Woohoo!
Right now there’s not much to add to that. 
Everything looks like it worked perfectly, and now we have a new laboratory on Mars. The Arizona Phoenix mission page is running a little slow, but you an get up-to-date info there. Basically, the lander will run through a series of checks for a while, to make sure everything is OK.
I’ll add that the live coverage I watched was very cool. It’s really great to see so many people who have spent so much time have their hopes and dreams come true as we watch. Especially since Phoenix was aptly named; it was designed after the Mars Polar Lander, which was lost for reasons which are still not completely known. But Phoenix was tested, and retested, and retested again, and it’s clear that paid off.
Now, we wait. Soon enough, Phoenix will do what it was sent to the Martian north polar region to do: look around and test its environment to see if conditions there are right for life, or ever were.
More on that as it develops!
Edited to add: Emily has tons of details, so head over there for more info.
May 25th, 2008 at 6:05 pm
Marvin says to get off the lawn.
May 25th, 2008 at 6:05 pm
That was amazing
May 25th, 2008 at 6:06 pm
Fantastic! I taped the live coverage. I hope some of my students watched.
73, from the Texas outpost for fact based science.
May 25th, 2008 at 6:07 pm
I’m watching on the Science Channel HD. This is so cool!
May 25th, 2008 at 6:07 pm
Awesome. Way to go team Phoenix!!!
May 25th, 2008 at 6:08 pm
That was so neat! I was in tears because the team was so ridiculously happy.
May 25th, 2008 at 6:09 pm
That was fantastic!
My girlfriend cried. I damn near did too.
May 25th, 2008 at 6:10 pm
Woohoo!
I watched it on CNN. It was surprisingly tense.
May 25th, 2008 at 6:12 pm
I watched it live as well. That was incredible. 5 years of work. And they did it!!
It landed so beautifully. Only a quarter of a degree from being completely level.
That is…well… incredible.
Let the SCIENCE begin!!!
May 25th, 2008 at 6:13 pm
However many fundies tear down my faith in humanity, it’s achievements like these that re-assure that we are brilliant. I watched the entire thing, beginning to end, and I can say that if this doesn’t further the knowledge of mankind, nothing will (except maybe LHC).
May 25th, 2008 at 6:14 pm
It was fun to watch.
But, the blue shirts made me feel like I was watching a bunch of airport
workers, not engineers.
In the old days of the 1970’s, they wore white shirts and ties.
The message here is : Running a mars mission is lower class.
In fact, only the supervisor was wearing a white shirt and vest–walking between the rows of blue shirts, he reminded me of a shop foreman or
worse…..a slave tender.
Penny
p.s. I hope they get good science out of this multibillion dollar thingy—I keep thinking how many mathematics researchers this could have supported. How many theoretical astrophysicists could have been supported? How much research in general relativity etc….
p.s. Mars had some water–a long time ago, mars has some rocks–WOW,
really worth the tens of billions we have spent on this “research”!!
May 25th, 2008 at 6:14 pm
Watching it here in the UK on CNN, there was an actual air of enthusiasm and excitement about the event from both the presenters and the scientists - something I’ve not seen in a while.
May 25th, 2008 at 6:17 pm
Watched it on the interwebs, sign of the times!
May 25th, 2008 at 6:18 pm
Its 3:00 AM here in Kuwait, and I couldn’t sleep waiting for the landing. Now I can’t go to sleep from the excitement and playing the waiting game for the updates!!!
May 25th, 2008 at 6:18 pm
I managed to miss it …
At least the Bach was nice.
Ah well — I’ll try to enjoy the replay without having to be on the edge of my seat.
Woot! Science!
May 25th, 2008 at 6:22 pm
Dear Plasmafrag,
I have hopes for the LHC, but consider that it cost ten billion dollars.
Grisha Perelman solved the Poincare conjecture for peanuts. That too, gives me a feeling of human brilliance!
Still, if the Higgs particle is not found, and the standard model dies–the opportunities to do new and important physics are wonderful! So, here is hoping that they do NOT find the Higgs.
Penny
Never–the–less: softlanding on mars–with a 20 min time delay for radio–and thus completely robotic control, is NO WALK IN THE PARK.
It’s a triumph of mathematical control theory–Norbert Wiener would be
in seventh heaven!!!
p.s. My inner child–who spent years observing the planets with small telescopes, and reading Von Braun and Willy Ley and Fred Hoyle is
THRILLED!!!
May 25th, 2008 at 6:23 pm
Penny,
I don’t know where you are getting your numbers from, but this mission was originally part of NASA’s “Better, Cheaper, Faster”, series of missions, planned under Dan Goldin. I believe the total cost of this mission comes in at around $430 Million, a far cry from the “tens of billions”.
“p.s. I hope they get good science out of this multibillion dollar thingy—I keep thinking how many mathematics researchers this could have supported. How many theoretical astrophysicists could have been supported? How much research in general relativity etc….
p.s. Mars had some water–a long time ago, mars has some rocks–WOW,
really worth the tens of billions we have spent on this “research”!!
Also, the cost of this mission compared the the amount of money the Bush Administration is throwing at the war in Iraq is not even comparable. Maybe you should be asking the questions that you ask about the money spent on that.
May 25th, 2008 at 6:24 pm
Amazing - one quarter degree of tilt. I’m speechless as to how incredible that is. My house isn’t that level! Also, no loss of communication during entry. I don’t think it could have gone better.
May 25th, 2008 at 6:24 pm
Thank the FSM for NASA TV! That was great stuff! Congratulations NASA!
It’s 1:22am here (UK) at the mo. But I can’t tear myself away from it…
Good thing it’s a bank holiday here, cos there’s no way I’d get up for work tomorrow. Why can’t they plan these things to land at a reasonable time for us Yerpeens! ;o)
May 25th, 2008 at 6:27 pm
Today Mars
Tomorrow the
….. Primes!
May 25th, 2008 at 6:28 pm
Amazing.
Well done to the guys at NASA. And a big thanks to all of you American taxpayers who paid for it all, and allowed an Aussie living in London stream the coverage over the web and watch it nearly live!
Keep up the good work !
May 25th, 2008 at 6:33 pm
Congrats NASA!
And it’s not just named Phoenix because it’s designed after MPL, it actually uses parts of the MPL sister mission that was supposed to be launched later, but got cancelled after MPL went AWOL. As the mission PI said: “We can learn from our mistakes”. Can’t wait until first pics
May 25th, 2008 at 6:33 pm
It’s worth mentioning that the first photos will be up in about an hour (7:30 Mountain Time)
May 25th, 2008 at 6:34 pm
A crippled Mars Polar Lander lurches slowly towards Phoenix from the distance. It stops, sputters and asks “Hey buddy, is that a 7.7-foot robotic arm, or are you just happy to see me?”
May 25th, 2008 at 6:35 pm
Oh man, what a thrill!!
We are there. Again. All of us.
We are going to learn so much new stuff.
This is really cool. That is, really cool.
May 25th, 2008 at 6:37 pm
Forty-some years ago, in 1962-64, I was on a Navy Polaris launch team at Cape Canaveral. That was before it was the Kennedy Space Center — JFK was still alive during most my time at the Cape and actually watched one of our launches in person. Then later in the 1960s I worked on the development and evaluation of the Apollo Command Module reaction jet control system at Honeywell, and stuff I worked on went to the moon. I know what the people at JPL and Lockheed Martin felt like as the mission progressed through those “7 minutes of terror” and in particular how they felt when confirmation of the landing came through. It’s an amazing feeling, something one never forgets. Congratulations to all the participants. It’s a great accomplishment.
May 25th, 2008 at 6:39 pm
RBH thanks for being one of those people that made this possible!
May 25th, 2008 at 6:41 pm
I can’t say enough about how interesting and cool it was (is, it’s still on) to watch the Science Channel special and the landing; still, I can’t help thinking the Mars Science Laboratory (landing 2010) will be leagues more interesting, given its more extensive list of tools and its mobility.
I’m worried that Phoenix is rooted in place (giving a very limited sample area) and too weak and too slow to dig deep enough to find what it’s looking for.
Maybe I’m jaded after the multi-year operation of the rovers; Phoenix won’t last very long and once it exhausts the particular spot it landed in, if it doesn’t find much evidence, will the questions still remain, and will Phoenix 2 be far behind?
I’ll just enjoy the soon to come pictures for now…
May 25th, 2008 at 6:46 pm
@Reed:
“No, this time we used SI units.”
May 25th, 2008 at 6:46 pm
Phoenix made it. Unfortunately Emily’s blog does not seem to have survived the landing?
May 25th, 2008 at 6:50 pm
The science is awesome and I was as relieved as everyone else that it landed successfully, but man these rocket scientists don’t know how to do a live broadcast! I guess I’m just used to sports broadcasts.
Oh, and I am also very pleased with the conspicuous lack of any God-thanking going on, though they did admit to some superstition.
May 25th, 2008 at 6:50 pm
RBH: thank you for your service.
May 25th, 2008 at 6:54 pm
Way to go JPL!!! Very Cool!!!
I watched on CNN. I tend to think that Miles O’Brien is probably the best Space Correspondent of the major media outlets. He really seems to know his stuff and actually care about the subject.
But tonight I was wishing somebody would put a muzzle on him. It seemed that every time “the voice of JPL” was making an announcement of some critical event, Miles had to provide commentary; speaking over top the announcer so I that I could not hear what was happening
I understand that most of the viewers are not as knowledgeable as I or most of the readers here, so some commentary was appropriate, but sometimes, especially when thing are happening as fast as they did here, it’s best let the events speak for themselves.
Sorry, had to vent somewhere… It really annoyed me.
May 25th, 2008 at 6:54 pm
@ Reed LOL
Congrats to all those that worked on it.
Does anyone know the thrust rating of the descent motors? I can’t find it anywhere and now I need, I must know.
May 25th, 2008 at 6:55 pm
Was watching it on the web, glued to my seat. One of the manager’s of the mission said it never went so well even in their simulations. Truly amazing! In about 30mins they are supposed to be getting data, including pictures of the landing site I think. Whether those will be shown live or at the press conference I don’t know?
May 25th, 2008 at 6:56 pm
Penny-
I feel you are committing what I call the *Linearity Fallacy*. The implication is that there is a linear path from low-level economical experimenting, to multi-billion dollar ventures. Echoing the thinking of “let’s end poverty on earth before we send men to the moon”, it ignores the entire non-linear reality of human exploration and discovery. The point is we don’t know if the next revolution/ revelation in science will come from someone in their backyard shed, or from some multi-national, multi-billion dollar project.
May 25th, 2008 at 6:57 pm
EDL Communications just stated that neither direct comm nor Odyssey have received any transmissions from Phoenix since 1 minute after touchdown.
Is this expected? The way he stated it, it didn’t sound normal…
May 25th, 2008 at 7:05 pm
I couldn’t believe all the cheers with every tiny milestone that passed. Haven’t these flight controllers ever heard of the term “jinx”? Yes, I know they were watching telemetry 15 minutes old but still..
May 25th, 2008 at 7:06 pm
Loved watching it (now I can dump the expensive DIgital Cable!).
Mostly was on Science Channel, but also switched to U of A (yep, they carried the NASA Channel during the landing) during commercial breaks.
Takes me back to watching the Apollo launches from about 40miles south of the Cape in the 60’s.
-sigh-
J/P=?
May 25th, 2008 at 7:12 pm
Science Channel on cable in the US & Canada is running coverage with interviews. (Their website is more to promote their shows, the main coverage seems to be on TV) http://science.discovery.com/
Congrats also to the Canadian Space Agency with their meteorological laser station! (This is the first “laser cannon” sent to another planet.)
May 25th, 2008 at 7:14 pm
Penny,
I can agree with you on the shirts, but not on your naive dismissal of the rocks of Mars. To a real geologist those aren’t just redundant stones; they are a book of the history of an entire planet. Nailing down that history can put empirical constraints on models of how the world itself works.
And Phoenix isn’t a multibillion dollar expedition. It’s considerably less than one billion. I also find it hard to accept that this expedition has stolen an inordinate amount of food from the mouths of starving mathematicians. There’s a reason why the Soviet Union generously supported its own native mathematicians: because it was cheap to do so, their practical needs being in the way of paper, pencils & plenty of time to think. It’s things such as planetary exploration which require hardware, and therefore money.
May 25th, 2008 at 7:17 pm
Haven’t these flight controllers ever heard of the term “jinx”?
Et tu, Chew?
(Superstitious, I mean.)
May 25th, 2008 at 7:22 pm
Yeah, I was yelling at Miles O’Brian on CNN to shut up in that last minute there. He finally got the hint about 20 seconds from landing. Otherwise the coverage was pretty good by CNN. I was watching CNN and had the NASA TV feed online (albeit about 90 seconds delayed through buffering etc).
Anyway, big congrats to the Phoenix team!
HIP .. HIP … HOORAY!! 
This is certainly one of those times when it helps to be part of the reality-based community. Those who believe the US government already has advanced alien spacecraft technology and anti-gravity devices stashed away in Area 51 must be wondering what all the fuss is about.
They don’t know what they’re missing.
May 25th, 2008 at 7:23 pm
I heard it landed on Jesus and Elvis.
May 25th, 2008 at 7:28 pm
NOT the first photos from the North Pole of Mars.
J/P=?
May 25th, 2008 at 7:28 pm
http://members.cox.net/johnparadox/MarsSanta.jpg
NOT the first photos from the North Pole of Mars.
J/P=?
May 25th, 2008 at 7:29 pm
Wanders away, bored. Here ya go. Exactly why the general public doesn’t care about space.
What’s happening now? Regular people don’t know and can’t find out.
When can we see SOMETHING? Who knows? There’s probably so much scientific data that regular people won’t even understand what the muckitymucks find out, which is why, I have now lost interest. NASA keeps us all in the dark but we’re suppose to be interested in what’s going on.
May 25th, 2008 at 7:30 pm
@ Michael Nygard
Odyssey will be passing over Phoenix again in approximately 2 hours. At that point we’ll know if the Solar Panels and other Scientific Equipment has deployed correctly. No worries mate
May 25th, 2008 at 7:30 pm
NASA TV is about to have commentary and first images (9:30 EDT).
May 25th, 2008 at 7:32 pm
Fantastic. Today, we are all Americans. Congratulations.
By the way, I realized just today how similar the vehicle was, during the entry, to the UFO’s of the old British TV series!
From Argentina,
Guillermo
May 25th, 2008 at 7:33 pm
K,
What in the world are you talking about?
May 25th, 2008 at 7:36 pm
TSFrost,
no, not really. I was just torqued at everybody cheering while one man is trying to pass information. That’s bad form in the Navy, don’t you know.
May 25th, 2008 at 7:38 pm
Yes, K, all they have so far is data from up to a minute after landing — no pictures yet. What were you expecting? Video of little green men coming out of their burrows?
May 25th, 2008 at 7:43 pm
they said (NASA TV), about a minute for pics to arrive at mission control…
May 25th, 2008 at 7:44 pm
No, the reason is that the majority of the general public has an attention span of a goldfish when it comes to space, astronomy, and science. Perhaps part of the blame can be laid at the feet of scientists and educators, but it’s only a small part.
But after feeding on a steady diet of movies like Star Wars and Independence Day, it’s not surprising that some people want their live science coverage to be as exciting and instantly gratifying.
Much of the blame also should be laid at the feet of con men like Hoagland and Sitchen for pushing claims that the government is hiding all the really exciting stuff from the general public.
May 25th, 2008 at 7:49 pm
Very exciting. I’m actually listening to this event on local radio here in Tasmania (Australia). I’m really thrilled they’re covering this.
May 25th, 2008 at 7:50 pm
NASA-TV on the web is expecting preliminary pictures of the solar arrays and foot pad within a few minutes.
http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html
May 25th, 2008 at 7:52 pm
Does anyone know where I can watch the replay online? I’d like to show the landing to my class but I couldn’t find it anywhere as of now.
May 25th, 2008 at 7:52 pm
Any bets when and what the first woo will be about?
-Several times the live audio feed repeated itself. Obvious proof the whole thing was faked…
-2 other spacecraft were orbiting overhead during entry. Since they didn’t send any pictures back, obviously the whole thing was faked…
May 25th, 2008 at 7:54 pm
@Ricky
you can watch it on www.ustream.tv
Also, fist images are on the ground (in Phoenix). They’re waiting for them to appear on the screen any second…
May 25th, 2008 at 7:56 pm
Darn it! No alien artifacts anywhere! What the heck are they playing at?
May 25th, 2008 at 7:56 pm
Thew pictures just came across NASA–TV
May 25th, 2008 at 7:57 pm
First pictures have arrived! The panels unfurled successfully!
May 25th, 2008 at 7:58 pm
Meanwhile CNN has a repeat of Larry King interviewing some kids who were on something called American Idol…
May 25th, 2008 at 8:01 pm
Here are the first photos:
http://fawkes1.lpl.arizona.edu/gallery.php
May 25th, 2008 at 8:03 pm
Looks like plenty of soil/dust to dig through.
May 25th, 2008 at 8:34 pm
http://www.spaceflightnow.com/mars/phoenix/images/lg_347.jpg
Just at the edge of the horizon, about two-thirds of the way from the left, a little vertical white mark — dust on the lens, lens flare, a jpeg artifact, a glitch in the CCD/CMOS of the camera — ?
May 25th, 2008 at 8:38 pm
Evolving Squid wrote: “I heard it landed on Jesus and Elvis.”
Not exactly. It landed on Martian soil, but a Martin priest said: “They must be closer to the All Mighty to have built a ship like that!” And he walked toward the Lander holding up the holey Martian book of Zorgon.
And what to we do? The robotic arm scoops him up, dumps him into the wet chemistry beaker and cooks him at 1000 degrees revealing gasses indicating life on Mars! We’re in for it now.
P.S. – “War of the Worlds” jokes aside – this is exciting news.
May 25th, 2008 at 8:48 pm
Chip,
That’s pretty much how it plays out in the 90 minute Coke/McDonald’s/Sears/Skittles/etc commercial titled “Mac & Me”: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_and_Me
A NASA probe lands on a planet, the E.T. family starts poking it with sticks, and they all get SUCKED into the sample receptacle. Literally seconds later, the probe launches itself back to Earth. Hilarity and product placement ensues.
May 25th, 2008 at 9:22 pm
@ penny…
cripes… what a miserable post on such an otherwise wonderous occasion.
So let me get this straight… wearing blues shirts instead of 70’s era IBM white shirt and tie attire makes the mission low class? And ummm… if they were wearing white shirts and ties it would have lent more credibility to the mission from the viewpoint of the public?
Look… I’ve heard some ridiculous things uttered on this blog but I’m afraid we have a new leader in the clubhouse.
Don’t you have a graduation ceremony to go to somewher that you get get up in front of the hopeful graduates and tell them, “what’s the point?”.
Just because something isn’t valuable to YOU doesn’t mean it’s not valuable to anyone.
May 25th, 2008 at 9:32 pm
Dear Celtic,
Believe it or not, this video was advertising for NASA, and they clearly chose the blue shirt image. And, in fact, such images DO affect many people in the way you dismiss. I am particularly concerned about
young people choosing a career–not everyone is a class unaware NERD,
and it will turn off plenty of people. This is especially true for females and for the upper middle classes–who often see the message behind the image.
As to that Graduation ceremony—For decades we have graduated far too many Phd students in science–most of whom were and are destined for
broken hearts and no career in science–and that situation is far worse
in the liberal arts. Students of philosophy get to ask big questions–like
“Do you want fries with that?”.
I haven’t told the students, but someone ought too.
Penny
May 25th, 2008 at 9:41 pm
tacitus: I think you’re selling the goldfish a bit short. Otherwise I agree with everything you said.
And this is simply cool.
May 25th, 2008 at 9:50 pm
As to the cost being only hundreds of millions–that too would make a huge difference in math or the more theoretical sciences.
But, in fact, it is creative accounting–because one must include the ENTIRE
superstructure of NASA and the rocket booster industry–necessary for this
expedition to ever fly.
In RE: Money wasted on Iraq,
OF course, I have been making this point about that stupid war.
But, science money is easier to reallocate for science tasks.
As to the rocks for geologists–yes, I agree. But, what new physical laws will this give us? It will tell us nice things about the history of Mars–and I find that moderately interesting–but, a major breakthrough like general relativity or Quantum mechanics–done with pencil and paper– told us far more about nature. It is all a matter of degree.
It is not about what I find interesting–it is about what is the most significant and productive way to allocate science funding.
One interesting question: ” How much first rate science, published in
top peer reviewed SCIENCE (not engineering) journals carries a NASA
byline?
The answer is very little–especially considering the huge cost of NASA.
Oppenheimer, Chandrasekar, Schwartzchild discovered collapsed matter (aka black holes) with pencil and paper. We spent a fortune to send up a
space telescope ( very exciting, i was at the party when the space telescope institute opened in Baltimore), to see thingys with jets.
During that period quite a few promising young Phd physicists ended up
doing crap on wall street or writing video games or driving taxicabs.
In the same way, NASA was thrilled to announce in the early 1980’s that their expensive Saturn probe had discovered that Saturn had thousands of rings. In fact, this was proved mathematically a century earlier using
Hill’s equation by James Clerk Maxwell.
My inner child loved the Saturn probes and waited for them for decades.
I used to sleep with a picture of Saturn ( home astrophotography) as a little girl.
But, Science is a different matter.
May 25th, 2008 at 9:54 pm
Penny,
How is it you figure that having a PhD [and no scientific career] is worse than having no PhD [and no scientific career]? Do you suppose that never bothering to get that doctorate is the key to landing a career in a scientific specialty?
May 25th, 2008 at 9:59 pm
Maxwell also gave the first proof that the rings must be made of particles and not solid. He did this with pencil and paper.
Today, how many Maxwell’s are programming webpages or doing accounting with C++?
I watched most of my generation end up unemployed in math and physics.
During my time at the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study, most of the
postdocs ended up with NO career.
Don’t even ask what the job situation is like for Phd students in astrophysics or astronomy? Yes, Nasa hires a few. How many careers could we have at the cost of one or two billion dollar shuttle missions?
What science came out of the majority of shuttle missions?
But, we got thingys with jets, and pictures of saturn etc.
That was fun. But, what did we lose?
May 25th, 2008 at 10:01 pm
Penny,
You seem to have a vast ignorance of the difference between theory & observation. It’s one thing to predict the stratification of Saturn’s rings theoretically. It’s quite another to show that the theory is correct. To do that, we must LOOK at the rings. You have a very reckless disregard for empiricism. The way things ARE always trumps how theory insists they surely must be. Any religious nut can go about telling how things must be.
In short, not all theories turn out to correspond to the world in which we find ourselves and in which we take interest. You don’t know this?
May 25th, 2008 at 10:05 pm
…Oh, and Penny, you failed to answer my question. Is no education the key to landing that career?
May 25th, 2008 at 10:06 pm
Mark,
The point is that many people who went to get doctorates in the pure sciences were
very talented and devoted many years to their dreams and STILL were tossed by society like cigarette butts.
That is sad, and God only knows what important discoveries were lost.
Penny
I never said that the way to have a career in the science was not to get a
Phd, I said even those that got one–even many, at places like the Princeton
Institute ( where you don’t get to be a postdoc unless you have already
done some amazing science), were tossed out of science because the funding for pure basic theoretical physical science was–and is–minimal.
Nasa gets funding galore because it is ENGINEERING, and because it is
something that can excite a non-scientist. But, that is not what is the best
use of funding for the progress of SCIENCE.
May 25th, 2008 at 10:12 pm
They recently spent over a billion dollars to put up a satellite to test
“frame dragging”–an easy and inevitable consequence of Einstein’s equations.
What a waste!
Similarly, they trumpet the discovery of Einstein Rings and Gravitational
Lensing by the expensive Hubble Space telescope–these are easy and inevitable consequences of Einstein’s equations–derived in Undergraduate books
such as Wheeler and Taylor.
Penny
May 25th, 2008 at 10:16 pm
Penny,
You’re staring to sound much like David Suzuki. He has a tendency to cite statistics to the effect that some large number of species are rendered extinct each day by human behavior. When asked which species those are, he has no answer. You claim that some phantom number of critical discoveries have been lost. So tell me, what are those discoveries?
May 25th, 2008 at 10:20 pm
Dear Mark,
You seem to not understand the power of mathematics!
When Maxwell used celestial mechanics ( based on Newton’s laws–already
experimentally based on cheap earthbased measurements) and calculus
to derive these facts about Saturn’s Rings–the whole point of math is that the results are PROVED.
Similarly for Einstein.
Here is a quote from Einstein ( a religious cultist with no regard for reality)
When asked if he would wait for the results of Eddington’s eclipse measurements of light deflection from the sun, Einstein said:
” If he really undestood my equations, he wouldn’t need to do the experiment.”
When Newton found out that the empirical data didn’t match his
calculations of the moons orbit, rather than decline to publish the Principia, he fudged the data–for he knew that the empirical data must be wrong and his equations were correct to that level of accuracy.
But, I guess Newton and Einstein had a reckless disregard for empiricism.
Penny
p.s. Newton loved experiments–he invented the reflecting telescope–but he knew the power of math.
May 25th, 2008 at 10:21 pm
YOU DON”T GET IT. Those are necessary corollaries to theory. No self-respecting scientist would dream of investing belief in those predictions without validation from OBSERVATION. THAT’S THE WHOLE POINT. Gravity Probe B was a legitimate experiment to subject general relativity to the risk of falsification.
May 25th, 2008 at 10:22 pm
It doesn’t matter what Einstein said of his won theory. That’s nothing less than a corrupt appeal to authority. Shame on you.
May 25th, 2008 at 10:24 pm
Dear mark,
When 90 percent of our talented science Phd’s lost their careers, it is clear that critical discoveries were lost.
It doesn’t require a list.
You seem to be playing chess with me–and that is not my interest.
I have my point of view, and I have stated it, and I don’t need to play
King or Queen of the Hill.
May 25th, 2008 at 10:31 pm
WHICH DISCOVERIES WERE LOST? Cough up a list. Put up or shut up.
May 25th, 2008 at 10:31 pm
Mark,
The question is how much empirical evidence ( at what expense) do we need. General Relativity has plenty of empirical evidence–and one does
NOT need to verify all the mathematical predictions experimentally. That is the point of math.
If one had infinite money–sure, but it is question of allocation.
What is best for the future of science–that is the question.
As to my appeal to authority–I was simply giving examples of others who
in you words had a reckless disregard for empiricism. They did pretty good science.
A misplaced trust in empiricism over mathematical proof is the result of
a pragmatic ( in the philosophical sense) education–and, not some
special road to truth in physics.
When the experiments cost more than a billion dollars, one might
wonder if they are really needed.
I am too tired to argue. Have a nice night.
May 25th, 2008 at 10:32 pm
-Or is this just more of the same; that you have zero interest in how the world IS?
May 25th, 2008 at 10:35 pm
Mark,
I don’t have to give a list–my logic is clear.
You are attempting to bait me–because you are clearly smart enough to
understand my point that when several generations of talented scientists are culled, important discoveries must be lost.
As to “put up or shut up”. This is not a schoolyard, and I am not a little boy, and you need to learn
adult scholarly manners.
Bye
Penny
OFF THE THREAD.
May 25th, 2008 at 10:39 pm
That’s what I call projecting.
May 25th, 2008 at 10:45 pm
Wow, Penny. Thanks for trying to suck away the joy of this event, trying being the key word.
For whomever in your past you hold a grudge, one would think that you would use your obvious talents, not to mention your eloquent diction, in a more useful way.
I feel a particular sorrow for you since you seem to see things always in a negative light. It’s your choice, but having been down that road (and thankfully back) myself, I can honestly tell you, there is nothing waiting at that end.
Change never comes to those who wish it were different. Change comes from those who do something about it. That requires a different positive mindset. I truely hope you find yours someday.
May 25th, 2008 at 11:01 pm
Penny’s problem, as I see it, is that she thinks mathematicians are, as C. Montgomery Burns’ attorney put it, “not like other men”. She clings to a myth that mathematicians are generally incapable of making subtle errors. The record of history shows that they are quite capable of propping up proofs atop tacit assumptions where none should be.
And on the occasions when mathematical reasoning is impeccable, all that really means is that everyone who’s read the proof is in agreement. (I seriously doubt that she’s able to read, for instance, the entirety of Andrew Wiles’ purported proof of Fermat’s Last Theorem. So how would she or nearly everyone alive know if his proof is flawless?) But consensus does not a reality make. A perfectly good, rigorous proof of a proposition is no guarantee that the theorem itself is a faithful model of reality; and if reality is what one wants to understand, then empiricism rules. Nature is the final authority on itself.
May 26th, 2008 at 3:00 am
[…] new Mars lander Phoenix touched down last night, everything seems to have worked well, scientists cheer about the first images – and what do I […]
May 26th, 2008 at 5:03 am
@penny
How many careers could we have at the cost of one or two billion dollar shuttle missions?
None.
Get rid of the shuttle, and the budget gets cut one or two billion dollars. They don’t set it aside and say “let’s hire 10,000 PhDs”.
As an educated person you should know that there is theoretical and practical research. The pencil and paper types do theoretical. The space probes are practical. Theoretical research is a necessary part of science, but the job is only half-done until theories and mathematical models are demonstrated.
Would Einstein have bothered with relativity if big $ and big time hadn’t been spent observing the universe to show that there were problems with Newtonian mechanics?
As to careers, well, in many fields getting a PhD - particularly if you go directly from high school -> bachelor -> masters -> PhD - is not a ticket to an awesome white collar job that pays a zillion dollars. A PhD right out of school is a mid to late 20’s person who has no real work experience, a very high opinion of their worth with commensurate very high salary expectations. Unfortunately, unless the job they are looking for happens to be in their narrow PhD field (unlikely), they’re really just people with little real-world, non-academic work experience. So for these folks, it’s often “get a research job at a university, or get an entry-level job in some secondary field.” I interview people all the time, some have PhDs… but people get hired above entry-level based on work experience. That line I quoted exhibits the very point of this paragraph - some (many?) PhDs think that their advanced education should be some kind of magic ticket to big bucks, and because it isn’t, then something must be wrong with where the big bucks are.
People who get PhDs a bit later in life are much more employable, but they don’t seem to be wanted in the research world as best I can tell (ageism?). Their advanced education tends to be related to whatever career they’ve chosen, and they don’t tend to be motivated to leave the work force for an ivory tower. Even then, most of the PhDs I know make less money than people who were in the same Baccalaureate graduating class and didn’t go on to a PhD. In the 4-6 years it takes to go from a BSc to a PhD, those educated types are falling behind their peers in work experience. That can hurt your career in a lot of fields, and if you think a PhD is on the path to fortune, well, it seems unlikely.
So if you’re arguing that more money in total should be spent on research as a whole, and maybe less on wars then I would agree and that first group of PhDs will have better employment opportunities. If you think that less practical research needs to be done in favour of more theoretical research, I believe that is a misguided approach that won’t help anyone.
May 26th, 2008 at 6:55 am
Martin,
One last comment. I not only do understand the proof of the Wiles-Taylor
Fermat theorem, I have taught a graduate course on it. I have done the same with the much deeper proof of Grisha Perleman of the Poincare conjecture. Both were WONDERFUL to work through. They didn’t cost billions either.
Sure mathematicians can and do make mistakes, I certainly have, and I am not alone–but, over time the peer review and examination by mathematicians gets rid of the errors.
There are FAR more mistakes in experimental science–and that too is ultimately dealt with by peer review and time.
Evolving Squid
Love the name. Squid overlords rule. History has shown that theoretical
research has far more powerful and important practical results than
practical research. The computer came from Boole and Turing etc, who were doing theoretical research, the transistor from Quantum mechanics
again pure theoretical research, the laser from theoretical research into
Einstein Statistics. Radio came from Maxwell’s pure research. Experiment played a role, as spectroscopic anomalies were explained by the evolving
QM, but Planck first created the PURE theoretical idea because of a conceptual problem–the ultraviolet catastrophe. In the case of Maxwell,
Faraday and others had done experiments that led to some of equations,
but it was Faraday’s theoretical investigation into flux tubes and lines
( an early invention of ideas from Topology), and Maxwell’s use of
Partial Differential Equations ( and his idea of displacement current–a theoretical concept) that led to radio–and to all of modern electronics.
In the same way, there was no reason in practical terms for Einstein to create the theoretical system of General Relativity–but, he did. Then came experiments to verify his predictions. Accurate GPS is based
on General Relativity and indeed Kip Thorn was a consultant on the design. Thus, every use of accurate GPS is a check on Einstein’s Equations. Did we really need a billion dollar experiment to check a
simple prediction of his equations?-”frame dragging” aka non-diagonal metric terms.
First the mathematician ( or physicist) does the pure math research, then the experimental physicists do some device work, and only then
do the practical “researchers” build the thing.
If Roentgen had been told to do something practical about broken bones–he might have invented the inflateable splint. But, instead
discovered the X-ray-a type of light predicted by the equations of
James Clerk Maxwell.
I never said that experiments were not important. I said that very expensive experiments had to be weighed against other science as an investment. In fact, I made it quite clear that Newton had done experiments. He also invented calculus–which was sort of important
to the modern world, I think.
As to your comment about Phd’s. Most scientists do not care about big
bucks, they don’t get a Phd to get big bucks. And most want an academic job because essentially ALL the important discoveries in physical sciences are made at universities. Even the exception proves the point–Bell Labs
was modeled on a University. When theoretical–it won Nobel Prizes. When turned it the practical Lucent Technologies, it has done NOTHING
of scientific importance.
By the way, it would be nice to see some examples in the last fifty years of any important physical science or mathematical discovery made by someone without a
Phd, or not working on research for their Phd.
Dagger
I have no grudge, and I don’t see everything in a negative light.
I mentioned that my inner child was thrilled at this event, but that
I had reservations about the cost.
In fact, I am pretty happy, spent the morning playing Bach on my piano.
May 26th, 2008 at 7:17 am
Evolving Squid,
About Einstein, if you read a good biography of him–or his own comments, the answer is YES.
First, there were no real problems with Newton’s equations that he knew of. There was an astronomical anomaly in the orbit of Mercury–but,
there were plenty of possible explanations.
Einstein–according to Einstein–was motivated by the mathematical question of how to make the laws of physics invariant under diffeomorphisms–when his special relativity was only invariant under
the Lorentz transformation. He called this motivation–the principle of general covariance.
As to special relativity, he was motivated–as he explains–by a theoretical
“GEDANKEN” experiment ( aka a mind experiment), that showed that
Maxwell’s equations were not invariant under the affine group of motions
( aka Galiean transformations). This was a pure theoretical ( and indeed
mathematical) reason.
He claimed that he had never even heard of the Michelson-Morley Experiment before he had formulated special relativity. Indeed, his paper
was titled “On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies”.
It was this early work that gave us E=mc^2, by the way. Another consequence of pure theoretical mathematical thought.
May 26th, 2008 at 7:17 am
Not trying to ‘Penny-bash,’ but I have a problem with her logic, or perhaps a misunderstanding based upon what she’s said. Basically, it seems she feels that theory is more important than practicality? Why bother going to Saturn if we can mathematically predict what it is like, right?
Using that logic, why travel anywhere? Why even leave one’s house?
I know what Lisbon (Lisboa) looks like from photos, but at an even more basic level, I’ve read descriptions of what’s in Lisbon, so I don’t even need the photos. And I certainly don’t need to go there to prove the descriptions correct.
Will I go anyway? Yes. Nothing beats going there, in spite of the ‘theory’ of what it’s like.
Would the money for such a trip (from the US, in my case) be better spent on something else? I suppose… I could feed my family, maybe send someone’s child to college for half a week. But what rich cultural experiences might I miss in return? (And no, I won’t starve my family to go to Lisbon! But neither is NASA starving people to send probes to Mars.)
***
About an hour or two before the Phoenix landing, I heard a CNN radio report that “NASA hasn’t successfully landed a probe on Mars since 1976 with the Viking Landers.”
Really? Sojourner, Spirit, Opportunity, anyone? (It has been pointed out to me that CNN might have been referring to rocket-landers, as opposed to the ‘airbag bouncers.’ In any case, I didn’t hear the gaff repeated in later updates. Just thought it was funny, and wished I had a direct line to CNN so I could have pointed out/questioned the thing after I stopped laughing.)
May 26th, 2008 at 7:21 am
And I see Penny made a few clarifications whilst I was typing. I’ll have to go back & get caught up…
May 26th, 2008 at 7:22 am
The only problem with Newton’s equations that Einstein knew of, was,
of course, the high velocity problem–predicted and solved by Einstein in the invention of special relativity–by pure thought, and not by
expensive experiments on Newton.
He then solved the theoretical problem of diffeormorphism invariance, leading to General Relativity. He was NOT motivated by any expensive experiments on errors in Newton’s laws.
May 26th, 2008 at 7:28 am
Dear CR,
Yup. I would love to vacation on mars. I would love to see the rings of Saturn close up.
It is purely an issue of allocation of research funding for the best effect.
Hey, I grew up with telescopes.
If people admitted to the motivation of going to mars of:
” I want humankind to tour the universe.”
I would support it.
But, not at the cost of more important science. Maybe, we should stop killing each other and pay for a manned mission to mars?
It would be different if we could travel to a nearby Black hole to study
the quantum effects that are poorly understood by theory, in the hope of
getting some clues to a good theory of Quantum Gravity.
The main motivation for mars exploration is exploration–not great science.
In that sense, it is quite thrilling.
Penny
May 26th, 2008 at 7:33 am
Kerry,
Yes. We don’t know. But based on history, the odds are it will come from someone in a university library with a pencil, followed by someone in a university lab ( or a small number of government or industry labs modeled
on university labs).
With finite resources one has to allocate wisely.
Will it come from someone’s backyard shed—very unlikely.
May 26th, 2008 at 7:33 am
Again, I’m not trying to bash/attack here, but it seems you (penny) value theorists over engineers. Is that indicative of a philosophical side over a practical side, or am I totally ‘reading into’ this something that isn’t there? (And I suppose mathematics isn’t really philosophical, so perhaps my wording is wrong.)
I guess it doesn’t matter. I have a better idea of what you’re driving at from your updates; I don’t wholly disagree with everything you’ve said. I just disagree with the idea that practical engineering (or ‘going there’) has little merit. I don’t believe you’ve actually said that it has NO merit, either; rather you seem to think it has less merit than many other people think. (You were tired yesterday, I’m tired today… sorry, everyone, for my ineloquence today.)
May 26th, 2008 at 7:38 am
And once again, we’re all typing at the same time. Thanks for clarifying that you’re not against exploration. I suspect that might be what some people thought (myself included).
I do think some interesting science may come of this mission, but it might not be ‘earth-shattering’ in its revelations. But it will still be interesting. Does that alone justify the trip? My personal preference of what’s interesting differs from yours, or everyone else’s, of course; I personally would answer ‘Yes’ to that question.
May 26th, 2008 at 7:38 am
Dear CR,
In fact, if there was a colony on Mars, I would retire there, and do some engineering and help build it.
But, that is irrelevant to what I was saying.
May 26th, 2008 at 7:42 am
CR,
If they find life–with a different biochemistry, then yes.
I did say–in my original post–that I hoped some good science would come of this mission.
Against exploration–certainly not. Very pro.
But, we have only so much funding for science—it seems more important
to kill each other.
May 26th, 2008 at 7:46 am
And I certainly would agree that I’d rather see more science & education funding.
I’m not anti-military, but I’m against wasteful military sepnding (in both money & lives). That’s a topic for a different thread/forum, though, so I’ll leave it at that.
May 26th, 2008 at 7:48 am
CR,
This battle of theoretical vs practical has been going on since ( and probably before) the days of Plato and Aristotle.
I am not anti-practical. However, in this culture–most people are brainwashed that practical, targeted and especially non-mathematical
research is the source of all progress in physical science.
The truth is almost one hundred percent the opposite.
And, of course, philosophy enters into it. It enters into all intellectual
activity–consciously or not.
May 26th, 2008 at 7:57 am
Maybe we need to stop looking at it from an ‘either/or’ standpoint, and proceed from a fusion ot the two… (By ‘we,’ I mean humanity.)
May 26th, 2008 at 8:02 am
ot = of
Told you all I was tired. Long night, little sleep.
By the way, for what it’s worth, I appreciate that penny has come back to clarify & discuss her stanpoint, even though it seemed earlier like she had left for good. I think the break helped everyone avoid nastier confrontation, like we see on this blog during religious… discussions.
Now, before I start saying anything too stupid, I’m going to have a break myself. My head’s spinning, and I don’t know that it’s just from the intellectual discussion at hand! (For the record, it’s not alchohol nor drug induced, either!)
May 26th, 2008 at 8:09 am
CR,
It would be ideal if we could allocate the sort of money that we waste
on unnecessary wars to both kinds of research, to education, and to
exploration and space travel.
This was all said very nicely by H.G. Wells, in his screenplay
“Things to Come”–based on his ” The Shape of Things to Come”
It is a great 1930’s movie–which is at the internet archive.
Get some rest CR, I very much enjoyed our conversation.
Same to everyone else, even Martin.
May 26th, 2008 at 10:24 am
Been years since I’ve seen that film, but I recall the big question about moving forward or staying mired in the past, something along the lines of “we have a choice… which shall it be?”
May 26th, 2008 at 10:48 am
dear CR,
Yes. That was the point.
The beginning of the movie is about the waste of war.
The middle is about the great engineering projects done with resources
freed from war.
The end is about the conflict between comfort and safety and the risks
of space exploration.
The book is better because it is clearer there that the technocrat leaders in the future are also repressive and authoritarian. Life is rarely one dimensional.
Got to go and do some math research.
May 26th, 2008 at 3:19 pm
Math… what a way to derail a thread on exploration. Sure, math is what puts the Phoenix on Mars, but the unprovable empirical fact of the planet being there is what made it go in the first place.
I’m not especially well versed in the history of science, but AFAIU Newton invented his infinitesimals to be able to describe his physics. Seems to me the above is putting the cart before the horse as earlier.
That was debated AFAIU, but in truth every prediction of a theory is an opportunity for falsification and so further progress. As things stands now, there is a scarcity of empirical tests to further theoretical physics. Many theoreticians argue AFAIU that they need more data, not less.
The thing is, that many theoreticians (and others) have reasoned as penny does, after Einstein. But the absence of success with such an approach is evident. Even Einstein himself proved that, he didn’t believe in the stochastic nature of QM in spite of his early work on it.
Other theoreticians (IIRC; Brian Greene for example) have concluded for good reasons that this was a one off moment in history.
After all, Newton could have realized that his mechanics really implied galilean invariance. (Perhaps he would have if he hadn’t been so motivated to argue for a separation between objects and space that he had to make the latter “absolute” to get this point through.) Likewise, Maxwell could have realized that light speed should be a theoretical constant, implying lorentzian invariance.
These low hanging fruits remained; but today there are no easy pickings. To believe so is in all likelihood to chase a pipe dream.
May 26th, 2008 at 5:48 pm
Tor
I have given plenty of examples how the theoretical approach has been very successful. Newton did realize that his equations were Galilean invariant–in fact that was part of his construction of the equations. He didn’t look for Lorentz invariance, as Maxwell’s equations were centuries into the future. He also understood the issue of reference frames, saying in the Principia that —for now–he would use the fixed stars as an ersatz
replacement for a universal reference frame.
It is a common misconception ( often taught in elementary physics classes by people with no historical background) that Newton invented
calculus to clarify his physics. In fact, he was a professor of Mathematics,
had done serious work on the classification of singularities of polynomial equations in several variables ( today that would be called Algebraic Geometry), learned about the differential triangle from his teacher–the pure mathematician and geometer Issac Barrow. He THEN, after he had invented
his calculus, applied it to Natural Philosophy–what some may call physics.
However, Newton’s definition of Natural Philosophy was what we today
call rigorous applied math–all about theorems.
The opening of his Principia ( translated from Latin),
” I, Issac Newton, Lucsian Professor of MATHEMATICS at Cambridge,
do here, with recourse to theology, ….. , and purely by the method
of GEOMETRICAL proof here set forth the system of the foundation of the world.”
( Newton did start his career with his experimental researches on the nature of color and prismed light, but his job was mathematician–just like Galileo–and he published quite a lot in pure mathematics). Look up Newton Polygon, for example.
Maxwell stated the invariance of the speed of light in his work,
and indeed derived a formula for that speed in terms of the electric and magnetic constants of the vacuum. He also was disturbed by the change of group invariance implied–but, it took a decade or two for others to
work hard on that problem.
Brian Greene is not a mathematician, and String Theory is dicey. That doesn’t mean that the math approach to physics is doomed or that “all the low hanging fruit are picked”. During the last century, Gauge
theory was formulated by theoreticians ( and mathematicians had already
looked at these equations in a classical setting in studying the theory of connections on fiber bundles) leading to electroweak unification, very serious advances in
General Relativity have been done by mathematicians, similarly in
optics, fluid mechanics etc, not to mention the theory of superconductors, and superfluids, and many other things.
Some mathematicians are also looking –in our slow plodding careful way–at
String theory.
A minor example: String Theory is the quantization of a classical theory
that uses the area of a low dimensional surface in a high dimensional space as an energy.
Already at the classical level there are serious issues about existence, and singularities. There is a math paper that studies that, and gets
careful results –in the general setting of fiber bundles—which, as in Gauge theory–is really the right setting.
I am a little happy about that paper: ” Regularity for Area Minimizing Rectifiable Sections
of Fiber Bundles”, as I am one of the two coauthors. There is a slight error in the arxiv version ( in the differential geometry section of arxiv) that is corrected in the published version.
It’s part of a short series of papers that took us maybe 17 years.
And, I didn’t even know it was related to String Theory until 16 years into the process!! That’s math for you.
( I discovered the relation–not mentioned in our paper–when I was asked to tutor someone in string theory–and went through a nice
set of notes from MIT.)
Not so flashy as splash covers in popular magazines about some
theory of everything by String Theorists.
In String theory, as done by physicists, most of the work is not about rigorous mathematical
theorems, and rigor corners are cut constantly. Thousands of papers were written at a breakneck pace. PERHAPS, the LESSON
here is that Newton had it right: We should be doing NATURAL PHILOSOPHY–with extreme care to prove rigorous theorems about nature. It’s slower, but it works.
Math research was never easy–even in Maxwell’s or Newton’s day.
That is why these people were geniuses.
Easy pickings? Gee, I have spent as much as 14-17 years working on a proof of a single theorem, and this is not uncommon in math. Newton spent 20+ years writing the Principia to try to get the math theorems correct, and he almost got it all correct. Maxwell had several Psychological exhaustion breakdowns–one after his work on the rings of Saturn. It was never easy. It fact, it is hard as hell. Even for those people: who are once in a century geniuses.
Penny
p.s. It is interesting to note how much of the great work in theoretical physics was done by people with math degrees and/or holding math professorships–who physics teachers often call physicists.
Some examples: Euler, Newton, Lagrange, Maxwell, Lord Kelvin,
Dirac ( who was also Lucsian Professor of maths with a maths Degree)… I include Max
Born, who was Hilbert’s postdoc assistant, Hilbert, Wiener, Pascal
Jordan, Hawking.
The only person to ever win two Nobel Prizes in physics was John Bardeen, who had a pure math Phd from Princeton.
Einstein wasn’t, but his first papers on his general theory of relativity–which had most of the ideas–were written with a co-author who was a mathematician–M. Grossman.
Pauli and Heisenberg were physics posdocs with Born, and not only were connected to Hilbert, but were disciples of the mathematician Sommerfield, who had great influence of the developement of QM.
p.s. Let us not forget that string theory has competitor theories such as loop quantum gravity.
May 26th, 2008 at 5:51 pm
OOPS,
Newton said:
:WITHOUT recourse to theology
I left out the OUT.
Sorry
Penny
May 26th, 2008 at 7:06 pm
I’m sorry, but your paper doesn’t show up on ArXiv. Is there another resource where it can be accessed?
May 27th, 2008 at 5:35 am
Phoenix EDL was cool, but did anyone else miss Wayne Lee?
June 1st, 2008 at 2:33 am
Catching up on old threads.
@ penny:
No, his theory (and so his equations) is galilei invariant - but he didn’t present his theory that way, as you yourself note.
Naturally, he needed it for the later. Ah, I see the history is that he invented the calculus early, published his physics later, and finished with publishing his calculus last. The last part sounds familiar, in fact.
Yes, but he was wrong. Science is empirical, and theories are tested. As for example when special relativity predicts what classical mechanics cannot.
Which is why his opinion on physics science is informed. With respect, I find yours is not - for example when you complain that testable theories can “cut corners”. They are still right if they predict the observations. Formal theories aren’t everything, for example there is AFAIU no mathematically satisfying theory describing quantization, yet it works in physics theories.
Physics isn’t math. Get used to it.
PS. I find it amusing that you first object to physicists cutting corners, then claim that they are bona fide mathematicians. Gauss was both mathematician and hands on physicist. Another unique individual.
PPS. Let us forget LQG, as it can’t predict a harmonic oscillator or become lorentz invariant. But at least now I see where you come from.
June 1st, 2008 at 9:32 pm
Tor,
Gauss would have been insulted to be called a physicist. He was a mathematician, with a phd in math, a professorship in math, and
his major interest was actually in number theory.
When he was young, he was employed as an astronomer–which lasted
until he proved a few more theorems. His Phd degree was in mathematics.
If proving theorems about physics makes you a physicist–then,
all the mathematicians that I mentioned would also be physicists–heavens, even I would be a physicist.
But, the defining difference is that mathematicians prove rigorous
theorems.
Oddly, that would –for me–qualify Einstein as a mathematician, because in special relativity he proved rigorous theorems. He didn’t think of himself as a mathematician-but worked with Grossman and many other mathematicians during his career. Einstein’s degree was in physics.
Quantization by the mathematical method of geometric quantization works just fine. It is quantum field theory that is a problem–that is because QED-as accurate as it is, is mathematically inconsistent–the only QFT satisfying the Whitman axioms in four dimensions is the free scalar field.
Math needs to done there—or better axioms found.
Oh, and it turns out that Brian Greene has a joint appointment in math and physics.
LQG, I agree. What has string theory actually predicted? There is a flaky
calculation to get the black hole entropy out of string theory–but…
If you read my comments carefully, you will see that I said that the
mathematicians that I named –who contributed to physics–didn’t cut corners because they were doing their work with a mathematicians perspective–aka Newton’s “natural philosophy”. It is many of today’s physicists
who cut lots of corners.
( Of course, rigor in math has become greater in the last two centuries, then it was in the days of Gauss. Still, Gauss was VERY interested in rigorous proof, and was excellent at that by the highest standards of his day.)
One could say the same of Maxwell.
June 1st, 2008 at 9:43 pm
Tor,
And I am not uninformed of your point of view about experiments.
It was canon in my physics classes too.
I just disagree with you–in the case of very expensive experiments in a
field ( GR) that has never had a single experiment that disproved its predictions. If we had gobs of money–of course, we should do the experiment. But, we don’t.
Newton, Maxwell, Einstein etc, may well have been wrong about their approach–but I think their successful results in physics give some support for their point of view.
p.s. It would nice to do an experiment at the next few decimal places to verify that the Cartan-Einstein torsion connection theory is what replaces
GR at that level of accuracy. It’s my math guess ( and Cartan’s–who was the greatest geometer of his age) that it does. If I had to do a billion dollar GR experiment–that would be the one.
June 1st, 2008 at 10:01 pm
By the way, One could predict the orbits of the planets experimentally to a very high precision by using epicycles and claim the planets move because invisible gods or angels pull them around.
Indeed, this used to be done. Does that mean that it is good physics? Do angels pull the planets? Does the high accuracy prove that Angels exist?
If experimental accuracy were the main measure, it would have been enough. In the same way, do virtual particles really exist?
What it really is–in the epicycle case– is the fitting of data to a Fourier series.
Newton replaced angels by the mysterious inverse square law–a law imposed–he thought–by God. What makes Newton’s method work is
differential equations. That is why it is better. One differential equation
–One constant to measure ( G), and that’s it.
His experimental motivation was that Kepler had deduced–based on experimental observations of Tycho Brahe that the planets move in ellipses—Kepler was a mathematician, by the way.
Newton solved the math problem of finding the right central force.
It’s not about curve fitting and accuracy–it is about good math. Good math should NOT require that every prediction be confirmed by an experiment. Newton only need one match–elliptical orbits.
Before the Bohr atom, there was a theory of Nicholson–that was far superior–it predicted spectral lines accurately for many complex atoms.
It even included Bohr’s predictions for the two simple atoms for which he could get results.
It is on the dust heap–because Bohr’s elegant mathematical approach
( which was already implicit in Nicholson ( cited by Bohr)) was better
math.
Indeed, Nicholson’s work was called ” fitting epicycles” by his detractors.
June 2nd, 2008 at 5:21 am
Tor,
Interesting, that wikepedia article that you link to. It starts by calling Newton a “physicist, mathematician….”. Already, biased.
It neglects to mention that Newton also invented the Newton Polygon method for summing fractional series, and the calculus of variations.
As to “G-invariance”–the language wasn’t there, but if you read the Principia–he does discuss the issue, and he even discusses the issue of universal reference frames–choosing reluctantly to use the fixed stars as
a stand-in for a fixed reference frame.
Interestingly, his book on Natural Philosophy “Principia Mathematica N”
NEVER uses any calculus–except the implicit use of limits. All of the book is written in the Language of synthetic Euclidean Geometry.
Newton published Calculus later, after he was concerned about priority conflicts.
You might also be interested to know that Newton’s prof–Issac Barrow
already knew the concept of the differential triangle, and that calculus
was being done –before Newton–in the Indian State of Kerela–which was a major spice trader with Europe. This can be found in the Cambridge University Press book ” The Crest of the Peacock”.
June 2nd, 2008 at 5:23 am
In calling Nicholson’s theory “far superior”, I meant that in the sense that it gave good numerical predictions for far more atomic spectra than Bohr’s
theory. Of course, my view, and that of history, is that this fact is irrelevant–it lacked mathematical elegance.
June 2nd, 2008 at 4:14 pm
@ penny:
That doesn’t matter. What matters is that he, among other mathematicians of course, have actually made physical observations (regarding Earth size IIRC).
Not bad extracurricular activity for such a giant among mathematicians!
I don’t agree. The defining difference is that scientist use the scientific method of observation and theory.
With respect; if they predict the entropy, with whatever technical procedure that works with their theory, and it is tested as correct it is valid science, if not valid math. [Actually, I would argue that if it is algorithmically sound it is math of a kind, albeit possibly not yet axiomatic math as AFAIU second quantization is not. But I’m no mathematician.] That is all we need.
It can’t be all flaky, as AFAIU they get the same entropy as semiclassical derivations. Now remains the actual test against observation…
Sure, and as the method lets them, what is the harm? Physics doesn’t equal math, and there is no reason to believe everything can be formalized. No such expectations exist in biology, yet everyone agrees that it is testable science.
Sure, GR is an effective theory. But surely string theory the strongest contender? It predicts a lot, inclusively that pesky black hole entropy, supersymmetry, and what not. And I hear the math is hard as well.
I suspect you know very well that theories are constrained by other conditions put on them, until the best contender can be picked among those who passes the most critical set of tests.
Parsimony is often chosen for reasons of likelier to be correct, less number of reversals if wrong, as a part of “beauty” et cetera. And here it explains why epicycles went out of fashion, I believe.
Btw, isn’t this an argument against math as the only measure of science? Epicycles or ellipsoids, equally valid math objects. But I see that you use “mathematical elegance” yourself.
Thanks for the math history, it is interesting. (And needed, obviously.)
June 2nd, 2008 at 5:50 pm
Tor,
Supersymmetry is independent of string theory–though picked up later by string theorists. It was, in fact, first formulated as pure math by Russian mathematicians ( deformation of Lie groups and algebras) and then later picked up by pre-string Gauge theorists.
The black hole entropy is a retrodiction–the formula was already known from GR work ( Beckenstein, Hawking, Yau).
When Einstein did GR, he predicted important effects BEFORE they were observed. That is the difference between science and curve fitting. GR predicted gravitational time dilation, Greater light deflection by gravity,
Gravitational lensing, Einstein Rings, and Black holes all BEFORE they were observed.
The method of physics lets physicists cut corners when they can do experiments–but, they can’t always–consider string theory.
June 2nd, 2008 at 6:04 pm
Tor,
I do use mathematical elegance as a major criterion–as did Einstein.
In fact, I learned that approach from reading Einstein.
Parsimony is one of the ingredients of mathematical elegance.
Gauss was a poor kid, one of the first to get a scholarship to support his
education. But, that ran out when he finished his Phd, and the way he chose to get some kind of job was to calculate the orbit of Ceres using
celestial mechanics. Along the way, he had some jobs doing surveying.
They, he got a job as director of the Gottingen Observatory— a minor, poorly paid job that allowed him to sleep in the unheated observatory.
As soon as proved some more major theorems, he got a decent job as a professor of pure math.
His major interest was number theory–which he called the “Queen of the Sciences”.
Lots of mathematicians have played around in labs. As a young teen, I built a betatron, and a Gas laser, and an interferometer etc.–and many similar toys, mostly from the Scientific American
Amateur Scientist column.
When I was eight or nine my birthday present was bottles of Meth. Blue,
and Wright’s stain.
I built reflecting telescopes, and ground mirrors.
Then we discover our math ability, and we change directions. It’s a bit like being possessed. And that is ok.
Some physicists do both theory and experiment too–few nowadays. But
Fermi is a good example. Fermi–interestingly enough–started out
wanting to be a mathematician–and his first publication was on differential geometry–Fermi Walker coordinates.
June 2nd, 2008 at 6:17 pm
Tor,
The math in string theory–as used by string theorists ( not by mathematicians) isn’t really very hard. That MIT book–titled something
like ” An undergraduate Course in String Theory” is extremely clear and absolutely excellent. For someone who already knows classical QED, it si very accessible. Heavens, It worked for me.
The math in string theory, as used by mathematicians, is pretty fancy—for example my coauthored paper uses geometric measure theory, Global Calculus of Variations, Differential Geometry, The topology of fiber bundles,
Sobolev Spaces, Harmonic Analysis. And, this is just for the classical version of the non–supersymmetric theory.
People like Yau ( who is a bonefide mathematical Genius and Fields laureate) do even fancier math related to String Theory.
My argument with String Theory isn’t a math one. It is that no
decent predictions have been made—or verified in this theory yet.
So, there I am agreeing with your criterion.
June 2nd, 2008 at 6:34 pm
Tor,
Right now, I am overwhelmed with admiration for Einstein:
For a while, I thought–well, he just applied geometry to physics–but
compare his success to that of the many brilliant string theorists.
He was something really special.
Einstein:
The theory of Brownian Motion by kinetic molecular methods
The theory of the photoelectric effect
Special Rel
General Rel
Bose-Einstein Stats
A correct unification of Electric fields and Gravity ( different from the one
done by O.Klein) using torsion connections and teleparallel geometry
The first paper on “amplification by stimulated emission of radiation”
GOOD GOD!!!!
Thinking of Fermi–I am also very impressed. By Einstein just blows my mind.
June 4th, 2008 at 5:14 pm
Penny,
Yes, but AFAIU it gets a more thorough and natural physical motivation there.
My point was that it will be a prediction if confirmed by observation. I see that is your criteria as well.
There will be no difference there, when they get observations.
Yet they want to use math instead of physics methods in physics. (Gauss made it work, which is why I give him kudos.) Which remains my point.
I’m sorry, but I don’t see that we can come to an agreement here.
It is obvious to me that one should use physics methods in physics, since in science math is a tool but not the essence of the observational method or of all of theory. Others may not agree, which is fine with me but when they need to demonstrate that alternate methods works. That is all I have to say.
June 5th, 2008 at 6:07 am
Dear Tor,
//which is fine with me but when they need to demonstrate that alternate methods works.
As I said: I gave examples: The work of Newton, Einstein, Dirac, Hawking,
etc.
I agree, this has been fun, but I have said enough.
Penny
String theory is not the only natural road to supersymmetry. Again, if string theory does work–aka, some prediction will made and tested–that it
would be YET another example of the mathematical approach to physics–for it has sustained its creation, and thirty to forty years of work,
by thousands of “Physicists” who have been willing to work on mathematical theories without having ANY experimental justification to do so. They follow Einstein’s philosophical lead in this.
And, since I have some small piece in it. It would please me, if string theory were correct.
As I said, my argument against it is basically your “physicist” argument–that it makes no solid experimental predictions.
June 5th, 2008 at 5:23 pm
penny, I have to nitpick your examples. I thought we had an agreement agreed that Einstein was a one off example of a physicist (not a very good mathematician either AFAIU). He was using heuristics in a grandiose way. Remaining physicists have worked with either hypotheses and/or observations, and I was really looking for examples of alternate methods, say mathematicians using formal math.
This was however a minor nitpick, which won’t lead to an agreement in any case. But I accept your (or mine
argument against string theory.
June 5th, 2008 at 9:43 pm
Tor,
Einstein was actually a very talented mathematician–degree in physics–but a student of Herman Minkowski. He developed most of the ideas in GR in joint work with the mathematician
Marcel Grossman–had mathematicians as “assistants” in his later work–I knew two of them.
If you read his paper on SR ” On the electrodynamics of moving bodies”, you will see that his math proofs are very elegant–and similarly in his work on Brownian motion. He claimed he had NEVER heard of Brownian motion until he had submitted the paper. Similarly, for the Michaelson-Morley experiment.
His main ideas “SR and GR” were based on group theory–
the Lorentz group, and the diffeomorphism group–with a lot
of differential geometry in GR.
The motivation for SR originally (aka before the paper, according to Einstein) was that Maxwell’s equations were not
invariant under Galilean transformation–if one looked at
a moving conductor in a magnetic field in two reference frames the MATH predicted incompatible answers.
NO EXPERIMENT NEEDED.
His principle in GR was that fundamental physics was basically….
Geometry.
And, indeed, Hilbert showed that if one extremized the simplest possible geometric energy invariant –the integral of the scalar curvature–one gets the Vacuum Einstein Equations.
Thus, this would have happened anyway as mathematicians were exploring such things. In fact, there is an eight day difference ( and a priority conflict–which I hold in favor of Einstein) in publication.
Adding the stress energy tensor to get a divergence free
right hand side if you are not in a vacuum was a standard thing–even then–already familar from Maxwell, and
in solid and fluid dynamics.
When asked if he would wait up for the results of the Eddington eclipse experiment he replied, ” If they UNDERSTOOD my theory, they wouldn’t need to do an
experiment”.
The concept of Space-time ( sometimes called Lorentz geometry) was actually due to Einstein’s math prof
Herman Mink. No experiment was needed to motivate this.
The theory of causality in Lorentz geometry–largely due to Penrose ( who is a phd in math, a student of the same thesis advisor–Hodge–as Michael Atiyah) is another triumph of the math approach to physics.
Similarly for Penrose’s theory of Twistors ( Which predated him in pure algebraic geometry–a Robinson congruence is simple the Hopf Fibration), was not motivated by experiments.
And, thus we see again that :
Some physicists have done as you say, but some have not.
When, Feynman was working on a version of the four vertex
theory, it didn’t match the experimental data—like Newton he
said: ” The experimental data must be wrong, because my theory is too mathematically elegant to be wrong.” Feynman was incidentally a math Putnam scholarship winner!
Consider the Penrose singularity theorem, the Hawking Penrose singularity theorem, the work on Black hole area
thermodynamics–no experiments motivated this work.
The string theorists were motivated purely by math–in the spirit of Einstein–and it all started with an addition formula
for Beta functions.
We didn’t get Black holes, neutron stars, Einstein rings,
from experiments. The MATH came first–the experiments came later–often decades later.
In the same way, Maxwell’s equations ( yes, Faraday’s experiments had input–but the main idea was Maxwell’s pure thought idea of the displacement current–missed by Gauss etc.) PREDICTED Radio waves decades before they were observed. Maxwell, the ….mathematician.
In Quantum theory consider for example ” The Casimir effect”, which was predicted mathematically by the physicist
( who did enough rigorous pure group theory, like Eugene Wigner, to have an independent stellar career in math–geniuses!) Casimir decades before any experimental
confirmation.
One might say the same for the currently popular theory of
“wormholes”.
In the end, if several experiments disagree with predictions of math, the theory is discarded–as well it should be.
But, many of the absolutely top level theorists, are far more motivated by mathematical ideas than our education process
in physics makes clear. In fact, history is rewritten to make it look like the opposite is true in textbooks.
For example–Faraday is portrayed as a mathematical incompetent who didn’t know calculus and was primarly a tinkerer–meanwhile, Faraday invented a theory of flux tubes that contained many of the ideas of topology and led him to
conjecture the radio wave ( proved more standardly by Maxwell’s partial differential equations method). The radio wave was math before it was experiment.
p.s. Einstein himself always was falsely modest–saying he wasn’t much of a mathematician. His letter from his
Realgymnasium teacher said he was a “mathematical
genius”, his work in the statistical mechanics of Brownian
motion etc., say he was a very talented mathematician–real proofs.
He was also a large believer in the use of ” thought experiments”–another name for ” elegant mathematical
proofs”. In this, he was inspired by Galileo–who faked his
experimental data–but, as a mathematican–trusted his proofs.
In the “false” history of textbooks, Galileo dropped a heavy and a light object from the leaning tower to show that they fall at the same rate in a vacuum. In fact, Galileo gave a mathematical proof–a thought experiment–involving an imaginary line dividing an object into heavy and light objects.
He never dropped things from the leaning tower.
The impossibility of a pepetual motion engine was proved by
Simon Stevin–a medieval mathematician–by a geometric proof involving a weighted chain and an inclined plane.
Stevin was also led by this to the concept of momentum.
I have given plenty of examples to support my point. You have simply pontificated and reiterated yours.
Enough. It’s been fun.
June 5th, 2008 at 9:56 pm
One last point:
It is not for nothing that Einstein’s SR paper was titled
“On the ELECTODYNAMICS of moving bodies”–and the motivation I gave above is a big part of the paper.
Einstein, as a teen, also was wondering what the world might look like if he could ride a light bean–a thought experiment,
NOT an experiment.
The most brilliant minds are conceptual–they have deep
IDEAS. Often, long before any experiment shows the necessity
of those ideas.
July 2nd, 2008 at 4:06 pm
[I see my previous comment didn’t make it here.]
FWIW, catching up on old threads.
Penny, if Einstein was a mathematician so am I. I meant the ability to research