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String Theory a Disaster for Physics?
BlueCup writes "Mathematician Peter Woit of Columbia University describes string theory in his book Not Even Wrong,. He calls the theory 'a disaster for physics.' Which would have been a fringe opinion a few years ago, but now, after years of string theory books reaching the best sellers list, he has company."
Some people really get tied in a knot about stuff like this.
... not when one side, his own, acts of the panties are in a wad.
/Thats my opinion, I could be wrong
AccountKiller
Okay, so because a theory (or more an idea or almost a philosiphy) cannot be disproven, it becomes a disaster for modern science?
I suppose we should stop looking for what started the universe, since we can't disprove the existance of God or anything. What a load of BS.
the universe is like a safe with a combination but the combination is locked up inside the safe...
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
asked a ninja.
We must blow up the safe. Someone... get me the antimatter.
..for me to make up my own theory. I'll write a book, make millions! Maybe even billions!
SmartBox
I think ST is a very interesting and peculiar theory. I'm not sure it's a disaster. Even if ST is proved wrong in some way the math that resulted from ST is still worthwhile. However I think Woit's point is metascientifical, in that string theorists get more funding than those who are trying to provide alternatives to ST. That ST has become somewhat of a marketing term. This is surely damaging but again science is not excluded from human frailty.
The best education consists in immunizing people against systematic attempts at education. - Paul Feyerabend
Wow, that article made absolutely no sense to me... Quarks, leptons... even with wikipedia I'm having problems.
Exactly - String "Theory" is not testable at the current time, so it is largely an academic wank-fest.
ed
String Theory attempts an actual prediction and then gets it correct.
Till then, it's a bunch of fancy gobbedly gook as far as I'm concerned.
There exists a universe in which major advances in Phyics would have been made if so many smart scientists were not distracted by String Theory.
I've never felt very comfortable with string theory. Not that it threatens some deep-held belief (I have few of those), but that it seems mostly like conjecture, trying to shoehorn increasingly complex theories to fit some phenomena that is probably explainable in a simpler manner which we just yet haven't found. Of course, physics often doesn't adhere to common sense.
"I would say that 99 per cent of what my father has written about his own life is false." - L. Ron Hubbard Jr.
He blames string theory for this "crisis in particle physics," the branch of physics that tries to explain the most fundamental forces and building blocks of the world.
String theory, which took off in 1984....
Does string theory explain how its own effects are able to reach back in time a decade before its creation?
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
Let me point out that this has been well known in physics departments for years. The problem is string theory is nowhere near producing any prediction that can be tested, this means that it is not science, any more than mathematics is physics.
Did Glenn Beck rape and kill a girl in 1990? gb1990.com
Michio Kaku in his book Hyperspace describes why we can't actually get very far with this theory, is because "nobody is smart enough to figure it out". Since it was an accidental discovery in the 80's, he describes it as "21st century math that accidently made its way into the 20th century". The problem is to do with phase shifts and perturbation theory:
(Excerpted from Hyperspace: A scientific Odyssey through the 10th dimension)
To understand this form of tunneling, think of an imaginary Charlie Chaplin film, in which Chaplin is trying to stretch a bed sheet around an oversize bed. The shit is the kind with elastic bands on the corners. But it is too small, so he has to strain to wrap the elastic bands around each corner of the matress, one at a time. He grins with satisfaction once he has stretched the bed sheet smoothly around all four corners of the bed. But the strain is too great; one elastic band pops off another corner. Every time he yanks an elastic band around one corner, another elastic pops off another corner.
This process is called symmetry breaking. The smoothly strechted bed sheet possess a high degree of symmetry. You can rotate the bed 180 degrees along any axis, and the bed sheet remains the same. This highly symmetrical state is called the false vacuum. Although the false vacuum appears quite symmetrical, it is not stable. The sheet does not want to be in this stretched condition. There is too much tension. The energy is too high. Thus one elastic pops off, and the bed sheet curls up. The symmetry is broken, and the bed sheet has gone to a lower-energy state with less symmetry. By rotating the curled up bed sheet 180 degrees around an axis, we no longer return to the same sheet.
Now replace the bed sheet with ten-dimensional space-time, the space-time of ultimate esymmetry. At the beginning of time, the universe was perfectly symmetrical. If anyone was around at that time, he could freely pass through any of the ten dimensions without a problem. At that time, gravity and the weak, the strong and the electromagnetic forces were all unified by the superstring. All matter and forces were part of the same string multiplet. However, this symmetry couldn't last. The ten-dimensional universe, although perfectly symmetrical, was unstable, just like the bed sheet, and in a false vacuum. Thus tunneling to a lower-energy state was inevitable. When tunneling finally occurred, a phase transition took place, and symmetry was lost.
Because the universe begain to split up into a four- and a six-dimensional universe, the universe was no longer symmetrical. Six dimensions have curled up, in the same way that the bed sheet curls up when one elastic pops off first. For the ten-dimensional universe, however, there are apparently millions of ways in which to curl up. To calculate which state the ten-dimensional universe prefers, we need to solve the field theory of strings using the theory of phase transitions, the most difficult problem in quantum theory.
I'll subscribe to Slashdot when I see a month without a dupe, a typo, or an article the "editors" didn't read.
As I know it, physics does not change based on how we understand it, our understandings of physics might change based on itself. Am I being too narrowminded here? How the hell could anything be a disaster for something that exists with or without us having a theory about it.
-Is the meaning of life vanity, or is vanity the meaning of life?
Please tell me you OCR'd this before posting it. Either that or your diet needs improvement...
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.
String theory is almost recursive.... a snake eating its tail.
TFA is right in one thing-- it's lead to physicist bigotry.... an increasingly inbred idea that string theory rules and all else drools, but in dimension 9. So many things are unsolved.... and Hawking has helped but the mathematicians that used to rule physicists are finding themselves in a reverse role, where expostulations must be found to match equations which were pimped for expostulation.
It's like curve-fitting, but with unprovable geometry, not Euclidian and not non-Euclidian.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
The goal of string theory is to create a verifyable prediction. Just because it hasn't yet created a predictable theory doesn't mean it can't.
Maybe Intelligent Design can get some respect if other hard-to-test and long-shot hypotheses are allowed to be called "science". Just because backers tend to be religious does not by itself make it wrong. If a Darwin or SETI cult formed, would evolution or SETI's hypothesis grow less likely? Human bias does not change the truth values of the universe. If biased people want to hunt down evidence for long-shot hypotheses, so be it.
Table-ized A.I.
...but also turned out to be a disaster for productivity at work recently. Two developers engaged in a battle of semantics as to whether or not M-theory was actually string theory or a unification of same. Almost an hour later, people had a concern that someone may end up being stabbed in the face; the argument, however, was cut short later when a concerned manager dealt with the high-strung arm-chair physicists.
Two hours later, the local protagonist "pulled their strings" sublimely bringing up the subject in the midst of those two persons and subsequently, another shouting match ensued. At one point, the intellectual conversation had almost degraded into a volley of "momma" jokes. By the end of the day, neither developer realized how close they were to being "strung up" by the rest of the team.
I am an (ex-) particle theorist. I worked on phenomenology, which is how particle physicists describe people try to work with actual data.
I don't think the rise of string theory has been the cause of the dearth of breakthroughs in particle physics in the last 30 years, but rather the effect. For all that time, nothing unexpected has come out of accelerator experiments -- just more confirmations of the predictions of the standard model developed in the 1970s, and more accurate measurements of its parameters. In an environment like that, it's no surprise that theoreticans turn to highly speculative and mathematically challenging models to keep their work interesting.
There are still some related fields generating new and interesting data for good young theorists to cut their teeth on -- cosmology, for example.
Acording to general relativity there is a link between time and gravity, Hawkins always talked about it, with his Black Hole discoveries. It is Known now that Galaxies are not only moving away from each other as Hubble discovered with Red shift, but they are accelerating, acording to classical physics a force must be acting on them to do so, Now here's the neat part, With General Relativity as gravity gets weaker, Time speads up, it would make sense that because there is no mass we can see outside of galaxies, time has spead up there, and possibly caused a reversal of gravity, because it would make sense that anti gravity comes from accelerated time which comes from the absence of mass...If time is accelerated out there because of the absense of mass it would cause the force that makes galaxies accelerate away from each other. You can prove that gravity is the same as a magnetic field by putting a hyper sensitive clock by either a high powered electromagnetic field or a large mass such as earth and use space as a control, for both nearby clocks will go slower next to the earth and next to the magnetic field. The dimensionality of the fields thus must be studied to find the geometric flow of this one force, take a sphere magnet into deap space and fire it out of a gun so only one force is acting on it, and have it hit a target, it will always hit at the equater of it's fields neither North Nor South will hit the target just the equater, because of the dimensionality of it's reaction with one force, this force that was the gun now represents gravity and in this experiment it isolates the electromagnetic force and it's dimensional reaction to only one single force; gravity, in this model all the forces can be geometricly aligned, and you have 21st century tech. Zukunft.
The parameters of string theory can be bent far enough to encompass almost any observation predictable by other current theories.
It is almost like a Turing-Complete programming language where anything definable can be executed (ran) by giving it the right programming code. With 11 dimensions to play with, one has a lot of wiggle room to shape imaginary little sub-atomic string machines that can be just about anything you want, bending it to fit new observations.
Perhaps an equation for God is nearly as hard to test as an actual god.
Table-ized A.I.
I think ST is a very interesting and peculiar theory. I'm not sure it's a disaster. Even if ST is proved wrong in some way the math that resulted from ST is still worthwhile.
Think of Newtonian physics. We now know that Newton falls apart when viewed under the lens of Einsteinian relativity. But if you're dealing with relatively small masses, at relatively slow speeds, then Newton's physics works perfectly because relativity is too small a factor to affect the numbers. Likewise with quantum mechanics at the macroscopic level.
Neither of those three "theories" is a complete and accurate view of how the universe works. They are each of them a model for certain situations, and which one you choose depends on which one is most appropriate.
The thing about string "theory" is that it's more of a model than a theory. When physics gets down to this level, it's more mathematics than science. The theory/model that you use is never going to be perfect or complete, but as long as it fits the purposes you want it for, it's good.
Actually, it's the universe that doesn't change. Physics -- the body of science that explores how said Universe works -- changes all the time, relatively speaking.
Remember: the difference between the thing and our model of the thing is rather significant.
could it also be that our public education primary and secondary schools suxors so bad that we aren't cranking out any worthwhile new einsteins? no one since einstein has made an astonishing leap in physics with detailed mathematics to back it up. are we in an age of "who the hell cares?"
I think the whole problem is that string theory is misclassified. As far as I understand, the whole reason for its existance is that people have noticed several beautyful equations for strings in 12-dimensional space. On the other hand, we are as far now from seeing a measurable connection between these equations and the world around us as we were 20 years ago.
This is not physics because physics ultimately deals with the real world around us, with things we can measure or at least hope to measure. However, since this is a beautyful theory, this is math.
IMHO, any beautyful math will someday find its application and even if it doesn't, it should be done solely for its beauty. In any case, if string theorists would start calling themselves mathematicians, all the problems with string theory would disappear. Just don't expect it to have any obvious applications.
Based on the article it sounds like string theory is just like intelligent design; based on ideas without any concrete scientific evidence. I think the author is being a bit inflexible. It is probably the case the string theory needs further revision and examination before it is fully realized, at which point it will probably be a very different view of the universe. There was a time when it was thought that the atom was the smallest particle, which we now know to not be the case, but this was a good starting point for current quantum theory. String theory is just the beginning...
First off, I should point out to those that aren't familiar with the world of physics that Lee Smolin is one of the principal advocates, at least in the public discourse, of Loop Quantum Gravity, a competitor to String Theory. That is certainly not to say he's bashing string theory for his own benefit, though. His arguements are all quite sound.
Secondly, in my own experience, speaking to physics professors about string theory, we're starting to see some saturation in the number of students willing to work on topics in string theory for their PhDs, and as jobs become more scarce for those who enter into the field (after all if they don't advance with predictions, there's less and less to do), we'll see more people entering into other areas, ro examining other theories.
And finally, I should point out that the last line, That string theory abandoned testable predictions may be its ultimate betrayal of science , is extremely insulting. I'm sure there's nothing string theorists would like more than to come up with a testable hypothesis that could be tested immediately, but the fact is that it's a difficult subject. Just because we can't test it now is no reason to start crying "pseudo-science".
I came here for a good argument
It's not really related, but I found this interview with Carver Mead very interesting. Related in that it's also about progress (or non-progress) of scientific theory.
...you cannot fully understand the machine from within the machine.
Never trust anyone who makes up dimensions to make the math work.
http://physicsmathforums.com/showthread.php?t=56
Tied Up & Strung Out: Hollywood String Theory Movie!!! Looking For Extras!!!
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
ALL TIED UP & STRUNG ALONG, a movie about String Theorists and their expansive theories which extend human ignorance, pomposity, and frailty into higher dimensions, is set to start filming this fall. Jessica Alba, John Cleese, Eugene Levie, Jackie Chan, and David Duchovney of X-files fame have all signed on to the $700 million Hollywood project, which is still cheaper than String Theory itself, and will likely displace less physicists from the academy.
"As contemporary physics is about money, hype, mythology, and chicks," Ed Witten explained from his offices at the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study, "The next logical step was Hollywood, although I thought Burt Reynolds should play me instead of Eugene Levy."
Brian Greene, the famous String Theorist who will be played by David "the truth is out there" Duchovney, explained the plot: "String theory's muddled, contorted theories that lack postulates, laws, and experimentally-verified equations have Einstein spinning so fast in his grave that it creates a black hole. In order to save the world, we String Theorists have to stop reformulating String Theory faster than the speed of light. We are called upon to stop violating the conservation of energy by mining higher dimensions to publish more BS than can accounted for with the Big Bang alone, and I win the Nobel prize for showing that M-Theory is in fact the dark matter it has been searching for."
Greene continues: "At first my character is reluctant to stop theorizing and start postulating, but when my love interest Jessica Alba is sucked into the black hole, I search my soul and find Paul Davies there, played by John Cleese. I ask him what he's doing in my soul, and he explains that the answer is contained in the mind of God, which only he is privy too, but for a small fee, some tax and tuition dollars, a couple grants here and there, and an all-expense-paid book tour with stops in Zurich and Honolulu, he can let me in on it. And he shows me God in all her greater glory, as he points out that we can make more money in Hollywood than writing coffee-table books that recycle Einstein, Bohr, Dirac, Feynman, and Wheeler. I am quickly converted, and I agree to turn my back on String Theory's hoax and save Jessica Alba."
But it's not that easy, as standing in Greene's way is Michio "king of pop-theory-hipster-irony-the-theory-of-everything- or-anything-made-
you-read-this" Kaku, played by Jackie Chan. Kaku beats the crap out of Greene for alomst blowing the "ironic" pretense his salary, benefits, and all-expense paid trips depend on. "WE MUST HOLD BACK THE YOUNG SCIENTISTS WITH OUR NON-THEORIES!! WE MUST FILL THE ACADEMY WITH THE POMO DARK MATTER THAT IS STRING THEORY TO KEEP OUR UNIVERSE FROM FLYING APART, OUR PYRAMID SCHEMES FROM TOPPLING, AND OUR PERPETUAL-MOTION NSF MONEY MACHINE FROM STOPPING!!" Kaku argues as he delivers a flying back-kick, "There can be ony ONE! I WILL be String Theory's GODFATHER as referenced on my web page!! I have better hair!"
But Greene fights back as he signs his seventeenth book deal to make the hand-waving incoherence of String Theory accessible to the South Park generation, senior citizens, and starving chirldren around the world. "Kaku! Kaku! (pronounced Ka-Kaw! Ka-Kaw! like Owen Wilson did in Bottle Rocket)," Greene shouts. "It is theoretically impossible to build a coffee tables strong enough to support any more coffee-table physics books!!!"
"Time travel is also theoretically impossible, but there's a helluva lot more money for us in flushing physics down a wormhole. Nobody knows what the #&#%&$ M stands for in M theory ya hand-waving, TV-hogging crank!!! Get it?? Ha Ha Ha! We're laughing at the public! We're the insider pomo hipsters! Get with the gangsta-wanksta-pranksta CRANKSTER
That's some of the most marvelous pseudo-science doubletalk I've seen in quite awhile.
Congratulations!! Well done!
INfitinte time using rand() will get the result.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
According to string “theory”, the universe is a safe where you have combination but the lock is on the inside.
Join Tor today!
dog?"
-Ogre, Revenge of the Nerds 2
IAAP (I am a physicist). Out of all the bloviating, often obnoxious high energy physicists who feel compelled to write popular books with pretentious titles (Dreams of a Final Theory (Weinberg); The Quark and the Jaguar (Gell-Man); The God Particle (Lederman); The Cosmic Landscape (Suskind); A Brief History of Time (Hawking)), Kaku has absolutely contributed the least to the actual science. Lisa Randall is 10x the physicist of Kaku, if not moreso.
I think that if time were removed from the equation and replaced with a rate of change coefficient for each element, known and theoretical, we would be a lot closer to finding the answer. Each element changes at a specific rate depending on it's environment. ie; heat, cold, pressure, vacuum and gravity to name a few. Time actually does not exist in my opinion, only rate of change fluctuations in sub-atomic particles creating the illusion of time. Take the test done at high altitude with an atomic clock in an airplane and one on the ground for example. The isotope decayed at a faster rate at high altitude not because it was traveling faster through time, but because it's own gravity was enhanced by earths gravity causing it to release it's decay particles slower on the ground than at high altitude. Hence, close proximity gravitational enhancement gave the illusion of time distortion.
I also think the author is right, string theory has a lot of good scientists "tied up"
I am a string theorist. I would write my own rebuttal to Peter Woit, who is well known in the community for being very vocal about his opinions, but it has already been well done (these are blog posts by Sean Carroll at Chicago/Caltech).
I'm all for public education on all topics of physics, including string theory, but this is an unfortunate case of a little bit of knowledge being dangerous for armchair physicists. In order to properly understand string theory requires understanding conformal field theory, supersymmetry and supergravity, Riemann surfaces, Kaluza-Klein theory, and so on, just to name a few of the introductory ideas. I don't think it's too unreasonable to assume that most of Peter Woit's audience has not studied any of these. But without studying string theory, I don't think it's possible to judge whether or not the things string theorists find compelling are in fact sufficiently exciting to warrant the attention it receives from them. For my part, I think they are.
I'm glad reputable scientists are finally starting to get some publicity to beat back the string theory nonsense. The whole theory is essentially a math trick. They start with some parameters - like string harmonics in three dimensions - and then change anything they need to get the results they want. The fact that it needs a yet-to-be-determined number of dimensions (last I heard was 21) to work should be your first clue that it has no real value. To me it just proves that if you use scientific jargon and are pretty good at math you can make a lot of people believe just about anything - even other "scientists".
I think that dimensions should be imagined like an Isocahedron, twenty different facets. About 50% of them are positive planes, 25% of them are negative and the remaining 25% are too vague to make a decision either way.
The only problem with this theory is that all dimensions tend to be shaken up quite a bit. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_8_ball
A real concern is that the "landscape" (the fact the string theory is really a collection of theories that could have something like 10^500 (yes, that's a googol to the fifth power) possible vacua as solutions) renders string theory nearly unfalsifiable. It's not that they can't predict anything. Indeed, they've predicted everything. If the LHC at CERN started up tomorrow and found a Higgs boson with a mass of 220 GeV, and some kind of light supersymmetric partner at 260 GeV, they could claim that's consistent with string theory. Heck, if the Tevatron folks at Fermilab found a fourth family of leptons next week, the string community could claim to understand that, too. I would love to see just one example of something that could credibly be found at the LHC that string theory can't explain. Just one.
is that String Theory is the only theory that so far allows for the unification of Gravity with the other forces (strong, electroweak). Lee Smolin has his own agenda as he invested a lot of effort in "Quantum Gravity", a theory that does not even come close to the power of Sting Theory, in the sense that is deals only with gravity, ignoring the other fundamental interactions.
The article also fails to mention that String Theory is also Ultraviolet-finite and is has a single free parameter (other models have tens or hundreds of free parameters) so this are very good reasons to contimue studying it. No other theory comes close to achieving that.
And most important, people who study String Theory are working on the problem of unifying all interaction in Nature, they are not trying to predict the ratio of the electron and proton masses. In fact the proton is not even an elementary particle.
And that is patently false. Einstein did not fail math or do poorly at all. His grades reflect this.
While what you say makes sense on the outside, the truth may be a little scarier than that.
According to the results of some experiments in quantum physics the act of observing an event can change the outcome. (I don't feel like looking up the names or whatnot, someone more familiar with the topic feel free to fill in details or refute my line of thinking. I think the experiment had something to do with unexpected results in the double slit experiment when one particle is propelled through the slits at a time, and a whether or not it is directly observed which slit the particle passes through.)
Okay, technically speaking, observing the event doesn't actually change the outcome, but collapses the probablility function into one or another outcome. But the interesting thing is that observing some other factor of the event after the fact can expand the oringal outcome back into the probability function. To understand this statement requires an understanding of the phrase "probability function" as I am using it. It basically means something along the lines of if there are two possible outcomes, what actually occurs is a blending between the two. For instance in the double slit experiement, a single particle fired at two slits will take BOTH paths. The particle also takes the right path, and the left path, and neither path all at the same time if it's waveform is not collapsed to one individual outcome. And it's not something like "Oh, you mean of all the particles fired, they make a random distribution?" Because a single particle fired at the slits takes the left path, the same particle also takes the right path, and in addition to that it takes both paths and no paths. Sort of like the concept behind Schroedinger's cat, where untill the box is opened the cat is neither actually alive nor dead. Some take this as the observer does not know whether the cat is alive or dead, but what Schroedinger meant is that the cat literally exists in a superposition between the state of being alive and the state of being dead.
So, what does this this all mean in response to your post? In the quantum world, observing a thing will ultimately change that thing. How the thing is observed will change how that thing is changed. How your understand physical phenomenon will change the way you observe it, so a difference in understanding can, according to a stretch quantum theory, change the outcome or possibly even the structure of the nature of the thing.
Why do I get the feeling that there is a zen master smiling somewhere based on what I just wrote?
I'll never make that mistake again, reading the experts' opinions. - Feynman
The way you present it is very understandable. I suppose a good analogy, at least from a "coders" perspective, is that you don't really understand why using a particular programming language construct is slower unless you understand how the compiler translates it, how the microprocessor interprets those instructions, the operating temperature of the CPU, etc, etc.
It seems that quite a bit of theory builds upon past knowledge which still manages to 'stick', even though we tend to lose knowledge of the 'fundamentals' in the process. It would be interesting, however, to see a lot of that theoretical 'math' put to work in the physical world; or, at the very least, explained simply to those who are capable of giving that math physical manifestation.
I am a cosmologist, albeit one who works "close" to string theory (I am not a string theorist, but many of my collaborators are), and I am familiar with Woit's arguments (and have met the gentleman himself several times).
However, my impression -- and I speak as someone who works inside a particle theory group, and who has served on faculty-level particle physics search committees -- is that string theory is far from having a "lock" on theoretical particle physics today. In the article, Woit is quoted as follows: "By his count, of 22 recently tenured professors in particle theory at the six top U.S. departments, 20 are string theorists." Looking at the Particle Physics Rumor Mill (http://physics.wm.edu/~calvin/) which assembles the short lists for faculty jobs in particle theory many of (and perhaps most) the people getting offers are not "hard core" string theorists. Many of them will have written papers with some string content, but have wider interests in cosmology, particle phenomenology, and/or physics "beyond the standard model".
This statistic differs from Woit's, in that it is not just counting "top" physics departments, and looks at Assistant Prof hires, and not tenured faculty (although *outside* the top six, most Assistant Profs can expect to be promoted to tenue). However, I suspect that the "twenty out of twenty two" statistic is either over a very carefully chosen interval, or reflect a very broad definition of who counts as a "string theorist".
My feeling is that string theorists have a *hard* time getting jobs. In general, many places outside the top ten (ande most of the jobs are outside the top ten) do not have string theorists on their faculty, and string theorists have a hard time differentiating themselves from other people in their field, which makes it hard for them to get hired -- especially as they are competing against other, very smart people.
The real issue here is that particle physicists have received no "surprises" in many years -- perhaps the only genuinely unexpected recent data point being the non-zero value of the cosmological constant. And this did not create a new problem, since the challenge for the theoretical community was always to explain why the CC was around 10^120 times smaller than its "natural" value, which is not much easier than explaining why it is actually slightly different from zero. In this enviroment, we have no good way to "prune" theoretical ideas, and the hope of many is that the LHC (Large Hadron Collider) will yield results that cannot be explained within the context of the so-called "standard model" of particle physics. In this sense *any* theoretical framework that had been worked on since the mid 1970s would risk falling into the same trap as string theory, since there is no data we can't explain with existing models -- if it was incompatible with the standard model it would have been dead on arrival, but any model which yields the standard model in some limit is not falsifiable with current data.
On the other hand, string theory does provide a rich mathematical structure with some very surprising results. The so-called "AdS/CFT" correspondence sets up a completely unexpected relationship between gravity and a particular class of field theories, and some calculations in QCD (the theory of the "strong" nuclear interaction) can be "organized" and performed using string theoretic ideas. This does not "test" string theory, but it does show that there are deep and unexpected consequences to what is ultimately a very simple idea and, in the absence of data, this motivates theoriests to keep working in this area.
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/hep-ph/pdf/9709/9709318. pdf
Chapter 6 counters your arguments in a way that I think is quite clear (for a string theory paper, at least).
And while I won't try and claim there's some particle that we can discover at the LHC that string theory can't explain, by not finding light supersymmetric partners of existing particles, the LHC has the possibility to disprove string theory.
I came here for a good argument
There are dualities between string theory and quantum field theory that allow intractable QFT calculations to be performed using string theory methods. In some cases, millions of Feynman diagrams can be summed up by translating the problem into a string theory problem. While some people view string theory as being largely made up, theoretical physics is all about constraints. In order for things to be physically consistent a large number of aspects must fall into place. Even if string theory doesn't eventually fit the bill, the investigation thereof allows us to sample the space of theories, so to speak, so get an idea of what the ultimate theory will look like.
Applying the principles of quantum physics to the macro world is not correct. From Wikipedia:
"Quantum mechanics is a fundamental branch of theoretical physics that replaces classical mechanics and classical electromagnetism at the atomic and subatomic levels."
Note the part "at the atomic and subatomic levels". When we talk about Schrodinger's cat we are using a metaphor to describe the behavior of the quantum world.
There are quite a number of new age loonies that regurgitate quantum mechanical ideas as if they are directly applicable to the macro world as opposed to governing the behavior of subatomic particles. It doesn't work like that:
"Quantum mechanics is a more fundamental theory than Newtonian mechanics and classical electromagnetism, in the sense that it provides accurate and precise descriptions for many phenomena that these "classical" theories simply cannot explain on the atomic and subatomic level. It is necessary to use quantum mechanics to understand the behavior of systems at atomic length scales and smaller. For example, if Newtonian mechanics governed the workings of an atom, electrons would rapidly travel towards and collide with the nucleus. However, in the natural world the electron normally remains in a stable orbit around a nucleus -- seemingly defying classical electromagnetism."
Sometimes my arms bend back.
String Theory is a regression to the ancient Greek disdain for handing instruments and tools. Surprise, it has thrown physics back to about the pace of discovery the Greeks kept, too.
You can theorize until the cows come home ... in the end, prove it.
String Thoery isn't just bad in and of itself. It is bad because of the mentality it fosters: the notion that it is acceptable for science to be based on mathematical models that are based on other mathematical models and so forth.
Science isn't science until the rubber meets the road.
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
Time to confess, boy.
Infuriate left and right
I thought they were circular.
Infuriate left and right
The statement that string theory makes no testable predictions does not necessarily limit its usefulness. As I understand it, the mathematics behind quantum theory and relativity are irreconcilable, in that they lead to infinities and singularities when extended into each others' domain. The brilliance of string theory is that it provides a general framework that encompasses both quantum theory and relativity, and thus it may be a superset of the "true" framework of the universe, if not the most concise description. The idea that string theory is "bad science" only because our universe may be one of 10^500 possible configurations (and string theory can't predict which one it is) is like saying that statistics is bad science because it can't predict the exact run of cards I'll have at my next poker game. The development a framework within which our observed universe is possible at all (which cannot be said of relativity or quantum theory) is a tremendous achievement in itself.
Think of it this way. Many theorists predict that our universe may be one of many (e.g., in a much larger "multiverse"), and these universes are not all expected to be identical. Therefore, the variations between them represent quantities that are not exactly "predictable" by any theory, and the best we can hope for is a meta-theory that describes all possible universes, and says that ours is one of them. The earth is not the center of the universe; the prediction of string theory may simply be that our universe is not the center of the universe, so to speak.
Weeks of coding saves hours of planning.
I really find it hard to imagine that after over 30 years of work that string theory is wrong. Correct me if I'm mistaken, but as far as I know, string theory is the only generalization of quantum field theory that makes sense! For those who don't remember, general relativity and quantum field theory are not exactly compatible. Whereas quantum field theory makes it impossible to incorporate general relativity, string theory demands it! No other mathematical framework can claim to have that.
String theorists have yet to provide any empirical proof of their theory. This is not, however, sufficient reason to dismiss their theory outright. Testing some of the fundamental predictions of string theory may not currently be possible, but that does not mean that it will never be possible. What demands a plausible explanation, however, is why general relativity and quantum mechanics are not compatible with one another despite the failure to demonstrate an experiment which shows either theory to be wrong.
Yet, both theories cannot be entirely correct as general relativity "breaks-down" at the quantum scale, and quantum mechanics at larger scales. There must therefore be an underlying theory which combines the two, and the best we have today is string theory (or M-Theory for that matter).
Lisa Randall is 10x the physicist of Kaku, if not moreso.
That's all well and good, but more importantly, is she hot?
Fellow engineers, nerds, and other three/four-dimensional entities, Let us all be thankful for string theory: 1.) This keeps a large number of intelligent people studying fizziks, and out of the engineering and programming market. 2.) As e.e. cummings said: listen:there's a hell of a good universe next door;let's go
Life is tough. Life is even tougher when you're stupid.
Cold gaze *shudder* http://physics.harvard.edu/people/facpages/randall .html
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/trivers04/images/r andall300.jpg
There's a recent discussion of this topic, including debates between some key players, over at:h eory-backlash/#comments
http://cosmicvariance.com/2006/06/19/the-string-t
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On one hand, we have a large number of top-flight mathematicians and physicists struggling to come up with testable hypotheses and publishing in main stream scientific journals in an honest attempt at turning String Theory into a truly scientific theory. On the other hand, you have a few dozen fundamentalists intentionally not turning ID into an actual scientific proposal, let alone come up with a single, solitary testable prediction, while trying to force their nonsense into highschool science classes. People are getting ready to discard String Theory on the scrap heap of failed ideas. Yet ID isn't even in the same ballpark as String Theory. It's like science's got the world series winner, String Theory's got a high school baseball team, and ID has three severely brain-damaged chimps eating their own feces. No insult meant to brain-damaged chimps or feces.
An idea cannot be "a disaster for physics". Scientists who think that theories are more important than observation and reasoning are "a disaster for physics". Fortunately, it's a disaster with a long history, and physics, somehow, continues to muddle forward.
Good way to sell books. Sloppy way to think.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Either you're asking that question of Lisa Randall, or another Woman Of Science, or somebody who wishes to fuck Lisa Randall. Or possibly both of the latter options.
Seriously, who the hell else would use this thread as an opportunity to heap praise on an obscure Physics chick but the chick herself, or somebody who wants to get into that chick's panties.
Now watch me get modded '-1 Troll and Flamebait' because I dared to state the bleeding obvious on Slashdot.
Mr. T pitied this fool on 27 July 1992.
May be in 20 years from now we will read a very similar article about the impact of "most" of the systems biology work on Biology compared to the current view on String Theory on Physics. Systems Biology can easily generate untestable hypotheses and keep thousands of scientists busy forever.
She's hardly obscure. She's a Harvard prof, for crying out loud. She's written at least one pop-sci book dealing with higher dimensions. She also gave some VERY interesting talks at my university a few months ago.
Looks like his book doesn't come out until September 30. You can, however, check out his blog with the same title, Not Even Wrong.
This article sounds more like the author is describing creationism or astrology, rather than real science. They say that there are no real formulae or predictions that have ever been made, that it is more like a "framework" (as opposed to something scientists would use), and that they can justify wrongful experiments or equations by saying that the equation came out, just as preditced, but in a parallel universe.
So, either string theory is a religion, which has fooled an entire generation of bright young scientists, or the article is one-sided. I suspect the latter. Is there another side to this story (other than just claims that the author supports a different theory)? Is there anything one could look at that would explain in a little more detail how either the author is wrong, or how this idea has suckered some of the brightest people on earth into trading science for religion?
Newtonian gravity came about because Newton had an idea and then used math to express it. Relativity came about because Einstein had an idea and then used math to express it. Quantum physics came about in a similar fashion. An idea (or ideas) and then math to express it (them).
The problem with string theory is that some equations came along that fit the data in an intriguing way and so physicists pursued and continue to pursue the math. The problem is, it's not based on some sort of idea that someone had. The idea is the thing that's missing. Math is great at expressing ideas, but it's not particularly good at creating them.
It could be that at some point, someone will come up with an underlying conceptual idea that the math can then be used to express, but until that happens, I don't think string theory is really going to become a practical theory.
i'd hit it.
Well, it certainly was a disaster for Dr. Sam Beckett, that's for sure...
(Though perhaps it was for the greater good?)
"But one thing they haven't done is coax a single prediction from their theory. In fact, "theory" is a misnomer, since unlike general relativity theory or quantum theory, string theory is not a concise set of solvable equations describing the behavior of the physical world. It's more of an idea or a framework."
Something that is a concise set of solvable equations describing the behavior of the physical world is a LAW!
An idea or framework is a THEORY!
This guy has a PhD? Just because something is too small to see, too difficult to imagine, too abstract to think is possible- DOESN'T mean it should be dismissed because headway has been rough the past 30 years! Did Physics become invented in the past 10 years? 100 years? or thousands of years!?
I'd hit it then talk about her theories.
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
This is all well and good, but everyone knows it's turtles holding up everything. In fact it's turtles all the way down!
Unraveling a subject of this nature os sure to produce lots of interesting threads.
"Untestable! Unfalsifiable!" This is a common refrain from string theory critics, and even from many string theory fans - and it really bugs me. I'm a philosopher of science, and I say: forget falsifiability!
Well, don't completely forget falsifiability - but don't let it be the whole story. Falsifiability was already outdated philosophy of science 50 years ago. Its main problem is what's sometimes called the "Quine-Duhem Thesis" - roughly speaking, any treasured theory can be made to fit any evidence, as long as you're willing to adjust enough auxiliary hypotheses. Here's an ordinary example: when your high school science lab experiments didn't fit predictions, your results didn't get published in Science for falsifying the theory at hand. Instead, quite reasonably, you drew the conclusion that something wasn't quite right with the instruments, etc., and you kept the original theory. The tricky question is to figure out when it's reasonable to excuse recalcitrant data, and when you're unreasonably trying to rescue a theory that's just wrong. Intelligent design advocates can lay out all sorts of falsification criteria, and then make similar excuses should unhappy data come their way. So does that make ID a science? (If on the other hand you insist that only actual falsification makes something a science, then only theories we no longer believe can count as scientific!)
It's too easy in all sciences - not just string theory - to make theories "supported" by the data. Given this problem, the name of the science game is to find the simplest explanation that fits the data. It's very hard to say exactly what counts as a simpler theory, but some theories are clearly less simple. Compare the hypothesis that "the butler did it" to the hypothesis that "unknown sneaky aliens planted all that evidence to make it look like the butler did it." Both hypotheses fit the evidence equally well, but the latter is clearly less simple, and we normally never even consider it for a moment.
String theory explains all the data, from quantum physics to relativity, with a simplicity that's hard to beat. (Its elegance is so good, we're apparently willing to posit 11 dimensions for it!) That's what makes it a legitimate scientific theory. Of course it would be great to have more relevant data, to see if string theory can accommodate them simply too. But just because we can't get such data (now, or maybe ever) doesn't spoil the current scientific status of the theory.
I don't understand ST well enough to know if that's true. But if it is true, then String Theory is very bad science indeed. The only thing that separates science from superstition is the fact that scientific theory is subject to invalidation.
Mr. Woit states about string advocates: "But one thing they haven't done is coax a single prediction from their theory."
Yet as the article points out: "To be fair, string theory can claim some success. A 1985 paper showed that if you compactify extra dimensions in a certain way, the number of quarks and leptons you get is exactly the number found in nature." So I guess it has.
Gee Mr. Woit, I'm sorry that the nature of the universe is bigger than the human mind and doesn't easily surrender all of its secrets to "testable predictions."
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
The existence of God can only be proved subjectively, and even then it's still a matter of interpreting a numinous subjective experience, and deciding to name it "God." And you could still be fooling yourself. Maybe it wasn't THE GOD, but just A REALLY MIGHTY GODLIKE ENTITY. How would you know the difference?
Anyhow, before one decides whether to believe in "God" it's a good idea to have a definition of what He is so one knows what to look for.
In my case, I believe God would have to be utterly transcendent, and an immaterial non-composite entity. In other words, something nonexistent. Can something nonexistent exist?
On the other hand, I also believe that God is all there is, and there is nothing that is not God. If one could take a step back and look at *everything* one could observe the totality of God. However, the All is both eternal and infinite. One could not ever see the totality, nor indeed can "God" ever actually be realized, because the totality is in constant flux.
Since God is all that exists and also the utter transcendence of existence, the union of many paradoxes would be required to fully appreciate the nature of "God." Such a mind transcends - and encompasses - reason, and hence it is beyond knowledge, proof, and expressibility in language.
Language and reason are tools for sharing experience, but they are not the only means. I may not be able to describe God, but I can point you to the door beyond which you can experience God, and then you can know for yourself.
Science - String Theory especially - is something like that too. The value of science is that it gives us the means to test and manipulate reality. Within the macroscopic realm it is expressible via the conventions of common experience. But as we get into quantum physics and string theory the ideas become uncanny. When you try to explain the relation of a string to space-time, the common experience of cause preceding effect no longer applies. So we need new language to express these new experiences. At a certain point these "experiences" may well become utterly inexpressible.
But perhaps, just like the experience of union with the Ultimate, there is a conventional means to point the right direction.
.
-- thinkyhead software and media
How do you know Shirley Jackson didn't post that comment?
Yes, I walked into that one. But you still can't anonymously plagiarize.
Ceti Alpha 6 exploded six months after we were left here!
Quotes fron the article: 1/"In fact, "theory" is a misnomer, since unlike general relativity theory or quantum theory, string theory is not a concise set of solvable equations describing the behavior of the physical world. It's more of an idea or a framework." 2/"One physicist commented on Mr. Woit's blog that Ph.D. students who choose mathematical theory topics that "are non-string are seriously harming their career prospects." 3/"That string theory abandoned testable predictions may be its ultimate betrayal of science." Not trolling or trying to be flame bait here, but dang! that sounds *so* similar to evolution IMHO.
.. you know where. but, uh, boy, about those puns !
Now, some of these could do with an explanation. Quantum foam probably can't be observed directly (as yet) but it must radiate for the same reason black holes must radiate - the laws of thermodynamics don't provide for exceptions. In fact, it's the requirement for a non-absolute environment that produced the theory of quantum foam in the first place. We won't be able to see this radiation directly, but we should be able to observe the effects of it, as it should purturb high-energy atom-smashing experiments ever-so-slightly and apparently randomly.
Superstings are tough, as they're not assumed to be everywhere, but again we should be seeing some experimental evidence by now. They have negative gravity, for example, which makes them bloody obvious even if you can't see them. Particles should clearly be exposed to a force that is repulsive in nature. With 99% of the Universe in the form of clumps of dark matter, we should have much better luck at seeing that. Again, particles should behave oddly on occasion. We're not seeing it.
This lack of exciting observations may mean that upgrades to the standard model may not be necessary, useful or even vaguely correct. In which case, the observations and/or chains of thought that led to those ideas may need revisiting. Observation trumps speculation, and the observations we are seeing do NOT match up to more modern speculations.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Ok, this is a thought-experiment. Take it or leave it....
What is evil for a stone? A stone has no interests to concern itself with.
"Evil" is that which is harmful to a living being, in other words that which threatens, harms, coerces, or destroys a living being.
Is killing always evil, and is it so for all involved? Perhaps a parent saves his child from a perceived thug by killing him. Perhaps the parent felt no particular ill-will, but acted rashly and with too much force. Has the person who was killed had evil perpetrated against him? Has the parent committed an evil deed or a good one, or both? How would you mix them in your metaphysical cauldron?
Likewise, perhaps a person acts out of malice, and then a moment later feels regret. Where has the evil gone? Poof! Maybe it never existed.
The continuum of good versus evil is broad and subjective. That evil which is done today may turn out to be beneficial in the long run. That good which is done today may turn out to foster future evil! Yet there is no such thing as "disembodied evil." It is a value judgment brought to a particular situation, and one which always exists with respect to Life.
Life gives rise to the whole continuum of good/evil. To wit, the concept of "resources" is meaningless without Beings: entities having needs. There is an intimate connection between all concepts which emanate from the existence of living beings. As to the relation of resources to the concept of good/evil, that which provides for the sustenance of life is generally Good, that which deprives is Evil. (Except of course in those instances where provision is detrimental and deprivation is beneficial, in which case provision is really deprivation and deprivation is actually provision.)
The original language of Genesis used to describe the Tree in the Garden is not "good and evil" in the general sense but rather "advantageous and disadvantageous," which specifically imply beings having interests. In other words, the allegory of Adam and Eve describes the emerging awareness of self/other, and knowledge of those fruits which benefit or harm self/other.
While there is are fairly well-defined objective standards as to what constitutes a resource, or a need, there is a much slipperier and more subjective notion of what constitutes good/evil (and if you ask me, these words have been so usurped by armchair ideologues they have lost all sense of rational meaning).
But it is clear that to provide resources for another is an act of good, and so we should seek to be giving. And to deprive another of what they need is an act of "evil" so we should resist our tendency to be stingy.
So, by this definition, are most of us "good" or "evil" or something in-between? Indeed, how does "God" fare in this test?
.
-- thinkyhead software and media
I think the only real problem is with call ing it a theory. It isn't yet, hypothesis might be a better word. I think some people are confused as to how it came about. It's not just people making things up. Basically what happened was scientists worked out that you could explain phenomena and unify forces if you discribed basic building blocks as 1D strings not 0D particles, and that if you had more than 4 dimensions, you could do it with all forces. It's a nice, neat little mathematical model. However, as has been said. Mathematics is rules without a game." You can have something that's a mathematical turth, but not have that truth have anything to do with actual reality.
Of course at this point there's no real way to test it, hence why it isn't really a theory. That's fine, but it doesn't mean it's worthless. Scientific discovery often starts with mathematics. You work out a theoritical model first, then work on what that would predict and form a falsifiable theory, then start testing to see if your model actually has anything to do with reality. String theory may be some of the most out there stuff but that doesn't mean it's wrong, just that we haven't worked out how to test it yet.
So really it just needs to not be put forth as a thoery. Call it the String hypothesis if you like. While it's not something I'd believe, it's also not something I'd dismiss.
Dude you rock!!! Keep up the Awsomeness man...
All kinds of possiblities are consistent with whatever data you have. Eg, maybe you're a handless brain in a vat that's hooked up to wires that an evil scientist uses to give you hand-like sensations.
But most people think that, if they know anything, they know they have a hand. Heck, if we can't know something like that, how are we supposed to know anything else?
So what's our evidence?
The hypothesis that they have a hands seems to be the simplest explanation for our hand-like senations.
Note that hypothesis doesn't entail any prediction that can be falsified by the "data", ie your hand-like sensations.
So if string theory is in the same boat -- if it's the simplest explanation for the data but it can't be falsified by any data -- why think it's a sinking ship?
Honestly, I don't see the need for a String Theory. Weren't the good old char array good enough?
640KB of virtualized ram will be enough for everybody
Why is it there's so many people that seem to miss this central point about what sciene is? Science isn't just an explanation or a story. Science makes predictions.
AccountKiller
I don't really understand string theory, but I do try to keep up with it and stuff, as best I can. I heard once though, that "any problem" [presumably mathematical] "is solvable by adding extra dimensions". Can someone confirm this? And, if so, doesn't that make string theory, until proven, essentially a cop-out?
Simple theory? Did you ever sit down and listen to two string theorists discuss ? IAAPANAPOS (I am a physicist and not a philosopher of science), but it seems that falsifiability seems a crucial ingredient of any theory. If you cannot test a prediction repeatedly (and this is where your science lab argument fails), then it could just as well be astrology or religion.
It always makes me smile when I hear this. The last time in history when similar thoughts were voiced by a reasonable number of people was at the end of the nineteenth century. At the time pretty much all the phenomena observed had been more-or-less explained by classical physics. There were a few inconsistencies, like the photo-electric effect, but it was expected that these would be mere trivialities to clear up or might just never be knowable.
Of course history tells us that this was not the case. Solving these "trivial" problems lead to the demise of classical physics and the birth of Relativity and Quantum physics. I personally believe that we are approaching a similar breakthrough point in physics. While it is possible that string theory may be the correct way to go it is also possible that things we learn at the LHC will completely change the tack of theorists and point them at something new. Now I could well be wrong but my guess (and hope) is the universe still has a few tricks up its sleeve yet!
An idea or framework is a hypothesis .
Laws of nature like the law of gravity are theories .
I'm sure it's encoded somewhere in the digit string of pi.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
If on the other hand you insist that only actual falsification makes something a science, then only theories we no longer believe can count as scientific!
That's actually a reasonable and sound position. It's more or less impossible to prove something correct in science - we've discovered many times that if a theory looks right on one level, when you go deeper it's just a good approximation. So you can never really be sure whether you've found the right answer, or just something close to it. And from our experience of science the odds are in favour of the 'good approximation' side.
On the other hand, when you've proven something wrong, you're pretty damned sure that it's wrong. It's then a scientific fact. You can't do that for something that appears right - it's more like a scientific guess.
It's important to keep this in mind - remember that something you believe to be correct is almost certainly not correct in every particlar. And follow up on those "Hmm, that's odd" moments, because those are how progress is made.
string theory was a diaster for someone's career.
Is that a SCSI connector or are you just glad to see me?
I'm afraid you've confused a "complex" explanation with a fully expanded simple one in your example.
In the second example, all you've really said is "aliens did it," but moderately expanded. It's just as simple as "the butler did it," and its consideration mostly has to do with how open minded one is about alien life. *How* "the butler did it" could easily be as or more complex than the m.o. you gave to the alien example.
A complex explanation would be an explanation that a group of several hundred people, comprised of different ethnic makeups, from different areas of the globe and of little common relation carefully synchronized watches and produced some elaborate Rube Goldberg style scheme to poison the Master's tea. See the diff?
This kind of analytical laxity is unbecoming. You go on and on about the "unfalsifiability" aspects of string theory, when the main issue, the critical one, is the "untestable" issue. Forest for the trees, sir.
I would maintain that if you can't test a theory repeatedly under different conditions and environments, then you cannot perform the MOST critical part of the scientific method and are no longer engaging in science. Do we have instruments to measure dimensions #5-11? We're barely sure that a stopwatch will measure #4.
Theoretical physics has yielded us some great results, but it is largely done on paper. For it to be science, you have to log some time on the particle accelerator, of which we have far too few. The author of this article is justified in saying that maybe it's time people studying something other than string theory got a few hours.
--
Torodung
American's shun science careers because they are so punishingly expensive. Conside the lifecycle of someone who want's to go into String Theory:
4 years undergrad ($40-$120k in cost)
5-7 years grad school (making $15k per year)
2-6 years postdoc (making $40k per year)
7 years pre-tenure (making $60-80k per year)
tenure (making $80-$100k per year)
Oh, and if you fail at any point along the line, you have no career. Since you are looking at 18-24 years to get to tenure, that's a HUGE
investmet to make. You are basically looking at not knowing whether you have a career or not until you are 36-42 years old.
Compare this with the career track of an equally bright student going into CS, and getting a job in tech.
4 years undergrad ($40k-$120k in cost)
starting job ($60k-80k)
5 years experience ($80k-$120k)
move into management ($100k-$150k)
etc... notice how the CS grad going into IT hits the $60-$80k range 7-13 *years* before the scientist?
Plus, while there is less risk of being laid off as a tenured professor, the risk of having your career evaporate as an IT person (please note, IT person who could have hacked being an academic scientist) is MUCH lower. Sure, you may loose your job, but there are plenty of other jobs.
Few American's go into science because the economics of science is so bad. I don't know how to fix that, but the cause is pretty clear.
Oh... by the way, I am an American who was on the academic track in String Theory and got off the merry-go-round. Everytime I talk to my friends who stuck it out I am overjoyed I left. My friends are at the mid-potsdoc stage right now. They are trying to scrape by living on $40k a year in ultra expensive locals like Boston, and live in terror that the only jobs they will be available will be in middle of no-where universities in unpleasant places. By way of contrast there are tech jobs to be had in a variety of nice locals to meet most peoples tastes. It's particularly hard on the women, who are starting to hear their biological clocks tick VERY loudly, and who are still years away from being settled in enough to take a break to have children. It's also very hard for both genders to find a long term mate, as they face the aforementioned prospect of having to move a lot to unpleasant places (like Norma, OK, middle of nowhere PA, middle of nowhere plains states, etc) if they want to continue their careers. And let's not even start talking about the two body problem (two romantically entwined academics).
So basically, if you want more Americans to go into science, make it suck less.
It may be a "disaster for physics", but it's a string curtain shielding the real world from the attentions of these guys. Let them contemplate strings, navel lint, or trans-dimensional bozo-ons for all I care. What we don't need is an easy way to make antimatter bombs.
E Proelio Veritas.
This is the only slashdot post I have wanted to mod up in recent memory. I love it. Thanks for the link, too.
Hi Lisa!
String theory made William of Ockham turn over in his grave... 11 dimensions, pfft...
Many physicists stopped being scientists some time in the 20th century; they stopped following the scientific method, their experimental methods became sloppy, and so became their reasoning. They started valuing theoretical elegance more than testable hypotheses, and they became more enamored with formulas than data.
I think Einstein may have been responsible for that development: while relativity was a great insight and made useful, testable predictions, it falsely instilled the belief in physicists that Einstein's way of doing physics was the way they should all follow. The problem with that is that most physicists aren't as smart as Einstein, and even if they were, there is only a small number of self-styled visionary scientists any field can comfortably accommodate before becoming unscientfic.
The article ist way too one-sided. While this is understandable given that Lee Smolin has a competing theory of quantum gravity to defend, it prevents a real critique of the current state of theoretical physics. The structure of spacetime at (currently unobservable) very small scales is an issue not just for string theory, but for every quantum theory of gravity. Testing any such theory is a major challenge as, presumably, it will almost only differ from General Relativity at very high energies.
Even then, it is not true that string theory deals with entirely unobservable phenomena. For example, testable predictions can be derived from the Randall-Sundrum models. A valid point though, is that today, experimental science needs to catch up with theoretical physics. An important step will be the Large Hadron Collider currently being built in Switzerland, which could either help detect so called "superpartners" for known particles, or help put constraints on their nature.
42
I'd say yes. Plus she's a geek chick. What more could you ask for?
But why is the rum gone?
is what these jokes are
I thought it was a good idea
However, there are more numbers in R than in Q, for example -- even though they're both infinite. See Cantor's diagonalization proof of the uncountability of R. Showing that Q is countably infinite is easy... you just have to realize that Q can be viewed as discrete points on a two-dimensional grid. Simply "connecting the dots" will provide a numbering scheme to map all those numbers to N (which is obviously countably infinite).
HAND.
How many times were the Greeks a stone's throw away from triggering a period similar to the European Renaissance?
Why did it not happen? Because Greek society emphasized thought over tinkering. That's a really, really bad set of behaviors if you wish for a better tomorrow.
Most of the Greeks who did build anything of lasting value to the world (Archimedes, anyone?) lived in the colonies or even further out of the periphary of the Greek world.
The Greek core culture disdained the kind of work that it took to take advantage of their thought and turn it into science.
Most of the advanced that stem from Greek thought came between 1600 and 1950, prompted mostly by an explosion of interest in Protestant countries where a mathematician wasn't afraid to grab some tools and go prove it.
There's a reason that non-Euclidean geometry was developed by guys with German last names rather than Greek last names.
And that circles back to my point about String Theory. We cannot promote approaches to science that allow us to be happy and say, "Hey, the math works out! Who cares if it can't be proven in the real world?!"
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
im not a physicist. i "know" string theory ...) ... open.
:)
from tv shows and popular physics book (abit).
but my take on the string theory is that it clearly
sets limited to how fundmental "regular" particle
physics is allowed to get.
i would like to compare the situation to the 18th hundred
when whithead and russel were trying to proof the
"fundmental correctness" of logic. these two being
like the modern day particle physicists trying to find
the theory for EVERYTHING. nothing is worse then
someone who thinks and believe he knows everything.
(yes the fundamentalism of certain religions comes to mind
string theory is a liberation and would correspond to
the "discoveries" of goedel, that logic is, well
even tho string theory might not predict anything to be
discovered with an experiment (yet?) it does take the
wind out of the fundamental physicts sail looking for
the "THeRROR OF EVERYTHING(tm)".
it's good to know that a solved equation on a sparsly lit
desk cannot make the universe solidify around me and
my fellow geeks
there's a name for theories that are unable to be emiprically tested. They're called religions.
String theory isn't science. Lets move on.
One comment was right on the money about string theory becoming a religion. The yearnings of scientists to evolve a theory that ties all of everything together and turns the white noise of everything into a discernable pattern harkens to early man and his feeble attempts to explain the sunrise. Why does it all have to make sense? Why isn't chaos fine? Maybe the reason there aren't any documentable visitations is because our "science" is so laughable right now that we would be little more than the Charlie Chaplains of the universe.
I study physics, and there are a few other theories, but none has less problems than the string theory. Also, claiming that it doesn't make any predictions that can be checked is wrong, it predicts a new particle that we might find when the LHC is finished and running on its top energy. I think these guys are obviously just trying to sell a book by making up a controversy where there is no real one, just like the ID guys ...
there exists a universe in which Slashdot is a respected scientific journal.
if our universe was really made of tiny, vibrating pieces of underwear, there would be no misery.
It's one thing to say a theory could be wrong, it's another to say it's not a science. (Intelligent design advocates like to conflate those in order to put ID on the same footing with evolution, though.) In high school science classes we should teach theories that could be wrong (in particulars or wholly!) but are our best guesses - like evolution, general relativity, etc. We should not teach it if it's not even a science (like ID). My guess is that, on reflection, you're not really committed to the view that quantum electrodynamics is not today a science, and that they're just doing the equivalent of astrology.
Hey, he's a prof at my alma mater, CCNY, and I'm from New York City
so watch what you say before I kick your ass motherfucker.
How's that for arguing a scientific point in a rational way?
Fuck You again.
But truth be known, I've fallen in love with every female physicist I've met, once I came to know them well.
is now:
But that isn't the situation that we're in here. String theory has proven infertile for physics(although fertile for mathematics). Let the mathematicians work on it and let the physicists do true physics. If a physicist wants to work long-term in string theory, transfer him/her to the mathematics department.
You can call it the impressive "Quine-Duhem Thesis," or you can call it what it is known as commonly--"lying." I guess lying scientists get special treatment and a fancy nomenclature.
E Proelio Veritas.
In high school science classes we should teach theories that could be wrong (in particulars or wholly!) but are our best guesses - like evolution, general relativity, etc. We should not teach it if it's not even a science (like ID).
We should teach them as good approximations that make useful predictions. There's no point teaching ID because it doesn't even try to make any predictions so it can't ever be useful; I don't think it's worth worrying about whether or not something is true if it's of no practical value (unless you're studying philosophy).
The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim.
Easy: scientists futzed around for about a decade before grasping at this particular straw and not letting go.
I don't put much weight in string theory, either, for reasons mentioned by others: it doesn't make predictions which could be proven false by an experiment.
What if gravity just simply can't be joined to the other forces -- what if there are no bogon particle swaps, and space just really is bent to affect a "field" / "force gradient", the end?
Yow! I'm supposed to have a plan?
Nitpick: Woit teaches math, but that's just something he does to pay the rent. His doctorate is in Theoretical Physics. Now, there are always more PhDs in any given field than there are faculty openings. Still, it seems likely that he'd be working in the field he trained for if he were less skeptical about String Theory. Note that I'm just making an observation, not accusing him of sour grapes: his opinions should stand or fall on their own.
It's not just the money, it's the whole quality of life.
:) But as I look forward I can see the day coming where to accomplish what I want to accomplish, I will need to start doing more managing of people than I do now. At some point you can't realize your vision unless you start scaling significantly beyond yourself.
It's being able to live somewhere nice instead of facing possibly having to live in some bubblefuck town in Iowa that has the only university that was hiring in your area of research that year.
It's actually being capitalized. Compare what it takes to get a grant to buy the computing and other equipment you need to what it takes me in the commercial world to get equipment. I am fantastically better capitalized than anyone I know in academia. I've known physics profs who built racks in the machine shop, and soddered their own serial cables to save money... I'd rather not waste my time.
It's respect for my time and personaly life. My commercial job is much more respectful of my time and personal life than academia is. If you aren't working 80 hours a week and sacrificing everything in the sciences, people start to question whether you are 'committed' or not. That perception can make a big difference in whether you get to have a career. By way of contrast, nobody questions the commitment of my manager who knocks off every Thursday at 4pm to go to his sons baseball game.
As for my daily job... I rather enjoy the work I do. I have a tremendous amount of control over my own projects. I get to work with cool cutting edge tech. I can see how my work leverages out to make the lives of hundreds of millions of people better. There's a lot more fulfillment for me there than I would get still chasing String Theory.
As to the dream of going into management, I can sort of agree with you there. I am currently dodging the management bullet myself
I think the fact that I have to understand all those things to understand the idea indicates something is amiss. You had me at 11 dimensions - I think Occam is still sharpening his Razor.
http://www.tudumo.com - todo list with tags
Many years ago in graduate school I thought I might have to be knowledgable about harmonic analysis, so I hit the web and found some respectable sites that recommended a lecture notes book--down to the library and check it out. One of the punchlines of the book was that the Green's function has a well defined resolvent only in 1,2,4 and 8 dimensions, and this is associated with the existence of the 4 division algebras--the reals, the complex numbers, quaternions and octonians: the resolvent of a Green's function is a beast like 1/(x - x_o ), hence the need to be able to divide if you want it to exist. The spectrum (i.e., observables of your theory) comes from the poles (infinite blow-up values) of the Green's function--hence physics can only predict an observable only in 1, 2, 4 or 8 dimensions. You will notice the absence of 10 dimensions, so popular with string theorists from the list. Ergo, you can never make any predictions of any physical observables in any 10 dimensional theory if you want any mathematical respectability--and string theorists are nothing if not decent mathematicians.
I believe that Science, and especially physics, is coming to an incredibly important crossroads. It is very possible, if not probable, that theory has and will continue to outpace experimental ability such that few if any verifiable predictions can exist.
For example, let's pretend that you want to determine what your girlfriend was doing 45 minutes ago in her car on the way home from work. This information may be unknowable if she is dead, was alone while driving, and the car is missing. While it may be completely true that she was drunk and went in the wrong direction off the side of a bridge onto a tug boat and is now on her way to the dump, this may be unknowable.
So is the case with String Theory and many other advanced scientific and mathematical theories. Although, in the case of string theory, the barriers to testing and experimentation may be far far greater than this. It is very possible that the physical world which we experience is unable to affect measurable change in the multiverse in a manner that would result in a reaction that is measurable back in the physical world. This does not make predictions or theory inaccurate, but simply untestable.
More importantly, it brings into question the value of Science as a whole. Science is not a tool that will guarantee answers. It may produce only accurate knowledge, but not necessarily the most thorough or useful knowledge. Assumptions and ideas are also valuable, as is art, music, and many other things that exist outside the parameters of testable and experimental knowledge.
If our smartest minds begin to abandon studies like String Theory because of these types of Scientific shortcomings, we may just get bad ideas and bad results, rather than good ideas with no results. I'd rather read a good book of ideas, than no books at all.
Fight Link Spam with LinkSleeve.org
Infinity + 1 is the same as infinity for any cardinal infinity, where you are just measuring how many of something there are.
But ordinal infinities, which measure the process of counting, are rather different. In that case 1+ inf = inf (magine taking the positive numbers and adding zero at the beginning - the set will still becounted the same way), but inf + 1 != inf, because that means counting all the positivie numbers and then counting one further thing when you're finished, which is different.
IMO, the only thing we're missing is the "gravity to the rest of it" connection, confounded by the inconvienient fact that gravity appears to be the only force in the universe which is apparently instantainious over galactic distances.
The 1993 Nobel Prize was awarded for work which, among other things, indirectly measured the speed of gravity: it works out to th speed of light, to within a few percent error.
Go work any celestial orbital mechanics problem, including the orbit of the earth around the sun, and try and make it work if the gravitational attraction vector is assumed to be toward where the sun appears to be now (as opposed to where it is right now instead where it was 8 minutes ago when that light left the suns position then). By adding any delay, the orbit falls apart, and our earth would have spiraled into the sun many billions of years ago.
That's incorrect. To first order, the attraction points at the Sun's "instantaneous" position even in a relativistic theory. This happens in ordinary Maxwellian electromagnetism as well as in general relativity. There is orbital decay due to gravitational radiation, but it is much, much slower than what is given by the naive calculation you describe. This issue is discussed in detail by this paper by Steve Carlip.
Back in the day I read a great book on the philosophy of science, not Kuhn, which was good, but Feyerabend ("Against Method"). He proposed an aspect of 'anarchy' in science, and noted that quantum physics has an aspect of anti-falsification. He mentions an ad-hoc method of normalization to results to 'create' the correct answer. This is similar in some regard to whats mentioned here. In the begining many were on the side of people like Popper (see vienna circle) in the falsification method (if something can't, conceivably, be falsified then its worthless; almost Wittengsteinish).
Ayer would mention the aspects that because it can be verified then it's acceptable; verification principle. This, obviously, is not superior to the falsification method. So, these scientists need to think about what can disprove their theories, what would make them say 'string theory is a load of rubbish'...
but for all the strings attached.
He's missing his sixth sense...
His sense of humor.
A blog about stuff.
First off, I should note that I am a nuclear/particle physicist so I actually know something about this stuff.
Yeah, the vast majority of string theory is probably crap. But what people don't seem to realize is that 99% of what all theorists say is crap. That 1% that actually manages to get something right gets all the fame and tends to be the only ones the general public hears about, but the sad truth is that most theorists take the shotgun approach: They try to come up with as many different theories as possible in the hope that one of them might actually turn out to be right.
The article seems to imply that the existence of string theorists is preventing advancement in particle physics. That's BS. The reason why there haven't been any new dramatic discoveries in particle physicists in the past few years is because there haven't been any new experiments! Science is experimental in nature. Progress is made with new experiments. The theorists can speculate all they want but no consensus will be reached until somebody tests it. Unfortunately experiments in particle physics have become so massive and expensive that progress has slowed significantly.
Actually, there have been many discoveries in less traditional aspects of particle physics...neutrino mass for instance. So I'm not even entirely sure what the article is complaining about. Yeah, traditional accelerator experiments haven't done much since the discovery of the top quark at Fermilab, but again it's because there haven't been any new experiments since then. Other than RHIC, which focuses on a very different kind of physics (and RHIC has also been producing many interesting new results).
When the LHC finally comes online expect a flurry of new discoveries. Until then the theorists can speculate all they want. If they weren't wasting their time on string theory they would be wasting their time on something else.
Physics is good
Happiness is a choice.
Yes, you can live more simply, and be perfectlly happy with much less in the way of material wealth. I agree. There are trade-offs. I actually left physics for reasons that had nothing to do with the arguments above: it wasn't fun for me anymore. If you enjoy it so much more than the alternatives, then perhaps an academic career will be worthwhile to you, in spite of the sacrifices compared to other career paths you could have chosen.
The problem is that these days the sacrifices to go into science compared to your other options are getting very steep. At the same time many of the things that made science a nice job are available elsewhere. Flextime for example. One of the nice things about being an academic scientist was that to a large extent you had great flexibility in when you worked. That's now true in the private sector as well. Another was that science presented some very interesting problems, and certain kinds of people really *enjoy* working on such problems. But there are now interesting problems to work on in the private sector as well.
Basically, the relative benefits of being a scientist are shrinking, and the relative costs are increasing.
Can't it be a complex superposition of humorous states?
The biggest problem with ST is that it is called ST. It's a marketing disaster, what with images of grey-bearded scientists periodically wrapping new bits onto the big balls they keep hidden in the kneeholes of their desks. I suggest "The Big Breasted Women Theory"; half the population will have to read about it and the other half will be curious.
The Plan: Time machine | lottery ticket | blondes.
String theory explains all the data, from quantum physics to relativity, with a simplicity that's hard to beat. (Its elegance is so good, we're apparently willing to posit 11 dimensions for it!) That's what makes it a legitimate scientific theory.
My view is that string theory is a science -- but it is not an experimental science. String theory has more in common with pure mathematics than with theoretical physics.
Obviously string theory is compelling. An awful lot of smart grad students go into it. But there is some concern in the particle physics community that, when the LHC comes online, there will be a lack of smart young theorists to interpret the results. We know that the standard model is wrong, and we have excellent reason to believe that the differences between it and reality will be apparent at the energies reached by the LHC. There will probably be some puzzling results, and string theory will not help with figuring out the puzzle.
Not really, complicated things start to appear whenever the gravitational field is strong enough. The relativistic perturbation of the orbit of Mercury was one of the effects that were observed before the special theory of relativity existed. Today we even have open source software that calculates those effects.
What string theory really has going for it is the fact that it shares the same initials as Star Trek. We might be able to use it to explain the physics behind photon torpedoes, warp drive, transporter beams, and holodecks! I know, this is ambitious. If the current cast of string theorists can't accomplish this task, maybe the next generation will.
How about "the non-existance of God cannot be proved"? Since a negative cannot be proven, God must be in a super-position of existance and non-existance. Therefore, Schroedinger's Cat is God!
Hmm...
I remember reading somewhere that someone used String Theory to explain why there were 3 families of particles.
Apparently the number of particle families puts topological constraints on String Theory. So finding another particle family would help make String Theory a bit more precise.
-Nivag
I think it's provocative that when string theory was highly regarded, the fact that it employed 10 or 11 dimensions was considered something deep and mysterious about it, but now that it is beginning to be criticized, that same fact is ridiculed (as it is in the cited review). I'm not equipped to judge string theory, but I don't like it when people decide what is worthy of respect based simply on how commonsensical it is. Too often, people are so unwilling to admit that there are things they may not ever be able to understand well enough to critique meaningfully. They insist that because it makes no sense to them, it must be nonsense.
That is nonsense, if you like. I'm all for informed criticism (and for all I know, the physicists mentioned in the review are indeed bringing that to the table), but the miasma of revisionist innuendo that surrounds that nucleus of scientific review isn't very productive. I suppose some of it is necessary to inform public policy regarding scientific research, but there ought to be much less posturing than there is.
Because everyone I knew going through school was *shocked* to discover the jobs situation was even more screwed up that it was in physics. All through my training in physics, *everyone* kept saying: go away, there are no jobs. Everyone I knew doing an undergrad or grad in bio was convinced there we opportunities there... until they got their degrees, and found the jobs prospects even bleaker than my friends who stayed in physics.
That greatly depends. Please note the modifier in my post about someone who could have succeeded as a scientist. Such people tend to end up on the higher end skill-wise of IT. Perhaps someday they will be outsourcable, but for right now, you generally don't find comparable talent in India or China that you can reliably acheive savings outsourcing to. Don't get me wrong, there is some REALLY bright talent in India. Absolutely top drawer. However, top grade Indian talent is no longer cheap, it's gotten expensive. And that cheap India IT labor? Uhm... yeah... it's not really that great. They take LOTS of supervision if you want a good outcome, and you generally can only get reliably decent results on your lower level tasks. I work with lots of folks who are IT workers in India we have outsourced some work to, I'm unafraid. Don't get me wrong, you can still get REALLY good folks in India, but they are expensive.
As to H1-Bs. Many of those folks are dead brilliant. Just amazing. But their numbers are way smaller than the demand for high caliber talent. Again, I am unafraid.
Will H1-Bs and globalization threaten my career someday? Perhaps, but so far, it doesn't look very threatening to me.
What you are really saying is that in your estimation, scientists are still over compensated, and overvalued.
That's fine.
But it's a market out there. If you want to dramatically undervalue scientists compared to the other available career paths, don't be shocked when you get very few American's going into science, and of a lesser caliber than in past generations. A bunch of economists has taken to responding to the NSF 'we won't have enough scientists' rhetoric that way.
As to your comment on tenure... tenure is definitely in many ways a problem. I've seen lots of folks basically retire in place and become deadwood. Not everybody mind you (I've also known guys in their 90s who are still doing dynamic research and excellent teaching), but a lot of folks. I'm not sure what to do with it though. Sans tenure there is absolutely nothing left to recommend science as a career in the US. Problem is, folks are starting to realize how low the expectation value of that future tenure is, and despairing.
Just couldn't bear to see the count stuck at 666 :P
I agree and this is what I understand science is.
It has produced numerous amounts of mathematics that have been successfully applied to other fields of science and mathematics. However, it has also taken a lot of bright people away from developing new theories or researching existing competing theories and put them into a blackhole of physics where even the speed of thought cannot escape.
137
But that's the combo for every physicist's briefcase, so the secrets of the ubiverse aren't too safe.
The latest Slashdot meme.
I make no claim to being a physicist or even a scientist (Except perhaps in a philosophical sense where we're all scientists of life or something) but I thought I would share my impressions of the discussion here to see if I got the general feel about String Theory right. (Note: Stuff in parenthesis is directly relating to Anime/DBZ, to more effectively bridge the analogy) It's basically the Dragonball Z of Physics. It used to be really cool, but then people realized there was no real point to it and its actually kinda flakey, but it got popular in the general media so lots of people who know nothing about the rest of the stuff think its true/good. So a lot of "Physicists" who could be spending time on other more useful studies (To bring back in anime, watching a better series like Escaflowne or Nadesico) are instead wasting time on a problem (series) that really doesn't (seem to) have an end or definite benefit to physics (anything). Afterwards, upon reflection, there were some cool ideas, but there wasn't really much gained from the endevour except perhaps to say "Yeah, I studied string theory pretty extensively, but it was kinda pointless in the end." (Relate to DBZ...) Anyway, that was my impression of what I read. Ha, I think I'm actually harder on DBZ than it deserves, but whatever. Hope you find the analogy amusing if nothing else.
Isn't that just an interpretation of special relativity?
If fewer physicists were tied to strings might some of the enduring mysteries of the universe be solved?
Really should read:
If fewer physicists were tied to strings might some of the enduring mysteries of the universe be unravelled?
dnuof eruc rof aixelsid
If God is everything, why not substitute the word God with the word everything?
;)
People connect the word everything with Every-Thing, ie. something material. God is more than Everything in many more ways too. God is past, present and future, as well as nothing and space.
Islam is very precise on this when they call on Allah, one indivisible God (although He do have 99 names
The Vedic scriptures have many "Gods" or deities, making it easier to separate different aspects of God in a meaningful way. But at the core, Hinduism is still about One God - One Reality. It's funny that science is also searching for this One Reality..
Why God is of benefit to humans is because humans have the potential to embody the Godly attributes of absolute love, creativity, selfless service, understanding, power, benevolence, humility, etc, etc. All God qualities. Every religion praises and promotes this.
We are here to make God into bodies. Without us, God cannot do this!!
The point is to get people moving in the right direction, and you're free to start a religion that worships Everything as a deity. However, unless there's something extraordinary about you, I doubt people will follow..
I totally agree that talking about God raises alot of ignorance, intolerance and stances all around though. So many useless discussions.. What is needed is that everyone study what religions REALLY say, and that we can respect each others views, and maybe see that the core is always the same..
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
A cat is placed in a sealed box. Attached to the box is an apparatus containing a radioactive atomic nucleus and a tail removing mechanism. The experiment is set up so that there is exactly a 50% chance of the nucleus decaying in one hour. If the nucleus decays, it will emit a particle that triggers the mechanism, which removes the cats tail and creates something which is not a cat. If the nucleus does not decay, then the cat remains a cat. According to quantum mechanics, the unobserved nucleus is described as a superposition (meaning it exists partly as each simultaneously) of "decayed nucleus" and "undecayed nucleus". However, when the box is opened the experimenter sees only a "decayed nucleus/not a cat" or an "undecayed nucleus/still a cat."