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WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE DEEP, ELEGANT, OR BEAUTIFUL EXPLANATION?
Scientists’ greatest pleasure comes from theories that derive the solution to some deep puzzle from a small set of simple principles in a surprising way. These explanations are called “beautiful” or “elegant”. Historical examples are Kepler’s explanation of complex planetary motions as simple ellipses, Bohr’s explanation of the periodic table of the elements in terms…
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The World as a Hologram
UC Berkeley’s Raphael Bousso presents a friendly introduction to the ideas behind the holographic principle, which may be very important in the hunt for a theory of quantum gravity. Series: “Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Summer Lecture Series” [3/2006] [Science] [Show ID: 11140] Dialogos of Eide
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String Theory Landscape
The theory of strings predicts that the universe might occupy one random “valley” out of a virtually infinite selection of valleys in a vast landscape of possibilities Quantum Effect, however allow a manifold to change state abruptly at some point-to tunnel through the intervening ridge to a nearby lower valley. By Raphael Bousso and Joseph…
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THE ANTHROPIC PRINCIPLE
The String Theory Landscape, by Raphael Bousso and Joseph Polchinski Given the success of replacing the gravitational force with the dynamics of space and time, why not seek a geometric explanation for the other forces of nature and even for the spectrum of elementary particles? Indeed, this quest occupied Einstein for much of his life.…
