String Theory a Disaster for Physics?

BlueCup writes "Mathematician Peter Woit of Columbia University describes string theory in his book Not Even Wrong,. He calls the theory 'a disaster for physics.' Which would have been a fringe opinion a few years ago, but now, after years of string theory books reaching the best sellers list, he has company."

Man...

[bcat24]

Some people really get tied in a knot about stuff like this.

Re:Man...

[Tx]

Yeah, it feels like these scientists are just stringing us along.

They should have

[Anonymous Coward]

asked a ninja [youtube.com].

Re:Man...

[Bruce Perens]

I get a hadron just thinking about it.

The simple answer is...

[manx801]

There exists a universe in which major advances in Phyics would have been made if so many smart scientists were not distracted by String Theory.

Re:Wait, what?

[__aaanwh8370]

Unfortunately, this proof only holds true for certain values of good.

Re:Man...

[Surt]

We recently hired someone who worked at the LHC, and the company email that went out (small company announces all new hires) made that very obvious misspelling. Much hilarity ensued.

Re:the universe

[OakDragon]

The secret combination to the universe is the same as the combination to my briefcase.

Re:A Powerful Theory

[ZombieWomble]

Does string theory explain how its own effects are able to reach back in time a decade before its creation?

Rather elegantly, in fact, by postulating the existance of a universe where "took off" is not a synonym for "created".

Re:Man...

[cgenman]

What a charmingly strange thing to say.

Re: The simple answer is...

[Black Parrot]

> There exists a universe in which major advances in Phyics would have been made if so many smart scientists were not distracted by String Theory.

Of course, there also exists a universe in which string theory is correct.

Not just a disaster for physics.....

[SubliminalVortex]

...but also turned out to be a disaster for productivity at work recently. Two developers engaged in a battle of semantics as to whether or not M-theory was actually string theory or a unification of same. Almost an hour later, people had a concern that someone may end up being stabbed in the face; the argument, however, was cut short later when a concerned manager dealt with the high-strung arm-chair physicists.

Two hours later, the local protagonist "pulled their strings" sublimely bringing up the subject in the midst of those two persons and subsequently, another shouting match ensued. At one point, the intellectual conversation had almost degraded into a volley of "momma" jokes. By the end of the day, neither developer realized how close they were to being "strung up" by the rest of the team.

What we should look at

[Upright Ape]

Acording to general relativity there is a link between time and gravity, Hawkins always talked about it, with his Black Hole discoveries. It is Known now that Galaxies are not only moving away from each other as Hubble discovered with Red shift, but they are accelerating, acording to classical physics a force must be acting on them to do so, Now here's the neat part, With General Relativity as gravity gets weaker, Time speads up, it would make sense that because there is no mass we can see outside of galaxies, time has spead up there, and possibly caused a reversal of gravity, because it would make sense that anti gravity comes from accelerated time which comes from the absence of mass...If time is accelerated out there because of the absense of mass it would cause the force that makes galaxies accelerate away from each other. You can prove that gravity is the same as a magnetic field by putting a hyper sensitive clock by either a high powered electromagnetic field or a large mass such as earth and use space as a control, for both nearby clocks will go slower next to the earth and next to the magnetic field. The dimensionality of the fields thus must be studied to find the geometric flow of this one force, take a sphere magnet into deap space and fire it out of a gun so only one force is acting on it, and have it hit a target, it will always hit at the equater of it's fields neither North Nor South will hit the target just the equater, because of the dimensionality of it's reaction with one force, this force that was the gun now represents gravity and in this experiment it isolates the electromagnetic force and it's dimensional reaction to only one single force; gravity, in this model all the forces can be geometricly aligned, and you have 21st century tech. Zukunft.

Re:Gravitons

[fimbulvetr]

A little coaxing of the numbers, and string theory could prove the existance of Santa Clause, the Easter Bunny and Jesus.
BFD.

Re:String Theory

[SetupWeasel]

Or how about that Bananarama cassette without a case? We really scored big on that one!

Re:Man...

[snuf23]

Ack, it makes my brane hurt.

Re:Man...

[thrillseeker]

Seemed a little off color (anti-color?)

Trust

[Oligonicella]

Never trust anyone who makes up dimensions to make the math work.

Re:Gravitons

[snuf23]

Wait a second... you're saying the Easter Bunny isn't real?

*cry*

Re:String Theory

[thrillseeker]

Now you're Really Saying Something.

New Hollywood Movie: All Tied Up & Strung Alon

[22RealMcCoy]

http://physicsmathforums.com/showthread.php?t=56 [physicsmathforums.com]

Tied Up & Strung Out: Hollywood String Theory Movie!!! Looking For Extras!!!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

ALL TIED UP & STRUNG ALONG, a movie about String Theorists and their expansive theories which extend human ignorance, pomposity, and frailty into higher dimensions, is set to start filming this fall. Jessica Alba, John Cleese, Eugene Levie, Jackie Chan, and David Duchovney of X-files fame have all signed on to the $700 million Hollywood project, which is still cheaper than String Theory itself, and will likely displace less physicists from the academy.

"As contemporary physics is about money, hype, mythology, and chicks," Ed Witten explained from his offices at the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study, "The next logical step was Hollywood, although I thought Burt Reynolds should play me instead of Eugene Levy."

Brian Greene, the famous String Theorist who will be played by David "the truth is out there" Duchovney, explained the plot: "String theory's muddled, contorted theories that lack postulates, laws, and experimentally-verified equations have Einstein spinning so fast in his grave that it creates a black hole. In order to save the world, we String Theorists have to stop reformulating String Theory faster than the speed of light. We are called upon to stop violating the conservation of energy by mining higher dimensions to publish more BS than can accounted for with the Big Bang alone, and I win the Nobel prize for showing that M-Theory is in fact the dark matter it has been searching for."

Greene continues: "At first my character is reluctant to stop theorizing and start postulating, but when my love interest Jessica Alba is sucked into the black hole, I search my soul and find Paul Davies there, played by John Cleese. I ask him what he's doing in my soul, and he explains that the answer is contained in the mind of God, which only he is privy too, but for a small fee, some tax and tuition dollars, a couple grants here and there, and an all-expense-paid book tour with stops in Zurich and Honolulu, he can let me in on it. And he shows me God in all her greater glory, as he points out that we can make more money in Hollywood than writing coffee-table books that recycle Einstein, Bohr, Dirac, Feynman, and Wheeler. I am quickly converted, and I agree to turn my back on String Theory's hoax and save Jessica Alba."

But it's not that easy, as standing in Greene's way is Michio "king of pop-theory-hipster-irony-the-theory-of-everything- or-anything-made-
you-read-this" Kaku, played by Jackie Chan. Kaku beats the crap out of Greene for alomst blowing the "ironic" pretense his salary, benefits, and all-expense paid trips depend on. "WE MUST HOLD BACK THE YOUNG SCIENTISTS WITH OUR NON-THEORIES!! WE MUST FILL THE ACADEMY WITH THE POMO DARK MATTER THAT IS STRING THEORY TO KEEP OUR UNIVERSE FROM FLYING APART, OUR PYRAMID SCHEMES FROM TOPPLING, AND OUR PERPETUAL-MOTION NSF MONEY MACHINE FROM STOPPING!!" Kaku argues as he delivers a flying back-kick, "There can be ony ONE! I WILL be String Theory's GODFATHER as referenced on my web page!! I have better hair!"

But Greene fights back as he signs his seventeenth book deal to make the hand-waving incoherence of String Theory accessible to the South Park generation, senior citizens, and starving chirldren around the world. "Kaku! Kaku! (pronounced Ka-Kaw! Ka-Kaw! like Owen Wilson did in Bottle Rocket)," Greene shouts. "It is theoretically impossible to build a coffee tables strong enough to support any more coffee-table physics books!!!"

"Time travel is also theoretically impossible, but there's a helluva lot more money for us in flushing physics down a wormhole. Nobody knows what the #&#%&$ M stands for in M theory ya hand-waving, TV-hogging crank!!! Get it?? Ha Ha Ha! We're laughing at the public! We're the insider pomo hipsters! Get with the gangsta-wanksta-pranksta CRANKSTER

Re:Man...

[Anonymous Coward]

My large boson is just begging to interact with your hadron, big boy... I hope you have a nice flavour...

Re:Sounds like it's time..

[Ohreally_factor]

Have you had a chance to explore noodle theory?

Re: I'd call this a 'debate', but....

[Black Parrot]

> ... not when one side, his own, acts of the panties are in a wad.

Hmmm... panties are a sort of two-dimensional string, wadded up in a higher-dimensional space.

Maybe we can explain the universe with panty-wad theory.

Re:Gravitons

[gyrogeerloose]

Santa Clause?

That would be the Christmas attorney, I suppose?

Re:the universe

[Cheapy]

No no no, I've seen this before. It's "12345".

Re:String Theory

[Stalyn]

Sounds like a cut-n-run philosophy. I think it's better to stay-the-course with String Theory.

Re:Kaku is a self-promoting hack. QWZX

[Anonymous Coward]

Lisa Randall is 10x the physicist of Kaku, if not moreso.

That's all well and good, but more importantly, is she hot?

Let's be thankful for string theory

[engineerofsorts]

Fellow engineers, nerds, and other three/four-dimensional entities, Let us all be thankful for string theory: 1.) This keeps a large number of intelligent people studying fizziks, and out of the engineering and programming market. 2.) As e.e. cummings said: listen:there's a hell of a good universe next door;let's go

Re:Man...

[Profane MuthaFucka]

The jokes are either funny, or unfunny. They cannot be half-funny. And you'll never know until you load the page. Heisenjokes.

Re:Man...

[SevenHands]

Ahh, Beer is all over my screen right now. These are the best comments I've read all day!! SevenHands (through 11 dimensions)

Re: The simple answer is...

[Tavor]

>> There exists a universe in which major advances in Phyics would have been made if so many smart scientists were not distracted by String Theory.

> Of course, there also exists a universe in which string theory is correct.

In that case, there's also a universe where Bush is smart, where Iraq is a democracy, where the US is not being held hostage by corporations, and where oil is irrelevant.

But I don't see it happening or affecting me any time soon.

Re:The meaning of "theory"

[spune]

The main problem I have with ST is that in its attempts to unify QFT with GR, the WGT becomes much too ambiguous with regard to WGO. Does our universe even qualify as proper SFU? And does ST demonstrate HTAW? Our universe, being ASLOM could be considered little more than a running simulation in the light of TBNT. The RFLN of alternate landscapes may not even BCWN; to assume there is a limit to their VPIN is shakey.

Re: The simple answer is...

[honkycat]

No, no, it's a common misconception that an infinite number of universe implies that everything is possible somewhere. In contrast, there is a great number of invariants -- things that are so fundamental to the inner workings of the physics that governs the multiverse that they are equally and absolutely true in any of the billions of alternate universes. I'm pretty sure you just identified four of them. You should publish.

Re:Trust

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah. String theorists are the Enron accountants of physics.

Never trust an accountant who makes up money to make the math work.

Re:Man...

[Marsala]

But it does add a whole new dimension to the conversation.

Ritchie would be disappointed

[SpanishArcher]

Honestly, I don't see the need for a String Theory. Weren't the good old char array good enough?

Re:Man...

[jozmala]

But thats only because you don't see all those dimensions of the joke. In one dimension of the Joke is persieved to be completely funny while in other dimension its persieved as totally unfunny. If the Joke exists in 12 different dimensions, and its persieved funny in 6 of them and unfunny in 6 of them then the joke can be considered as half funny.

Re:Man...

[Karthikkito]

I guess they all lepton the band wagon...

Re:Man...

[Fred_A]

Quarky ? I'm a frayed knot...

Re:Kaku is a self-promoting hack. What??? Fuck you

[satan666]

Hey, he's a prof at my alma mater, CCNY, and I'm from New York City
so watch what you say before I kick your ass motherfucker.

How's that for arguing a scientific point in a rational way?

Fuck You again.

Re:Wait, what?

[Jedi Alec]

When is it reasonable to conclude that the signal from Ceti Alpha 6 that repeats "1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 56" is not a natural signal?

The moment a cease and desist gets sent back claiming prior art.