Nima Arkany Hamed, a professor at the Princeton Institute of Advanced Studies in the US, gives a presentation at the Science Innovation Conference of the Choi Jonghyun Academy held on July 28. Provided by Choi Jonghyun Academy
“Theoretical physicists, including myself, are people who scribble long calculations on a blackboard instead of conducting experiments with copper wires. But I think of physics as an experimental science. In close communication with the experimenters, new theories can be imagined. .”
Nima Arkani Hamed, a professor at the Princeton Institute of Advanced Studies in the US, said this at the Science Innovation Conference, which was broadcast live online on July 28, hosted by the Choi Jong-hyun Academy. Arkani Hamed is a theoretical physicist who studies particle physics and string theory. He made an impact in theoretical physics circles at the young age of 26 when he presented the so-called ‘ADD model’, in which he predicted why gravity is weak in 1998. He was also awarded the American Physical Society Sakura Award for outstanding achievements in particle physics last year.
In the first session of the day, he gave a lecture on the topic of ‘space-time, quantum, vacuum’. The four basic interactions in basic physics are gravity and electromagnetic force, weak nuclear force (weak force), and strong nuclear force (strong force). Although they appear to be different, they have one thing in common: the three elementary particles meet.
Particle physics has long attempted to unify these four forces. In 1867, British physicist James Maxwell unified the electric and magnetic forces. Afterwards, the ‘Great Unification Field Theory’, which adds a strong force, and the ‘Super String Theory’, which combines all four forces including gravity, appear one following another. “I’ve learned that all interactions have something in common,” said Professor Arkany Hamed.
But he said that the ultimate theory of nature ‘no one knows yet’. This is because, like the spin of an atom, there are clearly instances where the number of theoretically possible cases differs from the actual number of cases that exist in nature. It is clear that there are parts that cannot be explained by particle physics alone.
He says that to solve this problem, an experiment using a giant hadron accelerator (LHC) is necessary. The LHC is the world’s largest particle accelerator at CERN, Switzerland, and is an experimental device that accelerates and collides particles with high energy. The Higgs particle, one of the basic particles that explains the standard model theory, was also discovered here. He said, “Theoretical physicists also need a process of recognizing what happens through experiments,” he said. Conversely, he added, he “may motivate experimentation by proposing new theories.”
Professor Arkani Hamed finally emphasized that “we are at a special crossroads in the development of basic physics”. Humans have been developing physics for a long time, and now we have a theory that can explain most things we see in nature. “With the LHC, we can investigate from the smallest distances to the size of the entire universe,” he said. “I think we’ll eventually find out if spacetime and quantum mechanics are connected,” he said.
At the Science Innovation Conference hosted by Choi Jong-hyeon Academy on July 28, Kim Young-ki, chair professor at the University of Chicago, Ha Taek-jip, Johns Hopkins University professor, Andrea Guess, University of California, Los Angeles, USA, and Nima Arkani, Hamed, Princeton Advanced Institute of Science are having a discussion. Provided by Choi Jonghyun Academy
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