Epstein Secrets

determined by phenomena that lie well beneath the surface of our experience—phenomena that don't rely in any way upon our existence. In this sense, Einstein was wrong: "God" does appear to play dice with the universe, or universes. So far we have been lucky. But like playing at the craps table, our luck

ot implemented. Novel ideas generally stagnate and die without the courage to implement them. I bring this up here because perhaps the true mark of Einstein's ge- nius was not his mathematical prowess (although, contrary to conven- tional wisdom, he was mathematically talented), but his creativity and hi

this subject? —Martin Rees, author of Just Six Numbers "It is an exhilarating experience to be led through this fascinating story, from Galileo to the Standard Model and the Higgs boson and beyond, with lucid detail and insight, illuminating vividly not only the achieve- ments themselves but also the joy of creat

hrough Newton's discovery of the laws of motion, through the experimental and theoretical investigations of the nature of electromagnetism, through Einstein's unification of space and time, through the discoveries of the nucleus, quantum mechanics, protons, neutrons, and the discovery of the weak and st

romagnetic wave whose speed could be calculated from first principles, and lo and behold, the prediction was equal to the mea- sured speed of light. Einstein's unification of space and time predicted that clocks would slow for moving observers, and lo and behold, they do, and in just the way he predicted

ne wanted to talk about the details in public. 2P_GrealetaleryEverTold_AC.indd 254 12/16116 3:06 PIA EFTA00286176 Spanking the Vacuum 255 That the Standard Model didn't fix in advance many of the details of the Higgs sector didn't dissuade many theorists from proposing models that "predicted" the Higgs mass

§0,(x) where 122 = 1 + 2e4)t./All, (2) is the conformal factor and Alp is the reduced Planck mass. By doing so, one passes from the Jordan to the Einstein frame. The scalar potential in the new frame becomes V (h) Am 4 (1 + ) 2 (3) where we have written et = h2/ 2. At large field values, h > Mp/

erved values, MH 125 GeV and Mt :4 173 GeV, the coupling runs neg- ative at h 107° — 1012 GeV; this is the well-known vacuum stability problem of the Standard Model [26]. Successful HI requires an O(2e) deviation from central values toward either larger Higgs boson mass or smaller top quark mass. Gauge depende

li,„(s) where D2 = 1 + 2e(}141/4/1, (2) is the conformal factor and My is the reduced Planck mass. By doing so. one passes from the Jordan to the Einstein frame. The scalar potential in the new frame becomes V(h) 2 (3) 4 (1 + where we have written 4.147, = h2/ 2. At large field values. h > ii/p/V

bserved values, 125 GeV and Mt xr. 173 GeV, the coupling runs neg- ative at h ot 101° —1012 GeV; this is the well-known vacuum stability problem of the Standard Model [26). Successful HI requires an O(2o) deviation from central values toward either larger Higgs boson mass or smaller top quark mass. Gauge depende