B) Thanks so much for posting, I had skimmed a few of these articles but didn't realize it was part of a cohesive series. For others, since it's not really obvious at first: the whole series is built to setup the three articles at the bottom, where Charlie Wood examines three competing research groups. Quanta is on fire these days... This is an amazing evolution upon 2020's What is a Particle?, which is an article I've been bringing up in like every other conversation b/c it's so fascinating and accessible.
C) Other than the initial complaints about the intro, the article itself is downright groundbreaking webdev-wise. And I called it when I started this comment -- the rest is additive!
The way the text deforms around the sliding divs (but quick enough that it probably won't interrupt you since you haven't gotten to it yet) is just beautiful, I don't think I've seen that before. The dynamic, freeform cutouts fit perfectly with the theme, and the background is bold (how many sites are purple??) but indescribably perfect. Of course, the star of the show is the animated "thought experiment" page, even if the transitions are atomic (can't be reversed halfway through by scrolling back up). And the final summary + animation is worth scrolling to the bottom for, even if you don't read the rest of it.
Well done Quanta web team, you're seriously raising the bar with this article, IMHO. Inspiring stuff. Is there any magazine ~~article~~ "series" (issue?) that even approaches the beauty and cohesiveness of this one? I'd love to proven wrong by the experts on here ;)
[ETA: wow everyone hates the UX, I'm shocked. Why, in particular...? At the end of the day the linked page is just a list of links that appears right near the top, I don't understand the ubiquitous hate! What am I missing?]
D) I'm pretty far from critically evaluating the physics surveys themselves, but I certainly found them helpful. Some quotes that are just insanely insightful, the kind of simple, boring statements that edge on superstition through their pure profundity alone:
In periods when we are looking for new theories, physics has always become philosophical.
Our natural perspective as beings with locations separated by space sticks out as a mathematical oddity. “It’s a reminder that the laws of physics that we perceive in our world don’t seem to be random,” said Sean Carroll (opens a new tab), a physicist at Johns Hopkins University. “They seem to be specific.”
“AdS/CFT is an insane suggestion that should be stupid,” said Geoff Penington, a physicist at the University of California, Berkeley who studies holography. “But then you try all these things, and it all ends up being consistent.”
For his part, he feels that holography isn’t radical enough. It shows how one dimension of space could emerge, but otherwise all the familiar ingredients of quantum theory are there from the start: some space, locality, and a clock to mark time. Arkani-Hamed feels that all of those elements should emerge together from something more primitive — as they do in surfaceology.
It might seem like I’m interested in lots of different things, but I’m not sure if they’re really all that disconnected. At least within math, it is kind of true that sufficiently beautiful things tend to be connected with one another.
So the key to black holes’ underlying structure exists on their surface. “People began to think,” Law said, “that maybe whatever microscopic theory describes black holes lives in a space-time with one lower dimension.”
Sorry for the spam, won't mind if this is deleted -- it's just terribly helpful to write as I go. If you're scrolling by, I highly recommend bookmarking this series in full! And if you work at Quanta and are reading this: you're awesome.