The Unnatural Future of Physics

Physicists don't believe in the truth being out there. They want nature to be natural, fit in or have a reason not to.

There's a problem with unnaturalness.

There is a poster child for unnatural. It has never played well with other people, it is weak compared to other things in the universe. The spoon can be lifted against the pull of the Earth's gravity. Nobody knows why. The buzzing quantum probability-speak native to other forces is not the same asGravity's smooth geometry language.

Natural means to be expected and explained. I turned my hair white because I'm older. That's normal. I would feel compelled to support a cause if it turned bright pink.

Despite global-scale efforts using massive machines and master minds, the beast still resists naturalization, which is why physicists are being forced to confront the issue. The Higgs is not very strong. Nobody knows why.

The cure for unnaturalness has been to find a hidden player. One side always pops up when your seesaw isn't balanced. Some theorists think that there is a boulder weighing one side down. Experimentsers know where to look because their calculations are so precise. They confirm the rock's existence eventually.

People sigh of relief. There were cheers and applause. The prize for the best work.

Physicists call it natural if the new thing has to balance perfectly. Naturalizing new citizens is not the same as integrating them with the natives to settle into new conditions. No intervention is possible due to naturalness in physics. It means exactly to a lot of points.

It is hard to imagine that this fix won't keep working, despite the need for such precision. It is possible to find a hidden finger on the scale. As a bonus, physics expands.

Hopes for a repeat were raised by the Higgs. There has been no second chance. No rocks have come up.

To understand what went wrong, I called on a physicist who is somewhat unnatural. He is influenced by hip hop and works with Jaron Lanier, who is a founding scientist of the Universal Hip Hop. He is multilingual and can converse with hostile camps such as string theory and loop quantum gravity.