What I learned as a hired consultant for autodidact physicists | Aeon Ideas

is a research fellow at the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies, with a special interest in the phenomenology of quantum gravity. Her writing has appeared in Forbes, Scientific American, and New Scientist, among others. Her latest book is Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray (2018). Edited byCorey S Powell Brought to you by Curio, an Aeon partner Listen to more Aeon Ideas here Danjo Paluska/Flickr It began after I started as a teaching assistant at the department of physics. The first note was a classic – it proved Albert Einstein wrong. The second one solved the problem of quantum mechanics by dividing several equations through zero, a feat that supposedly explained non-determinism. The next correspondent offered a Theory of Everything, and complained that the academic mainstream was ignoring his insights. I work in theoretical physics, specifically quantum gravity. In my field, we all get them: the emails from amateur physicists who are convinced that they have solved a

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