Physikalisches Kolloquium

June 11, 2019 at 4 p.m. c.t. in HS KPH

Prof. Dr. Friederike Schmid
Institut für Physik
friederike.schmid@uni-mainz.de

Prof. Dr. Concettina Sfienti
Institut für Kernphysik
sfienti@uni-mainz.de

How Beauty Leads Physics Astray
Dr. Sabine Hossenfelder (FIAS Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies)


To develop fundamentally new laws of nature, theoretical physicists often rely on arguments from beauty. Simplicity and naturalness in particular have been strongly influential guides in the foundations of physics ever since the development of the standard model of particle physics. In this lecture I argue that arguments from beauty have led the field into a dead end and discuss what can be done about it.