Whenever I hear a group of scientists debate the number of dimensions needed for String Theory, it conjures up a mental image of a group of monks debating how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. I’m in the camp that believes a different set of rules apply to macro (special relativity) and micro (quantum physics), but I’m open to a unified theory if one can be developed that solves all the inconsistencies.
This fall, Columbia University mathematician Peter Woit has published a critique of string theory (Not Even Wrong: The Failure of String Theory), pointing out that in more than three decades, string theory still has yet to make a single prediction that can be verified in the lab or through the lens of a telescope. If all scientific disciplines maintained such fluffy and forgiving standards, Woit argues, science would devolve into little more than medieval disputations about angels and heads of pins.
Lee Smolin of Canada’s Perimeter Institute has taken the next step in his new book, “The Trouble With Physics: The Rise of String Theory, The Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next”, outlining the most promising non-stringy paths to reconciliation between Einstein and the quantum.
Oxford University mathematical physicist , author of The Road to Reality, invented a mathematical tool called “twisters.”
Smolin and Penrose take a look at the diverging paths beyond string theory.
No matter what you call it or how it works, trying to understand the underlying framework of reality is an impressive endeavor.
If we’re dealing with an infinite regression of material reality — logically there couldn’t be anything but — then a unified theory, unified principles should be possible. We just don’t have the smarts, yet.
Smolin is a gas isn’t he? [metaphor, folks!]
If it isn’t testable it isn’t science. QED.
It’s hypothesis — which is perfectly acceptable to scientists.
A good hypothesis is testable. A hypothesis that is not testable is called a religion.
4. That’s right, Improbus. Science has hit not only the unknown, but more significantly, the UNKNOWABLE. Buddhism has known the answer for a long time, and it is just now that the West is discovering Emptiness. String theory is an attempt to understand Nothingness. How do you measure nothing?
That was an excellent introspective on string theory. I especially enjoyed the commentary by Lee Smolin on the disastrous politics of string theory in an equally insightful article, “Why No ‘New Einstein’?” http://www.everythingimportant.org/relativity/no-new-einstein.pdf
char* s = {115, 116, 114, 105, 110, 103, 32, 116, 104, 101, 111, 114, 121}
Well, I think you’ve sometimes got to follow the math (or even just the idea) and see whether it is testable later.
From what I’ve read string theory is so complex no-one has worked out how to test it yet, doesn’t mean that no-one will ever come up with useful tests. Wish I was clever enough to understand it.
Cripes, Improbus — go read another book on semantics instead of trying to redefine science. The history of science has encompassed any number of hypotheses developed before any capability to test them. Or need we explain all the other bits of history about contemporary tests not being blah, blah, blah?
Few were humbug enough to call them religions. It’s your hangup — not science.
Interesting to think that you could have a physics model (string theory) that explains and predicts everything in the universe we can “see,” experience, test or infer, but still possibly be thought of as invalid because it also does the same for some things we can never “see,” experience, test or infer. If string theory made perfect – and I mean perfect – mathematical sense, would it still not be valid?
RBG
#10, I too have solved many problems, issues, quandaries, hypotheses, and perplexing questions in my day. Only to forget them by the time I (we) sobered up.
How long was it before someone came up with a realistic test for Einstein’s theories? Was the first “real” test the Manhattan Project? Or maybe some astronomical observation of bent light around a super massive star? Just because you have don’t have a test doesn’t make it a religion. You just need to think up a better test.
Anyway, I just hope when they finally do devise a test for string theory that it doesn’t create a new “big bang” that annihilates the current universe.
#7,
char* s = {118, 101, 114, 121, 32, 99, 108, 101, 118, 101, 114} 🙂
There has been a test that proves the quantum foam exists:
http://www.smartalix.com/casimir.htm
char *s = {110, 111}
well aren’t we the enlightened race?