在李淼老师的blog上看到过 Xiao-Gang Wen 教授 的留言。前几天，Sean 在一个帖子里说起 Foundational Questions Rewards。查看一下，发现 Xiao-Gang Wen 教授是得奖者之一。他的课题的名字叫：Microscopic Origin of Gravity and Light. Summary 如下：

Light and gravity are first two natural phenomena appreciated by human even before human civilization. In modern science, we find light and gravity to have rich and mysterious internal structures. It is a dream for physicists to have a unified understanding of light and gravity. We like to understand the origin of their wonderful internal structures. Recently, it was shown that if particles organize into network of strings and the strings, in turn, form a quantum liquid (called string-net condensed state), then light can emerge naturally as collective motions of such organized particles. In this proposal, we plan to find a new organization of particles, such that collective motions of newly organized particles correspond to gravitational waves. If successful, the particle system that we find will correspond to a quantum theory of gravity. It will solve the long-standing problem of putting gravity and quantum mechanics together. The particle system, in principle, can be realized in magnetic materials and/or ultra-cold atomic systems. Thus the effects of quantum gravity as represented by the organized particles can be explored in those condensed matter systems.

The newly organized particles represent new states of matter. The defects (the excitations) in those states may correspond to black holes and charges of the emergent gravity and the emergent electricity.

因为不了解这个领域，所以不能评论什么，但是我也算是凝聚态物理出身的（不过是实验的，不过叫固体物理），能明白其中的美妙之处。最近注意到不少激光与真空相互作用的文章，现在光又可看作 collective motions of network of strings，那么光经过真空，是否就像声波经过凝聚态物质一样？

Xiao-Gang Wen 教授主页上有不少报告的 pdf，感兴趣的话很值得一读。他有一本新书，叫 Quantum Field Theory of Many-Body Systems —from the Origin of Sound to an Origin of Light and Electrons，好像中文版也已经有了。Introduction 这一章可以网上阅读，Preface 中有这么一段：

As mathematical formalisms become more and more beautiful, it is increasingly easy to be trapped by the formalism and to become a ‘slave’ to the formalism. We used to be ‘slaves’ to Newton’s laws when we regarded everything as a collection of particles. After the discovery of quantum theory, we become ‘slaves’ to quantum field theory. At the moment, we want to use quantum field theory to explain everything and our education does not encourage us to look beyond quantum field theory.

However, to make revolutionary advances in physics, we cannot allow our imagination to be trapped by the formalism. We cannot allow the formalism to define the boundary of our imagination. The mathematical formalism is simply a tool or a language that allows us to describe and communicate our imagination. Sometimes, when you have a new idea or a new thought, you might find that you cannot say anything. Whatever you say is wrong because the proper mathematics or the proper language with which to describe the new idea or the new thought have yet to be invented. Indeed, really new physical ideas usually require a new mathematical formalism with which to describe them. This reminds me of a story about a tribe. The tribe only has four words for counting: one, two, three, and many-many. Imagine that a tribe member has an idea about two apples plus two apples and three apples plus three apples. He will have a hard time explaining his theory to other tribe members. This should be your feeling when you have a truly new idea.

这一段其实是这个帖子的重点，很好的 blog 资。：）这无疑是正确的，但是民科们估计也喜欢这个论调。还是那句老话，只有掌握了之后，再超越它，才能让别人信服，让自己宽心。