Is String Theory Really a Scientific Theory? 397
vk38 writes, "The New Yorker is running a story on whether String Theory is really a scientific theory or just an abstract exercise in math designed to churn out papers and Ph.Ds for the established academics. The article reviews two current books, by Lee Smolin and Peter Woit, laying out the case against string theory."
From the article: "Dozens of string-theory conferences have been held, hundreds of new Ph.D.s have been minted, and thousands of papers have been written. Yet... not a single new testable prediction has been made, not a single theoretical puzzle has been solved. In fact, there is no theory so far — just a set of hunches and calculations suggesting that a theory might exist. And, even if it does, this theory will come in such a bewildering number of versions that it will be of no practical use: a Theory of Nothing... String theory has always had a few vocal skeptics... Sheldon Glashow, who won a Nobel Prize for making one of the last great advances in physics before the beginning of the string-theory era, has likened string theory to a 'new version of medieval theology,' and campaigned to keep string theorists out of his own department at Harvard. (He failed.)"
Neither Proved Nor Disproved (Score:5, Interesting)
I could speculate all day on whether or not it is fact but from what I've read, I will make a few statements. It seems that string theory was invented to satisfy some things we could not explain. This doesn't mean it's wrong or right although some people will contend that it is most probably wrong.
As the summary points out, few (if any) of String Theory's propositions can be tested or even observed. So it is simply an unknown right now. We cannot measure the proposed strings so how can we prove if they exist or they don't? We simply can't yet.
A good analogy would be Bohr's early assumptions about the atom [utk.edu]. They were wrong but they were a step in the right direction. In hindsight, we see this now but we don't know what the future holds for String Theory. I'm just glad there are people out there thinking outside the box.
Do not fret, however, as scientists have been very resourceful at proving/disproving theories. I submit, for example, the exercise of determining the diameter of the building blocks of matter. Scientists had the idea to fill up one cubic milliletre of oil and dump it on top of a trough of water with a roller across the top. As the oil spread out, they moved the roller further down the trough. Once they started to see non-reflective parts of the water, they moved it back until they agreed the oil was completely spread out to the best of their abilities. Using this area, they determined how thick a molecule of oil could be without precision tools!
Similar ingenious tests have been devised to easily find the diameter of the earth at sunset on a beach with a yard stick or ruler.
So even though we may never be able to measure these strings, there are still some options left to explore to record properties that may prove/disprove their existence. We're merely in the very early stages of the scientific process.
Let us be excited about String Theory, even if it is wrong it sure is interesting. Nothing's wrong with a scientist who dreams, is there?
Re:Neither Proved Nor Disproved (Score:4, Insightful)
So how is that any different from intelligent design? If you can't test it, it isn't science.
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What's the diameter of the earth at sunrise? Can I use the same stick?
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But you can't test Intelligent Design by design, so to speak. Everything comes down to the classic response A Big Boy Did It And Ran Away (and yes, I am a Brookmyre fan!).
I don't know for certain, but I'm supposing that quantum physics and string theory make the same predictions about everyday life, in the same way that quantum and classical physics can be reconciled in most circumstances. But for certain ca
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Re:Neither Proved Nor Disproved (Score:5, Insightful)
And of course, eventually someone might come up with a way to test the string theories, and then they'll definitely be science.
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Re:Neither Proved Nor Disproved (Score:5, Interesting)
String theory does provide a model of physics. That is to say, if you set the parameters right, you get something that looks kind of like quantum field theory (which, by the way, is also a mathematical theory in addition to a scientific one). Unfortunately, the math is too hard to deteremine how they differ, and even once a determination is made, string theory has a lot of parameters which will have to be set before real predections are possible. Note that quantum field theories are testable, but only barely. For instance, Howard Georgi's "representations of SU(5)" theory was disproved by experiments in proton decay.
Finally, once string theory does make real predictions, they will be hard to test. In particular, they are likely to require enormous amounts of energy, and accelerator experiments can take years to run and analyze. So it will be a long time yet before string theory becomes scientific.
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That's somewhat the point I was making with a my previous..simplistic post below. It would be different if the artical was written with no apparent predisposed position. Simply a... as someone else said layperson's attempt to understand and explain the debate over String Theory.
Note the possibilities, note the present reality of even putting much of M-Theory's proposed experiments through the wringer, and state time will tell. Critically analyze it, versus....this.
That's not what we got here, and
If it's not testable it isn't science. (Score:3, Insightful)
String theory is at the moment, philosophy. As soon as someone comes up with a way of testing it, it will become science.
Re:If it's not testable it isn't science. (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you "prove" logic by testing it, or testing anything is to apply logic to the issue?
When something "becomes" science, that's because it never was philosophy. Philosophy is that discipline that provides you the tools with which you build science. Not the other way around.
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I'm not sure that I'd call string theory philosophy, but I wouldn't dismiss such a categorization immediately, either. It isn't just an as-of-yet untestable proposition, it is a fram
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When something "becomes" science, that's because it never was philosophy. Philosophy is that discipline that provides you the tools with which you build science. Not the other way around.
Well, that's pretty much true for string theory right now. It's a huge body of math that doesn't predict anything in particular. However, it's possible that in the future, it can be built into something that actually says something about the real world - and then it'd be a useful tool for doing science with.
Right now it
Re:If it's not testable it isn't science. (Score:5, Interesting)
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In the context of science, "theory" does not mean "unproven." It is very far from "guess." We have "the theory of gravity" and "the theory of evolution." When someone says "evolution is *just* a theory," remind th
Perhaps we could agree that it is a model (Score:5, Insightful)
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I don't think that there is a theory of gravity. We know gravity exists. We can quantify it. We have a law of gravity based on those observations. But laws are not theories. A theory of gravity would explain how gravity wo
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What we have evidence of is the apparent attraction between objects.
Aristotle explained a limited set of that evidence as the "natural mot
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We do have such a theory - general relativity reduces gravity to
geometry - and some additional (testable) theories about the geometry of spacetime.
It's very pretty: There is no such thing as "gravitational force." Freely falling objects follow geodesics, which are the paths of "extremal proper time" between events. This simple formulation wasn't possible until physicists accepted the possibility that spacetime is curved, and learned the mathematics of di
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a theory is, by definition, unproven and could be wrong.
DING DING DING!!!
Einstein's theory of general relativity is still a theory... it's not fucking ironclad or anything .... it's just that at this point, it's close.
But even that still doesn't stop you from hearing about things that cause a moments doubt in the theory...
This just in: Theories are not immutable law... film at 11...
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Re:Neither Proved Nor Disproved (Score:5, Insightful)
What makes a theory scientific or not?
Falsifiability is only one criterion. Science is a communal activity, and to a far greater extent what is taken to be "scientific" is what is approved by the community. The community of science has a set of self-perpetuating rules such that we hope our communal sense of where the truth lies never gets too far out of sync with reality.
By the minimal standard of falsifiability string theory passes, just--there are experiments that can at least be imagined that would test the predictions of the large family of equations that string theory now encompasses. But it is a perfectly legitimate point that continuing to invest in a failed family of theories in perpetuity at some point becomes a faith-based initiative, and that divergent approaches should be more welcomed.
Insofar as aesthetics have played a role in physics, they have done so after the fact. The principles that guided most of the major developments in 20th century physics were consistency constraints with quite simple justifications. Most famously, Dirac's insistence on a second-order wave equation that treated space and time symmetrically gave us the foundations for relativistic quantum mechanics. This was not an arbitrary or aesthetic constraint, but a logical inference from empirical fact and known relativistic symmetries.
What string theorists are doing is quite different, and no amount of invoking Einstein or Dirac can hide that. If they want to be taken seriously they need to come up with "aesthetic" principles--if they want to call them that--that uniquely constrain their equations, perhaps up to a constant of integration (we gave Einstein that, after all.)
And until then, the measure of how "scientific" string theory is can be answered by a single question: How many string theorists are spending the majority of their time trying to prove that no string theory can ever describe the universe that we actually live in? If the answer to this question is: few or none, then the string theory community is not a scientific community, but merely a mutual admiration society.
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As others pointed out 'theory' doesn't mean 'guess.'
The word you're searching for is hypothesis. Here's how it works:
1) Data
2) Hypothesis that explains current data
3) Prediction derived from Hypothesis
4) Data from new tests
5) See if hypothesis matches #4 data
6) Repeat, then hypothesis is called theory
So, if something can not be tested by going through that process, it is just a hypothesis looking for a way to become a theory. Atomic theory has
Replace "string theory" with "religion" (Score:2)
I could speculate all day on whether or not it is fact but from what I've read, I will make a few statements. It seems that Religion was invented to satisfy some things we could not explain. This doesn't mean it's wrong or right although some people will contend that it is most probably wrong.
As the summary points out, few (if any) of Religion's propositions can be tested or even observed. So it is simply an unknown r
This isn't a "story"... (Score:2, Insightful)
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To be objective, you need to start being skeptic, and then evaluate all the alternatives, choosing the one that seems more likely to be true/better.
There is no middle ground between "skeptic" and "believer". For any new piece of knowledge the sensible form of analysis is start as an skeptic, and follow from there.
Layperson's perpective (Score:3, Informative)
IIRC, string theory *does* make predictions, but the amount of energy required to run an experiement would be literally almost astronomical, so we have no practical way of testing it. I think according to concensus on what the 'scientific method' is, that makes it a hypothesis -- an educated guess, based on evidence. After it has sucessfully passed a few rounds of experiment, then we can say that it is a theory.
So, bottom line, it is scientific, as much as any other hypothesis. However, it's not a theory.
Re:Layperson's perpective (Score:5, Funny)
Sorry to break it to you, but you're a hippie, not a geek.
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let's upgrade it then (Score:5, Funny)
I'll even throw a bone to an entrepreneural slashdotter out there. STRINGFACT.COM is not registered yet. It is yours for the taking.
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A thinly veiled attempt to defame all science? (Score:2)
Lee Smolin is definitely NOT an ID'er (Score:3, Informative)
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Pretending for a moment than an all-powerful being created this entire reality around me milliseconds ago and I never actually typed that first sentence at all but simply remember having done so as some sort of cosmic practical joke, there's no reason not to study what could have happened nonet
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Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Well.... (Score:5, Funny)
Ergo, ignorance is bliss... and not.
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Re:Well.... (Score:5, Funny)
Is String Theory Really a Scientific Theory? (Score:5, Funny)
Short Answer: No.
Long Answer: Yes.
Longer Answer: Both of the above, but each in a separate Universe.
Actually it's on the ropes (pun intended) (Score:2)
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After all, if evolution can be challenged by a theological precept which cannot be tested in any fashion, then so can the Theory of Gravity be challenged by the Theory of Invisible Rubberbands.
a theory needs to predict (Score:2)
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Of course most scientists seem to be a little wary of string theory too. The problem is that while it sucks, nobody has come up with anything better yet. If think if someone came up with a competing theory that was a bit more elegant you would
Lee Smolin thinks he has (Score:2)
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This is exactly what I felt about quantum mechanics as well. Compared to Einstein's relativity, it was too complicated, too random, to messy.
why does the new yorker care? (Score:5, Insightful)
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It's also worth mentioning that this research -- at its worst
Re:why does the new yorker care? (Score:4, Informative)
Should the New Yorker not cover things that may be beyond the reach of the average reader?
Even if they were publishing the mathematical theory itself, they should be free to do so (though it would probably not appeal to the average reader), but they're not doing that, they're publishing about a controversy in the field - just as they might about any other field. Is physics somehow different than (to take an example from one article I remember) considering the effectiveness of different kinds of therapy on people who've experienced stressful events and who might then be subject to PTSD?
Writers and journalists should be encouraged to write about whatever interests them and their audience, even if the people they're writing about don't always find it flattering or helpful.
As someone who frequently reads the New Yorker, I must say I've learned a lot from it over the years - and in many areas that I'm not familiar with such readings have sometimes taught me something (perhaps only a little, but something), sometimes aroused my curiousity, and sometimes introduced me to whole new ideas that I might not have otherwise run into. I say "More power to 'em".
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Not yet, but it will be! (Maybe? or Maybe Not?) (Score:5, Insightful)
Why? Because everytime string theory gets disproven, they come out with a new theory and call it 'String Theory'. String Theory from the 70's really doesn't resemble current string theory much other than the name. It's strange that this is so, but there are a lot more politics involved than there is science at times. And the author is right, there are lots of articles being written, but not much going on that can be said to prove the theory, and little in the way of predictions (cause those could be tested). And so far, everytime someone does stand up and make predictions, it quickly gets disproven by actual tests. Which may be why no one is predicting much using it anymore.
At this point actually String Theory may very well be the most 'disproven' theory in physics. But that doesn't seem to stop people from trying. It will be curious to see what science has to say about all of this 50 years from now. To be honest I think many of us have gotten too close to the subject to be objective about it, and I think that is not helping the issue on either side.
Reminds me of another theory (Goodbye Karma!) (Score:3, Insightful)
This reminds me of Evolution, in the sense that the label "Evolution" is applied to all areas of science: Biology, Astronomy, Geology... It's as if no one would ever refute
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Of course if you have any examples or astronomers evoking evolution, you could easily provide a link...
No way (Score:3, Insightful)
While some of the math might be right, the same theory applies to friggin role playing games, too. So, are those real just because their math ads up?
Where are the good string theory experiments? Nowhere.
Occam's razor (Score:3, Interesting)
As far as my popular understanding of the domain goes, it goes like this. Before there was quantum phyiscs. Scientists thought lets smash these atoms see if there is anything inside them. So to the dismay of theirs they have been rewarded with millions of particle types quarks, muons etc etc. that they are trying to categorized catalogue, derive properties of. Some of them didn't like the idea that millions of disjoint test results as material for explaining universe's compositions. With advances in field of mathematics and nod from those early einstein papers they moved on trying produce the theory of everything. Sort of like beautiful theory of relativity. Though relativity has been easy to test and formulas are often recognized by some 6th 7th grade students (E=mc^@), string theory is quite a bit more complicated then that. As it stands of nearly infinite data result domain of quantum physics.
As the string theory suggests that protons neutrons and electrons are singlewaveforms of certain frequency. And smashed atoms and half-waveforms and for some reason decay rapidly.
I suppose it is an excersize in occam's razor placed into the future when theory can be verified.
Why scientists are folling said theory, is in their wet deams they think of Unified field theory, which string theory may well support.
Just like way back as someone mentioned here Bohr's suppositions were incorrect in many ways, but generally incorrect. Perhaps string theory will inspire a new one in the future, that will make more sense.
But for now I would think it should be renamed a hypothesis, away from shameless marketing of non existant product!
2c.
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O.R. is not science. That's why it's not called "Occam's Law". It's about as useful as an analogy in a discussion, and about as scientific.
Just because something is easier to understand, doesn't make it true.
Medieval Theology? (Score:2, Insightful)
works of philosophy vs. works of science (Score:2, Interesting)
Apologies in advance (Score:2)
Scientists against following hunches? (Score:2)
Now, it's true there's no testability to string theory(s) yet, but it certainly fits with the observing phenomena bit. Since when is examination and extrapolation frowned upon by scientists? I'm not saying there aren't better things string theorists could be doing, but I certainly see the exploration of the concepts a wor
My Great fear (Score:2)
Pug
Shoulders of giants (Score:2)
So ... where's all the ID bashers? (Score:2)
[That's what I thought. It was never *cool* to bash string theory. It was never so cool and in to bash it that the late night hosts were bashing it. So you didn't join in
Intellectual Masterbation (Score:2)
First one fad, now another (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe after this period, people can be less childlike and some serious discussions about its strengths and weaknesses can begin.
Of course it's a scientific theory. (Score:4, Insightful)
These are some of the predictions of string theories.
And they all can, to some degree, be tested empirically.
All the technology that needs to be implemented to do this isn't readily available right now, but hopefully, in coming years with experiments such as LHC and IceCube coming online, we could start to see meaningful results - Remember, it took years for empirical confirmation of General Relativity, simply due to technical limitations.
problems (Score:4, Informative)
I read Smolen's book recently, and learned a lot of new and interesting things about string theory from it. Some problems with string theory:
Maybe worth keeping in mind. (Score:4, Insightful)
Physics is hard! (Score:3, Insightful)
Sorry but sometimes physics is hard - even for physicists! Of course it might turn out in the end to be a waste of time from the physics point of view (although I'm sure even then it will leave a legacy of interesting maths) but we don't know that yet. Giving up on, from my understanding, the most promising avenue of research just because it turns out to be hard to figure it out is not good physics.
Since when did people get so uppity. . ? (Score:3, Insightful)
A year ago, nobody would force this nonsense to the table.
I can't stand popular memes! Occam started making the rounds after Jodi Foster popularized him in Contact. Ugh. The number of dumb and dumber arguments resulting from a little mis-applied knowledge was astronomical. Bubbo's Ridiculous Law, (Or whatever his name is) which states that the well-accessorized geek must close his ears upon hearing the word, "Nazi" is another.
While not quite as destructive to a healthy mental process, this cross-culture, (geek culture, that is) sudden need to lecture other geeks left and right upon the proper use of the word, "Theory", is just as annoying.
You watch. It will be mis-applied by geeks trying to knock the wind out of interesting, new ideas by declaring the ideas to be beneath even the rank of theory and therefore somehow worthy of contempt. I've seen so many people who are scared to think for themselves that unless all the ideas in their heads have been validated by somebody else, (TV or other annoying geeks with name tags), then they will shie away from them at all cost.
It's the old jr. high programming. If you are different, you will be punished through ostricization.
A cowardly geek is useless.
-FL
Re:Not a scientific theory. (Score:5, Insightful)
What's happening here is that people are complaining that the scientific establishment has made it difficult to work in alternatives to string theory. But just because you can't get a job to disprove a theory doesn't make it unfalsifiable. There needs to be healthy debate in the scientific community about which theories to work on. Shutting valid theories down is not healthy for science, but neither are accusations that conflate "impractical" with "impossible".
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So we have a "theory" that doesn't make any predictions, and cannot be tested. In that way it is very similar to "Intelligent Design" which also doesn't make any predictions, and cannot be tested. If ID isn't science
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Understanding gravity, for
Rolled up dimensions don't require extra dims (Score:4, Informative)
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Compare it to a cube. People know what cubes are. Say that you're trying to measure a cube, so you take the measurements of every edge of the cube, 12 measurements in all. Then you realize that really there are 3 sets of measurements, containing 4 identical measurements along the height, width, and depth of the cube. Suddenly something that seemed like a 12 dimension ob
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Seriously, the case may be that the reality of the Universe is so complicated that String Theory will take a long time to come to fruition. Also, it may be that there are no testable predictions because of our limited perspective.. eg 3 dimensions.. limited energy resources.. Fundamentally limited abilities to measure..
Or maybe the Universe is just a big knot of strings, and no human can untie it.
I am fud.
Re:Thanks for the troll submission (Score:5, Insightful)
it's true, it really is FUD.
String theory hasn't been replaced by newer versions, it's been updated with small modifications like "what if the basic premise is the same, but instead of a 1D string vibrating in 4 dimensions (x,y,z and t) it's vibrating in 11 dimensions, where the other dimensions are curled up within the planck length?"
There are reasons why string theory has failed to come up with any NEW predictions. For one thing, it's being constantly tweaked so that it is consistent with EXISTING experimentation. After all, why would you build a theory that you hope will become a GUT if it's not consistent with other proven theories?
The other thing is that this is a theory... the fact that it (mathematically) treats particles as being a 1D string vibrating in n-dimensions doesn't actually mean that if you could see items smaller than the planck length, that you would actually see a vibrating string!! It's a mathematical representation... the math doesn't have to represent exactly what's happening as long as it can be used to describe what is happening.
After all, modern chemistry is incredibly useful for predicting how atoms interact with eachother to form compounds... even though it's based off the idea that electrons orbit a nucleus like a tiny little planet orbitting a sun... that is precisely NOT what an electron does, but who cares, the math allows you to make determinations. It's the same with string theory.
I do not think that string theory is a con job. I do, however, think that attempting to come up with a GUT is a MUCH MUCH larger task than simply trying to explain, say, quantum behaviour, like tunneling.
They're starting with a very simple, and very elegant premise (that all particles are periodic vibrations with different frequencies corresponding to different particles) and then building from there. Hell... start with that and just try and figure out how to represent the periodic table... that alone would be mind-boggling. Now start trying to figure out what particle interaction would look like... then build up from there. The trick, is that it's possible to describe nearly everything using this theory... but it hasn't happened yet. Just because it's possible doesn't mean it'll be easy.
This, of course, probably means that it's the wrong way of going about it... but that doesn't make it a waste of time... the hardest part, I think, will be in having enough patience to see what the theory can produce outside of existing theories... unfortunately it has to be harmonized with existing theory ;-)
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That's not a theory, then, or even a hypothesis, but merely a rationalization. A scientific hypothesis is consistent with existing results and falsifiably predicts new results; a theory is a hypothesis that has survived testing. But if all you have is a model that is consistent with old results and predicts nothing new that
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Yep; there are so many free parameters to superstring theory that it seems that it would be possible to create a version to suit almost any experimental observations. I know that the hope is that one d
Re:Thanks for the troll submission (Score:5, Informative)
This is why you don't get it: That is behaviour which is generally considered unscientific. If you need to keep modifying your theory to explain stuff, then it's not a scientific theory. It's an ad-hoc mess of empiricism of zero real value. The rules of the game are:
1) It must be testable (falsifiable)
2) You must provide new predictions
3) You must explain previous observations, observations not used in formulating the theory., and ideally, none at all.
4) You must do so using fewer postulates (assumptions) than the previous theory.
The word you're looking for is "model". But how is this another thing? Our current understanding is a model as well. The question is whether it's a better model or not is still there and unanswered.
You have no clue. Modern chemistry is not based on any such model. It's based entirely on the standard model of physics. There is not one, not one! molecular property that can be described in anything less than a fully quantum-mechanical treatment. All of chemistry is purely due to quantum-mechanical effects.
And string theory is not the same at all, even if you'd been right. String theory is an attempt at a more basic and general theory of quantum mechanics, in the same way as classical mechanics is a limiting case of quantum theory. It is not an approximation of quantum theory, and not intended to be one.
You don't get it. The periodic table is already entirely explained from QM, and has been for some time. There's no more reason to describe it in terms of string theory than to describe the motion of billiard balls in terms of quantum mechanics: It's unnecessary because it's already explained by classical mech, and we know classical mech is a subset of quantum mech.
In the case of string theory, all they need to do is show that QM is a subset of that theory. That's not hard and it is. It forms the basic premise of their work as well as the goal. The idea is that they're going to work from part of quantum theory and relativity and somehow arrive at the whole thing. Which parts the
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Uh no (Score:2, Insightful)
String theory doesn't make testable predictions. Therefore it is not a theory [reference.com]: "A theory in technical use is a more or less verified or established explanation accounting for known facts or phenomena" It is in fact only a hypothesis.
This doesn't make it not science; it's just not a theory, and calling it a theory, no matter how sure you are it is right, is not science either.
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Re:Uh no (Score:5, Insightful)
The bad news is that they are the same predictions that General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics make, many of which we've already tested, and is thus indistinguishable from them.
The good news is that String theory makes the same predictions as GR and QM while still being only one theory.
It is the non-compatability of GR and QM that creates the need for something like ST. If ST doesn't make a single unique prediction, but is able to explain both the quantum and relativistic worlds, then not only is that a theory, it's a great theory.
Re:Uh no (Score:5, Informative)
GR was more complex than Classical Newtonian Mechanics, but it was, essentially, a value-added theory: it explained a bunch of things that Classical Mechanics couldn't, all while remaining compatible with Classical Mechanics in places where Classical Mechanics made accurate predictions. Therefore, GR was taken to replace classical mechanics, despite the added complexity of the theory, because it was broader in scope, falsifiable, and provably more correct than the theory it replaced.
ST does not fit this mold. It is far, far, far, far more complex than either GR or QM, and makes no extra falsifiable predictions. It doesn't resolve the inconsistencies between the two. In other words, from a purely scientific perspective, it's just a hypothesis and not a particularly useful one at that.
Of course, I'm a mathematician by training and lots of interesting math has come out of ST, so for that I'm happy.
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Well, I guess it depends on what you mean by "complex." Conceptually, it's actually very simple to describe, especially compared to the standard model. It's just a situation where a simple theo
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If it were a theory, then string theory could independantly create a new testable hypothesis (that may be backed up by current quantum theory or relativity) and be tested based on merits of its own. Something is not a scientific theory if it merely describes what has already happened and can make no new predictions outside
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This is completely wrong.
First of all it is no surprise that it resembles QM because i
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Oh, and ID has nothing to do with any religious book. People who argue that know as little about ID as they do about string theory. Although I admit that's beside the point--the creationi
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