String Theory Put to the Test

secretsather writes to mention that scientists have come up with a definitive test that could prove or disprove string theory. The project is described as "Similar to the well known U.S. particle collider at Fermi Lab, the Large Hadron Collider, scheduled for November 2007, is expected to be the largest, and highest energy particle accelerator in existence; it will use liquid helium cooled superconducting magnets to produce electric fields that will propel particles to near light speeds in a 16.7 mile circular tunnel. They then introduce a new particle into the accelerator, which collides with the existing ones, scattering many other mysterious subatomic particles about."

Comments

You can't prove a theory

[hypnagogue]

Welcome to slashdot; here's your junk science for the day.

You can't prove string theory through experimentation, all you can do is attempt to disprove it.

Re:You can't prove a theory

[kripkenstein]

Welcome to slashdot; here's your junk science for the day.

You can't prove string theory through experimentation, all you can do is attempt to disprove it.

Depends on what philosophy of science you subscribe to:

1. According to the 'old consensus' (e.g. the Logical Positivists, early 20th century), you can prove scientific theories.
2. According to Karl Popper, you cannot prove theories, you can only disprove them. It appears that you follow this approach.
3. According to W. V. Quine, you cannot prove or disprove theories, strictly speaking; evidence is taken along with previous information in order to arrive at conclusions.
4. And if you listen to Thomas Kuhn, you get a really different picture from all of these (which I won't go into).

Note that both Popper and Quine are among the most influential philosophers of the 20th century. It is of course legitimate that you are presenting the views of one of them. However, Slashdot readers should be aware of the existence of other views, both in science and in philosophy.

Re:Flipping Burgers?

[Martin Blank]

The number of dimensions isn't that high. When all of the string theories are combined into M-theory, the total number of dimensions is eleven, IIRC. Harder to understand? Yes. Impossible to visualize? Yep. But not abhorrently high.

Re:Flipping Burgers?

[Ambitwistor]

String theory always seemed to be the most complicated mathematical way you could "force" a unified field theory into existence by adding as many dimensions and undefinable, physically meaningless constants as possible. Actually, it's the simplest known way of creating a unified field theory.

It's been known since the 1920s that adding extra spacetime dimensions allows you to unify forces; Kaluza and Klein successfully unified classical electromagnetism and gravity that way, with a theory in 5 spacetime dimensions. Unfortunately, this idea can't be readily extended to all the forces in the Standard Model, and the unified theory is at least as difficult to quantize as gravity alone.

From a different perspective, leaving gravity out of it, there are the grand unified theories. They too have "extra dimensions", except that the extra dimensions are not of spacetime, but of an internal "gauge" symmetry space. (Kaluza-Klein theory basically turns these internal gauge dimensions into true space dimensions, paving the way to a gravitational theory.)

String theory also does not add as many "undefinable, physically meaningless constants as possible". Indeed, it has fewer constants than the Standard Model. In fact, it has only one constant, which is certaintly definable: it is the string tension. Furthermore, the dynamics of string theory are unique, unlike the quantum field theories. (You can write down infinitely many different particle physics theories with different particle content and interactions, but all of the string theories are part of the same theory, and all the strings obey the same fundamental laws of interaction.)

In short, string theory is not a totally contrived fudge; pretty much all of the ideas that led to semi-successful unified field theories found their way into string theory in a natural and uniquely determined way.

Why we musn't fear microscopic black holes

[benhocking]

The energies that will be created in the LHC happen on a daily basis in our upper atmosphere. The only difference is that we will have detectors in the immediate vicinity.

Re:Flipping Burgers?

[nebosuke]

Unfortunately, that site is totally bogus. Interesting, but it's entirely unrelated to string theory, which the author seems to mention just to lend his ideas some credibility.