Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface
- Part One Reference Frame Columns, Physics Today 1988–2009
- 1 What's wrong with this Lagrangean, April 1988
- 2 What's wrong with this library, August 1988
- 3 What's wrong with these prizes, January 1989
- 4 What's wrong with this pillow, April 1989
- 5 What's wrong with this prose, May 1989
- 6 What's wrong with these equations, October 1989
- 7 What's wrong with these elements of reality, June 1990
- 8 What's wrong with these reviews, August 1990
- 9 What's wrong with those epochs, November 1990
- 10 Publishing in Computopia, May 1991
- 11 What's wrong with those grants, June 1991
- 12 What's wrong in Computopia, April 1992
- 13 What's wrong with those talks, November 1992
- 14 Two lectures on the wave–particle duality, January 1993
- 15 A quarrel we can settle, December 1993
- 16 What's wrong with this temptation, June 1994
- 17 What's wrong with this sustaining myth, March 1996
- 18 The golemization of relativity, April 1996
- 19 Diary of a Nobel guest, March 1997
- 20 What's wrong with this reading, October 1997
- 21 How not to create tigers, August 1999
- 22 What's wrong with this elegance, March 2000
- 23 The contemplation of quantum computation, July 2000
- 24 What's wrong with these questions, February 2001
- 25 What's wrong with this quantum world, February 2004
- 26 Could Feynman have said this? May 2004
- 27 My life with Einstein, December 2005
- 28 What has quantum mechanics to do with factoring? April 2007
- 29 Some curious facts about quantum factoring, October 2007
- 30 What's bad about this habit, May 2009
- Part Two Shedding Bad Habits
- Part Three More from Professor Mozart
- Part Four More to be Said
- Part Five Some People I've Known
- Part Six Summing it Up
- Index
24 - What's wrong with these questions, February 2001
from Part One - Reference Frame Columns, Physics Today 1988–2009
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 January 2016
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface
- Part One Reference Frame Columns, Physics Today 1988–2009
- 1 What's wrong with this Lagrangean, April 1988
- 2 What's wrong with this library, August 1988
- 3 What's wrong with these prizes, January 1989
- 4 What's wrong with this pillow, April 1989
- 5 What's wrong with this prose, May 1989
- 6 What's wrong with these equations, October 1989
- 7 What's wrong with these elements of reality, June 1990
- 8 What's wrong with these reviews, August 1990
- 9 What's wrong with those epochs, November 1990
- 10 Publishing in Computopia, May 1991
- 11 What's wrong with those grants, June 1991
- 12 What's wrong in Computopia, April 1992
- 13 What's wrong with those talks, November 1992
- 14 Two lectures on the wave–particle duality, January 1993
- 15 A quarrel we can settle, December 1993
- 16 What's wrong with this temptation, June 1994
- 17 What's wrong with this sustaining myth, March 1996
- 18 The golemization of relativity, April 1996
- 19 Diary of a Nobel guest, March 1997
- 20 What's wrong with this reading, October 1997
- 21 How not to create tigers, August 1999
- 22 What's wrong with this elegance, March 2000
- 23 The contemplation of quantum computation, July 2000
- 24 What's wrong with these questions, February 2001
- 25 What's wrong with this quantum world, February 2004
- 26 Could Feynman have said this? May 2004
- 27 My life with Einstein, December 2005
- 28 What has quantum mechanics to do with factoring? April 2007
- 29 Some curious facts about quantum factoring, October 2007
- 30 What's bad about this habit, May 2009
- Part Two Shedding Bad Habits
- Part Three More from Professor Mozart
- Part Four More to be Said
- Part Five Some People I've Known
- Part Six Summing it Up
- Index
Summary
On 15 August 2000, The New York Times, celebrating the new century, published a list of 10 questions that they characterized as ones physicists would like to ask their colleagues in the year 2100 if they awoke from a hundred-year sleep.
Are there reasons why the fundamental dimensionless parameters have the values they do?
What role did quantum gravity play in the Big Bang?
What is the lifetime of the proton?
Is supersymmetry a broken symmetry of nature?
Why is spacetime apparently four-dimensional?
What is the value of the cosmological constant, and is it really constant?
Does M-theory describe nature?
What happens to information that falls into a black hole?
Why is gravity so weak?
Can we quantitatively understand quark and gluon confinement?
You will not be surprised to learn that the questions were assembled at a party celebrating the conclusion of a conference on superstring theory. The Times, however, characterized them as “Physics questions to ponder,” leaving me to ponder why they were so different in character from what I would be most eager to learn from my professional descendants at the end of a hundred-year nap.
The Times inspired me to put together my own list of the questions I'd put to a colleague in 2100. The criteria for inclusion on my list are (a) that I would love to know the answer, (b) that the questions should be likely to make sense to scientists in 2100 and not just to historians of science, and (c) that the questions should have a reasonable chance of not eliciting titters at my early 21st-century naivety. Probably you'll find my list just as parochial as I found the string theorists’ list. But here it is:
1. What are the names of the major branches of science? What are the names of the major branches of physics, if physics is still an identifiable branch? Please characterize their scope in simple early 21st-century terms, if you can, or try to give me some sense of why my ignorance makes this impossible.
I can't imagine that the landscape will look familiar in 100 years. […]
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- Why Quark Rhymes with PorkAnd Other Scientific Diversions, pp. 167 - 173Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2016