Guest Editorial: Truth, Beauty and Supergravity
- Creators
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Deser, Stanley
Abstract
I begin with a warning: theoretical physics is an edifice built over the centuries by some of mankind's greatest minds, using ever more complicated and sophisticated concepts and mathematics to cover phenomena on scales billions of times removed—in directions both bigger and smaller—from our human dimensions, where our simple intuition or primitive language cannot pretend to have any validity. So any popular discussion is necessarily impressionistic, being couched in terms of classical analogies that do not really apply. This warning label should be attached to all such accounts, the present one included. However, I have tried to focus here on an aspect that involves more human attributes of our subject.
Additional Information
© 2017 American Association of Physics Teachers. Received 9 June 2017; accepted 28 June 2017. This work was supported by grants NSF PHY-1266107 and DOE#desc0011632. An earlier version appeared on the PRC Mr. Science program; the author thanks A. Zee for inviting it. Finally, the author thanks J. Franklin for translating his manuscript into AJP-ese. A somewhat longer version was posted on the arXiv.3 A technical discussion of SUGRA's formal attractions is given in Ref. 4, while a historical account of how the theory came into being may be found in Ref. 5.Attached Files
Published - 1_2E4994807.pdf
Submitted - 1706.02448.pdf
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Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 78209
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20170614-120344918
- NSF
- PHY-1266107
- Department of Energy (DOE)
- DE-SC0011632
- Created
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2017-06-14Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2021-11-15Created from EPrint's last_modified field
- Caltech groups
- Walter Burke Institute for Theoretical Physics
- Other Numbering System Name
- CALT-TH
- Other Numbering System Identifier
- 2017-028