[Brahms-l] Fw: comments on rhic physics

Dear All
I received the following message from Rob Pisarski; It is stated to be an
open letter to the community
so I assume that other experiments have also received this. As you can see
it is highly critical of the
theory efforts, even though I found the talk he refers to less so.

enjoy
flemming

----------------------------------------------------------------
Flemming Videbaek
Physics Department
Brookhaven National Laboratory

Subject: comments


>
>
> Dear Fleming:
>
> I now that you are very busy, so please do not worry about
> responding to this email, which is to be treated as an open letter
> to the community.
>
> I am sorry that i missed the meeting at RIKEN/BNL last
> weekend.  While I am on sabbatical in Copenhagen, I would have gone if
> I had known in time.
>
> However, I am certain that you, and the other
> RHIC experimentalists, appreciate how utterly astonishing the quality and
> beauty of your data is.  It is so much more fantastic than any of
> us ever had reason to hope.  Truly amazing.
>
> And how at present, the theory is so
> completely and totally inadequate.  A collections of theories,
> each of which explain only one aspect of the data, and yet which are
> in obvious mutual contradiction, cannot be the goal.  The way there, yes.
> But the goal?
>
> There are many fields of profound interest in which
> experiment hopscotches over theory.  For example, high-Tc
superconductivity.
> That does not make the theory less interesting, but more so.
>
> I understand the political imperatives in communicating to
> fundaing agencies, and the community as a whole, the truly wonderful
> job which the RHIC experimentalists have done.  For example, I have
> a colloquium which I have given several times, see
>
> http://quark.phy.bnl.gov/~pisarski/talks.html
>
> under "Chasing the Unicorn, RHIC and the QGP".  Despite the title,
> I conclude not that the Unicorn, a.k.a. the QGP,
> has been found, but that "gluon stuff" has, slide 1.
> And that, say from HBT, it is not the beast we expected to find,, slide
44.
>
> Indeed, I gave the talk at NIKHEF, with Veltman in the audience.
> Even he had to admit, grudgingly, that there is something there.
> (Characteristically, he also asked what can one do with precision,
> an excellent question indeed.)
>
> Veltman is also responsible for the metaphor on slide 12, that
> in the hunt for the Unicorn, that the experimentalists are Hunters, and
that
>
> "All theorists are Dogs."
>
> I hope that while the Hunters may follow the Dogs, that they
> do not always listen to their incessant yapping.
>
> Otherwise, there is no reason for those of us, who are fervently
> trying to do something which truly links fundamental field theory with
> experiment, to bother.  The young Dogs, of whom there are far too few
> to begin with, will go sniffing about elsewhere.
>
> The last slide may also amuse you.
>
> Yours, Rob.
>
> R. D. Pisarski, pisarski@quark.phy.bnl.gov
> (+45) 35.32.53.59; fax 35.32.50.16.  http://quark.phy.bnl.gov/~pisarski
> Niels Bohr Institute, Blegdamsvej 17, DK-2100 Copenhagen 0, Denmark.
>


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