{"id":13438,"date":"2020-06-02T07:53:01","date_gmt":"2020-06-02T14:53:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/?p=13438"},"modified":"2020-06-06T16:53:28","modified_gmt":"2020-06-06T23:53:28","slug":"the-biggest-ideas-in-the-universe-11-renormalization","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/2020\/06\/02\/the-biggest-ideas-in-the-universe-11-renormalization\/","title":{"rendered":"The Biggest Ideas in the Universe | 11. Renormalization"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The third installment of a little trilogy about the basics of quantum field theory. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/2020\/05\/19\/the-biggest-ideas-in-the-universe-9-fields\/\">First<\/a> we explained free fields, and why they led to particles; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/2020\/05\/26\/the-biggest-ideas-in-the-universe-10-interactions\/\">then<\/a> we added interactions and used Feynman diagrams to calculate them; and today we&#8217;re going to deal with pesky infinities by introducing effective field theories. A wild ride!<\/p>\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed-youtube wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"lyte-wrapper\" title=\"The Biggest Ideas in the Universe | 11. Renormalization\" style=\"width:640px;max-width:100%;margin:5px;\"><div class=\"lyMe\" id=\"WYL_Nm8DRUgmjZc\" itemprop=\"video\" itemscope itemtype=\"https:\/\/schema.org\/VideoObject\"><div><meta itemprop=\"thumbnailUrl\" content=\"https:\/\/i.ytimg.com\/vi\/Nm8DRUgmjZc\/hqdefault.jpg\" \/><meta itemprop=\"embedURL\" content=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Nm8DRUgmjZc\" \/><meta itemprop=\"duration\" content=\"PT1H25M34S\" \/><meta itemprop=\"uploadDate\" content=\"2020-06-02T14:43:56Z\" \/><\/div><div id=\"lyte_Nm8DRUgmjZc\" data-src=\"https:\/\/i.ytimg.com\/vi\/Nm8DRUgmjZc\/hqdefault.jpg\" class=\"pL\"><div class=\"tC\"><div class=\"tT\" itemprop=\"name\">The Biggest Ideas in the Universe | 11. Renormalization<\/div><\/div><div class=\"play\"><\/div><div class=\"ctrl\"><div class=\"Lctrl\"><\/div><div class=\"Rctrl\"><\/div><\/div><\/div><noscript><a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/Nm8DRUgmjZc\" rel=\"nofollow\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.ytimg.com\/vi\/Nm8DRUgmjZc\/0.jpg\" alt=\"The Biggest Ideas in the Universe | 11. Renormalization\" width=\"640\" height=\"340\" \/><br \/>Watch this video on YouTube<\/a><\/noscript><meta itemprop=\"description\" content=\"The Biggest Ideas in the Universe is a series of videos where I talk informally about some of the fundamental concepts that help us understand our natural world. Exceedingly casual, not overly polished, and meant for absolutely everybody. This is Idea #11, &quot;Renormalization.&quot; When you include particles in Feynman diagrams of all possible energies, you often run into infinite results, which are clearly wrong. The modern approach to this problem is to work with &quot;Effective Field Theories,&quot; in which we admit that we only understand physics up to some cutoff energy scale. While enormously successful, this EFT paradigm also runs into issues with the Higgs mass and the cosmological constant. My web page: http:\/\/www.preposterousuniverse.com\/ My YouTube channel: https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/c\/seancarroll Mindscape podcast: http:\/\/www.preposterousuniverse.com\/podcast The Biggest Ideas playlist: https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/playlist?list=PLrxfgDEc2NxZJcWcrxH3jyjUUrJlnoyzX Blog posts for the series: http:\/\/www.preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/category\/biggest-ideas-in-the-universe\/ Background image: https:\/\/art.alphacoders.com\/arts\/view\/74769 #science #physics #ideas #universe #learning #cosmology #philosophy #quantum #fields #effectivefieldtheory #renormalization\"><\/div><\/div><div class=\"lL\" style=\"max-width:100%;width:640px;margin:5px;\"><\/div><figcaption><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And here is the associated Q&amp;A video:<\/p>\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed-youtube wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"lyte-wrapper\" title=\"The Biggest Ideas in the Universe | Q&amp;amp;A 11 - Renormalization\" style=\"width:640px;max-width:100%;margin:5px;\"><div class=\"lyMe\" id=\"WYL_1M0PJAUW9Vg\" itemprop=\"video\" itemscope itemtype=\"https:\/\/schema.org\/VideoObject\"><div><meta itemprop=\"thumbnailUrl\" content=\"https:\/\/i.ytimg.com\/vi\/1M0PJAUW9Vg\/hqdefault.jpg\" \/><meta itemprop=\"embedURL\" content=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/1M0PJAUW9Vg\" \/><meta itemprop=\"duration\" content=\"PT43M17S\" \/><meta itemprop=\"uploadDate\" content=\"2020-06-06T23:52:14Z\" \/><\/div><div id=\"lyte_1M0PJAUW9Vg\" data-src=\"https:\/\/i.ytimg.com\/vi\/1M0PJAUW9Vg\/hqdefault.jpg\" class=\"pL\"><div class=\"tC\"><div class=\"tT\" itemprop=\"name\">The Biggest Ideas in the Universe | Q&amp;A 11 - Renormalization<\/div><\/div><div class=\"play\"><\/div><div class=\"ctrl\"><div class=\"Lctrl\"><\/div><div class=\"Rctrl\"><\/div><\/div><\/div><noscript><a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/1M0PJAUW9Vg\" rel=\"nofollow\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.ytimg.com\/vi\/1M0PJAUW9Vg\/0.jpg\" alt=\"The Biggest Ideas in the Universe | Q&amp;amp;A 11 - Renormalization\" width=\"640\" height=\"340\" \/><br \/>Watch this video on YouTube<\/a><\/noscript><meta itemprop=\"description\" content=\"The Biggest Ideas in the Universe is a series of videos where I talk informally about some of the fundamental concepts that help us understand our natural world. Exceedingly casual, not overly polished, and meant for absolutely everybody. This is the Q&amp;A video associated with Idea #11, &quot;Renormalization.&quot; Mostly it is me trying to say in slightly better ways what I tried to say in the original video. But we also talk a bit about whether virtual particles are real, and whether an effective field theory of gravity can really explain all the data. My web page: http:\/\/www.preposterousuniverse.com\/ My YouTube channel: https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/c\/seancarroll Mindscape podcast: http:\/\/www.preposterousuniverse.com\/podcast The Biggest Ideas playlist: https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/playlist?list=PLrxfgDEc2NxZJcWcrxH3jyjUUrJlnoyzX Blog posts for the series: http:\/\/www.preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/category\/biggest-ideas-in-the-universe\/ Background image: https:\/\/art.alphacoders.com\/arts\/view\/74769 #science #physics #ideas #universe #learning #cosmology #philosophy #quantum #fields #effectivefieldtheory #renormalization\"><\/div><\/div><div class=\"lL\" style=\"max-width:100%;width:640px;margin:5px;\"><\/div><figcaption><\/figcaption><\/figure>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The third installment of a little trilogy about the basics of quantum field theory. First we explained free fields, and why they led to particles; then we added interactions and used Feynman diagrams to calculate them; and today we&#8217;re going to deal with pesky infinities by introducing effective field theories. A wild ride! And here [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[137,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13438","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biggest-ideas-in-the-universe","category-science"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13438","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13438"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13438\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13447,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13438\/revisions\/13447"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}