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Gamma Ray Anomaly Could Test String Theory
exploder writes "String theory is notorious for its lack of testable predictions. But if the MAGIC gamma-ray telescope team's interpretation is correct, then a delay in the arrival of higher-energy gamma rays could point to a breakdown of relativity theory. A type of 'quantum lensing effect' is postulated to cause the delay, which is approximately four minutes over a half-billion year journey." Ars's writeup is a little more fleshed-out than the Scientific American blog posting.
While this is great research, even if it can be demonstrated that the higher energy particles traveled faster, this is not a prediction specific to String Theories, but as the arstechnica.com article points out, this is common to most quantum gravity theories. Still, it would be an awesome thing to prove.
There is no need to confirm a breakdown of relativity. We already know that it is, at the least, incomplete, if not incorrect. Albert Einstein himself saw this, and was on his own quest for a "theory of everything" in his later years. String theory should become fully "testable" with the startup of the LHC (Large Hadron Collider, part of CERN) in May of 2008. Hopefully we may find proof for the God particle, also known as the Higgs boson. In any case, tremendous amounts of data will be reaped from this machine, and we may very well prove or at least expand upon string theory. (We could also completely disprove it, but I'm trying to be optimistic.)
I do know everything, just not all at once. It's a virtual memory problem.
There is a need to confirm a breakdown of relativity. It's an incredibly well-supported theory that predicts things on cosmic scales down to the Hydrogen atom.
The Higgs boson is predicted by the Standard Model, not String theory. String theory will be no more testable with LHC than it ever was. It's not even wrong.
Actually, there are a great many phenomena that string theory explains, the subject of this story, for example is potentially one of them, there's also some things about black holes (like Hawking radiation) which string theory predicts, but other theories also predict Hawking radiation.... plus there's a whole host of things that it predicts that occur at very high energies. But that's essentially the problem with string theory. The kind of things string theory predicts that would confirm it require energies that we are simply incapable of achieving, and the more mundane predictions made by string theory also happen to match predictions by competing non-string theories, making it pretty much impossible for string theory to distinguish itself using modern technologies.
That being said, I think string theory is beautiful, however, it could very well turn out to be the most beautiful theory of physics ever constructed as well as the biggest dead end.
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