Chapter 429 The two highest peaks in contemporary physics!
That's right.
The big boss who appeared at this time was none other than Mr. Yang.
So far, the Chinese physics community has
The highest peak.
Mr. Yang was born in 1922. He is now just over 100 years old and has made great achievements.
And at the same time.
He is also the most controversial scholar in the Chinese physics community so far, and there is no one like him.
People who like Mr. Yang wish they could love him more than a cow. Even Bordirac could only kneel down and polish Mr. Yang's shoes.
What about those who hate Mr. Yang?
I wish I could label him as a rare classmate who can't even be counted as F=ma.
But how high is Yang Laojiu's actual achievements?
When introducing Hawking before, he had refuted the so-called statement that [Mr. Yang is ranked 18th among the greatest scientists selected by Nature magazine], but he did not introduce Mr. Yang’s specific achievements (see Chapter 211).
Actually.
There are many achievements of Mr. Yang, but there are only two most important ones:
Parity nonconservation and the Yang-Mills field.
Mr. Yang won the Nobel Prize by relying on the former, and became great by relying on the latter.
Those who were classmates of Einstein in a previous life should know this.
After the problem of universal gravity is solved.
Lao Ai heard Captain Olga's last words before his death, so he did not stop.
He saw a new big problem facing physics, that is
The unification of universal gravitation and electromagnetic interaction forces.
Therefore, in his later years, Lao Ai devoted a lot of energy to the work of unifying gravitation and electromagnetic interaction.
But unfortunately.
Lao Ai never succeeded in unifying the two until his death.
And the scientific community has also discovered two other interactions inside the nucleus - weak interaction and strong interaction.
At that time, scientists did not even know how to describe the strong and weak interactions.
At this time, Mr. Yang appeared.
1954.
Yang Lao published his Yang-Mills gauge field theory.
Subsequently, several very outstanding scientists such as Gell-Mann and Weinberg used this theory as a framework and proposed quantum chromodynamics and electroweak unified theory describing strong interactions.
That is the unity of weak interaction and electromagnetic interaction.
So far.
Among the four types of interactions, electromagnetic interaction, weak interaction, and strong interaction are all completed under the framework of Yang Lao's gauge field theory.
The fundamental particle model mentioned before was developed based on gauge field theory and almost dominated physics research after the 1950s.
So the reason why Mr. Yang is said to have made a great contribution to the world of physics is here.
Therefore, this theory did not help Mr. Yang win the award, but it is the core of his current influence.
Of course.
What needs to be explained is.
At the beginning of Yang Lao's theory, he did not directly give how to describe the interaction. He proposed more of a general framework.
That is to say, a foundation is laid, and then everyone adds bricks and tiles to build the building.
For example, Tehuft arrived earlier.
Before Tehooft, people often could only perform violent truncation when doing electroweak theoretical calculations, and the results obtained were far from the experiments.
Therefore.
The electroweak theory 70 years ago was not widely accepted by people.
It was precisely because of Te Hooft's work that the electroweak theory truly became "useful".
Therefore, there is a saying that has been circulating in the academic circles:
Although Tehuft is younger than Mr. Yang, he has made Mr. Yang and Weinberger successful.
Nowadays, many people have a tendency.
It is because the Yang-Mills field is at the bottom of the theory that the entire Standard Model and even all quantum field theories are attributed to Mr. Yang.
This is also not objective.
If Mr. Yang's situation were to be benchmarked, it would probably be a bit similar to the "Journey to Piaomiao" in the online article.
It is also the originator of the so-called "Xianxia" novel classification. Almost all subsequent Xianxia novels have its shadow. When talking about Xianxia novels, it must be mentioned.
But you said it completely defined the pattern of Xianxia novels?
This is obviously a bit extreme.
Readers of "The Change of Stars", "The Rebellion of Immortals" and "Mortal" will definitely not be happy.
So according to what was said before.
Mr. Yang belongs to the ‘founder’ type, but strictly speaking he cannot be regarded as a ‘pioneering person’.
For example, there was Edward Mills Purcell before Mr. Yang, who was the Mills of Yang-Mills gauge field theory.
Before Mills, there was Schrödinger.
Going back and forth, we finally returned to the early days of physics more than a hundred years ago.
So the statement that Mr. Yang is one of the top ten in the history of physics, sitting around and looking out for others, is actually trying to attract trouble for him.
It's not that we don't have enough strength, it's that the time is wrong.
The age in which Mr. Yang lives is destined to make it impossible for him to carve out a big road, or to carve out a big road independently.
Objectively speaking.
Mr. Yang's overall ranking in the physics community is probably around 35.
Roughly the same as Stephen Weinberg, he is at the 1.2 level of Landau's ranking.
No matter what "traitor, trash, traitor, shameless love between young and old", or "top five in history, even comparable to Einstein, better than Weinberg, Witten, Feynman, Dirac, Heisenberg and others, between Hawking and Mr. Yang
Sayings like "100 Feynmans left" are all fallacies with strong personal emotions or misunderstandings.
And among living physicists.
Regardless of nationality and color.
Mr. Yang can probably be ranked in the top five or three - especially after the deaths of Gell-Mann in 2019 and Stephen Weinberg in 21, Mr. Yang is firmly in the top three from any perspective.
Of course.
If I have some personal feelings, it doesn't hurt to say Mr. Yang is number one.
But one thing that needs to be corrected here is.
It is wrong to say that Mr. Yang is also considered the first person in physics abroad.
For example, many institutions in Europe believe that Mr. Yang and Mr. Weinberg are in the same class, while those in Europe and the United States believe that Glashow's achievements are higher than those of Mr. Yang, but the difference is very, very slight.
And these big guys above are slightly inferior to another person at the same time.
another.
There is even controversy over whether he is a physicist or not.
Compared to Higgs, who arrived earlier, Mr. Yang was in a much more depressed state, and was only slightly more energetic than Mr. Wang.
So it's very fast.
After a brief chat with Hou Xingyuan, Mr. Yang was transported away by a team of security personnel.
but
After seeing Mr. Yang off, Hou Xingyuan still did not leave the airport.
It is not difficult to see another meaning from this move:
It seems that there is still a giant that has not emerged yet.
At this time, Weinberg and Gelman had already passed away, and it was obviously impossible for Glashow to run from the ICU to Chengdu.
Higgs had already arrived one step ahead of Yang Lao.
See this situation.
Xu Yun suddenly had a guess in his mind.
Could it be
It's him?
I was called to pick up the plane at the airport in the morning, and more than 15 hours had passed.
Therefore, even young people like Xu Yun and Lu Chaoyang were a little unable to hold on at this time, and their eyelids were shaking like vibrators.
Fortunately, Xu Yun also stuffed a few Snickers bars in his clothes in addition to nut bars this time. Although these things are very greasy, they are still very good at resisting hunger.
"Professor Lu."
I glanced at the banner that was still held up high [Warmly welcome famous physicists from all over the world to Chengdu].
Xu Yun handed the Snickers bar to Lu Chaoyang and asked:
"How long do you think it will take for today's pick-up to be completed?"
Lu Chaoyang took the Snickers bar, gently rubbed the corners of his eyes with his fingers, and thought:
"It should be almost there. Judging from Dean Hou's non-stop attitude, he is obviously planning to pick up the next person and then leave - otherwise he will have to sit still for a while."
Xu Yun nodded in agreement.
It seemed that Lu Chaoyang had the same idea as him, and Hou Xingyuan's physical fitness was estimated to be reaching its upper limit.
Therefore, there is most likely only one big boss who has not arrived yet.
About twenty minutes passed.
When the time came to about forty in the morning.
The atmosphere at the airport pick-up port became visibly solemn again.
Xu Yun noticed.
Even several physicists who had arrived earlier but never left on the bus with the other big guys also stood up.
There are even Nobel Prize winners like George Parisi.
Another thing worth mentioning is that.
The majors of these big guys are basically related to topological quantum field theory and supersymmetric gauge field theory.
See this situation.
Xu Yun's guess became more certain.
five minutes later.
There was a sound of suitcase rollers.
At the end of the special passage, a young foreign man with an oval face and an energetic, tall and straight nose appeared.
This man was about sixty or seventy years old, wearing a gray woolen sweater, standing upright, dragging his suitcase alone, without anyone accompanying him.
Judging from his demeanor and dress, he looks like a foreigner visiting Chengdu.
See this situation.
There are even some media reporters who don’t know much about the physics circle, and they can’t help but have a question in their minds:
What's going on?
Could he be a passerby who stumbled into this situation?
After all, no matter in terms of appearance, age or appearance, he really couldn't match the posture prepared by Hou Xingyuan in advance.
But soon.
This question of the reporters was completely dispelled by the same deafening applause as when Mr. Yang appeared on the stage.
Xu Yun also clapped his hands, feeling relieved that he had guessed the answer:
Sure enough it was him!
As we all know.
There are only two top scientists in human history, namely Xiao Niu and Lao Ai.
But if one day someone tells you that there is a person in the scientific community who is only hanging around at Landau level 1-1.5, but once his theory is successfully verified, he will immediately be promoted to the level of being loved by cows. What do you think?
is it possible?
The answer is yes.
There really is such a person.
he is the one.
Edward Witten.
A man of genius whose current achievements are on par with Mr. Yang, a physicist whose status as a physicist has been debated to this day.
If you don't know much about this name
Have you watched the American TV series "The Big Bang Theory"?
Sheldon said that he studied M theory, and was disgusted with others saying that he studied string theory.
The founder of M theory is Edward Witten.
Edward Witten was born in 1951 and is only 72 years old now. He is a topic that is no less interesting than Mr. Yang.
In college, his first major was history—yes, he was a liberal arts student.
Majoring in history and minoring in linguistics.
With a strong interest in linguistics, Witten also had political ambitions.
After graduation.
He also worked on George McGovern's presidential campaign.
Early 1973.
Witten entered Princeton University and studied applied mathematics.
Then he received his PhD in physics in 1976 under the supervision of theoretical physicist and 2004 Nobel Prize winner in physics David Gross.
Completed a paper entitled "Several Issues in Short-range Analysis of Gauge Theory".
Yes, it took three years to go from a first-year undergraduate degree to a Ph.D.
In the years before and after Witten graduated, string theory was becoming very popular.
At the time, physicists were looking for ways to incorporate fermions into the string theory spectrum, which led to the proposal of supersymmetry, a mathematical model of transformation from bosons and fermions.
But the path to developing this new theory is not as easy as it seems.
By the mid-20th century.
Theoretical and mathematical physicists have developed five different versions of string theory, and no one can figure out which one is the real one.
The five different versions of the theory are called Type I, Type IIA, Type IIB, and two types of hybrid string theory (SO(32) and E8xE8.
The biggest problem at that time was to determine which theory was the actual theory of everything and which theory's low-energy limit was consistent with the physical phenomena observed today.
The result was in the spring of 1995.
While speaking at a string theory conference at the University of California, Witten came up with a surprising insight into the solution to the problem that would later start the second superstring revolution in physics:
He believes that these five theories are not actually completely different, but are different limits of one theory.
He then unified all five theories into a new master theory called M-theory.
That is.
Superstring theory.
Up to now.
Superstring theory is still considered by the modern scientific community to be the most promising and effective candidate theory for the theory of everything, that is, the theory that unifies general relativity and quantum mechanics.
Notice.
Superstring theory and string theory are two different things.
but!
One thing that must be mentioned is
Superstring theory is a theory based on supersymmetry, and so far no such supersymmetric particles have been discovered - at the Kamiokande detector launch conference, Atsushi Suzuki played a word game.
Therefore, the lack of experimental evidence is a serious limitation on M theory.
Although it is theoretically accurate and mathematically very consistent.
Let’s use an analogy.
Other physical theories generally have physical inferences first and then look for mathematical tools.
For example, in order to study general relativity, Einstein went back to study Riemannian geometry for a year.
Another example is that in order to study gravitation, Mavericks came up with flux theory, which is calculus.
But the most unacceptable thing about M theory is that
It is based on pure mathematics and has a physical explanation.
So the current situation of M theory is very delicate:
Not only can you not prove it's true, you can't prove it's wrong either.
Therefore, in the scientific community, Edward Witten’s situation is also very special:
First of all, he is extremely famous in the mathematical community.
The 1990 Fields Medal was awarded to Edward Witten, who was also the first physicist to be awarded the medal by the International Mathematical Union.
But in physics
You can refer to Yang Lao in China, who is constantly controversial.
He has won almost all scientific awards except the Nobel Prize. He was named the sixth most influential figure after World War II by the American "Life" magazine. He is also the one with the highest H index among contemporary physicists - Tian Liangwei's H
The index is 77, and Edward Witten's is 287.
How outrageous is he?
In 2018.
Edward Witten wrote two lecture notes for summer school, and then he posted them on RMP. (/10.1103/RevModPhys.90.045003,/10.1103/RevModPhys.92.045004)
The impact factor of this thing is as high as 44+
At the same time, in addition to M theory, Witten has made many outstanding contributions.
For example, there are some works in topological field theory, the most important of which are the Donaldson-Witten, Gromov-Witten, Seiberg-Witten theories, and the non-Abelian Chern-Simons field theory.
In addition, he will also interpret Jones polynomials and their derivatives as objects of quantum field theory, which is also a very important work.
There is also another proof of his positive energy theorem, as well as a physical proof of the Atiyah-Singer index theorem, etc.
These theories may not be able to beat the Yang-Mills field one-on-one, but when combined, Witten's current achievements are actually not inferior to that of Mr. Yang.
It’s just that because the professional barriers are too high, Witten’s reputation is not that great outside the industry - basically the same is true for characters who do not appear in primary and secondary school textbooks.
Let me speak very objectively.
From a domestic perspective, or from a perspective of the same nationality, Mr. Yang may be regarded as the number one person in the physics world today.
But from an international perspective, the ranking distribution generally looks like this:
Before 19 years.
About 1.50% think that Mr. Yang is the best, 1.50% think that Glashow is the best, and 1.50% think that Weinberg is the best - these three people are considered to be in the same echelon.
Then Gelman, Higgs, and Te Hooft each accounted for 10%, and Witten accounted for 20%--sometimes Tehooft would replace Yang Lao or Glashow and switch positions.
The remaining 0.50% are others.
However, with the deaths of Gell-Mann and Weinberg, the relatively mainstream proportion has also changed:
Yang Lao and Glashow each received 20%.
Higgs and Tehuft each have 1.50%.
Witten 2.5%.
The remaining 0.50% is still owned by others.
Of course.
The reason why Witten ranks first is largely due to the fact that M theory currently has no fixed number.
Whether it is Lao Yang or Sigstehooft, their theories are complete, equivalent to a novel that has been written, and everything has been determined.
And what about Witten?
He is like a work that will be as famous as those completed novels when it reaches one-third of the serialization. Maybe it will become the next Lord of Mysteries.
Nowadays, the reason why many people oppose Witten is not because of his ability, but because he is a mathematician and should not participate in the selection of physicists.
Like a calf.
Is the calculus he came up with great?
Of course great.
This is a tool that can be regarded as a god in the history of mathematics.
But if you use calculus alone and say that Maverick is a physicist, this will definitely be very controversial.
Another example is wheat.
Are Maxwell's equations beautiful? Are they strong?
Of course beautiful, of course strong.
But if Hertz hadn't discovered electromagnetic waves ten years after Wheat's death, no one would have known that Wheat's model was correct.
This is the case with Witten.
Although many people now say that string theory is dead, they actually refer to its employment boom, just like the four major sinkholes in biochemical and environmental materials.
Actually.
At present, there are at least more than 15 Nobel Prize winners engaged in research in this area.
After the Higgs particle was discovered.
Domestic Shuimu University also organized a symposium, and Edward Witten was invited, and the seat was still the first - for details, you can search for the theme symposium of Shuimu University "After the discovery of the Higgs particle: Where will basic physics develop?"
Even the dinner table after the meeting was arranged at the top of the table.
True.
In the opinion of many people, M theory may be the wrong model.
But at least for now.
In the process of unifying the two pillars of modern physics, quantum mechanics and general relativity, and unifying the four basic interactions of nature, the most successful one is superstring theory.
all in all.
Although Edward Witten is currently surrounded by controversy, his status is indeed quite stable.
Compared with Higgs and Mr. Yang, Edward Witten, who is only in his early 70s, appears to be very energetic and keeps shaking hands and chatting with everyone.
Then follow the guidance of the staff.
Edward Witten left the scene with the other big guys.
And here we are.
The two tool men, Xu Yun and Lu Chaoyang, were finally liberated.
Then the two of them and everyone in the reception group took the bus back to downtown Chengdu and returned to the Niccolo Hotel where they were staying.
After washing up, I went to bed early to rest.
in the next few days.
Xu Yun and Lu Chaoyang were occasionally asked to make welcome mascots, and sometimes they assisted in proofreading reports.
