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Current Thoughts in String Theory
DrLudicrous writes "The NYTimes is running a nice little synopsis of the current ideas in string theory. Apparently, there is still quite a bit of disagreement about how to interpret the various theories, with some string theorists supporting a semi-deterministic worldview a la Einstein (God does not play dice), while others believe our universe is just one possibility among many, with respect to various physical parameters."
Still, intriguing stuff.
Link
In case the site is slow, or you don't have a stinking NYTIMES account, here is a mirror.
Martin Studio Slashdot Policy
This site is maintained by a professor and has a great book on string theory. http://www.mkaku.org/
Just use the StringTokenizer class, and leave the actual implementation to the virtual machine. That way, the best String theory can be used later, when it is derived, and you won't have to change a line of code.
(God does not play dice)
yep god is much more sophisticated, it's all decided through russian roulette.
You are correct in stating that we lack the energy to test string theory -- According to Hawking, one estimate of the (theoritcal) grand unification energy would be a thousand million million million GeV. Further, he goes on to say that it would take something the size of a solar system to produce this. So you're right, we can't do it.
BUT, there could very well be places that do have this necessary energy and could be observed to exhibit traits that we can measure and confirm theories with. This has been how most of the more recent unification theories have been confirmed -- either by measuring very small things with very fine equipment or measuring very large things in space.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
My housemate was recently developing a comprehensive theory of the oscillations of short bits of string, even comprising such philosophical points as whether they're inherent or caused by some bored unemployed minor god. Then I bought a laser pointer and now it's all refraction this and speckle that.
Cats are fickle.
While various Theories of Everything are being proposed, a lot of them are not based on observation. They are just complex mathematical magic created to explain reality. It's like someone saying the earth is suspended in space on the back of a big turtle which is suspended on the back of another turtle, ad. infinitum. For a human who doesn't have any means of verification, the turtle theory can explain things as well as gravity. Similarly, there are currently no means to verify string theory. It is about as good as the turtle theory until then.
Once quantum computing becomes a reality, would we be able to emulate some of the conditions certain experiments? I know an emulation is not the same as the real thing, but it would still be something,no?
If you like me refuse to register with NYTimes:
/ 02 STRI.html?ex=1063080000&en=dff6c05797550ede&ei=506 2&partner=GOOGLE
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/02/science/space
..quantum physics probably doesn't exist...
From the article:The new calculations suggest that this dark energy cannot last forever, that it will disappear sometime in the far future
how can it disappear? does dark energy not follow the laws of conservation? (energy can neither be created, nor destroyed, only changed) any one have an answer?
Game Overdrive - Gaming News
I think that quote (or rather, truncuated paraphrases thereof) is much abused. What Einstein is saying (which is much clearer in a fuller context) is that while the probabalistic equations that comprise much of quantum theory are valuable as descriptive and predictive tools, they do much less to further Einstein's cherished ideals of really understanding the fundamental basis of physical reality. The statement "I am convinced that He does not throw dice" is a statement that while the equations of quantum mechanics might behave like statistics, they did not mean that the underlying reasons for why these equations work were simply artifacts of random, statistical processes - mere throwing of dice. Our ongoing failure to connect all the dots of the various paradigms could indicate that he was on to something...
It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries
Strings are pretty cool. They make clothes (among other things), and when they vibrate, they make music. They're also good for fishing if you tie a hook at the end of it. String it up with two cans and you've got yourself a cool communication network!
I do have a theory on string cheese, though. I think it's a plot to tempt and destroy the lactose intolerant. So cheesy...so convenient...so stringy but oh so dangerous.
If particle man got in a fight with string man who would win? If he's underwater does he get wet or does the water get him instead? (They Might Be Giants)
Maybe god is like some kind of ubercoder, daring us to figure out his implementation.
And like most of them, he doesn't document.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
[snip] ... Of humans' existence, he says, "We live where can live."
WOW, thats so profound for a scientist to say...
Come on, the odds are just better for perfect play, sometimes over 100%. And we all know the Lord is a perfect player.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
The Tales of Narnia were right, after all. Now all we have to do is find a way into the 2 dimensional universe!
A+ for effort
The answer is painfully obvious to those of us who have taken the red pill...or seen the Matrix.
Unfortunately no one can be told what the matrix is, you have to see it for yourself. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.
The world is the way it is, because you are made to think that it is the way it is.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
...ouch! owww!
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Man u are a dumass
For anyone curious about string theory, I would highly recommend Brian Greene's "The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory". He uses excellent writing style and plain, easy to follow examples to illustrate difficult concepts, and rather than going through lots of math and derivations, reserves that type of thing for the endnotes. It makes for a very approachable book that is particularly good for someone trying to learn new concepts rather than the struggle with the gory details of theoretical physics equations.
forget for a moment the moral implications of God playing a gambling game.
An all-knowing and all-powerful God would have no problem predicting the outcome of dice. They are physical objects governed by all the physical relationships that govern things like gravity, collisions and such.
The magnitude of the complexity of the outcome of dice seems to be too complicated for any human or machine to calculate a result.
Random outcome of dice is just a concept to help us deal with extremely complicated situations.
on string theory can be found here.
3 75 708111/qid=1062534059/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_1/104-254985 8-4783127?v=glance&s=books&n=507846
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0
great book and i'm not even 15% done yet. we are all traveling at light speed through the spacetime continuum.....
smd4985
Captain Obvious to the rescue!
If Einstein's fudge factor is real after all, the universe will continue to expand faster and faster as space grows bigger and bigger, producing more and more repulsion.
Einstein's fudge factor is strikingly similar to Hershey's fudge factor, in which those unfortunate souls who are addicted to sugary goodness tend to expand faster and faster, producing more and more repulsion to members of the opposite sex.
"Werd"
Wait! Maybe he's on to something. That's why I can always hear people talking on my 900MHz phone. I wonder what the weather is like in 900MHz-land.
Funny, scientific american ran a better article with the same concepts, but didn't mention strings once:
1 ED D-B48A-1E90-8EA5809EC5880000
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=000F
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
So what happens when God messes up on bounds checking, or memory allocation for strings?
Segmentation fault. Asteroid dumped *shudder*.
I guess we're lucky He decided to steer clear of pointers.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
"...our universe is just one possibility among many, with respect to various physical parameters."
I'd like to think there's at least ONE universe out there where I'm skinny and good look'n!
"No pain, no... pain." Why don't we just leave it at that?
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced. - Geek's corollary to Clarke's law
I was given Steven Hawking's Universe in a Nutshell as a gift. It's a great coffee-table book with cool illustrations and lightweight text that doesn't bog you down with formulas but with all these weird concepts. Don't put the book in your bathroom pile. Can get dangerous unless you have a padded seat.
Brian Greene wrote an excellent book, The Elegant Universe on superstring theory. It's an engaging book, and well worth the read.
You can buy it here from Amazon.
Arr! The laws of physics be a harsh mistress!
"My own philosophy," Dr. Douglas said in an interview, "is that we should do our best to listen to what string theory is trying to tell us. It is smarter than we are." But that statement, well it's just funny!
He hops up on a barstool and says "Bartender gimmee a bourbon on the rocks." The bartender says "We don't serve strings in this bar, git out!" So the string leaves, ties himself at one end and musses up the other. He walks back in and asks for a bourbon again. The bartender says, "Hey, aren't you that piece of string I just threw out of here?" And the pice of string says, "No, I'm a frayed knot."
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Nothing like a discussion about a physics topic that most physicists don't understand. If you poll 50 PhD physicists, most likely *none* of them really understand string theory beyond what Brian Green writes in his books indended for the public.
main(O){10<putchar((O--,102-((O&4)*16| (31&60>>5*(O&3)))))&&main(2+ O);}
LN2 is cool!
It seems to me that all the desperate anti-anthropic people are frightened, at some deep existential level, by the undoubted, rational reality of there being no omnipotent Sky God watching over them. So ever-expanding universes, or universes where sudden phase changes in the structure of the dark energy destroy existing life, or universes with life-hostile substructural "laws" all make them feel too small, unloved, and insignificant against the vastness. Get used to it, we are cosmic dust. The simplest explanation is that there is no design, no Sky God, no plan, and no ordering. Sic transit gloria mundi.
Da Blog
Am I the only one drawn to the inescapable conclusion that God has deliberately obfuscated the universe to prevent reverse engineering? Or maybe I've just been working too hard...
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
I'm not so sure they are barking up the right tree. We don't have the TOE (theory of everything), but I'm not sure if it can be found. That is, I'm not sure if string theory can be valid. Or if it is valid it is not a TOE. I do not have time or energy to prove, but I Belive a TOE violates the 2nd Law of thermodynamics. Granted, some might argue that a TOE would take precedence over the grand 2nd law, but it so reliable and prevents so many stupid things from happening on a big scale that I have faith in it.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
... we just are forbiden to know where it is.
I'd say more, but my guild is raiding.
I did a science project last year on string theory. They told me I couldn't do the baking soda volcano or solar system model with balls of aluminum foil anymore. As a test I used ten cans of silly string to represent ten dimensional space but only 3 colors to represent the ones you actually see. Smart huh? I let all 10 cans fly at once thus showing the Big Bang. "Chaos" ensued but eventually it all settled into a stable universe. Smaller minds have banned me from submitting this project again too. Clearly a conspiracy by "the suits" to suppress free thinking. I heard somewhere they patented it too.
Has anyone ever stopped to think that there is no TOE? And not just that, that there is no valid description of possible universes either? Theoretical physicists are playing mathematical games to find the TOE, but are having lots of trouble. The TOE should produce all the physical constants from its principles, right? What if the TOE has constants? Worse, what if someone proved a Godel or Turing like theorem that says something to the effect of "There is no theory that can describe everything, because there will be at least one (universe|force|particle|whatever) that does exist, but cannot be described." This is the most likely outcome I think.
At best I think that if we find a TOE it will have extremely poor predictive value because it will be so generic that it tells us not too much more about our universe than we already know, and simply give physicists new universes to wank around in. Not to say we shouldn't research this... ya never know where you might find useful stuff.
All long time readers of the rec.humor newgroups will recognize "the string joke". Apparently it was submitted so many times that it became a cliche for the "already heard joke", to the point that whenever somebody submitted what was thought to be an old joke, people would reply simply with the phrase "I'm afraid not". Ah, those were the good ol' days...
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
Two strings walk into a bar.
The first string says to the bartender, "Give me a beer." The bartender turns to the second string and says, "and what about for you?" To which the second string replies, "I would also like a beer#@a9101gb230b81;kajf3#$B89*#(&)*13!$%#@$" and goes on and on spewing gibberish.
The bartender, shocked, asks the first string, "What is your buddy's problem?"
The first string answers, "Oh, you'll have to excuse him, he isn't null terminated."
"You lied to me! There is a Swansea!"
So what happens when God messes up on bounds checking, or memory allocation for strings?
The universe uncurls from its current 3+1+6 configuration to a simple ten dimensional space-time continuum of lower overall energy. Depending on the divide error, one may end up with a simple 9+1 (9 spatial, 1 temporal dimension) universe, but for particularly eggregious errors we end up with 8+2, 7+3, 6+4, and even 5+5 configurations.
What one would want with 5 temporal and 5 spatial dimensions I don't know, but 5 temporal dimensions might allow me enough time to get my neighbors' Windows boxes free of SoBig and other sundry worms while at the same time allowing me to get that new Gentoo box built. Alas, at that point the universe will probably have to be rebooted anyway (which should be a comfort to those acquaintances forced to run the Redmond OS), but I digress.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
His is just 20,000,000,000 sided instead of 20, and he gets +19,000,000,000 HP.
There are several overlooked points in the discussion. Someone above has already pointed out that the Einstein quote about divine gambling is over and misquoted.
String theory was proposed by Lord Kelvin, who started to investigate by developing a theory of knots, which was expanded by Reidmeister, and blossomed in the 20th century.
Einstein's special and general relativity were created to explain observed phenomenon that could not be explained by current theories. For special relativity, this was the constant velocity of the speed of light given by electromagnetism and confirmed by the Michaelson-Morley experiments. General relativity is a result of formulating Newtonian gravity in the field theoretic language used for unified electromagnetism. There were bits of data around indicating its necessity, though, such as errors in the perihelion of Mercury.
Quantum mechanics was similarly developed because of an incredible plethora of data. Thanks to Bell, we now know that (unless theory takes some really extreme turns), before an interaction with a "classical" apparatus, a quantum particle not only has unknown position and momentum, it actually doesn't have either. It's a subtle argument, but it's pretty well tested.
The motivation for string theory was to remove infinities in the fields which result from point-like particles. There is no physical motivation. String theory was not formulated as a theory of gravity or a grand unification theory. Those were bolted on afterwards as people noticed they could have sufficient degrees of freedom: you can build similar theories with straight up quantum field theory, and many people do for their life's work. So far the theory has produced one observable, which we already knew to far higher accuracy from quantum field theory. Pure number theorists get more physics as a by product than do string theorists. Supersymmetry and the Higgs boson are attempts to clean up mathematical holes, but they seem almost well motivated compared to the morass that is string theory.
String theory has driven a wedge between theorists and experimentalists in particle physics, and made it "unfashionable" to do serious theory that actually deals with reality. However, the popular press loves it: you can quote big sounding names and no one can nay-say them. Most areas of particle physics abjectly fail when it comes to explaining what you're doing to the layman.
Thankfully the pendulum seems to be swinging. At Caltech, their one phenomenologist has recently been absolutely swamped with pupils: string theory seems to be dying off at last.
And the point of QM is that such "relationships" fail miserably when subjected to small distances, energies, single particles, etc.
Random outcome of dice is just a concept to help us deal with extremely complicated situations.
Not necessarily. I'll assume you're not really familiar with all the implications of the uncertainty principle, but the problem is that it's actually impossible to gather the information required to make the predictions even if you had the correct parametric forms for all the phenomena. Case in point: what happens if I precisely determine the position and momentum of a particle (your die, if you will)? Well, for a very small particle, I have to use light with a very small wavelength to get sufficient accuracy with regard to position. Unfortunately, short wavelengt == very energetic, so that photon just knocked the crap out of our particle. I knew where it was before I disturbed the system, but I know knothing of it's momentum.
The concept here is that of conjugate (ie, non-simultaneously-knowable) variables. Position and momentum are a pair. Energy and time are another. Basically, the way to check is if the QM operators for two measurements are commutative. If they're not, you can't know the two properties to arbitrart precision.
So it's not just about computational power or inferior instruments. It's actually impossible to gain this information, no matter what.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
Capice?
Is there a click through license when you are born? And does a C-section circumvent it?
R: That voice. Where have I heard that voice before? B: In about 365 other episodes. But I don't know who it is either.
Some other good physics books that don't focus on String Theory that I also thought were very readable:
For Dark Matter and Dark Energy- Quintessence by Lawrence Krauss (who also wrote the Physics of Star Trek)
For Quantum Computing- Minds, Machines and the Multiverse by Julian Brown
The sending of this message pretty much inconveniences everyone involved.
Is it patentable?
bash-2.05$ echo "Let there be light" >universe bash-2.05$ strings universe Let there be light
But then Schrodinger's Cat started to play with it.
Now all I have is a mess.
III.IIVIVIXIIVIVIIIVVIIIIXVIIIXIIIIIIIIVIIIIVVIII
But Dr. Max Tegmark, a cosmologist at the University of Pennsylvania, said, "I think this grand dream is basically dying."
Along with BSD, trinity and internet.....
BSD has been dying for over 10 years.
Trinity died even before reloaded could hit the screen.
Internet has been dying for sometime now.
Yes I do have a physics PhD and I have done a lot of quantum mechanics in my time (low energy electron-molecule collisions). Yet, I don't have a clue about the string theory. Popular articles on the subject do not help at all (at least for me).
I guess this is just an extreme example of the typical slashdot discussion. A lot of people are "insightful" and "informative" particularly if the topic is esoteric enough.
"Unfortunately, most of the available dark matter on the Earth was devoured by Dr. Emmett Brown's steam-powered time-travelling locomotive. Dr. Brown split the hoverboard Marty left behind and placed the two disks mounted to the bottom of the hoverboard against each other to generate the 1.21 gigawatts of energy needed for temporal displacement," Dr. Susskind said as he finished an equaition on the room's chalkboard.
"...the reaction allowed time travel to occur, but the cast iron structure of the locomotive devoured all the dark matter it came into contact with. Fortunately, recent satellite data has told us that dark matter springs back to life from nowhere, violating the laws of conservation and maintaing the equilibrium that prevents the universe from shooting away in all directions."
Dr. Susskind finishes by saying, "Just imagine if everyone had time-travelling locomotives! What a problem that would be!"
The universe is tied up in knots. Figuring out just how has physicists tied up in knots
QED
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
Everybody wants a rock to wind a piece of string around.
Man is the animal that laughs.
And occasionally whores for Karma.
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/09/0 2/1918210&mode=thread&tid=134&tid=160
I thought about the string theory a while ago and had a flash and now that the subject is up I propose that strings and wormholes are the same thing,(who says wormholes have to be big?) could help with time distortion facts and well maybe we can't find dark matter because it is always going from here to there in sub-atomic space. If we eventualy find a way to suck the energy out of a solar system to prove what ever, do it ot the McCoy's solar ststem, they started it all. What would we have if we turned a sphere inside out?
I eat my grapes at room temperature, cuz the cold ones hurt my teeth
I know more about string and particle theory than 99% of the population, which means I'm still a comparative dumbass on the subject in relation to people who really know what they're talking about.
However, here's a spiffy chart of the current "standard model" to help people get up to speed. Especially helpful for those who don't normally deal with Mesons and Antibayrons on a regular basis...
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
The NY Times article mentions that Nova is doing an string theory episode this fall (Oct 28,2003 and Nov 4, 2003) based on Brian Greene's book The Elegant Universe. Turns out the homepage for this episode is already online with plenty of interviews and animations.
Rene' Descartes walked into a bar. The bartender shouted to him, "Hey Rene'! How about a drink!"
Descartes replied, "I think not.."
Then he disappeared.
I have something in common with Stephen Hawking...
'Nuff said.
God Does Not Play The Trombone Either.
Because I said so.
It impresses me that so many debates over anthropomorphism use violent analogies or parables. Maybe it's because it is impossible to reconcile the opposing viewpoints. The only successful strategies through history for deliberately changing world-views has been conversion or repression.
Da Blog
I am no physicist, so somebody please explain to me the following inconsistency:
...very long string to explain the universe. Let's hope I see it in my lifetime (and humans don't disappear!!!)...
-energy can't be destroyed or created
-matter is energy and energy is matter, according to the famous formula e = mc2.
-the universe was created with a Big Bang(tm).
So, if the universe was created, doesn't that mean that energy can be created too ? If energy can be created, does that mean that our current physics is bollocks ?
It would really take a
God plays dice and he doesn't know the result because he doesn't exist...
You may also be interested in reading about loop quantum gravity, an alternative theory of everything. I' not expert, better refer to this reference that I looked up.
Fewer people know Neils Bohrs' response, which I think is more insightful:
"Don't tell God what to do."
Its some kind of underwear, wht mostly, girls wear?
a theory about it? *starts reading*
Wrong!
They're not really separated by miles -- they're doing this in a lab with a coil of fiber. Furthermore, what constitutes a measurement? Is it when the photons hit the polarizer? When they hit the detector? When the detector writes to the computer's hard drive? When a grad student analyzes the data?
These are not easy questions, and it will be some time before many of the issues are fully resolved.
As a side note, there are also people investigating the possibility that Bell is wrong. Two papers I've been meaning to read for a while are
I assumed the previous response was arguing from a scientific standpoint. The possibility of a real God in QM, as opposed to a metaphorical one, isn't worth discussing.
You can't win this God argument, it's like vi vs. emacs.
I come from Kentucky. You can't even not lose the God argument.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
I think Richard P. Feynman once said something like that : "Nobody understands Quantum Mechanics".
On October 28th, from 8pm to 10pm EST, the PBS show "Nova" will be running a special regarding string theory (among other things). More details are here: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/elegant/.
"Yeah, well, Dracula called and he's coming over tonight for you and I said okay."
One use where science is most proficient, getting and keeping grants. Most of us need to come up with recommendations or ideas that work. It appears many scientists today seek theories that are unprovable as the quoted story hints: "In principle, strings can unite all the forces of nature, including gravity, in a single mathematical framework. But the "stringiness" of nature manifests itself only at energies and temperatures that can be generated in a particle accelerator the size of a small galaxy. "As a result, physicists have been left at the mercy of their mathematical imaginations or sifting cosmological data for hints of a clue from God's own particle accelerator, the Big Bang." You can find the word "unanalyzable" in some writing as a proven quality in material they simply don't grok YET.
Those who trade freedom for security will soon have neither.
The string theories are not very satisfying when billions and billions of universes are needed for ours to exist by random chance. The mathematical games played to extend quantium mechanics to bind everything together is impressive, but it appears to be using random chance to explain the rare uniqueness of our universe that allows life to exist. I find that a designer of the universe is a more satisfying solution than using random chance to account for the very rare uniqueness of our universe.
Immanuel Kant was a real pissant
Who was very rarely stable.
Heidegger, Heidegger was a boozy beggar
Who could think you under the table.
David Hume could out-consume Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel.
And Wittgenstein was a beery swine who was just as schloshed as Schlegel.
There's nothing Nietzsche couldn't teach about the raising of the wrist;
Socrates himself was permanently pissed.
John Stuart Mill, of his own free will
On half a pint of shandy was particularly ill.
Plato, they say, could stick it away;
Half a crate of whiskey every day.
Aristotle, Aristotle, was a bugger for the bottle; Hobbes was fond of his dram.
And Rene Descartes was a drunken fart, "I drink, therefore I am."
Yes, Socrates himself is particularly missed;
A lovely little thinker, but a bugger when he's pissed.
I am relatively uncertain how this all relates to string theory, but I'm sure it does.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Well, aside from the "News for nerds...news that matters" bit that doesn't generally include religion, religion and science don't typically belong together because they are diametrically opposed, typically. Science deals with building theories from evidence, religion, for good or bad, deals with faith, not evidence. This was a discussion about science, to which you bring up a comment like "the universe should be understood intuitively." The onus is on you. If I brought up string theory in a discussion of religion, the burden would be mine.
That said, it doesn't even make sense from a religious standpoint, but actually does sound more like the kind of vacuous new-age enlightment teaching that suggested that one might get energy from crystals. Similarly, feel free to actually explain to me what "understanding the universe intuitively" means. Give me details, including how I might be able do do it. Are you talking about enlightment? Nirvana? Salvation? What? You claim this was a religious comment, yet you don't mention how. And which religion, by the way? You don't even mention that. Not to mention which, from your comment it doesn't sound like I'm the first to accuse you of bringing up unfounded, nebulous new-age-isms. Seems to me, where there's smoke, there's probably fire.
But no, slashdot isn't necessarily the wrong place to mention religion. Slashdot's the wrong place to bring up anything pro-microsoft or anti-linux or anti-mac, as I've learned the hard way. That said, there's not really a good place for making vague, nebulous feel-good statements, about religion or anything else, and a discussion of string theory is certainly not the place for it. Remember, it was your response to a discussion of quantum theory, so you have to expect someone to question you for making such a statement rather than accepting your position as gospel. If you can't back up what you say, don't blame the general community for questioning you. As I'm fairly tolerant, I'll indulge anyone's discussion, including yours, so long as it mentions something reasonably funny, insightful or informative...no offense (really!) but "understanding the universe intuitively" fails all three standards.
So again, if you'd like to explain what you meant, it might provoke an interesting discussion. On its own, however, your original comment neither answered any questions nor really provoked any, hence my response. I'm not dismissing anyone's views - you just need to bring more than that to the table.
As I said, I fully invite you to clarify. Your views aren't being dismissed, simply your previous comment, and there's a world of difference in the two.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
The New York Times had an article, way back in the day, on the New York transit system. It was in a shambles. A major fix to the system was implemented on a Monday. Can you see where this is going? Yup, the headline read "Sick Transit's Glorious Monday."
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Why do everybody (or every second) have to get the concept of a god intermingled with nuclear science?
// Jens MAndreasen
It is not like we are running for president, so get over it!
mvh
send + more == money?
Wow, someone on slashdot with a great sense of humour. I nominate this one for:
POST OF THE DAY
"Asshat." I like that.
No matter how deep science delves, no matter which fancy new equation is popular this year, one problem still remains...
Why something instead of nothing?
Because we have something, and something can't arise from nothing, science can never find the "answer" in a formula.
I am not religious, but I consider myself deeply spiratual for the reasons mentioned above. And while I love science, this is one area it can only go so far in.
http://gregegan.customer.netspace.net.au/
. au/APPLETS/A pplets.html
Lots of good stuff here
Applets:
http://gregegan.customer.netspace.net
Some of the applets/code has/is being used by real physicists looking at this stuff
The Singularity is closer than you think
Quant
Loop quantum gravity is not an alternative theory of everything. It is an alternate theory of quantum gravity; it does not attempt to be a "theory of everything". (i.e., it treats only gravity, not the other forces, and does not attempt to unify gravity with them.)
God... won't tell you the rules...
Legend has it that a certain carpenter's son used to go around telling people something along the lines of
I vaguely remember some theorist complaining that String theory is so complex that it has more or less become a Turing Machine in which *any* universe can be explained simply by "executing" it with whatever parameters (code) you want to explain (simulate) a given something. In other words, theorists have piled on so many layers of complexity in order to get something to work that they have built a virtual computer chip of sorts. That would mean that there is no simple core model candidate right now and String is probably baseless since it can be (simulate) anything you want.
The structure also kind of resembles DNA. Perhaps the parameters for our Universe are encoded at the base level in a DNA-like thingy in a round-about way.
Table-ized A.I.
It both exists and doesn't exist at exactly the same time! ;-)
"What it leaves behind," Dr. Susskind said, "it's hard to say. Almost certainly not a livable universe."
Livable? To our current standards, no. Livable in some other form, I'd bet my last 2 cents on it.
Somehow flatland comes to mind with that statement... anyway...
It is somewhat arrogant to say that life cannot exist in that universe in which it's description is "hard to say". It is also somewhat arrogant to say that we can understand our universe from the 4 dimensions that we are trapped in... especially concidering that the universe we are describing has dimensions beyond ours. Our 4-dimensional way of thinking can be applied to 10+ dimensional universes? To me that's like trying to apply algebra to calculus... or better yet, sureal numbers.
What I'm trying to get at is the very question of if we are capable of understanding our universe fully, or are we stuck in our close-minded 4-dimensional realm in which there is no escape? And their statement of life certianly brings up the philosophical question of the very definition of life or sentient beings.
There's just too many unanswered questions that many of these statements are balancing on. If one were to take my opinion seriously, I'd say that we're going to reach a limit to our scientific discoveries until a revolution of the accepted philosophical model of the universe is undergone.
And until that happens, I'll be watching TV.
You just had to do it, didn't you?
-why being able to catch a ball, run fast and put a thread thru a needle matters more then "a theory of everything"?
-"does this mean i get free food, if there's "a theory of everything"?"
-"are we still going to get blackouts, if there's "a theory of everything"?"
-"are GAMMA-rays still going to hurt me, if there's "a theory of everything"?"
try here:
http://203.156.46.105/tap.htm
don't swamp it's a 64 kbps link!
thx!
We have made some serious and fundamental mistakes in physics. Let's go back and rethink things since we now know that the speed of light is variable. Maybe we will gain some new insight.
Space-time does not dilate mass dilates. This changes many, many things.
String theory is like E=MC2; some of the anwsers are right, but we are asking the wrong qiestions.
Jamey Kirby
since his/her comments generally reflect mine which is by most people taken as a sign a comment is valid :)
As another replier also mentioned, loop quantum gravity is nota theory of everything. It is an attempt to do quantum gravity, that is the quantum version of the generally accepted of general relativity. Now at this point I should warn you that i am a string theorist, so loop quantum gravity is not my thing, but:
Loop quantum gravity has never been proven to predict the same things as ordinary general relativity to my knowledge. That is, the limit in which loop quantum gravity should reduce to general relativity is (in four dimensions) calculationally not under (analytic) control (read: some handwaiving is involved). That said, there is no fundamental reason loop quantum gravity shouldn't work....
While we are on the subject, there is one other way of doing 'quantum gravity' apart from loop quantum gravity and string theory: that is canonical quantum gravity. Here the philosophy is that the reason we cannot make sense of quantum gravity up to now is that we simply haven't found the right way to calculate (read 'regularize' for those in the know).One way of dealing with this problem is to brute force the problem: put it on a computer. This seems to work just fine (in three dimensions).
String theory: To Infinity And Beyond!
Need I say more than what the subject does? I don't get the term "semi-deterministic". Maybe I am just a physics novice, but philosophically, either something is deterministic or it isn't. Deterministic (vs. non-deterministic) means that, given the current state, in principle the future state can be exactly known without any doubt (vs. can't be known). So what is "semi-deterministic" supposed to mean? That it can be sort of exactly known, without any doubt, but possibly with just a little teency doubt? As far as I can tell, "semi-deterministic" is completely meaningless.
Segmentation Fault(galactic coredump)
Whilst I agree that much (if not all) of string theory remains just that, i.e. theory, it does produce results that are strongly suggestive of an underlying truth. I just finished a degree in theoretical physics, and am about to start a PhD on cosmological implications of string theory (oh, and since this is /., I'll also mention that I'm female, since we're somewhat under-represented here!). My final-year undergrad. project looked at a string-theoretic treatment (Vafa, Strominger, et al.) of Hawking radiation, comparing it with Hawking's own treatment using quantum field theory in asymptotically flat space-time. Hawking's theory raises the problem of black-hole entropy: it can be calculated in terms of the area of the black hole, but what exactly is 'disordered' to produce this entropy? A string theoretic treatment of black holes, considering intersections of higher-dimension 'strings' ('Dirichlet branes') and the interactions of strings with boundary conditions on these branes, gives a result for the entropy of the black hole which corresponds to the quantum-field-based result, including numerical factors.
OK, so this is all quite non-trivial, but the point is that (a) I have a fair idea of what I'm talking about, up to a point, and (b) there are strong indications that string theory is pointing the way to a viable theory of quantum gravity. It may not be the right answer, it probably isn't the right answer, but just as Newtonian physics pointed the way to relativistic mechanics, and was subsumed by it, so I believe string theory will provide insights vital to the next stage in our understanding of 'how it all works'.
As Matthew Murphy found out through carefule reverse engineering, DNA is actually C code written by god, and the 60% of genes that seem to serve no function are actually comments! Read a sample of the code here
Do not be alarmed. This is only a test.
When God plays dice with the Universe, he throws every number at once.
Have a look at the Many Worlds interpretation of Quantum Mechanics for all the answers you need...you might start with David Deutsch's excellent Fabric of Reality.
One theory to rule them all!
Three strings come to a bar. First string orders a beer. The bartender asks "Are you a string?" to which the string truthfully replies "Yes." Says the bartender: "We don't serve strings here!"
;)
Second string orders a beer. Again, the bartender asks: "Are you a string?", again the string says "Yes". "We don't serve strings here!"
The third string - before ordering his beer - messes up his hair and bends into a loop. The bartender asks again: "Are you a string?"
"No, I'm a frayed knot."
I hope I got it right. Saw that one quite a while ago...
My cats ate my karma. They also wrote this comment.
I always wondered how they got it all in one can..