Matt Strassler

Matt James Strassler (born December 1966) is an American theoretical physicist and science communicator. In 2007 he was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society. Quotes What physics explains the enormous disparity between the gravitational scale and the typical mass scale of the elementary particles? Problems for the Next Millennium, Strings, July 10-15, 2000, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor https://theory.caltech.edu/~preskill/millennium.html ... there's an argument that the Standard Model plus gravity is all there is, and the Hierarchy problem naturalness argument has nothing to do with nature. And that argument is that the properties of the world, the properties of particle physics in particular, are determined partly ... largely? ... by a selection bias. A Metacrisis in Particle Physics Naturalness On the Brink by Matt Strassler IPhT-TV March 7, 2017 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kug0XuXG2dQ&t=2611 (quote at 43:31 of 1:05:51 in video) ... a very special type of falsehood common in explanations of physics for nonexperts ... a physics fib or, more simply, a phib.Phibs are often found in articles and books about the universe. They arise when well-intentioned physicists, faced with a nonexpert's question, are trying to concoct a short, memorable tale to serve as a compromise between giving no answer at all and giving a correct but incomprehensible one. Overture https://books.google.com/books?id=91fJEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q=phibs%20are%20often%20found%20in%20articles&f=false Waves in an Impossible Sea: How Everyday Life Emerges from the Cosmic Ocean 2024 154160329X ... Are we thinking about the Higgs field wrong? Are we thinking about quantum field theory wrong? Are there particles at the Large Hadron Collider that are hiding from us? ... It's true that the Large Hadron Collider has vast data sets. And when you have a gigantic amount of data, if you don't ask exactly the right question, you might not see what's actually in there. So, we have to be very thoughtful about all the different questions that we should ask of this data. Matthew Strassler, "Waves in an Impossible Sea: How Everyday Life Emerges from the Cosmic Ocean" June 14, 2024 Harvard Science Book Talks and Research Lectures, YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1hkTqqUz0g&t=2805s (quote at 46:45 of 1:01:10 in video) External links Category:Academics from the United States Category:Physicists from the United States Category:1966 births Category:Living people Category:Princeton University alumni Category:University of Pennsylvania faculty Category:Stanford University alumni Category:Harvard University faculty