Related papers: Is nature natural?
A general overview of neutrino physics is given, starting with a historical account of the development of our understanding of neutrinos and how they helped to unravel the structure of the Standard Model. We discuss why it is so important…
With unprecedented advances in genetic engineering we are starting to see progressively more original examples of synthetic life. As such organisms become more common it is desirable to be able to distinguish between natural and artificial…
With the Higgs boson discovery and no new physics found at the LHC, confidence in Naturalness as a guiding principle for particle physics is under increased pressure. We wait to see if it proves its mettle in the LHC upgrades ahead, and…
I briefly review the conceptual developments that led to the Standard Model and discuss some of its remarkable qualitative features. On the way, I draw attention to several puzzling aspects that are beyond the reach of our present…
We consider the class of physical theories whose dynamics are given by natural equations, which are partial differential equations determined by a functor from the category of n-manifolds, for some n, to the category of fiber bundles,…
We discuss the anthropic principle and its implications for our existence and the physical laws which govern the universe. Several amazing coincidences which provide conditions necessary for creation of life suggest that the "laws of…
It is a well-known empirical phenomenon that natural axiomatic theories are pre-well-ordered by consistency strength. Without a precise mathematical definition of "natural," it is unclear how to study this phenomenon mathematically. We will…
We show that anthropic selection emerges inevitably in the general framework for prediction in quantum cosmology. There the predictions of anthropic reasoning depend on the prior implied by the universe's quantum state. To illustrate this…
Various aspects of physics beyond the Standard Model are discussed from the perspective of the fantastic phenomenological success of the Standard Model, its simplicity and predictive power
The simplest theories often have much merit and many limitations, and in this vein, the value of Neutral Theory (NT) has been the subject of much debate over the past 15 years. NT was proposed at the turn of the century by Stephen Hubbell…
We consider the bounds imposed by naturalness on the masses of superpartners for arbitrary points in nonminimal supersymmetric extensions of the standard model and for arbitrary messenger scales. This constitutes a significant…
Established idea-sets don't update seamlessly. The tension between new and old views of nature is e.g. documented in Galileo's dialogs and now present in many fields. However the science of Bayesian model-selection has made recent strides…
The observation of the nature and world represents the main source of human knowledge on the basis of our reason. At the present it is also the use of precise measurement approaches, which may contribute significantly to the knowledge of…
Genetic information and environmental factors determine the path of an individuals life and therefore, the evolution of its entire species. We have succeeded in proposing and studying a model that captures this idea. In our model, a…
We demonstrate that many Naturalness tests of particle theories discussed in the literature can be reformulated as straightforward algorithmic finetuning assessments in the matching of Wilsonian effective theories above and below particle…
We recall the many obstacles which seemed, long ago, to prevent supersymmetry from possibly being a fundamental symmetry of Nature. We also present their solutions, leading to the construction of the supersymmetric extensions of the…
With a view to connecting random mutation on the molecular level to punctuated equilibrium behavior on the phenotype level, we propose a new model for biological evolution, which incorporates random mutation and natural selection. In this…
QCD sheds considerable light on several of the most basic features of the natural world including the origin of mass, the feebleness of gravity, the extent to which the properties of matter can be determined conceptually, the possible…
In this article, it is shown specifically that natural system chance events as represented by theory predicted (a priori) probabilistic statements used in such realms as modern particle physics, among others, are only random relative to the…
Here I briefly discuss why supersymmetry is considered a leading candidate of physics beyond the standard model. I also highlight the salient features of different supersymmetry breaking models. A few other symmetries, broken or intact,…