Frank Wilczek - Standard Quotes

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Sam Treiman... has quoted something he called Treiman's theorem... Impossible things usually don't happen.... With the discovery of radioactivity... it suddenly became apparent that the "impossible" was happening all the time. Uranium, thorium, radium... fit all the requirements of chemical elements. They could not be broken down by any of the standard methods... But occasionally... atoms of these elements spontaneously changed into other kinds of atoms.... So what is left of the doctrine of the elements? Is alchemy reinstated? Not at all. The point is that the doctrine fails only under rare or special conditions.... We can isolate the conditions in which they do, and retain a more restricted but still useful concept of the "impossible."

Frank Wilczek
The phase transition paradigm: The standard model of fundamental physics incorporates, as one of its foundational principles, the idea that empty space or vacuum can exist in different phases, typically associated with different amounts of symmetry. Moreover, the laws of the standard model itself suggest that phase transitions will occur, as functions of temperature. Extensions of the standard model to build in higher symmetry (gauge unification or especially supersymmetry) can support effective vacua with radically different properties, separated by great distance or by domain walls. That would be a form of failure of universality, in our sense, whose existence is suggested by the standard model.

Frank Wilczek
To put it crudely, theorists can be tempted to think along the lines If people as clever as us haven't explained it, that's because it can't be explained – it's just an accident. I believe there are at least two important regularities among standard model parameters that do have deeper explanations, namely the unification of couplings and the smallness of the QCD θ parameter. There may well be others.

Frank Wilczek
A common habit of thought... is the idea that space is [a] simple receptacle in which bodies move around, with no two bodies present at the same point.... In modern quantum physics generally, and in the standard model of fundamental physics in particular, physical space appears as a far more flexible framework. Many kinds of particles can be present at the same point in space at the same time. Indeed, the primary ingredients of the standard model are not particles at all, but an abundance of quantum fields, each a complex object in itself, and all omnipresent.

Frank Wilczek