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Re: Rare Tachyons: A Tale of Two (Scientific) CitiesPosted by DickT on May 12, 2003 at 09:43:22: In Reply to: Rare Tachyons: A Tale of Two (Scientific) Cities posted by OsherDoctorow on May 11, 2003 at 23:04:03: Osher, I'm afraid I can't agree with either your Whig interpretation of physics history or your particular application of it to Sen's conjectures. Physics is not mathematics, where the presence of the strong excluded middle alllows "bad" theories that have existence proofs involving the axiom of choice. I suppose in this context that "good" mathematics would be some variety of constructivism. But physicists are accustomed to doing whatever they have to do to to handle what nature, and latterly their theories, does to them. Your hero Newton had to introduce spooky action at a distance and got called on it by the continental physicists. It was only after the passage of a half century, plus Voltaire's enthusiam, that Newtonism was accepted in France. The presence of tachyons in stringy physics is a fact of life. They are like roaches. No matter how you try to get rid of them, as soon as you turn your back there they are again. And the fact that tachyons destroy the vacuum is also a given. So Sen says, as Newton said before him, to hell with prissiness, let's see where this goes. Let the vacuum collapse, and then? And he thinks it goes in some interesting places, and lots of physicists agree with him. Sol had a link to a slide show where Sen's graph - the same one that's Figure I in the paper you link to - is exhibit A. It's all about calculating the results. Different physicsts have different technologies, but they seem to be getting to the same place, which is encouraging as hell! Regards, Follow Ups: (Reload page to see most recent)
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