String Theory a Disaster for Physics? 737
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... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Man... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Man... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Man... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Man... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Man... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Man... (Score:5, Funny)
And you read them all (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Man... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Man... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Man... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Man... (Score:4, Informative)
Then I started wondering if "brane" might actually mean something. In case I am not the only one who didn't get it at once:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brane [wikipedia.org]
New Hollywood Movie: All Tied Up & Strung Alon (Score:5, Funny)
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... (Score:5, Informative)
I'm confused here. The sun is (pretty much) unmoving, and emits a (pretty much) spherically symmetrical gravitational field. So wherever the Earth is, the 'gravitational attraction vector' is going to be pointing to the sun - as that's the direction of the gravitational field. As the mass of the sun is (pretty much) unchanging, there will be no changes to the gravitational field over time, and things continue just as in newtonian physics.
Complications to this probably arise when you've got more bodies in the system, though - so if you include the other major planets, you'll get effects such as you're talking about, but they're on a far smaller scale than you think as the sun's so big in comparison.
(Note that the same does not apply to pulsars, black holes and the like - where there's a lot more mass, and things are a lot more extreme.)
Re:Man... (Score:4, Interesting)
Only when the gravitational field is not spherically symmetric, or if it is time-dependent, do complicated things start to occur.
Note that it doesn't matter if you're thinking in an Earth-centric way, or a Sun-centric way - they're equivalent, although the Earth-centric view is more complex.
Re:Man... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Man... (Score:5, Insightful)
They should have (Score:3, Funny)
String Theory (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:String Theory (Score:4, Insightful)
I think the article says it best. If we keep letting people use the term "theory" too loosely it just gives more ammunition to the intelligent design idi... proponents.
In truth neither intelligent design or string "theory" is really a scientific theory as neither makes testable predictions yet. Maybe string theory will in the future but until then it is just an idea.
Re:String Theory (Score:5, Insightful)
The meaning of "theory" (Score:5, Informative)
Think of Newtonian physics. We now know that Newton falls apart when viewed under the lens of Einsteinian relativity. But if you're dealing with relatively small masses, at relatively slow speeds, then Newton's physics works perfectly because relativity is too small a factor to affect the numbers. Likewise with quantum mechanics at the macroscopic level.
Neither of those three "theories" is a complete and accurate view of how the universe works. They are each of them a model for certain situations, and which one you choose depends on which one is most appropriate.
The thing about string "theory" is that it's more of a model than a theory. When physics gets down to this level, it's more mathematics than science. The theory/model that you use is never going to be perfect or complete, but as long as it fits the purposes you want it for, it's good.
Re:The meaning of "theory" (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a huge problem. Of course there is the possibility that finding the ultimate theory of everything is impossible and this would be the physics dual to Godel's incompleteness result. Which I'm sure sure scares the shit out of many physicists.
Re:The meaning of "theory" (Score:5, Funny)
Re:The meaning of "theory" (Score:5, Informative)
It's simply because each one of these theories were postulated starting from physical events, a model was conceived and using this model, we were able to predict phenomenons that we had yet not experienced.
Case in hand: back in Newton's time, there were no air hockey tables. There wasn't anything that would make people think that an object would continue in a straight line at the same velocity if not interfered by any outside force. Try telling a medieval man that the mule and ox pulling his cart were only doing so to counter the force of friction on the wheel axle. He would laugh at you. Turns out, pretty much everything from going to the moon to airplanes could be explained if not predicted using newtonian theory.
Maxwell, using nothing but simple equations not only 'found out' that light had a maximum speed, he measured the said speed. He's also the one who came up with e=mc^2, although he didn't quite know what that meant.
Einsteins relativity. No need for an example.
Quantum? As far fetched and sci-fi as quantum is, it explained how tainted glass can possibly be (something which made no sense in classical physics), it also predicted transistors (by the same tunelling principle).
ST on the other hand, is a very very highly indirect 'theory' in which there has been practically no observation, and no verifiable predictions made. It's all underneath the cloak of the "too small to be verified". Which, when you really look at it, means it's on the same level as mysticism: as systematic as it might be inside of its confines, you have to first start by believing in it.
All this being said, I'm not taking sides. I do hope that they eventually find something of relevance from it. I know a few people at least who've put their live's work into this.
Re:String Theory (Score:3, Insightful)
ichin4's comment further down the page was rather insightful.
Re:String Theory (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:String Theory (Score:3, Interesting)
I think it's very premature to say String Theory will never make any predictions.
Well, it's been more than 20 years, and still no testable predictions. When will ST be mature and it's clear it's time to throw in the towel and abandon ST? It seems to me if ST is so hard that we haven't made any headway to even theorize a way to prove/disprove it in 20+ years time, it's really time to treat it like a red herring and find a theory that's easier for us humans to deal with. This is really the main point of t
Re:String Theory (Score:4, Funny)
Re:String Theory (Score:3, Funny)
Re:String Theory (Score:3, Funny)
The simple answer is... (Score:5, Funny)
Re: The simple answer is... (Score:5, Funny)
Of course, there also exists a universe in which string theory is correct.
Re: The simple answer is... (Score:5, Funny)
String "theory" (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: String "theory" (Score:3, Insightful)
What if the universe is so complex that there's no explanation that's both simple and correct?
Before the consensus ... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Before the consensus ... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Before the consensus ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Science, on the other hand, does not require one wait for the finished product. Working on string theory is working on science. It's just not complete, nor even all that useful currently. It's still in the early stages--a stage that is rarely so long and drawn out as it is in this case.
For example, when devising special relativity, Einstein's theory was, at some point, still in the state string theory is in currently--that is, significantly conceptual, with a lot of math and refining yet to be done, and early on was entirely untestable making no real predictions. He was still engaged in science during that stage. That doesn't mean that special relativity was useful yet, nor do I mean to imply that string theory is correct or will bear fruit, just that even at this early stage it is legitimate to call it science.
Not so? (Score:5, Informative)
(Excerpted from Hyperspace: A scientific Odyssey through the 10th dimension)
To understand this form of tunneling, think of an imaginary Charlie Chaplin film, in which Chaplin is trying to stretch a bed sheet around an oversize bed. The shit is the kind with elastic bands on the corners. But it is too small, so he has to strain to wrap the elastic bands around each corner of the matress, one at a time. He grins with satisfaction once he has stretched the bed sheet smoothly around all four corners of the bed. But the strain is too great; one elastic band pops off another corner. Every time he yanks an elastic band around one corner, another elastic pops off another corner.
This process is called symmetry breaking. The smoothly strechted bed sheet possess a high degree of symmetry. You can rotate the bed 180 degrees along any axis, and the bed sheet remains the same. This highly symmetrical state is called the false vacuum. Although the false vacuum appears quite symmetrical, it is not stable. The sheet does not want to be in this stretched condition. There is too much tension. The energy is too high. Thus one elastic pops off, and the bed sheet curls up. The symmetry is broken, and the bed sheet has gone to a lower-energy state with less symmetry. By rotating the curled up bed sheet 180 degrees around an axis, we no longer return to the same sheet.
Now replace the bed sheet with ten-dimensional space-time, the space-time of ultimate esymmetry. At the beginning of time, the universe was perfectly symmetrical. If anyone was around at that time, he could freely pass through any of the ten dimensions without a problem. At that time, gravity and the weak, the strong and the electromagnetic forces were all unified by the superstring. All matter and forces were part of the same string multiplet. However, this symmetry couldn't last. The ten-dimensional universe, although perfectly symmetrical, was unstable, just like the bed sheet, and in a false vacuum. Thus tunneling to a lower-energy state was inevitable. When tunneling finally occurred, a phase transition took place, and symmetry was lost.
Because the universe begain to split up into a four- and a six-dimensional universe, the universe was no longer symmetrical. Six dimensions have curled up, in the same way that the bed sheet curls up when one elastic pops off first. For the ten-dimensional universe, however, there are apparently millions of ways in which to curl up. To calculate which state the ten-dimensional universe prefers, we need to solve the field theory of strings using the theory of phase transitions, the most difficult problem in quantum theory.
Kaku is a self-promoting hack. (Score:5, Informative)
Watching the detective.... (Score:3, Insightful)
TFA is right in one thing-- it's lead to physicist bigotry.... an increasingly inbred idea that string theory rules and all else drools, but in dimension 9. So many things are unsolved.... and Hawking has helped but the mathematicians that used to rule physicists are finding themselves in a reverse role, where expostulations must be found to match equations which were pimped for expostulation.
It's like curve-fitting, but with unprovable geometry, not Euclidian and not non-Euclidian.
Maybe this is boon to I.D. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Maybe this is boon to I.D. (Score:4, Insightful)
Doubt it. Both string theory and Intelligent Design may be unfalsifiable, but then they are also unfalsifiable for different reasons. A major goal of string theory was to make the theory falsifiable, by looking for low energy phenomena that could be predicted by it. The string theorists failed, because their theory takes place in what turns out to be an unobservable realm with no observable predictions, but at least they were trying. Intelligent Design's unfalsifiablity was built into it by design.
String theory could still surprise you. They might make unexpected progress and come up with some string-theory derived explanation for some low energy phenomenon, like the mass of the proton. But Intelligent design will never successfully predict a thing since by nature it is not a predictive theory.
Re:Maybe this is boon to I.D. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll admit that Intelligent design is not an inherently terrible idea. It's not impossible that we might find "fingerprints" of intelligent design, and that this might lead to trying to investigate the idea more closely. Furthermore, investigating how human "intelligent design" has effected the evolution of other species is certainly a worthy subject for research, and something which people do research. But as it is currently formulated, Intelligent Design is not testable enough to be anywhere near the realm of "science." At least String Theory tries.
A Physicist's Thoughts (Score:5, Informative)
I am an (ex-) particle theorist. I worked on phenomenology, which is how particle physicists describe people try to work with actual data.
I don't think the rise of string theory has been the cause of the dearth of breakthroughs in particle physics in the last 30 years, but rather the effect. For all that time, nothing unexpected has come out of accelerator experiments -- just more confirmations of the predictions of the standard model developed in the 1970s, and more accurate measurements of its parameters. In an environment like that, it's no surprise that theoreticans turn to highly speculative and mathematically challenging models to keep their work interesting.
There are still some related fields generating new and interesting data for good young theorists to cut their teeth on -- cosmology, for example.
Why American's shun science careers (Score:5, Insightful)
4 years undergrad ($40-$120k in cost)
5-7 years grad school (making $15k per year)
2-6 years postdoc (making $40k per year)
7 years pre-tenure (making $60-80k per year)
tenure (making $80-$100k per year)
Oh, and if you fail at any point along the line, you have no career. Since you are looking at 18-24 years to get to tenure, that's a HUGE
investmet to make. You are basically looking at not knowing whether you have a career or not until you are 36-42 years old.
Compare this with the career track of an equally bright student going into CS, and getting a job in tech.
4 years undergrad ($40k-$120k in cost)
starting job ($60k-80k)
5 years experience ($80k-$120k)
move into management ($100k-$150k)
etc... notice how the CS grad going into IT hits the $60-$80k range 7-13 *years* before the scientist?
Plus, while there is less risk of being laid off as a tenured professor, the risk of having your career evaporate as an IT person (please note, IT person who could have hacked being an academic scientist) is MUCH lower. Sure, you may loose your job, but there are plenty of other jobs.
Few American's go into science because the economics of science is so bad. I don't know how to fix that, but the cause is pretty clear.
Oh... by the way, I am an American who was on the academic track in String Theory and got off the merry-go-round. Everytime I talk to my friends who stuck it out I am overjoyed I left. My friends are at the mid-potsdoc stage right now. They are trying to scrape by living on $40k a year in ultra expensive locals like Boston, and live in terror that the only jobs they will be available will be in middle of no-where universities in unpleasant places. By way of contrast there are tech jobs to be had in a variety of nice locals to meet most peoples tastes. It's particularly hard on the women, who are starting to hear their biological clocks tick VERY loudly, and who are still years away from being settled in enough to take a break to have children. It's also very hard for both genders to find a long term mate, as they face the aforementioned prospect of having to move a lot to unpleasant places (like Norma, OK, middle of nowhere PA, middle of nowhere plains states, etc) if they want to continue their careers. And let's not even start talking about the two body problem (two romantically entwined academics).
So basically, if you want more Americans to go into science, make it suck less.
It's math, not physics. (Score:4, Interesting)
This is not physics because physics ultimately deals with the real world around us, with things we can measure or at least hope to measure. However, since this is a beautyful theory, this is math.
IMHO, any beautyful math will someday find its application and even if it doesn't, it should be done solely for its beauty. In any case, if string theorists would start calling themselves mathematicians, all the problems with string theory would disappear. Just don't expect it to have any obvious applications.
Some Comments (Score:3, Insightful)
First off, I should point out to those that aren't familiar with the world of physics that Lee Smolin is one of the principal advocates, at least in the public discourse, of Loop Quantum Gravity, a competitor to String Theory. That is certainly not to say he's bashing string theory for his own benefit, though. His arguements are all quite sound.
Secondly, in my own experience, speaking to physics professors about string theory, we're starting to see some saturation in the number of students willing to work on topics in string theory for their PhDs, and as jobs become more scarce for those who enter into the field (after all if they don't advance with predictions, there's less and less to do), we'll see more people entering into other areas, ro examining other theories.
And finally, I should point out that the last line, That string theory abandoned testable predictions may be its ultimate betrayal of science , is extremely insulting. I'm sure there's nothing string theorists would like more than to come up with a testable hypothesis that could be tested immediately, but the fact is that it's a difficult subject. Just because we can't test it now is no reason to start crying "pseudo-science".
The "landscape" and falsifiability (Score:5, Insightful)
Can't say I didn't come prepared (Score:3, Interesting)
Chapter 6 counters your arguments in a way that I think is quite clear (for a string theory paper, at least).
And while I won't try and claim there's some particle that we can discover at the LHC that string theory can't explain, by not finding light supersymmetric partners of existing particles, the LHC has the possibility to disprove string theory.
Re:The "landscape" and falsifiability (Score:4, Interesting)
But I do find it rather amusing that you'd have to give up something like Lorentz invariance or unitarity to disprove string theory.
Carver Mead (Score:3, Interesting)
Trust (Score:5, Funny)
a counter argument (Score:4, Informative)
I'm all for public education on all topics of physics, including string theory, but this is an unfortunate case of a little bit of knowledge being dangerous for armchair physicists. In order to properly understand string theory requires understanding conformal field theory, supersymmetry and supergravity, Riemann surfaces, Kaluza-Klein theory, and so on, just to name a few of the introductory ideas. I don't think it's too unreasonable to assume that most of Peter Woit's audience has not studied any of these. But without studying string theory, I don't think it's possible to judge whether or not the things string theorists find compelling are in fact sufficiently exciting to warrant the attention it receives from them. For my part, I think they are.
Re:a counter argument (Score:5, Insightful)
I have only one thing to say about all of this. Everytime I sit in a talk on strings or branes all I can think is one thing.
Extra dimensions are the epicycles of Modern Physics
That's all I have to say. If you understand this, it is profound.
Re:a counter argument (Score:4, Insightful)
Q "Look, the orbits aren't exactly circular"
A "Try adding more circles"
Q "..."
A "Try adding more dimensions"
I don't mean to say that the true answer is simpler in a sense. I honestly have no idea.
I came to this conclusion after sitting through dozens of talks and realizing that so many physicists were using extra dimensions like a tool in their toolbox (like renormalization or something), but that tool has never actually fixed anything yet. It's their hammer and everything looks like a nail. Only no nails are proven to exist.
Re:a counter argument (Score:4, Insightful)
It really is saying something that the best thing we've got has survived 30 years of scrutiny. I think it does say it's better than nothing, and when you've got something good, simply abandoning it to try and find something else that better fits your equipment isn't a good idea. Not to mention that it is very difficult to simply generate a new theory of quantum gravity. There are a few other contenders, but they suffer from much bigger flaws than string theory.
Also, a lot of people (many thousands, roughly) do understand string theory. It's just that they all coincidentally have Ph.D.s in the subject.
Re:a counter argument (Score:4, Insightful)
It really is saying something that the best thing we've got has survived 30 years of scrutiny.
Well, it's pretty easy to survive 30 years of scrutiny when ST hasn't come up with one single testable prediction not accounted for by other theories. If you don't make any testable predictions it's pretty hard to knock it off the chopping block. From what I've read, ST isn't even a full theory, but merely a framework for other theories. When you've got 10^500 possible theories it makes it a bit harder to knock them all down.
when you've got something good, simply abandoning it to try and find something else that better fits your equipment isn't a good idea.
Why not? The energies ST is testable at are far far far above anything we can even conceive of, much less build. ST seems to be based on the great white hope that someone will come up with testable predictions.
statistics (Score:5, Interesting)
However, my impression -- and I speak as someone who works inside a particle theory group, and who has served on faculty-level particle physics search committees -- is that string theory is far from having a "lock" on theoretical particle physics today. In the article, Woit is quoted as follows: "By his count, of 22 recently tenured professors in particle theory at the six top U.S. departments, 20 are string theorists." Looking at the Particle Physics Rumor Mill (http://physics.wm.edu/~calvin/) which assembles the short lists for faculty jobs in particle theory many of (and perhaps most) the people getting offers are not "hard core" string theorists. Many of them will have written papers with some string content, but have wider interests in cosmology, particle phenomenology, and/or physics "beyond the standard model".
This statistic differs from Woit's, in that it is not just counting "top" physics departments, and looks at Assistant Prof hires, and not tenured faculty (although *outside* the top six, most Assistant Profs can expect to be promoted to tenue). However, I suspect that the "twenty out of twenty two" statistic is either over a very carefully chosen interval, or reflect a very broad definition of who counts as a "string theorist".
My feeling is that string theorists have a *hard* time getting jobs. In general, many places outside the top ten (ande most of the jobs are outside the top ten) do not have string theorists on their faculty, and string theorists have a hard time differentiating themselves from other people in their field, which makes it hard for them to get hired -- especially as they are competing against other, very smart people.
The real issue here is that particle physicists have received no "surprises" in many years -- perhaps the only genuinely unexpected recent data point being the non-zero value of the cosmological constant. And this did not create a new problem, since the challenge for the theoretical community was always to explain why the CC was around 10^120 times smaller than its "natural" value, which is not much easier than explaining why it is actually slightly different from zero. In this enviroment, we have no good way to "prune" theoretical ideas, and the hope of many is that the LHC (Large Hadron Collider) will yield results that cannot be explained within the context of the so-called "standard model" of particle physics. In this sense *any* theoretical framework that had been worked on since the mid 1970s would risk falling into the same trap as string theory, since there is no data we can't explain with existing models -- if it was incompatible with the standard model it would have been dead on arrival, but any model which yields the standard model in some limit is not falsifiable with current data.
On the other hand, string theory does provide a rich mathematical structure with some very surprising results. The so-called "AdS/CFT" correspondence sets up a completely unexpected relationship between gravity and a particular class of field theories, and some calculations in QCD (the theory of the "strong" nuclear interaction) can be "organized" and performed using string theoretic ideas. This does not "test" string theory, but it does show that there are deep and unexpected consequences to what is ultimately a very simple idea and, in the absence of data, this motivates theoriests to keep working in this area.
Re:statistics (Score:5, Insightful)
Excuse me? You should try keeping up with experiment if you're going to make broad statements like this. Minos, up here at fermilab, recently discovered that neutrinos do in fact have mass. This was suspected a year or few ago, which was why Minos was built, but is nonetheless quite surprising. It is surprising because it is really the first definitive measurement which is nearly unquestionably outside the standard model. (I don't need to tell you this, I suppose, but others will read this too: The standard model assumes explicitly that neutrinos have no mass at all.)
Anyway, the problem that most experimentalists, such as myself, see with String Theory is that in some ways it is a step backwards from the standard model. It is purported to be "parameterless", which contrasts with the plethora of unconstrained parameters that the standard model contains. However, this is really only a bit of sleight of hand. Instead of numerical parameters, which are (relatively) easy to measure, and continuous, we now have the topology of space, which is discrete (no smooth change from one topology to the next) and quite difficult to measure, and embodies immensely more variation than the parameters of the standard model.
Missing the Point (Score:5, Interesting)
Think of it this way. Many theorists predict that our universe may be one of many (e.g., in a much larger "multiverse"), and these universes are not all expected to be identical. Therefore, the variations between them represent quantities that are not exactly "predictable" by any theory, and the best we can hope for is a meta-theory that describes all possible universes, and says that ours is one of them. The earth is not the center of the universe; the prediction of string theory may simply be that our universe is not the center of the universe, so to speak.
The problem is... (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem with string theory is that some equations came along that fit the data in an intriguing way and so physicists pursued and continue to pursue the math. The problem is, it's not based on some sort of idea that someone had. The idea is the thing that's missing. Math is great at expressing ideas, but it's not particularly good at creating them.
It could be that at some point, someone will come up with an underlying conceptual idea that the math can then be used to express, but until that happens, I don't think string theory is really going to become a practical theory.
Forget falsifiability, simplicity is where it's at (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, don't completely forget falsifiability - but don't let it be the whole story. Falsifiability was already outdated philosophy of science 50 years ago. Its main problem is what's sometimes called the "Quine-Duhem Thesis" - roughly speaking, any treasured theory can be made to fit any evidence, as long as you're willing to adjust enough auxiliary hypotheses. Here's an ordinary example: when your high school science lab experiments didn't fit predictions, your results didn't get published in Science for falsifying the theory at hand. Instead, quite reasonably, you drew the conclusion that something wasn't quite right with the instruments, etc., and you kept the original theory. The tricky question is to figure out when it's reasonable to excuse recalcitrant data, and when you're unreasonably trying to rescue a theory that's just wrong. Intelligent design advocates can lay out all sorts of falsification criteria, and then make similar excuses should unhappy data come their way. So does that make ID a science? (If on the other hand you insist that only actual falsification makes something a science, then only theories we no longer believe can count as scientific!)
It's too easy in all sciences - not just string theory - to make theories "supported" by the data. Given this problem, the name of the science game is to find the simplest explanation that fits the data. It's very hard to say exactly what counts as a simpler theory, but some theories are clearly less simple. Compare the hypothesis that "the butler did it" to the hypothesis that "unknown sneaky aliens planted all that evidence to make it look like the butler did it." Both hypotheses fit the evidence equally well, but the latter is clearly less simple, and we normally never even consider it for a moment.
String theory explains all the data, from quantum physics to relativity, with a simplicity that's hard to beat. (Its elegance is so good, we're apparently willing to posit 11 dimensions for it!) That's what makes it a legitimate scientific theory. Of course it would be great to have more relevant data, to see if string theory can accommodate them simply too. But just because we can't get such data (now, or maybe ever) doesn't spoil the current scientific status of the theory.
Re:Forget falsifiability, simplicity is where it's (Score:5, Insightful)
That's actually a reasonable and sound position. It's more or less impossible to prove something correct in science - we've discovered many times that if a theory looks right on one level, when you go deeper it's just a good approximation. So you can never really be sure whether you've found the right answer, or just something close to it. And from our experience of science the odds are in favour of the 'good approximation' side.
On the other hand, when you've proven something wrong, you're pretty damned sure that it's wrong. It's then a scientific fact. You can't do that for something that appears right - it's more like a scientific guess.
It's important to keep this in mind - remember that something you believe to be correct is almost certainly not correct in every particlar. And follow up on those "Hmm, that's odd" moments, because those are how progress is made.
the problem started before string theory... (Score:4, Interesting)
I think Einstein may have been responsible for that development: while relativity was a great insight and made useful, testable predictions, it falsely instilled the belief in physicists that Einstein's way of doing physics was the way they should all follow. The problem with that is that most physicists aren't as smart as Einstein, and even if they were, there is only a small number of self-styled visionary scientists any field can comfortably accommodate before becoming unscientfic.
The Problem Isn't String Theory (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, the vast majority of string theory is probably crap. But what people don't seem to realize is that 99% of what all theorists say is crap. That 1% that actually manages to get something right gets all the fame and tends to be the only ones the general public hears about, but the sad truth is that most theorists take the shotgun approach: They try to come up with as many different theories as possible in the hope that one of them might actually turn out to be right.
The article seems to imply that the existence of string theorists is preventing advancement in particle physics. That's BS. The reason why there haven't been any new dramatic discoveries in particle physicists in the past few years is because there haven't been any new experiments! Science is experimental in nature. Progress is made with new experiments. The theorists can speculate all they want but no consensus will be reached until somebody tests it. Unfortunately experiments in particle physics have become so massive and expensive that progress has slowed significantly.
Actually, there have been many discoveries in less traditional aspects of particle physics...neutrino mass for instance. So I'm not even entirely sure what the article is complaining about. Yeah, traditional accelerator experiments haven't done much since the discovery of the top quark at Fermilab, but again it's because there haven't been any new experiments since then. Other than RHIC, which focuses on a very different kind of physics (and RHIC has also been producing many interesting new results).
When the LHC finally comes online expect a flurry of new discoveries. Until then the theorists can speculate all they want. If they weren't wasting their time on string theory they would be wasting their time on something else.
Re:Wait, what? (Score:4, Informative)
The God Equation (Score:3, Interesting)
It is almost like a Turing-Complete programming language where anything definable can be executed (ran) by giving it the right programming code. With 11 dimensions to play with, one has a lot of wiggle room to shape imaginary little sub-atomic string machines that can be just about anything you want, bending it to fit new observations.
Perhaps an equation for God is nearly as har
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Gravitons (Score:5, Funny)
BFD.
Re:Gravitons (Score:3, Funny)
*cry*
Re:Gravitons (Score:3, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Wait, what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, yes, because that's not how science works. Theories have to be put forward which make predictions which can be meaningfully tested. If there is no way to actually test it, then it is, in effect, impossible to develop - by definition it cannot be wrong, and therefore is effectively complete, and science is 'finished', more or less. If such an idea ends up being the dominant trend, then yes, it would be something of a disaster.
I suppose we should stop looking for what started the universe, since we can't disprove the existance of God or anything. What a load of BS.
Would you class the statement "Everything happens because God says so" as scientific? I would hope not - such a statement is inherently impossible to scrutinise or critique, as "God did it" is, in this theory, a perfectly valid response. Science does not advance by pursuing ideas of that sort, but rather putting forward testable theories, and working out ways to stress them and see if their predictions hold, and refining them as a result.
That some ideas cannot be disproven is not a problem for science - instead we content ourselves with studying those that can be.
Re:Wait, what? (Score:3, Insightful)
If it can't be disproven, it's not really scientific. And thus claims a lot of focus that should be given elsewhere. Thus, since it's not scientific it should be disregarded.
>>I suppose we should stop looking for what started the universe, since we can't disprove the existance of God or anything. What a load of BS.
No. This claim is the opposite claim. If we were to a
Re:Wait, what? (Score:5, Insightful)
How does this follow? "God did it" and "how did God do it?" are two different things. I find it really interesting that the former excludes the latter. Some historians of science have argued that it was because of the idea of a rational God that the idea arose that nature was ordered and could be fathomed, particularly through observation and testing. Wasn't it Kepler who studied the heavens in order to "think God's thoughts after Him"? So the idea that God and science are incompatible is, to borrow a phrase, "not even wrong". It's simply a by product of the anti-intellectual, anti-historical, "don't offend me" nonsense that passes for thinking these days.
Science flourished within a theistic worldview in Europe and elsewhere, so I don't see how you can support the idea that God is a disaster when it comes to science. But maybe by "modern" you mean "completely materialistic". And of course that's true. It's the age old dilemma: which came first? The naturalist says, "In the beginning were the particles...". The Christian says, "In the beginning was the Word..." And never the 'twain shall meet.
Oh, what the hell, let's go for troll moderation. I'll go so far as to argue that denying the existence of God is actually hindering science. Why? Because atheism a priori denies the existence of an intelligence far greater than man's and therefore denies the possibility of design in nature. Therefore, the notion of using science to identify and measure design isn't considered (except, perhaps, with SETI. But aliens are metaphysically less scary than God. There's no evidence for them yet the search goes on.) Nor are information theory, computer science, and complexity theory being applied to natural, especially living, systems. Why not? Who knows what we'll find?
Re:Wait, what? (Score:5, Insightful)
OK, that's an oversimplification of what they were claiming...but it's got the essence. And with those restricitions on "God did it!", scientific research became feasible. Without it... sorry. Can't do it.
Re:Wait, what? (Score:5, Interesting)
So (as a scientist) there is very little point in thinking about either of them for very long because they simply don't get you any further in making workable personal jet packs, or any of the other fun stuff that science is generally so good at.
Falsifiability is a reasonable requirement. It says: "OK Mr. Proponent of God/StringTheory. tell me one experiment I could reasonably consider doing that (if it hypothetically failed) would prove that God/Strings definitely doesn't exist." But there IS no such test for either thing. String theory is just so very flexible that it can accomodate almost any failed experiment by picking another one of the ten-to-the-power-500 possible variations on how space is wrapped up, and experiments that might manage to disprove it appear to require more energy than the entire universe contains in order to perform them. Meanwhile, God is claimed to be utterly omnipotent - so any experiment we think up to prove that he's not there, could merely be written of as him "testing our faith".
Lack of falsifiability doesn't prove or disprove a theory - it just makes the theory worthless for science.
So it's fine to believe in God and be a scientist - so long as you realise that your theory of the universe isn't going to help you make personal jet packs (which you still owe me by the way!).
If somewhere in all the religious texts it said "God can do absolutely anything EXCEPT make purple stars" - then we could all get out our telescopes and go look for purple stars. If we ever found one then the case would be closed. If we never found one - then we still wouldn't know for SURE that there was a God - but ultimate proof isn't something science can ever really provide. But as it is, we are told by the proponents of the God theory that he can do absolutely anything he likes - and we know that if he does exist then he has no compunction in planting REALLY convincing bogus evidence for the big bang just to "test our faith". So we can't make ANY predictions about God whatever and any theory that includes him in any way whatever is useless for our progress. If we employ our belief in God, we can't make a computer that works reliably because God might decide he doesn't like us calculating PI to a bazillion places so the machine would be useless for all practical purposes. We can't find out whether there was life on Mars because he does stuff like burying really convincing solid stone dinosaur bones to try to cheat us into a belief in evolution when he knows full well that it's not true. A world with a God in it is simply not open to doing any kind of useful science - so if we'd like to have personal jet packs (sorry to keep harping on about those - but really, they are a bit overdue), we'd better put God theories to one side while we're designing them. If we used a God-based universe as our model, the only really plausible way to get jet packs is to sit on our backsides and pray for them to materialise out of thin air.
String theory has similar problems - and I could understand why people are beginning to think it's a waste of time for such a large proportion of Physicists to be working on it. The theory is at the point where it certainly COULD be true - but if it doesn't tell us anything we don't already know and there's no way for us to ever disprove it - then it's just not very useful.
Re:Wait, what? (Score:4, Interesting)
--
Essentially, using god as an answer to a "How" question is a complete and total cop-out and non-sequitor. Using him as an answer to a "why" question is perfectly acceptable. That is the distinction that scientists make between science and non-science.
If I were to say that the universe was created by God's having willed it so, you would look at me strangely, and rightly so. We cannot duplicate God's will, so any answer to the "how" question produced by that theoretical framework is meaningless.
The entirety of science is explaining how something works so that we can either repeat or predict what will happen. If something is proven non-repeatable even once, then the theory is proven flawed. There is nothing wrong with this, and in fact it keeps scientists intellectually vigilant.
String theory cannot explain how anything should work in any meaningful fashion, and so is not a useful theory. Essentially what it does is say "There is effectively an infinite number of possible ways for the world to work. Ta-da! We've got a theory!" This is meta-physics and does not belong in a serious technical discussion. I believe one of the above posters said it best when he said that string theory is a gigantic academic wank-fest.
I'm really sorry to say this about something that originally got me interested in Physics, but String Theory is complete and utter bunk unless it can make predictions that are proveable, applicable, and are not covered by any other theoretical framework.
Re:Wait, what? (Score:4, Interesting)
either string theory is flawed and unproveable and is wasting time and holding back advancement from lack of studies in other directions.
OR
because string theory is beyond us right now and should net be focused on YET, if less of the brilliant people in science wasted time on string theory we might learn more! and become more enlightened by our new knowledge allowing for the possibility to product string theory.
Re:the universe (Score:3, Interesting)
Come on, jump on the bandwagon! (Score:3, Insightful)
According to string “theory”, the universe is a safe where you have combination but the lock is on the inside.
Re:the universe (Score:4, Funny)
Call me when (Score:5, Insightful)
Till then, it's a bunch of fancy gobbedly gook as far as I'm concerned.
Re:Call me when (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I'd call this a 'debate', but.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Makes me wonder if we are near the edge of what humans can know. Growing up, I took it on fiath that it was just a matter of time before we knew it all. Now, I am not so sure. Perhaps our monkey brains simply can't conceive of the true nature of reality.
Re:I'd call this a 'debate', but.... (Score:5, Interesting)
The most important part of new theories is the verification of predicted results - that's it, things that should happen theoretically but we haven't seen (yet). I don't know about ST, to be honest, but, for example, Heim theory [wikipedia.org] (which aims to be a "theory of everything") made some interesting predictions that haven't been put to test yet; one involved localized antigravity created by rotating electromagnetic fields and another predicted a couple of unseen new particles, if i'm not mistaken. I'd love to see someone try to verify them.
God Theory? (Score:4, Insightful)
Anyhow, before one decides whether to believe in "God" it's a good idea to have a definition of what He is so one knows what to look for.
In my case, I believe God would have to be utterly transcendent, and an immaterial non-composite entity. In other words, something nonexistent. Can something nonexistent exist?
On the other hand, I also believe that God is all there is, and there is nothing that is not God. If one could take a step back and look at *everything* one could observe the totality of God. However, the All is both eternal and infinite. One could not ever see the totality, nor indeed can "God" ever actually be realized, because the totality is in constant flux.
Since God is all that exists and also the utter transcendence of existence, the union of many paradoxes would be required to fully appreciate the nature of "God." Such a mind transcends - and encompasses - reason, and hence it is beyond knowledge, proof, and expressibility in language.
Language and reason are tools for sharing experience, but they are not the only means. I may not be able to describe God, but I can point you to the door beyond which you can experience God, and then you can know for yourself.
Science - String Theory especially - is something like that too. The value of science is that it gives us the means to test and manipulate reality. Within the macroscopic realm it is expressible via the conventions of common experience. But as we get into quantum physics and string theory the ideas become uncanny. When you try to explain the relation of a string to space-time, the common experience of cause preceding effect no longer applies. So we need new language to express these new experiences. At a certain point these "experiences" may well become utterly inexpressible.
But perhaps, just like the experience of union with the Ultimate, there is a conventional means to point the right direction.
.
Re:I'd call this a 'debate', but.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I'd call this a 'debate', but.... (Score:5, Interesting)
I have no idea why I felt the need to bring that up.
Re:I'd call this a 'debate', but.... (Score:5, Interesting)
That's actually an interesting point. If "cats", by definition, always have tails, then the statement "all cats have tails" is simply an arbitrary definition of "cat", rather than a useful scientific theory.
Re:I'd call this a 'debate', but.... (Score:5, Informative)
It also happens to be philosophy -- possibly mathematics -- rather than science.
The only way (that I know about) to prove "all X have Y" in science is to enumerate all X, which typically isn't possible in the physical world, and even if you do that, you still haven't proved that "all X must necessarily have Y".
... buddy.
Re:I'd call this a 'debate', but.... (Score:5, Interesting)
It depends on whay you mean by knowing everything. Knowledge can be somewhat compressed in comparison to raw reality. I can describe the chemical characteristics of a grain of salt in much less space than it would take to map the precise location of every single atom that makes it up. If I'm discussing the solubilty of salt in water, that level of detail is potentially superfluous. For the vast majority of purposes, much of the information in the universe is trivial and of no deep meaning except in aggregate. Atmospheric physics is complicated (Navier-Stokes equations, Rossby number, adiabatic lapse rate and the like), but the gross principles can become reasonably well understood. Applying this knowlege to global weather prediction is something else entirely, and is in that theatre in which the prohibitively comprehensive level of detail can become a problem if you desire extreme levels of precision. The same situation may well be applicable to the fundamental laws of the universe. We may be able to comprehend them without having to know the entire, exhausive state of everything.
Re: I'd call this a 'debate', but.... (Score:3, Funny)
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:A Powerful Theory (Score:5, Funny)
Rather elegantly, in fact, by postulating the existance of a universe where "took off" is not a synonym for "created".
Re:Sounds like it's time.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Sounds like it's time.. (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Hard to imagine that string theory is wrong! (Score:4, Interesting)
As I understand it, critics suggest that string theory itself says it will never be testable. A scientist worth their salt should not deride a theory simply because testing it is infeasable or inconvenient. If I have a theory, and the only way I can come up with to test it requires an aparatus the size of the milky way galaxy, then we may hope somone comes up with a better way to test it, and it is still a perfectly fine theory. On the other hand, if I have a "theory" that it is logically impossible to test in any universe where the milky way galaxy exists, I've got nothing; and my "theory" should rightly be bashed for not being science.
The suggestion is that string theory, by it's nature, cannot make testable predicitons about our universe. If that is so, it is not science, and should be done away with. Whether that's so, I have no idea.
Re:This is shit- He doesn't even understand basics (Score:4, Insightful)
But if enough people can prove it wrong, it goes. Even Sir Issac Newton's most basic equations are discarded in the scientific canon, replaced by Einstein's more complete set. Scientific LAW tends to get amended rather than scrapped, and that's what seperates it from theory.
The SCIENTIFIC METHOD, what science is *supposed* to be based upon, relies upon repeatable results based upon a given set of assumptions: the theory. If you can't test it, what's the point?
The writer of the article doesn't claim that string theorists are WRONG, he claims that they are WASTING THEIR TIME. Why? Because he feels they are more interested in "elegance" and "beauty" than they are in finding a relevant way to describe the universe that is useful and TESTABLE.
Whether that is right is a matter of some debate, but get the premise right.
--
Torodung