? Furthermore, will we abandon the idea that any thing exists at a fundamental level? Or are things and particles necessary for us to have a viable account of the world at all?
#physics #science #quantum #quantumphysics #particles
Tim Maudlin is a celebrated philosopher of science, renowned for his work on the foundations of physics and metaphysics. He is also an author and professor at New York University. Sabine Hossenfelder is a theoretical physicist and acclaimed science communicator, known for her sharp critiques of the scientific mainstream. She is also a best-selling author and YouTuber. Hilary Lawson is a philosopher and renowned critic of philosophical realism. His main work, Closure: A Story of Everything, has been described as ‘the first non-realist metaphysics’. Sabrina Gonzalez Pasterski is a theoretical physicist at the Perimeter Institute whose work on space, time, and gravity has been cited by Stephen Hawking. She now leads research on uniting quantum theory with general relativity through celestial holography. Güneş Taylor hosts.
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00:00 "You can't think of particles as fluctuations in a field if the fields aren't in spacetime"
00:43 Hilary Lawson argues that science will never produce a theory of everything
02:55 Tim Maudlin defends the scientific method
04:55 Sabine Hossenfelder on electrons, particle colliders, and the nuclear force
08:20 Probability spaces and our faulty idea of electrons
10:16 Hilary and Tim clash over the field-particle dichotomy
15:04 "Particles are excitations over the quantum field of the vacuum"
16:07 Can we measure the wave function?
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