FRONTIERS OF NUCLEAR AND
PARTICLE PHYSICS!
The frontiers of nuclear
physics are found in the quest to get to the largest
possible values of A, and to get as far as possible off the line
of stability in the direction of proton excess on the one side,
and neutron excess on the other. Probes of nuclei with huge
neutron excess have obvious implications for the understanding
of neutron stars... at least their outer layers.
The goals of relativistic heavy ion physics
remain to probe the nuclear equation of state, with an
increasing range of accelerators and with increasingly
sophisticated detectors and data analysis approaches. Since a
clear signature for quark-gluon plasma is currently unknown,
studies of the first-order phase transitions, critical point and
triple point, as well as transitions such as partial chiral
symmetry restoration, and phase transitions within the
quark-gluon state, remain distant goals... sometimes very
distant.
This
facility, FRIB (Facility for Rare Isotope Beams), which
has been named a top priority for nuclear physics research for
the last 30 years(!), only became operational in May of 2022!
That's a fair indication of how far down on the totem pole
nuclear physics currently is in the US. Another highly advanced
accelerator, FAIR
(Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research) was first approved
for construction in Europe in 2010, but is not expected to be
operational, in Darmstadt, Germany, until 2025. Also soon
coming on line is a competitive facility, NICA in Dubna, Russia. The
only other state-of-the-art nuclear research facility in the US,
apart from FRIB, is the Jefferson
National Laboratory, in Virginia, which uses a 12
GeV electron beam to do deep inelastic scattering studies
on protons. Current long-range plans in nuclear physics are
collected here.
Top
research priorities in particle physics. In particle
physics and cosmology, the huge stumbling block is the absence
of any experimental
clue whatsoever that points a way beyond the Standard
Model. In the prehistory of our own universe are clearly stamped
processes that we currently have no theoretical description of,
or any possibilities of probing experimentally. Very rare decays
that would point to new physics, or settle open questions, are
not being seen... no neutrinoless double beta decay, no large
sector of CP-nonconserving processes, no processes like proton
decay that would directly violate baryon-number conservation,
etc. No smoking guns of missing energy and momentum in LHC
collisions that would indicate production of dark matter
particles, and no direct detection of them on earth or
elsewhere. Also we have almost no solid hint of how to do “field
theories within or underlying existing fields,” and thus very
little guidance or encouragement in constructing a theory
of quantum gravity, or of dark energy, if it is a quantum field
also. The current top priority in particle physics is a Higgs
factory; beyond that, the next top priority is a muon
collider. [The muon collider could simultaneously serve as
a Higgs factory.]
The following quotes have been
attributed to various physicists.
• You don't have to be the
smartest, you just have to be the first.
• If you didn't calculate a
number, you didn't do any physics. (Feynman)
• You have to keep a dozen of
your favorite problems constantly present in your mind, although
by and large they will lay in a dormant state. Every time you
hear or read a new trick or a new result, test it against each
of your twelve problems to see whether it helps. Every once in a
while there will be a hit, and people will say, “How did he do
it? He must be a genius!” (Feynman)
• The fundamental laws necessary
for the mathematical treatment of a large part of physics and
the whole of chemistry are thus completely known, and the
difficulty lies only in the fact that application of these laws
leads to equations that are too complex to be solved. (Dirac,
1929)
• The fact that the author thinks
slowly is not serious, but the fact that he publishes faster
than he thinks is inexcusable. (Wolfgang Pauli)
• If you haven’t found something
strange during the day, it hasn’t been much of a day. (John
Archibald Wheeler)
• How wonderful that we have met
with a paradox. Now we have some hope of making progress! (Bohr)
[He was certainly wrong about some of the "paradoxes"
encountered in the past 60 years!]
• If you are a researcher, you are
trying to figure out what the question is as well as what the
answer is. (Witten)
A MAP AND GUIDE TO UNSOLVED PROBLEMS OF FUNDAMENTAL
PHYSICS!
CAN AI BE USED TO SOLVE THE HARD PROBLEMS IN
FUNDAMENTAL PHYSICS?
A Semi-sociological Explanation for Why
Theoretical Physics is Not Progressing.
A POSSIBLE WAY FORWARD?
Probably not part of the solution?
Another confounding problem!
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