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Test for String Theory Developed
inexion writes "PhyOrg is reporting that SLAC (Stanford Linear Accelerator Center) scientists have found a way to test the revolutionary theory, which posits that there are 10 or 11 dimensions in our universe. This past December, Joanne Hewett, Thomas Rizzo, and student Ben Lillie published an article in Physical Review Letters which shows theoretically how to measure the number of dimensions that comprise the universe. By determining how many dimensions exist, Hewett and Rizzo hope to either confirm or repudiate string theory under specific conditions which would consist of creating and examining 'micro-black holes', which could be formed by smashing two high energy protons together. Using the predicted decay properties of the emitted neutrinos, Hewett and Rizzo solved equations to find that our universe may have more than 10 or 11 dimensions -- too many dimensions to be explained by string theory."
How many micro-black holes have we measured in a lab?
None.
How many micro-black holes have we even seen?
None, as it turns out.
This is a story of hope and speculation--much like the story of super string theory.
Hell, do we even have the capabilities to smash two high energy protons together?
To be fair, Bosonic Super string theory has room for 25 dimensions but it's flawed with tachyon, the so called imaginary mass.
I'd be interested to know how they intend to measure the micro-black holes.
My work here is dung.
"Black Holes in Many Dimensions at the CERN Large Hadron Collider: Testing Critical String Theory" JoAnne L. Hewett, Ben Lillie, and Thomas G. Rizzo Phys. Rev. Lett. 95, 261603 (2005)
For those with access to PRL, the doi for the paper is: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.95.261603
This is the abstract: For those without access to PRL, you can view a different version of the manuscript on arXiv.
My comments (with the usual disclaimer: while I am a scientist, I'm not a particle physicist/string theorist, so I would appreciate any corrections to what I say): This work appears significant. String theory is incredibly elegant and fits in very well with other (experimentally verified) theories (quantum field theory, etc.). However, what string theory has always lacked, is experimental backup. The fact that there may be a way to experimentally test one of its predictions/requirements (that of extra dimensions) is truly significant, and will allow these fundamental theories to be advanced way beyond their current speculative nature.
As I understand it, one of the current "problems" in string theory is an over-abundance of theories. There are millions (perhaps even an infinite number) of theory-variants that are all consistent with the current string-theory formalism. Of course only one (or possibly zero) of the theories is right. An experimental test would (I hope!) help pick out which theory variant is the right one... or perhaps tell us that string theory is completely wrong! Either way it's a good thing for science and I look forward to this test being performed at the LHC.
turn into something a bit more substantial than what it is right now, but golly gee whiz, what happens if the the mini black holes don't behave quite exactly like they're supposed to?
Is it fascism yet?
Evolutionary "theory," for example, has a substantial quantity of data that suggests the general notion is true. But string theory, at least in the scientific community, does not maintain the same support that most other "theories" have. There are, rather, a number of prominent physisists who believe string "theory" doesn't deserve the theoretical status it has obtained (or at least that's what I've been led to believe).
The question I have, therefore, how was the "theory" part conferred?
An effective signature identifies a particular user amongst a base of thousands.
That when they find out that String Theory is String Fact, they'll find out that the string was placed there to keep the nano-kittens occupied.
Task Mangler
It says "under certain conditions." That is, if I read the article correctly, they have equations which say if the micro-black hole decays in a certain way, it will mean there are more than 11 dimensions.
Of course, if it doesn't decay as they predict, then their test fails and they've proven nothing about string theory. And that's assuming their math is correct.
isnt anything that is purported to be true as a result of some a mathematical proof a theorem and something that is known to be true but has no proof a postulate(Law)? I would expect it to work in somewhat the same way in physics. a paper demonstrating some sort of reasonable explanation of why establishes a theorem. whether or not that logical proof is sound is another matter. and for something which is difficult to prove experimentally, like string theory and (some would argue)evolution, there is always debate. Evolution is just much older and well-tested than string theory.
How is string supposed to predict the amount of dimensions? Do they drop it in a black hole and see how far it goes, and use it from that?
Sincerely, Confused in the Fifteenth Dimension
Grammar Nazi
My work here is dung.
You may not believe this, but the English language is often ambiguous. Some words have two, three, four, or more meanings. The word theory is one of those. One definition of theory is a widely tested and accepted set of principles, as in Einstein's theory of relativity, which gives specific predictions about the universe that have been time and again proven correct to a high degree of accuracy. Another definition of theory is a hypothesis that has not yet been verified, as in string theory, which has not been scientifically verified at all. Yes, this ambiguity causes no end of confusion when one refers to the "theory of evolution". Many of us sit back and chuckle as people refer to it as "just a theory".
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
This is off topic, but last night I was watching a special on string theory on the science channel - another discovery channel. And while it first seemed interesting, about halfway through it I realized it was almost completely devoid of actual information. Other than cool graphics and bouncing numbers, very little on the theory was actually presented.
I'm gonna read the article on wikipedia, maybe I'll get some more information.
"A knot is a method for fastening or securing linear material such as string by tying or interweaving."
So obviously, if the knot test succeeds we can assume the string theory holds together.
Proof by very large bribes. QED.
Since when have we been able to create micro-black holes? Man.....screw lightsabers, i want a gun that shoots micro-black holes!
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
All black holes emit Hawking radiation, which is essentially black-body radiation (the object is trying to come into thermal equilibrium with the rest of the universe, so is emitting/absorbing radiation to do so). The origin of Hawking radiation is vacuum pair production, if anyone is interested. This radiation causes the black-hole to slowly "evaporate." The temperature (hence rate of evaporation) is inversely proportional to the black-hole mass (hence size).
Micro-black-holes are (obviously) very small. Thus, they evaporate very, very quickly. In fact, they are well below the sustainable threshold, and will evaporate much faster than they accumulate new mass. Also note that these micro-black-holes have quite low mass, hence their graviational attraction is pretty much nill. They are "black holes" because their mass density is infinite, and they are thus a singularity, but nothing about "black holes" definitely implies "consumes matter indefinitely" (this only happens for black holes of sufficient size).
So, no, there is no danger with micro-black-holes eating up the entire Earth. Yes, our current theories may be incorrent (you never know), but if micro-black-holes were able to grow without bound, then you'd expect the universe to be littered with black holes all over the place (which is not the case). Thus there's no reason to worry: the LHC will not gobble up the Earth.
From Wikipedia: "String theory is a model of fundamental physics whose building blocks are one-dimensional extended objects (strings) rather than the zero-dimensional points (particles) that are the basis of the Standard Model of particle physics..."
y
Here is the article:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/String_theor
Sun and Fun
Theories are testable. The problem is that until now, the "String Theory" people insisted their theory was testable, we just lacked the technology to test it. Thus, other scientists told them to get their heads out of the clouds and work on something serious.
Now that this technology is on the horizon, the scientists are developing tests that will prove string theory to be "incomplete" (aka, wrong) by generating scenarios that do not match the predictions made by String Theory (in this case, that they can generate more dimensions than String Theory allows for). If the correct number of dimensions appear every time the micro blackhole is created, then we know that String Theory has the number of dimensions correct, to the best of our ability to measure dimensions (perhaps our understanding of these equations is incorrect, or our measurement equipment is missing something). This doesn't make it "right", it merely makes it "less likely to be wrong". So the scientists will think up some other way to challenge the theory.
It is a theory in the mathematical sense similar to Group Theory, Set Theory, or Ring Theory. In mathematics these "theories" really refer to the specific set of axioms assumed. There exist some axioms (well, really, assumptions) that define the body of work that is "string theory". But one should not confuse string theory for mathematics. There are few rigorous proofs in the literature, a very large set of assumptions, and a large set of unproven conjectures.
In practice, unless a very bizarre set of miracles occur (such as the fundamental scale of gravity being much, much lower than we measure it to be -- such as is assumed in the article), there is no way we will ever conclusively prove string theory to be correct. It will always be possible to write down a different theory which gives the same physics, but is far simpler. String theory is not falsifiable and therefore is unlikely to stand the test of time. (or, maybe, it will live forever -- kind of like dragons and vampires)
-- Bob
1^2=1; (-1)^2=1; 1^2=(-1)^2; 1=-1; 1=0.
>how was the "theory" part conferred?
There is no governing body that certifies theories. Saying something is a theroy does not specify how certain it is, how close it is to the "truth", how popular it is, how accepted it is within a group, how does it compare to other theories, how close it is being falsified. "Being worthy of academic discussion" is another idea.
(Some people would be scared because of this, saying that it makes science weak. But it doesn't, because science is about being open to ideas and exploring them, which means that everything is open, even to "crazy ideas" like string theory which should be evaluated and proven/disproven by its merits along, not on some title given by a set of people.)
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
>String theory is not falsifiable
Assume I have very little understanding of string theory. Could you please explain this in more detail; exactly what part and why string theory is not falsifiable.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
One should really call it String Hypothesis or String Postulate.
In cases like this, untested ideas about the function of the universe, I personally like the term "model." You can use it to posit the inner workings of the universe and why things happen, but untill the technology is there and the experiments have been run it is not fully a scientific theory. But I believe it does fall within the bounds of model. And the nice thing about this is that with a model, you can make some assumptions that may or may not be true to simply explore how the world would work supposing this is true.
My favorite correlary is light. We have a model of light behaving as a wave, and that model has been proven to be wrong under certain cirumstances. We have a model of light behaving as a particle, and that model can also be proven wrong under certain circumstances. However, the fact that each model is not completely correct does not mean that they are useless. The basis of the model can be used to make further predictions about the way the world works, or even to produce technology through engineering.
I'll never make that mistake again, reading the experts' opinions. - Feynman
If one day string theory is validated by an actual experiment what consequences will it have for the various interpretations of Quantum Mechanics? Is it going to give more credibility to any one of the interpretations of QM? Or is this a completely orthogonal issue?
Disclaimer: I know nothing about String Theory but methinks that a true Theory of Everything must provide us with an unambiguous answer for the nature of the collapse of a wavefunction, no?
Your pizza just the way you ought to have it.
Is it my imagination, or does everything on the Discovery channels in the UK seem to be related to either World War II, hurricanes, tornados, crime, accidents? I haven't been able to find anything related to the latest science news. There used to be Discovery 2000, but maybe that was some time ago. There just doesn't seem to be any sort of weekly science update like a video version of New Scientist.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
Peter Woit, a critic of string theory, points out some of the misleading bits in this article on his blog, "Not Even Wrong: http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress (scroll down for it). A brief discussion of why this isn't quite as exciting as it may sound.
JoAnne Hewett (one of the original authors) also comments in the blog, saying that the journalists tried to make the work a little more accessible by suppressing important details: As for the headline that is blazened on the SLAC home page - I saw it for the first time when someone drew my attention to it. I knew it was going to cause headaches...
So while this may be solid work, it doesn't seem quite so sexy as it has been made out to be...
Guess I'll be the first to say, 'We don't go to Ravenholm anymore...'
Given 11 dimensions, you will be able to kiss everyone good bye, at the same time, without knowing it.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
> Is it my imagination, or does everything on the Discovery channels in the UK seem to be related to either World War II, hurricanes, tornados, crime, accidents?
A few weeks back Jay Leno observed, "This week in 1933, Adolph Hitler came to power in Germany... thus creating The History Channel."
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Yes, but will string theory prevent Xbox 360s from overheating?
games journalism blog
So, no, there is no danger with micro-black-holes eating up the entire Earth
/. post I was really worried there for a second....
Man I'm glad I read this as a
A loop, by its nature, continues. If that didn't make sense, start reading this sentence again.
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String theory is not falsifiable and therefore is unlikely to stand the test of time.
It most certainly is falsifiable - we just don't quite have the technology to test it yet, but by all measures, we appear to be pretty close (hence the article).
Assuming they produce a mini-blackhole with the LHC, if the observations do not match string theory's predictions, then it will have been falsified. They then need to either throw it out, or take it back to the drawing board.
None, but John Titor has seen a few in his time.
Computer Go: Writing Software to Play the Ancient Game of Go
> isnt anything that is purported to be true as a result of some a mathematical proof a theorem and something that is known to be true but has no proof a postulate(Law)?
Notice that "theory" and "theorem" are different words. Theorems arise from applying rules of inferences to sets of axioms (and previously proven theorems).
In general, the empirical sciences work by induction and hypothesis testing rather than by applying rules of inference to known truths, and thus don't produce theorems.
As others have pointed, there are several meanings of the word "theory", even in the world of science. I don't know the history of it, but I suspect "string theory" is called a theory because of its very mathematical nature, like "computational complexity theory".
Also, I suspect we will continue to call it "string theory" even if it is eventually shown to be wrong.
I'm not crazy about that choice of names for it - we don't have any problems naming GR or QM without putting "theory" in the name - but language and terminology seem to have lives of their own.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
>> By determining how many dimensions exist, Hewett and Rizzo hope to either confirm or repudiate string theory
You cannot confirm a theory.
An experiment can either support it or disprove ("repudiate") it.
-
Yeah, there's nothing wrong with guestimated probability, or an understanding of the universe based on an uneducated perception. Hell, what's the worst that could happen, anyway? Tho', who among us would recognize a micro-black-hole if we saw one ...?
Oh, well. I hereby declare micro-singularities safe! As far as we know. Er, have observed. Which isn't much. At all, really. So ... um ... good luck.
Boom.
(Incidentally, I "expect" this post to merrily go completely unnoticed and acquire a total score of 0.)
A photon is both a particle and a wave, at all times. This is a common misunderstanding of the physics, unfortunately propagated by popular literature. One can solve certain problems easier by assuming that it is one or the other (e.g. the wave nature of a gamma ray is pretty useless, and the particle nature of radio waves is too), but the same equations govern both. All particles are both particles and waves, and for practical purposes we drop the distinction and call them all "particles".
-- Bob
1^2=1; (-1)^2=1; 1^2=(-1)^2; 1=-1; 1=0.
You'd think they'd leave this stuff alone after the "incident" over at the Black Mesa Facility. I think 4 dimensions is plenty for us right now.
That's what I mean by non-falsifiable. For any given conceivable measurement, there is a way to tweak the string theory to get around it. It can be discovered, but it can never be falsified. In this sense it is maximally non-predictive.
-- Bob
1^2=1; (-1)^2=1; 1^2=(-1)^2; 1=-1; 1=0.
So at the end of the day, the whole thing is non-predictive (due to the multitude of indistinguishable models from low-energy experiments) and non-falsifiable (due to being able to wiggle out of any conceivable measurement).
Up until the recent anthropic arguments I was even willing to still call string theory science. But it is now careening over the edge of superstition. The anthropic arguments are unprovable in principle, and therefore, not science. (I could rant about this for a few more pages...)
-- Bob
1^2=1; (-1)^2=1; 1^2=(-1)^2; 1=-1; 1=0.
Does it involve two tin cans and buttons? I believes I performed that test some thirty years ago. It acts as a primitive form of cell phone as I remember.
Take that, you lousy dimension!
....Since a theory which doesn't make predictions is, by definition, not falsifiable, string theory would therefore qualify as a non-falsifiable theory.......
In that case, this also fits the theory of evolution. Evolution attempts to explain the past, but what predictions does it make of the future than could be checked out by experiment? I'm not taking about breeding or adaptation here, but the jumps from simple organisms to more complex. Even more so, why has nobody yet done by diligent effort what supposedly happened by accident--- the creation of life from non-life? How about putting one or two, or even a hundred non-life derived chemicals together and making a simple cell or even a virus? Evolution makes no predictions on how this might be done.
All theory is gray
Even when string theory was new, it was hardly "revolutionary". It was more like SP17 for an already aging and proplematic physical theory.
welcome our new string theory black hole overlords.
Layman's explanation: the blackhole as you imagine it is giant mass that sucks things in and don't let them out. The side effect of such nasty behaviour is some ugly physics taking place inside. When you hear about small black holes, you imagine the same kind of horror, just very small. In fact, the small bastards have almost no mass, don't suck in anything _at all_, they just have the same ugly physics scientists are interested in. To put it short, in layman's words - it's not a black hole at all.
In that case, this also fits the theory of evolution. Evolution attempts to explain the past, but what predictions does it make of the future than could be checked out by experiment?
You are joking, right? The Theory of Evolution does not "attempt to explain the past" - it attempts to explain how one can get from point A to a later point B. We just happen to have mostly developed and verified the theory by looking at As and Bs that are in the past.
When one has access to an overwhelming amount of past evidence that can be compared against, one doesn't need to wait the 10s of millions of years necessary to see if it happens again.
That anyone doubts the truth of Evolution anymore I see as an astonishing failure of the school system.
Actually it sounds more like David Brin's Earth.
You are finite. Zathras is finite. This... is wrong tool.
I'll have to look up this stuff later on but thank you for giving me pointers on what to look for.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
> Evolution attempts to explain the past, but what predictions does it make of the future than
> could be checked out by experiment? I'm not taking about breeding or adaptation here, but the > jumps from simple organisms to more complex.
Organisms evolve to better fit their environment. As you've conceded, this can be seen via breeding experiments. So if by `more complex` you mean `better apapted to fit their environment` then that's what is shown by breeding experiments.
> Even more so, why has nobody yet done by diligent effort what supposedly happened by
> accident--- the creation of life from non-life? How about putting one or two, or even a
> hundred non-life derived chemicals together and making a simple cell or even a virus?
> Evolution makes no predictions on how this might be done.
If you're suggesting that because the theory of evolution hasn't explained everything means that it's yet to be proved, then you're wrong. Also, the gap between life and non-life is not as clear cut as you suggest.
You might want to read this:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/abioprob/
Or Larry Niven's The Hole Man, although that was about Mars being eaten by a small black hole.
one doesn't need to wait the 10s of millions of years necessary to see if it happens again.
The drawback of only having historical data is that there are quite a few holes in that data (IOW the sampling rate is rather low).
Using this data we don't get to see evolution in action, we see only the end result of what we assume/theorize must be evolution.
So in this case, yes we would benefit from 'seeing if it happens again'.
I knew both Hewett & Rizzo back in the early 80s when I was a physics undergrad at Iowa State -- JoAnne was a few years ahead of me, and Tom was a newly-minted professor, just out of post-doc.
I remember Tom telling us about supersymmetry (an ancestor of string theory) around 1983. God, I feel old...
.....If you're suggesting that because the theory of evolution hasn't explained everything means that it's yet to be proved, then you're wrong......
The orginal article was about testing string theory predictions EXPERIMENTALLY, thus determining if I set up condtions A, then result B will follow. If result B does happen, then the theory is on the right track and further tests can be done to refine the theory. If not then the theory gets thrown out or modified and new experiments done to test the refined version.
That's what happened with Einstein's theory of relativity. A TRUE theory of science is, that if I set up conditions A in an experiment, then result B should be observed. Many REPEATABLE, consistent experiments like this have been done with Einstein's theory, but what similar experiments have been done to show that the theory of evolution is an accurate predictor of the future? Nobbody has made evolution happen in the laboratory. Nobody has been able to take non-living chemicals and make even the simplest living thing out of them, thus PREDICTING the future through experiment. Nobody has ever taken a number of simple cells as building blocks and contructed a simple self sustaining multicellular organism -- kind of like biological lego blocks. Evolution is a conjecture, postulating immense eons of time, of how things may have come to be through the distant past, but has not in any way shape or form been experimentally tested in a lab, such as many other theories of science. Even the so called "missing links" from the past have never been found, because the are just that -- "missing" --ie. they never existed.
Real science requires EXPERIMENTS that can be done by anyone with the right tools and that will ALWAYS give results consistent with the theory behind the experiment. When scientists can devise a consistent, repeatable experiment that shows how life can come from non-life, then evolution rises to a falsifyable, experimentally verified theory. Until then it is a conjecture, believed by faith, of how things may have happened in the past, but not a predictor of the future.
All theory is gray
Well there are theorems too, and interestingly enough, some theorems will sometime become axioms instead in a new theory.
>Nobody has been able to take non-living chemicals and make even the simplest living thing out of them, thus PREDICTING the future through experiment.
I don't think that the theory of Evolution is saying this. It is basically starting with that there is life already and then it changes. It does not say anything about non-life turning into life. (I'm not even sure how does non-life "survives" or become more adapotable to its environment?)
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
> Nobbody has made evolution happen in the laboratory.
Wrong.
Well, speaking as someone who has worked in the competing field of loop quantum gravity, which does have discrete spacetime (more or less), I think your argument against string theory is ill founded. There is no known incompatibility between holography and string theory, and in fact there is a large literature on the subject. You can, for instance, see this review. Claiming that the continuous space in perturbative string theory implies that the full nonperturbative string theory cannot be holographic is naive. If you want to argue about the validity of string theory, there are much more legitimate targets.
They are not smashing these togeather.They are moving these things togeather at angles that reduces the ammount of natural spin in them .In reality they are slowing them down .I wish they could move 3 togeather at the same time at the same angles,six would be better.This would produce a black hole .
"Model" is not an appropriate word, given its common usage. A concrete solution of string theory that make specific predictions, e.g. a given compactification, etc., is a "model". The broad string framework that encompasses all such stringy models is a "theory". This is in accordance with typical usage, such as the Standard Model of particle physics, within the broad framework of quantum field theory.
I always understood "theory" to mean a set of principles or equations to explain phenomena, period.
If you think of an underlying mechanism that would explain things (whether we're talking scientific measurements or theology or whatever), you have a theory. If your explanation isn't internally consistent, you do NOT have a theory. If your theory doesn't have anything to distinguish it from other theories that could explain the same results, it is "just a theory". If your theory makes predictions which can be tested, and the tests match your predicted results, your theory looks good. But whether it is a crackpot explanation that can be easily disproven, or something that has been tested and not disproven over and over and over again, it is still a THEORY, because the word "theory" describes what sort of thing it is and has no implications, positive or negative, about its truth or validity.
Not unlike, say, the word "explanation". There are good explanations, and bad explanations, and ridiculous explanations, and so on, but its quality does not change it from an "explanation" to an "assumption" or an "observation" or a "calculation" or an "introduction" or a "poem" or a "classification system" or a "bedtime story". Well, some explanations may be suitable bedtime stories, or may be poetic, or may involve calculation or observation, but this is an independent attribute.
Is it? Or is it the astonishing success of religious lunatics getting to them first?
It amazes me that there is a debate about evolution in school, because it 'is just a theory', meanwhile christians send their children to sunday school from the age of 3 on up, to prevent the possibility of them ever doubting what they are taught. There they are taught that Elijah went to heaven in a chariot of fire (not the theory of the chariot of fire heaven journey) and other fables (like the time a snake talked to eve, or the time Jesus flew).
So the point is that christians immunize their children against reality from birth on up, meanwhile preventing the best knowledge we have available from reaching them because it conflicts with their myths and fairy tales.
The astonishing thing is that they succeed in subverting public education to this goal, and then manage to frame the debate in a form which casts them in a less than insane light.
How about putting one or two, or even a hundred non-life derived chemicals together and making a simple cell or even a virus?
Uhm, they pretty much have. Scientists have devised simple forms of RNA which replicate themselves in a nutrient bath. This is the simplest form of life in most theories of the advent of life as far as I know, and so your requirement is met and then some.
Yes, this is called "Television".
There aren't *any* shows where significant amounts of information are passed. It is one of the limitations of the media.
On the plus side "Television" is very good at giving you the impression you are learning something, and it is highly addictive.
(How many people do you know who simply don't have a TV because they don't care for it? Now how many people don't have an X where X is anything else? I will bet dollar for dollar that more people don't have heat in America than don't have a TV set. Moreover, I'll bet you that more people don't have any food whatsoever in their house than don't have a working TV. Moreover, I'll bet you that if you did a study of people who have been robbed, the first thing they replace is their TV.
And here is the best part. If you bring this up, people will react very angrily sometimes. It's like you are trying to steal their crack.)
Most string theorists do not believe that string theory will resolve any of the interpretational questions of quantum mechanics. The term "theory of everything" merely means that it incorporates all the known forces, not that it answers all foundational questions in physics. String theory applies standard quantization methods, just to strings instead of particles. As such, it has all of the interpretational problems of ordinary quantum mechanics. It's possible that string theory will teach us new about quantum theory, but as of yet, there is no strong indication that it will.
Almost certainly the "string" in question here is less of the type used to, say, keep one's shoes laced-up than it is of the "cheese" variety; so-called "String Cheese" is commonly found in both grocery and convenience stores and can easily be split into MANY more "dimensions" than just eleven (my almost-twin three-year-olds regularly split it into dozens...and then split those strings into dozens more... of course then they make an unbelievable mess that causes my wife to terminate the experiment prematurely...)
Who says physics can't be fun (and delicious!)?
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Historical models are inherently unfalsifiable, when falsifiability is restricted to experimentation. The historical element of neo-darwinian evolutionary theory is not refutable by experimentation. It is however, falsifiable, to the degree that it makes predictions about observations, such as phylogenetic biochemical observations, and fossilized natural observations. Basically all of the putative evidences of historical speciation by means of neo-darwinian model mechanisms are not only falsifiable, they have in fact been falsified by the observation of contradictory evidences. These are largely disregarded by the scientific establishment, which has an enormous investment, which bears substantial dividends, in the current dominant paradigm. This social process was well-described by Kuhn in the 1960s. Eventually, just as the original darwinian model was replaced by the neo-darwinian model, a new model will arise which more adequately accounts for the totality of observed facts, rather than accounting for a select few, and requiring ignorance of the remainder. Whether it will continue to be called darwinian (or quasidarwinian or pseudodarwinian or metadarwinian) is a topic of speculation only.
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
IANAStringTheorist but I am a mathematician who spent a good few years looking at the mathematics of String Theory.
"The White House is not an intelligence-gathering agency," -- Scott McClellan, Whitehouse spokesman.
People, please, the great grandparent thread has already been purchased in a $5 acquiring by Uwe Bool.
Boll initially tried to make this into a full feature movie but it lacked something mildly important to Boll--a plot line.
He hired round the clock game designers to code up a game called Bust-A-Move VI: The Black Hole. The game consists of the dinosaurs from Bust-A-Move trying to stop a falling black hole by firing balls at it. The first level contains a kill screen scenario which caused critics to pan it.
However, Boll was quoted as saying, "It look good."
In the movie, two dinosaurs have to race against the clock as they try to figure out ways to stop a falling black hole from reaching the earth's core. In many scenes, you can hear in the background Uwe grunting hard as he runs the laws of physics down his leg.
Boll revealed a few key plot points prior to the movie's release and summed them all up into one sentence, "... [the public] wants to see two naked dinosaurs doing it and I won't let them down."
The part of the black hole will be played by Alicia Silverstone's cranium.
My work here is dung.
If you are going to destroy Palo Alto / Menlo Park, please don't take the rest of the world with you.
The main point is that there are many "ifs", "ands", and "buts" in the paper that did not make it into the news release. Essentially what we showed was that, in a very special set of circumstances it is possible to make a measurement at the LHC which will could possibly determine the number of extra dimensions. If that can be done, then the result will be very important to understanding string theory, since the number of dimensions plays an important role in that theory. It certainly can not rule out string theory. We think it's an important and interesting piece of work, but it isn't a definitive "test" of string theory, as the headline suggests.
Here is a comment JoAnne left on Peter Woit's blog when this showed up there, and the complaint was raised that the story sounded over-hyped:
I've also replaced the arxive version with the published version: http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-ph/0503178, so both versions should now be the same.
Ben Lillie
what predictions does it make of the future than could be checked out by experiment?
Here's one: If you expose a microbe to a toxin that does not entirely wipe out the microbe, that microbe will gradually evolve to become resistant to that toxin.
Like, say, staph and penicillin.
You can go ahead and run this experiment yourself on non-resistant staph strains; I predict (via the Theory of Evolution) that if you vary the dosage of penicillin until it does not result in a die-off, that any samples you take from the exposed cultures will be statistically more resistant (i.e., take longer to die-off in subsequent trials) than non-resistant cultures that have not been exposed.
Please, get back to me and let me know how it turns out.
-Hentai [in vita non pacem est]
Actually, evolution does make predictions, which have been tested. You may not think predictions about bacteria, moths, or fruit flies are very interesting, but since these (and other similar ones) are the only creatures with short enough lifetimes that we might be able to expect some kind of really noticeable evolution to occur, I'm afraid you'll have to deal with it.
Specifically, it is predicted that, when the habitat of a species changes significantly (where the definition of "significantly" depends on the species - a sudden lack of fruit may not matter to a wolf, but will make life hell for a fruit fly), the species has a significantly increased chance of changing its behavior, coloring (as in the case of some white moths whose environment has suddenly acquired a lot of soot, making grey or black a better color for camoflauge), etc. Growing an extra leg is generally unlikely, which is probably good because otherwise everybody would have a different number of legs, but small changes are predicted to happen all the time (and do happen all the time).
He's the paper's author, and he's modded at one right now.
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They can always just add another dimension to the universe to make things fit if this experiment doesn't work out.
.....You may not think predictions about bacteria, moths, or fruit flies are very interesting, but since these (and other similar ones) are the only creatures with short enough lifetimes that we might be able to expect some kind of really noticeable evolution to occur, I'm afraid you'll have to deal with it......
A lot of phenomena of living things are all shoved together under the moniker "evolution". All the things that you and others have described fall under the category of adaptation to the environment. Moths and bacteria and many other living things can, do, and must adapt to their environment. A resistant bacteria or a darker/lighter moth are still such respectively and never "evolve" into an entirely different kind of creature. Breeding has produced who knows how many different kinds of dogs, cats, horses or even bacteria. They all however remain dogs, cats, horses etc. and do not become anything other than those. A Dachshund is very different than a great Dane, yet both are still dogs and never will be anything other than that.
A non-adpatation experiment, true evolution from one group to an entirely different group, would be a valid experiment, outside of the adaptation possibility. Start wil a culture of some strain of e-coli and "evolve" that into some kind of streptococcous would be true evolution. Start with an amoeba and "evolve" it be any means whatsoever into a paramecium would be. Mendel and others have shown that there are certain genetic borders that cannot be crossed.
(......Scientists have devised simple forms of RNA which replicate themselves in a nutrient bath.....)
Making a special nutrient bath composed of compounds that were once part of a living organism and then having some of those pieces come back together is not "making life". You must make a bath of chemicals from constituents, NONE of which were ever part of any living organism before. Anyone who does that would have demonstrated EXPERIMENTALLY how life (even a simple subcomponent like RNA) can be made from totally non-living matter.
Evolutionists have NEVER even made a single experiment that demonstrates evolution as Darwin or his present day believers conjecture it may have happened. Where are all the intervening transitions from one group to another? There are distinct, fully formed groups found in the fossil record, but never any of the thousands of transition creatures that ought to be there if the Darwinian evolution of the species were correct.
Before modern EXPERIMENTAL science, there were philosophers who speculated on how things worked. Only in the last few hundred years science changed from philosphical conjectures to repeatable experiments. Evolution is a throwback to the argumants of philosophers, all of them believing in the religion of atheism, rather than true experimental science.
All theory is gray
Best I can figure, Superstring theory is a way to describe the Universe that is opposite to the way science usually works. With Superstrings, they are trying to invent a particle which has all the parameters necessary to explain all phenomena. This is a particle, or string, that is able to detect what it should be at any particular time or place, with the ability to become that entity (photon, graviton, proton etc.) Traditionally, science figures out what and how entities are and behave, and works toward a greater understanding of the Universe from this information. Perhaps these two approaches will meet in the middle, but until they do, Superstring theory is an explanation of how magic works, competing with previous approaches usually featuring some kind of god. At any rate, finding a cause for magic, defined as something without a cause, may not be a profitable use of resources.
Except that (a) strep isn't a descendant of E. coli and parameciums aren't descendants of amoebas, so that can't actually happen, (b) evolving a unicellular organism into such a different type of unicellular organism on human timescales is physically impossible, as it took far, far longer for evolution to do it to begin with, and (c) none of this has diddlysquat to do with the enormous amounts of evidence that show that all species on Earth share common ancestry. Evolution doesn't predict that we should be able to do what you ask, nor is it remotely necessary in order to demonstrate the validity of evolution.
Bullshit. They showed no such thing.
Nonsense. You simply don't accept any of those experiments as demonstrating evolution, and require unnecessary and impossible experiments instead.
You ignore the evidence of transitional species as well, of course.
Every species is a transitional species, except for the ones that went extinct.
So, I'm curious, how did your whole stack corruption problem turn out? Did you find any tools that helped you out? Why not write up a journal entry about your experiences?
U said 'strings can detect what it should be at any time or place with the ability to become that entity', well, it sounds like to me that this tring theory can over come the quantum theory and revolutionalize study in physics. Starting from Paul Dirac, Quantum theory have been invincible, even Einstein could not beat this (1950). This string theory is only 30 years old, and are u saying this informations are all proven to be true as well? The physics in now about what is the probability of certain event happen in particular moment, not how this event happens.