458
E. Rabinovici
• It seems very likely in 2007 that eventually the neutrino masses will be added
without caveats to the pantheon of particles, the particle data tables. Some TPs
point to new physics at a rather high mass scale as the origin of small neutrino
masses.
It is interesting that very few of the theoretical ideas and visions used to the
address the ample set of problems mentioned above were originally created directly
for that purpose. They were more tools whose applications were found only well
after they were formed.
The theoretical structures discovered and created where an outcome of an urge
to question, generalize and unify almost anything.
• In addition to the attempts to unify all symmetries and considering extra
dimensions it was suggested that the topology of the extra dimensions may
determine the low mass particle spectrum. These extra dimensions were assumed
for year to be small but it turned out they could also be large, leading to theories in
which large extra dimensions play a key role. A variant of this idea is that there
exists a hidden sector where many desired things occur, SUSY is broken, the
cosmological constant is (nearly) cancelled to name some. These effects are then
communicated to the Standard Model particles by messengers. In many cases the
weak gravitational force is designated that role.
• A natural direction of generalization is to question the point particle nature of
the basic constituents of nature. Is there a consistent theory of elementary higher
dimensional objects such as strings or membranes, this direction of research is
developed under the name of string theory. It has led to much more satisfactory
theory of gravity. It has success, faces many challenges not least of which is the
present lack of experimental evidence and has a touch of magic. This magic has
had already a significant impact on Mathematical Physics.
• The never satiated desire for simplicity may suggest to remove even the concept
of a point particle which propagates in space time and for that matter to remove
even the concept of space time. The idea is that space time is but an emergent,
long distance, phenomena. The search for “true” underlying picture is still on.
• The quest for knowledge includes a succession of Copernican like revolutions.
After each such step the researcher finds herself even further removed from the
Center. A possible prospect for such a revolution is that our universe is but one
of many universes. The idea emerges in quite a few contexts not necessarily
unrelated. These include the many world interpretation of quantum mechanics,
third quantization in quantum gravity, the mutliverse in models for inflation and
in string theory. In string theory the idea has been refined in the brane world
picture, our universe reflects an underlying structure in which different particles
reside on different multi dimensional subspaces.
• In the process of quantization it was assumed that the space coordinates
commute with each other as do their conjugate momenta. Mathematically one
may construct noncommutative manifolds, manifolds whose coordinates do not
commute. This had led to the study of physics on such manifolds. This an the
E. Rabinovici
• It seems very likely in 2007 that eventually the neutrino masses will be added
without caveats to the pantheon of particles, the particle data tables. Some TPs
point to new physics at a rather high mass scale as the origin of small neutrino
masses.
It is interesting that very few of the theoretical ideas and visions used to the
address the ample set of problems mentioned above were originally created directly
for that purpose. They were more tools whose applications were found only well
after they were formed.
The theoretical structures discovered and created where an outcome of an urge
to question, generalize and unify almost anything.
• In addition to the attempts to unify all symmetries and considering extra
dimensions it was suggested that the topology of the extra dimensions may
determine the low mass particle spectrum. These extra dimensions were assumed
for year to be small but it turned out they could also be large, leading to theories in
which large extra dimensions play a key role. A variant of this idea is that there
exists a hidden sector where many desired things occur, SUSY is broken, the
cosmological constant is (nearly) cancelled to name some. These effects are then
communicated to the Standard Model particles by messengers. In many cases the
weak gravitational force is designated that role.
• A natural direction of generalization is to question the point particle nature of
the basic constituents of nature. Is there a consistent theory of elementary higher
dimensional objects such as strings or membranes, this direction of research is
developed under the name of string theory. It has led to much more satisfactory
theory of gravity. It has success, faces many challenges not least of which is the
present lack of experimental evidence and has a touch of magic. This magic has
had already a significant impact on Mathematical Physics.
• The never satiated desire for simplicity may suggest to remove even the concept
of a point particle which propagates in space time and for that matter to remove
even the concept of space time. The idea is that space time is but an emergent,
long distance, phenomena. The search for “true” underlying picture is still on.
• The quest for knowledge includes a succession of Copernican like revolutions.
After each such step the researcher finds herself even further removed from the
Center. A possible prospect for such a revolution is that our universe is but one
of many universes. The idea emerges in quite a few contexts not necessarily
unrelated. These include the many world interpretation of quantum mechanics,
third quantization in quantum gravity, the mutliverse in models for inflation and
in string theory. In string theory the idea has been refined in the brane world
picture, our universe reflects an underlying structure in which different particles
reside on different multi dimensional subspaces.
• In the process of quantization it was assumed that the space coordinates
commute with each other as do their conjugate momenta. Mathematically one
may construct noncommutative manifolds, manifolds whose coordinates do not
commute. This had led to the study of physics on such manifolds. This an the