Tuesday, December 4, 2012

Quote of the day: A lost Generation?


" It is easy to estimate the total number of active high-energy theorists. Every day hep-th and hep-ph bring us about thirty new papers. Assuming that on average an active theorist publishes 3-4 papers per year, we get 2500 to 3000 theorists. The majority of them are young theorists in their thirties or early forties. During their careers many of them never worked on any issues beyond supersymmetry-based phenomenology or string theory. Given the crises (or, at least, huge question marks) in these two areas we currently face, there seems to be a serious problem in the community. Usually such times of uncertainty as to the direction of future research offer wide opportunities to young people, in the prime of their careers. To grab these opportunities a certain reorientation and reeducation are apparently needed. Will this happen?" (M. Shifman).
From the paper arXiv:1211.0004v3:
"Reflections and Impressionistic Portrait at the Conference Frontiers Beyond the Standard Model", FTPI, Oct. 2012
M. ShifmanWilliam I. Fine Theoretical Physics Institute, University of Minnesota.

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