{"id":22658,"date":"2010-10-12T13:39:25","date_gmt":"2010-10-12T17:39:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=22658"},"modified":"2012-02-29T14:52:06","modified_gmt":"2012-02-29T19:52:06","slug":"hidden-symmetries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2010\/10\/hidden-symmetries\/","title":{"rendered":"Hidden Symmetries"},"content":{"rendered":"

 <\/p>\n

\"<p>Jeremy<\/a>
Jeremy Teitelbaum.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A recent talk at UConn by a Nobel Prize-winning physicist spurs the dean of CLAS to contemplate how adding an extra dimension to a problem can lead to new discoveries.<\/h3>\n

By Jeremy Teitelbaum, Dean<\/a>
\nCollege of Liberal Arts and Sciences<\/a><\/p>\n

On Sept. 24, the Physics Department hosted David Gross<\/a>, director of the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics<\/a> and winner of the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physics<\/a>, for its annual Katzenstein Lecture<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Professor Gross received the Nobel with H. David Politzer and Frank Wilczek for a mathematical approach to explaining how quarks \u2013 one of two fundamental classes of elementary particles in the current \u201cstandard model<\/a>\u201d of particle physics \u2013 are bound together into more familiar nuclear particles like protons and neutrons.<\/p>\n

Here at UConn, Professor Gross looked beyond past achievements, and, in a wide-ranging lecture, talked about what he and other physicists might hope to learn from the Large Hadron Collider<\/a> (LHC) just coming on-line in Switzerland. (One LHC experiment will test a theory of the structure of the proton proposed by UConn scientists Munir Islam and Richard Luddy, as explained in a UConn Today article<\/a> in the spring.)<\/p>\n

\"<p>CLASA baseline expectation for the LHC is to identify a particle known as the \u201cHiggs Boson<\/a>.\u201d The Higgs Boson is a new type of particle that, although theorized by physicists to give mass to all matter in the universe, has not yet been observed. My sense of the search for the Higgs<\/a> is that it would fill in a missing box in the highly elaborated theory \u2013 the standard model \u2013 that accounts for the interactions between matter and light at small distances.<\/p>\n

What really excited Professor Gross, however, was the idea that the LHC might reveal something truly new, and in particular whether it might provide some physical evidence for a family of theories called, collectively, \u201cstring theory.\u201d String theory offers the opportunity to unify the understanding of matter provided by the standard model with Einstein\u2019s General Relativity \u2013 in other words, to explain how gravity fits into quantum mechanics.<\/p>\n

There have been a number of popular books and TV shows<\/a> written about string theory, which has both supporters and skeptics<\/a> in the physics community. Although it is controversial as a physical theory, string theory has been highly influential in pure mathematics, where people simply don\u2019t care about experimental evidence. Indeed, Edward Witten<\/a>, a student of Gross\u2019s and nominally a theoretical physicist, received a Fields Medal<\/a> \u2013 the highest international honor in the field of mathematics \u2013 for his contributions to mathematics derived from research into string theory.<\/p>\n

What I took away from Professor Gross\u2019s talk was his emphasis on the related notions of unification and symmetry. In essence, the discovery of hidden symmetries in nature reveal that phenomena thought to be unrelated are seen instead to be different points of view on a single underlying truth.<\/p>\n

\"<p>Clockwise,<\/a>
A mysterious attraction? Clockwise, left, and counterclockwise inhabitants of Flatland.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Turning this over in my own mind, I thought of Edward Abbott\u2019s famous satirical novel \u201cFlatland<\/a>,\u201d which uses geometry to skewer Victorian mores. Flatland tells the story of a rather stodgy individual named \u201cA Square\u201d who lives in a two-dimensional world. The other inhabitants of Flatland are polygons (triangles, pentagons, and so forth).<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s imagine for a moment that physicists at work in Flatland discover that every individual in the world \u2013 every polygon \u2013 actually carries an additional piece of information. They are \u201coriented,\u201d meaning that each individual actually has a little arrow on his boundary pointing either clockwise or counterclockwise around it. Flatland scientists can distinguish clockwise individuals from counterclockwise ones, perhaps because of very tiny attractive and repulsive forces between like and unlike orientations.<\/p>\n

\"<p>Famous<\/a>
Famous Flatland experiment in which clockwise individual on left is flipped through 'third dimension' and returns with a counterclockwise orientation.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

No matter how the inhabitants of Flatland move around, they cannot change from a clockwise to a counterclockwise orientation. Unscrupulous scientists have even divided individuals in half by cutting through them, only to learn that the two pieces retain the orientation of the original individual.<\/p>\n

When \u201cA Square\u201d has his great insight that there is, in fact, a third dimension, a Flatland physicist makes a startling discovery. By applying tremendous energy to a Flatland inhabitant, he can cause that individual to undergo a reflection through the third dimension and, in the process, reverse his orientation!<\/p>\n

This example may seem trivial, but it shows how adding dimensions to a problem may reveal hidden symmetries.<\/p>\n

As for the spectacular, but esoteric, predictions of string theory \u2013 the jury is out. The LHC is just starting its operations and physicists will need years of analysis just to understand the output.<\/p>\n

My personal fantasy \u2013 for which there is absolutely no justification or hope \u2013 is that the key to faster than light travel will turn up somewhere and we can finally get some serious starships built.<\/p>\n

<\/em><\/p>\n

Comments? Send them to: dean@clas.uconn.edu<\/a><\/p>\n

The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences has 23 departments in the sciences, humanities, and social sciences, ranging from physics to philosophy, and more than 15,000 students, 600 faculty, and 83,000 alumni. Check out our three initiatives: Health and Human Behavior<\/a>, the Environment<\/a>, and <\/em>Culture and Society<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Other CLAS Blog posts:<\/h4>\n

On Not Buying an iPad<\/a><\/p>\n

A Step Closer to Science Fiction?<\/a><\/p>\n

Academic Freedom Meets Freedom of Information<\/a><\/p>\n

Ambition and Intrigue in the Court of Henry VIII<\/a><\/p>\n

A Civil Conversation on Contentious Issues<\/a><\/p>\n

Academically Anchored<\/a><\/p>\n

Meditations on A(nother) Snow Day<\/a><\/p>\n

Coming to Grips with Climate Change<\/a><\/p>\n

Ideas — The Psychological Currency of the University<\/a><\/p>\n

‘Just Hire the Best’?<\/a><\/p>\n

Will ‘Crowdsourcing’ Revolutionize Scholarship?<\/a> Spectacular Storrs<\/a><\/p>\n

Citizenship, Marriage, and Mosques: Problems in the Applied Humanities<\/a><\/p>\n

Of Deans and English Professors<\/a><\/p>\n

The Joys of Jamming<\/a><\/p>\n

Slick Calculations<\/a><\/p>\n

The Road to Agra<\/a><\/p>\n

UConn Over Yale and Other Tales from Jim Draper \u201941<\/a><\/p>\n

The Amazon, Avatar, and Smallpox<\/a><\/p>\n

The Value of Curiosity<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The dean of CLAS muses on how adding an extra dimension to a problem can lead to new discoveries.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":40,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[66],"class_list":["post-22658","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-14 00:09:53","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22658","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/40"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22658"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22658\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55742,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22658\/revisions\/55742"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22658"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22658"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22658"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=22658"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=22658"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}