Peter Woit: Unification, Spinors, Twistors, String Theory

Prof. Peter Woit discusses string theory, its decline, and introduces his graviweak unification theory using Euclidean twistor in Euclidean spacetime. TIMESTAMPS: - 00:00:00 Introduction - 00:00:00 String theory’s fundamental issues | Mathematicians’ challenges - 00:02:20 Spacetime and twistor theory insights - 00:20:00 Bundles & diffeomorphism groups - 00:38:34 Spinors as a spacetime point - 00:46:57 Dominance of string theory & Ed Witten’s influence - 00:54:17 Quest for quantum gravity - 01:03:22 String theory’s lack of predictive power - 01:09:33 Machine learning meets theoretical physics - 01:18:56 Personal attacks vs. intellectual debate - 01:24:49 Mathematicians vs. Physicists | Academic silos - 01:37:15 Developing a contrarian view & the origin of ’Not Even Wrong’ - 01:40:54 Langlands & representation theory - 01:48:51 Spacetime is NOT doomed - 01:58:47 Sean Carroll’s crisis in physics (odd responses to criticism) - 02:13:21 Differentiable structures by dimension - 02:26:10 Gravi-weak unification & chirality - 02:32:57 Chern-Simons theory - 02:42:20 Gravity as torsion or curvature - 02:50:07 Category theory in physics - 02:56:43 Defining a fulfilling life - Patreon: (early access to ad-free audio episodes!) - Crypto: - PayPal: - Twitter: - Discord Invite: - iTunes: - Pandora: - Spotify: - Subreddit r/TheoriesOfEverything: - TOE Merch: LINKS MENTIONED: - Not Even Wrong (Peter Woit’s Blog): ~woit/wordpress - Not Even Wrong (Peter Woit’s Book): - Spacetime is Right-Handed (Peter Woit’s Article): ~woit/ | ~woit/wordpress - Podcast w/ Edward Frankel: - The Elegant Universe (Brian Greene): - The Trouble With Physics (Lee Smolin): - Podcast w/ Sabina Hossenfelder on TOE: - Podcast w/ Stephon Alexander Part 1: - Podcast w/ Stephon Alexander Λ Sal Pais: - Podcast w/ Eric Weinstein: - Podcast w/ Stephen Wolfram Part 1: - Podcast w/ Stephen Wolfram Part 2: - Podcast w/ Jonathan Oppenheim: