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Atom Smasher May Create "Black Saturns"
David Shiga writes "If we ever make black holes on Earth, they might be much stranger objects than the star-swallowing monsters known to exist in space. According to a new theory, any black hole that pops out of the Large Hadron Collider under construction in Switzerland might be surrounded by a black ring — forming a microscopic 'black Saturn'. This could happen if extra dimensions exist, as string theory suggests, and if they are large enough." An evocative excerpt from the article: "...there is an outside chance that in a few years in a tunnel near Geneva, physicists will make a black hole far smaller than a proton and circled by a squashed four-dimensional black doughnut."
That was what I thought when I read the article. One of the major complaints about string theory has been that there's supposedly no way to test it experimentally. But the article says such a structure could only exist if there are really four dimensions. So if we succeed in creating one, would that be an experimental confirmation of string theory? Seems to me, at the very least it would confirm one of the major premises.
It's real easy to beat up on an amateur on Slashdot isn't it? You'll even get modded up. Regardless, a wide segment of the scientific community look at string theory as something interesting which isn't much good for anything. Why? Because whenever someone finds a prediction with string theory that differs from observed data the string theorists have a reason why this doesn't disprove the theory. Time and again, string theory has been shown not to be disprovable. The standard model, on the other hand, has not. That's the difference.. that's what makes string theory not science. It may be interesting.. it may give us insights into how things may work, but you can't call it science. Now, if you disagree with me, please, don't take it up with me.. I'm just an amateur. Take it up with the scientific community.
How we know is more important than what we know.