If our society were sane, rational, advanced, the headlines would be all about scientific and technological progress. The fusion power breakthrough of 2022 by Lawrence Livermore National Lab would still dominate the news. Large corporations would compete to create the first Star Trek replicator (at least for organic matter, food, etc) by advancements in nanofabrication. Politicians would debate R&D topics and strategy, figuring out which path leads to greater broad-sector economic progress.

One can dream. :) Instead, we have a society almost entirely dependent on many kinds of technology, and yet very few understand any of it, nor care to. Wonder how long this trend can persist until some sort of phase transition appears on the horizon.

> Yet the technique employed to make the theory useful — renormalization — repulsed Dirac because he found it mathematically ugly.

Perhaps if he had used quaternion the solution will not be mathematically ugly or can even be beautiful [1].

[1] A quaternion formulation of the Dirac equation:

https://mauritssilvis.nl/research/publications/silvis-rug10....

> Quaternions

I know nothing of physics, but it seems to me that rotation fingerprints are everywhere in physics. Is this just me or is there something more tangible in this remark?