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Murray Gell-Mann - A revolution in physics? (164/200)

4,743 views · Published 11 May 2016 · 1:25 · Indexed 6 November 2026

Channel: Web of Stories - Life Stories of Remarkable People · 2016 · Science & Technology

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New York-born physicist Murray Gell-Mann (1929-2019) was a theoretical physicist. His considerable contributions to physics include the theory of quantum chromodynamics. He was awarded the 1969 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on the theory of elementary particles. [Listener: Geoffrey West; date recorded: 1997]

TRANSCRIPT: [GW] Among some of the leading practitioners, Witten, Susskind, and so on, there is this vision that 'a revolution has taken place that is bigger than quantum mechanics', quote…

What is the revolution?

[GW] Whatever M-theory is, is somehow going to be bigger than quantum mechanics. That it’s going to change even the basics of fundamental physics. Have you been involved in, paid any attention to this?

Well, there is some sense in which the co-ordinate operators for the target space are represented by non-commuting quantities, matrices. Now you can still define commuting quantities which also enter, but there are non-commuting quantities that enter, and so on and so forth. So there're many very interesting features which will surely lead to a lot of re-formulations of... and possible interpretations... of fundamental theory, but I don't know what they mean by ‘bigger than quantum mechanics’; I don't understand that. Could be though that when that theory is clarified and… it will help with the clarification of the interpretation of quantum mechanics. That's conceivable. I don't quite see how, but it might happen.

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