Fundamental Physics in Graphics

Having got quite excited last month to reconnect with Martin Rowland’s simple presentation of the mathematical symmetries at the root of fundamental physics several neat graphic representations turned up via Twitter just this week.

Now normally I react to flashy graphics in science as giving too much mis-placed concrete credence to someone’s speculative musings – especially since flashy graphics are a free ticket-to-ride in the media. Sex sells, even metaphorically. (A real memetic problem). But two caught my eye initially, and then a thread by @katoi followed:

It started with this article in Quanta Magazine (h/t @AnitaLeirfall) which includes this wonderful dynamic 3D simulation:

(If you get lost, simply zoom back out, navigation is a little tricky, but worth exploring / interrogating.)

One of my reservations is still that for all its elegance and symmetries, the standard model is more than just missing some element that explains gravity and dark matter & energy at the cosmic scale, but must still be fundamentally flawed in some way we don’t recognise, probably to do with our default physicalist view (*) of the world. But this is indeed neat.

[Post Note: (*) “Our view” means we have to take Anthropic effects seriously, see footnote re Nima’s view.]

Shortly after that, these turned-up …

Image

… in this tweet.

Now I didn’t, still don’t, fully understand the “actually is an equation” point, but have always been fascinated by the equivalence relation between the four circles in 2D space and the one sphere in 3D space, especially also given flat / curved space considerations?

Anyway @katoi followed that up today with a thread explaining the significance:

Image

Image

=====

[Post Note:

Still digesting and watch the YouTube Video(s), (as well as investigating @katoi’s web site nounicorns – which has very little content yet?)

Oh, and wow! … the thread that keeps giving … the point of Nima Arkani-Hamed being the presenter is a non-PC / non-knee-jerk stance wrt to Anthropics … Carter, Barrow & Tipler … the inevitability … Wonder if Rick ever tied-up his ideas with Nima’s ?

(The handwritten graphic used by Katoi above is Nima’s)

It’s not about (mere) details,
but about (deep) structural issues

… I may be some time … ]

[And @Katoi continues the revelatory thread the following day, starting here ..

… more to follow?]

One thought on “Fundamental Physics in Graphics”

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.