John Moffat on Modified Gravity, Theories of Everything, and meeting Schrödinger

These interviews can be extremely technically dense at times but I'm not willing to sacrifice depth, nor my personal engrossment, for views.

The latter half of this video is primarily for posterity and I think you'll find it intriguiging only if you care about the history of physics around the time of Einstein, Dirac, and Feynman, which is why I put the answers to the more contemporary questions up front. John Moffat is an 88 year old luminary, which means there's a tendency to drone / ramble, since he doesn't perform much public speaking. But the content is there. Enjoy. - Curt

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0:00:00 On "Modified Gravity" (or MOG) and how new theories are born 0:24:58 Does MOG agree with the data? 0:29:53 Black holes are characterized by "mass, spin, and alpha" not "mass, spin, and charge" 0:32:49 His thoughts on current Theories of Everything, including Weinstien's and Wolfram's 0:34:56 The problem with quantum gravity 0:43:16 Modifying Quantum Field Theory and Moffat's method for learning 0:55:27 The advent of the Higgs, due to the non-renormalizability of SU(2) x U(1) 1:00:16 The Higgs is needed for unitarity, not renormalizing (in Moffat's theory) 1:04:54 On the Arrow of Time 1:06:44 When Moffat met Feynman (brief story) 1:07:36 Why modifying gravity is so difficult, apart from quantum gravity 1:10:58 What Moffat is currently working on 1:12:01 Non-technical books Moffat has written, explaining all his theories 1:14:04 Black hole singularity points often being dependent on coordinate choice 1:18:55 Moffat's start in math and physics from a painter with PTSD who had no previous predilection for mathematics 1:30:16 The history of Einstein's first attempts at a Theory of Everything (or Unified Field Theory) 1:41:04 Bohr and Schrödinger hating on Einstein 1:52:17 Attending Dirac's course 2:02:44 Some love for Prof. Brian Keating from Moffat

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