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Can String Theory Accommodate Inflation?
David Shiga writes "String theory is the leading contender for a "theory of everything" that could unite all the forces of physics. But a recent study suggests that it may be more difficult than scientists had hoped to square string theory with inflation — the widely accepted notion that the early universe had a period of especially rapid expansion. Some say this could even lead to the abandonment of either string theory or inflation, though no one is ruling out a possible resolution yet."
It is said that papers in string theory are published at a rate greater than the speed of light. This, however, is not problematic since no information is being transmitted.
I don't think ANYTHING can accomodate inflation.
Just disrupt the deflector shield with a tachyon burst.
Does string theory incorporate the inflation of meatballs and saucy noodles (i.e. strings) due to FSM?
Sure.
As central governments print more and more strings, the strings currently in circulation are devalued.
"String theory is the leading contender for a 'theory of everything' that could unite all the forces of physics. [citation needed]"
Yet another post validating this argument
(yeah, yeah, it's old. So sue me)
String theory's inability to accommodate inflation has been driving me nuts ever since we converted everything to type string. What a mistake that was. String theory needs some more time in the oven before it's going to be universally acceptable.
If the Fed cuts interest rates next week.
Brazil needs to know... and they will be in a conundrum!
Strings or inflation???
What a choice!
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
Actually it is 'evolution'. Because everytime an obstacle comes up, string theory is changed in another untestable manner to accomadate an uncomfortable reality that it is not really science.
At first I thought this was the Bush Administrations latest "plan" on balancing the budget. "...We need to unify the Five Forces of economics, ....and take the fight to Al-Qaeda."
Ok so the Universe came into being with rapid inflation, during the first 0.001 seconds or whatever it was. Then things settled down to all this matter getting itself organised into hydrogen clouds, which formed starts, some of which were super massive and only existed for 100 million years, before blowing themselves to bits, thus creating second generation stars (like Sol) and the stuff of heavier and various other elements (which makes up most of the planets and debris whizzing around Sol), but many stars actually collapse into black holes, or suck up so many other stars they're crushed by their own density and gravity to the point where neutrons are accellerating towards the cores and and emitting radiation bursts (converting matter to energy) until the black holes cease to exist (all this happening in an apparent timeframe which doesn't appear to support some of the physics and estimates of the universe's age. So anyway, if all this matter is turning into energy, why didn't it just do that initially rather than go through this labourious process of creating stars, galaxies, nebulae, etc?
space is big, space is dark, it's hard to find, a place to park. Burma Shave - from Workbench lander
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I've never understood how string theory could ever be validated, except through funky math invented for the purpose. It's my understanding that if you enlarged an atom to the size of the universe a string would be about 50 feet long (about a planck length). How is that ever going to be testable in practice? From all I've read, the energy required is just not possible, ever.
by M-theory. My understanding is that there are 5 different versions of 10-dimensional string theory that can be generalized to 11-dimensional M-brane theory. Not sure about the inflation thing though, I just wanted to throw in the fact that you are talking about an old theory.
That's an interesting opinion you have there. What do you think of the way that String Theory accommodates gravitons alongside lower spin particles in a single model? And what do you think of the way the proliferation of particle type in other quantum field theories can be cut down to a single string type (or maybe two in the case of Heterotic String Theory) in String Theory? Also, what do you think of some of the mathematics that has emerged from String Theory such as the proof of the Monstrous Moonshine conjectures by Richard Borcherds, as well as the contributions to geometry and topology by people like Kontsevich and Witten?
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
I didn't believe that when I read it so I worked it out and found that that' actually true (to within an order of magnitude).
It's also a shame that (at least in the USA) the funding system has made science another self-reinforcing status quo just like the political system, in that no one who is willing to change things and try a totally different approach has any chance of receiving the funding and support that's necessary to get off the ground.
You don't know what you're talking about. Explain what you meant, and give examples if you can.
Um...physics has completely turned upside down in the last century and has changed pretty dramatically over the last 20 years. What kind of remote island are you living on that you're so out of touch and think that 'different' approaches never get funding? If you've never bothered to look at current research then you really don't have any right to speak, and it's obvious that you haven't. For example there has been ongoing debate for many years now between people who are searching for dark matter and proponents of MOND. There's nothing more annoying than pontification from ignorant armchair physicists.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
If all the little strings are broken, it's no wonder the universe is flying apart!
All three of your links go to the same web site, which spends most of it's time talking about ways the standard model is incomplete, as opposed to giving any sort of quick summary of what their theory claims. Not to be dismissive, but this is a bit of a red flag.
In any case, it is silly to complain nobody is spending time and money trying to falsify a particular theory just because someone else thought it up; give us some reason to think it's worthwhile. While there are some rather gaping holes the standard model cannot explain, people like it because it has made stunningly accurate predictions (e.g. the COBE data).
The question for any new theory then is "What does it predict that is different than what the standard model does?" People ridicule String Theory because (in the opinion of the ridiculers) it doesn't predict anything in particular.
In a quick scan of the web site you link, I can't see an answer to, or even acknowledgement of, that question.
... the tendency to just insert dark matter wherever it's needed, after the fact (as opposed to predicting its presence and location by theory) Here's a thought -- what if the sole observable property of dark matter was that it exerted gravitational tug on the stuff around it? That there was no other way to detect it, other than it made it look like there should be some matter, with other observable properties, exist in a certain place? That it is not 'dark' matter at all, just a force of gravity? That you could only observe it by excluding all other possible explanations of gravitational pull?Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
no one is ruling out a possible resolution yet.
Ah-hem, I am. Please let the record reflect that I was the first to do so.
done. wake me up when there are more scientific milestones up for grabs.
ôó
The fact is that what string theory aims to explain (the very fundamental nature of the universe; the events just after the big bang; the reconciliation of quantum mechanics and general relativity) are effects that are inherently difficult to measure. (Otherwise these questions would have been asked long ago.) The fact is that we are not yet able to measure at the extreme energies where string theory becomes relevant. So, the fact is that string theory does make predictions, but it is difficult for us to test these predictions yet.
Efforts are being made, however. Increasingly sensitive measurements of large-scale cosmological phenomena, and ever-more-powerful particle accelerators may give us experimental information about string theory. Already, in fact, a wide variety of "string theories" have been discarded because they do not match the accelerator data. That is, we are placing bounds on the theories, based on experiments. This is how science works.
Also important to keep in mind is that string theory meshes with our currently established theories (which, it goes without saying, have been verified experimentally to a very high precision). The agreement is not yet perfect (as TFA points out), but it's important to keep in mind that of the millions of crazy theories you could write down to explain "the universe," very few of them can reproduce more conventional theories (e.g. electromagnetic interactions) in the appropriate limits. The fact that string theory meshes with established knowledge is the thing that keeps physicists "hopeful" that they are going down the right track. That doesn't mean the theory is right, but it shows that it fits in with our current scientific understanding. That's how science works: by developing more detailed theories that nevertheless reproduce the more basic theories. That kind of exaggeration isn't very useful. Ultimately string theory aims to explain the universe through verifiable (falsifiable) predictions. These observations are difficult to make, but are being attempted. If the observations contradict string theory, physicists will discard it. If a better theory comes along that explains observations, physicists will gladly use that theory instead. Until that happens, there is no reason to ignore our current "best guess."
Admittedly, there is an active and very loud group which has been theorizing that string theory will - at some point in the future - provide a grand unified theory of physics that is testable.
But there is a large and growing group of Ph.D.s who disagree, and believe that string theory is an evolutionary dead end in theoretical physics.
It is remarkable that now they're trying to push their theories into other spheres, when their core concepts are, as yet, unproven.
[caveat - I know this is controversial, in that many faculty and senior faculty in Physics are string theory proponents, but someone needed to point this out]
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String Theory is certainly an interesting mathematical theory, and that's fine - as a mathematician, I can respect that. But it has never had a single piece of confirming experimental evidence, and there are now suggestions that it in principle can't have confirming evidence. Given that a large part of the theoretical physics world has spent 30ish years on this, isn't it time to move on?
String theory is the leading contender for a "theory of everything"
Actually, not it's not. For this to be the case, it would have to predict something that is experimentally verifiable. Which has yet to be the case. All it is now is some really messy math. And even that's giving it something b/c most of it is the typical hand-wavy (read: non-rigorous) "math".
Quite frankly, the only good thing that I see here is that there might be an end to String Theory a.k.a. the "theory" that sucks up most of the money for research even though more than 3 DECADES have gone by without /one/ bloody experimentally verifiable prediction. Perhaps after this is all said and done with, we can spend some money on some actually *promising* areas of research.
String theory isn't science, but it isn't religion either. It's math. Someday it may become science.
Damning string theory is a bit like damning Reiman Calculus was in the 1890's. It was of no existing use. Eventually, though, Einstein found a use for it. That may happen with string theory. Or, of course, it may not.
It is interesting that the math can be mapped onto what is known about the universe. That makes it interesting. But it can't be tested, only particular mappings can be tested. So it's math rather than physics.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Oh please someone mod this down!
Electric Universe is not an alternate theory. To be alternative it needs to be based in reality somehow, but most of it's claims are easily disproved by just about every single observation we have ever made about the solar system.
Electric Universe is a scientific theory that is so bad it doesn't even deserve to be called pseudo-science.
Well it's not like there's the Pontiff of Physics and he/she decides what everyone studies. Research students and researchers make choices about what to study based on what's open to them and what seems interesting/useful/plausible/correct at the time. It's not like these people are unaware of competing models such as loop gravity. So I'm not sure how you intend the phrase "isn't it time to move on?" to be implemented in practice. Fine people up who study strings? Despite the fact that people naturally gravitate towards the cool new thing, they're still flocking to String Theory. Clearly it's still compelling until someone finds a good place for everyone to "move on" to.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
Dark matter is certainly a bizarre hypothesis, and the question you ask is natural - couldn't we just be wrong about gravity? It's somewhat easier to believe that Einstein's general relativity is modified than that the universe is filled with so much mysterious, unseen "stuff". This is the basic idea behind MOND (MOdified Newtonian Dynamics) theories, which has received a good bit of thought among physicists.
MOND doesn't look like the right solution, however. The last 2 or 3 decades have provided an enormous amount of observational data about the structure of the universe (large scale structure, galactic dynamics, gravitational lensing, light element abundances, the cosmic microwave background...), all of which is basically consistent with the simplest dark matter model ("cold dark matter") and inconsistent with any modified gravity theory. We don't need to imagine any particularly exotic properties to the dark matter, it just needs to be something that doesn't interact with electromagnetic forces (just like a neutrino only much heavier). Even very complicated MOND models fail to match observations, however (unless you add in a bunch of dark matter anyway).
Perhaps the most striking example is provided by observations of the Bullet Cluster last year. Basically we've found a pair of colliding galaxy clusters where the collision has separated the dark matter from the ordinary matter somewhat. Skipping over the details, this provides dramatic evidence that dark matter is real "stuff" - in essentially any modified gravity theory without dark matter, the gravitational forces still have to be coming from the same place as the visible matter! This is a very general argument, and observations like this have more or less put the nail in the coffin of MOND theories.
Astrophysicists are almost universally convinced at this point that something like dark matter exists. We're starting to map its distribution in detail throughout the universe, and the next major challenge will be determining its makeup - either by production in an accelerator or detection in dedicated experiments.
If it can't be tested, it's not science...it's pseudoscience.
String theory is the sort of intellectual game normally played by religions. There's always a part which can never be tested or disproved and that's where you'll end up if you start a "debate". An impasse is the best you can ever achieve if you try.
No sig today...
They'll just add 5 more dimensions.
___
If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
Actually it is 'evolution'. Because everytime an obstacle comes up, string theory is changed in another untestable manner to accomadate an uncomfortable reality that it is not really science.
/sarcasm
Right so Newtons theory of gravity was perfectly good enough and Copernicus's theories were just fine as well. No need to revise for data.
How on earth did this get +2 interesting. please mod it '-1 author should never breed'.
Evolution like all scientific theories are either rejected or modified over time. If there is enough data that contravenes the theory then the theory is rejected. If a little data points to an error in the original idea then it's modified. Evolution has never been rejected because the core idea is right but things like the mechanism and some subtitles must be changed as data came in.
The conversely the arguments against string theory never needs revision because the formula can accommodate almost every possible observation.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
"While there are some rather gaping holes the standard model cannot explain, people like it because it has made stunningly accurate predictions (e.g. the COBE data)."
Which is exactly the point. The COBE data doesn't line up with expectations. The standard model never predicted dark matter or dark energy, they were added because the standard model fails without them. That's a big difference. I think Albert Einstein would be very skeptical of the practices of modern physicists.
Anywhile, people like the standard model because they have been taught that it is correct and have since learned that it gets funded. Plus everyone likes something for nothing which is what the Big Bang is all about, that and we all used to occupy the same space, which is very new agey.
What? What other spheres? In order to be a grand unified theory, it must account for inflation, or either: String Theory is wrong or There is no inflation.
Your 'large and growing group of Ph.D.s' aside, it has the best promise of being a method to quantize gravity. There are other methods that should be researched as well, loop quantum gravity springs to mind.
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How much time we have spent on quantum physics without much experimental evidence? These are not the sort of things you can just test out in a bathtub.
Control is an illusion, order our comforting lie. From chaos, through chaos, into chaos we fly
When any Big Bang type of theory is mentioned, I sometimes wonder why alternative theories, like the Electric Universe, are never mentioned,/i>
Because that particular theory is obviously wrong.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
String theory should be discarded. It's a fanciful religion that explains nothing, but creates a lot of stuff that needs explaining.
It explains everything we have ever observed. However, this is not enough. String theory will not come into its own until it makes a prediction of a phenomenon we have NEVER observed before. Only then will it prove more useful than current theories.
Now, it's easy to construct a theory which explains everything ever observed -- simply enumerate the universe and say "that's it." But that's not what string theory is. Tomorrow, somebody could discover something in the math that actually makes a testable prediction about something we've never seen before. You have not asserted a single reason why this could not be the case.
Much promise, but few deliverables.
I predict in ten years we'll hear much more about how string theory will be proven in the future, with measureable repeatable observations.
But never today. Always the future.
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Not being falsifiable is a strong indicator, but that doesn't mean it is incorrect, or pseudo science. Scientific method is being used. It correlates with what we see, just like the theory of gravity in it's infancy. I use that example, not to compare it to gravity, only to explain there is often a period of time before an observation is put to a falsifiable test.
I am always glad to see people looking our for pseudoscience, but it does need to be tempered with thought.
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Admittedly, there is an active and very loud group which has been theorizing that string theory will - at some point in the future - provide a grand unified theory of physics that is testable.
If there is indeed a "theory of everything," it may be so far outside the range of our current intellect that the complete development of the theory could take centuries. If we are willing to throw away anything just because it hasn't made a new prediction within 30 years, we might be dooming ourselves to NEVER figure it out.
Inflation was introduced because the presumptive model of the Big Bang says that the universe sprang from an infinitesimally small point. At some time later, the expansion rate of the universe is thought to have changed. This change in expansion rate (inflation) was required by the assumption about the point-source of the Big Bang, working backwards from what we see around us today.
But what if the Big Bang was not a point source?
If the universe (the one that we see and experience in our daily lives, anyway) was created when two branes slapped together, there's no reason to think that that had to take place within a single infinitesimal point. If this contact took place over a larger region of space, the diameter of a single hydrogen atom, for example, then "inflation" isn't necessary.
So, replace Big Bang with Big Slap, and get rid of inflation.
The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them. - Mark Twain
when you said :"I'm just talking from my ass,"
God is Pseudoscience.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
To get closer to the reason you must take one step back and realize that Big Bang theories are based on general relativity theory. Relativity theory has been elevated to sacred dogma that is defended at all costs. And that includes supression of experimental evidence indicating a slightly variable and varying speed of light. See for example http://surf.de.uu.net/bookland/sci/farce/farce_6.html#SEC6, or go back to what Michelson and Moreley actually published and ignore the spin that was applied later. Or look at what Dayton Miller actually measured and reported before the inquisition arrived.
The thing that makes cosmology, and particularly the corresponding astronomical observations, highly political is that any reasonable cosmological model is bound to run into conflict with relativity theory. That's why we're stuck with a patched-up ludicrous model that includes a singularity, inflation, and more ad-hoc magic required to keep the model within the bounds of relativity theory.
One of the sharpest critiques of string theory is that it isn't really one theory -- it's many, many theories (something like 10^500), depending on how the hidden dimensions are wrapped up. It looks like this study showed that a certain flavor of string theory (IIA) might not be able to accommodate inflation -- but not to worry, the string theorists say, there are plenty of other flavors of string theory that might indeed allow inflation after all! But therein lies the problem: no matter how an experiment turns out, one can cook up a version of string theory that agrees with it! What we really need is a meta-theory (M-theory?) that tells us *which* string theory to use, but so far it doesn't exist. This is why some critics call string theory a "theory of anything."
Cheers,
IT
Power corrupts. PowerPoint corrupts absolutely.
Some say this could even lead to the abandonment of either string theory or inflation
So if the facts don't match the theory, just abandon the facts. Sounds like a neat idea. It should at least make it *much* easier to come up with a "theory of everything".
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
Because it is ridiculous.
I might as well said it was created by an Invisible Pink Pony that lives on the moon. Then complain no one take me serious.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
String theory is still just a bunch of fancy math. It literally started with a couple of guys saying "Hey, what if everything is made of tiny, vibrating strings?" It might be elegant, but without *any* physical evidence supporting it, it might forever be condemned to the realm of mathematics, not physics.
If there is indeed a "theory of everything," it may be so far outside the range of our current intellect that the complete development of the theory could take centuries. If we are willing to throw away anything just because it hasn't made a new prediction within 30 years, we might be dooming ourselves to NEVER figure it out.
Exactly.
The main problem many have with the devotion to string theory is that we have a lot of highly-educated thinkers devoted to a theory that may have neither practical applications nor usable physical methods within their own lifetimes.
Perhaps a wiser choice, as a society, would be to limit those studying string theory to a smaller fraction of physicists, while retasking the rest to more rewarding areas of theoretical physics that might have some use to us as a society.
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Some say this could even lead to the abandonment of either string theory or inflation, though no one is ruling out a possible resolution yet.
Um, yeah. You see I'm going to be extremely skeptical of anyone claiming that the sun cannot be performing fusion when based on the very same theories that describe the pressures and energies required for fusion occurring in the sun we have created fusion right here on earth.
/., he was claiming that EU explained impact craters, as if EU had now replaced the obvious and rather well tested effects of kinetic energy. Einstein didn't and simply couldn't up-end Newton's theory, he could only explain what Newton failed to. EU tries, and summarily fails.
I'm skeptical of anyone who claims not only to have solved problems with the existing theory, but to entirely upturn the existing theory itself even the parts that have extensive verification. Hell the last time I crossed baths with an Electric Universe proponent on
Epicycles were a case of taking something with a clear explanation -- elliptical orbits -- and deciding that no, everything must be comprised of circles. EU is the same thing -- attempting to turn everything into the universe into electricity, desperately inserting it everywhere even if there is no need.
It's one thing to try to explain the things that our current theories can't. It's quite another to try to invalidate well-verified aspects of those theories.
I'm no fan of science politics in this country, but the most basic bar for any theory is that it should not contradict the existing evidence. Relativity could do that, so even as weird and unlikely and unorthodox as it was considered at the time, it eventually won acceptance and now is one of the best tested theories. EU can't do that, and thus even in a perfect system should be rejected.
The enemies of Democracy are
Actually, I protest. About any decent physics department on earth has more people not working on string theory than people who do. Heck, I even know some universities that don't have string theory group.
Problem is that the other fields are far more difficult to explain and draw little to no attention.
#1) Respect the privacy of others. #2) Think before you type.
Given that a large part of the theoretical physics world has spent 30ish years on this, isn't it time to move on?
I am in no way a Physicist, but wouldn't "moving on" from String Theory require some genius to propose something else that reconciles Quantum Physics and Newtonian Physics? I don't think the first-step break through of an entirely new theory is going to come from the physics community as a whole, but from a single person or small group. Until that happens, grad students still need something to write thesis papers about...
We are all just people.
String theory is probably the only theory that really supports inflation. If the net energy in the universe is constant, then the net curvature must be constant, therefore it could only appear smaller if curvature were balanced between other dimensions.
We at slashdot are scientists, specialists and kernel hackers. Your FUD will be found out.
I'm not a string theorist, but I am a cosmologist. Here are some thoughts:
Inflation has not been "confirmed" in away way. It's the best explanation for a very very limited number of datapoints we have on the "early" Universe. Very smart people (e.g., Sean Carroll, now at CalTech) have made convincing cases that inflation is actually incoherent in important ways. I have spent quite a bit of time trying to come up with alternatives to inflation, and it's damn hard -- it "works" very well, in the sense that it solves a bunch of problems all at once that are hard to solve individually. But it does invoke plenty of nonstandard physics we've never seen in the Universe, let alone the lab.
Inflation and dark energy are deeply connected. They both require something called "negative pressure". Negative pressure is bizarre, and actually is from a Newtonian perspective a violation of the conservation of energy (in General Relativity, energy is not conserved -- rather a complicated combination of numbers some of which refer to what we'd measure as energy is conserved.) Negative pressure means that if you take a box of the stuff, and let it expand, at the end of the day there's actually more stuff in there than you started with.
String theory should better be known as "a collection of approaches." It does not have the coherence of, say General Relativity, which is a mathematically closed system. Talking about "giving up string theory" is kind of dumb -- essentially what you are saying is "do not try to do the following large class of calculation." There are definitely competitors to string theory, but none have captured the attention of a highly fractious community the way string theory has.
Not sure if anyone's still reading this thread, but I'm happy to talk more about it. Reply with questions if you like!
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you know not whereof you speak. The evidence confirming quantum theory is overwhelming. I don't even know where to start. OK, how about 100 years ago.
...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.
Smolin, Wolfram and others consider evolving graph-theoretic networks as a more likely base model for a theory of everything.
... an interesting experience which helped inspire my OSDC 2004 'Design on the Fly' paper (PDF) and slides (S^5 HTML).)
My first, and to-date only, experiment with a simplest-of-class evolving graph very soon produced a good analogy of inflation.
(Before I figured out what was going on, this 'inflation' had the side effect of making my puter seem to 'go away' even when I capped the clock at ten ticks
-- Our systemic servants do not good masters make.
**Whoosh!**
I don't think the GP was comparing the theory of evolution to sting theory, but but making the joke that string theory proves evolution because it evolves into "another untestable manner to accomadate an uncomfortable reality that it is not really science."
So either you misread the GP or I misread your post.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
No?
The question has no actual merit to it - it's like asking why, when you blow up a balloon, the surrounding room isn't counted as part of the balloon because that's where the balloon's surface is expanding into. The answer, of course, is simply that it isn't part of the balloon. Likewise with the universe. Think of it as the "surface" (in THREE dimensions, not four, folks) of a 3-sphere (a 4-dimensional object - a bowling ball is a pretty good model of a 2-sphere). The surface continues to expand because the "interior" is being inflated - but the interior isn't itself part of the universe as we know it. Yes, I realize I've basically given a half-assed summary of the holographic principle here (possibly in reverse).
The article seems to be sorely lacking in details, and when it finally does mention the specific models, it seems that they only actually tried to get inflation out of toroidally compactified Type IIa String Theory, claiming that this was generic. If anything, this is the opposite of a generic situation. Toroidal compactifications preserve far too much supersymmetry to be generic, and as the article mentions, there are other reasons to expect that inflation won't be visible in the IIa theory. Additionally, the article fails to mention that there are a number of inflationary mechanisms in string theory that seem to be quite generic. Included in these are KKLT, KKLMMT, Brane Inflation, DBI Inflation, and many more stringy inflation models which I haven't mentioned. In fact, if anything, the problem currently seems to be that there are too many viable inflationary models in string theory.
There's no sig like SIGSEG
I suppose I may have read it wrong. The quotes lead to some ambiguity on what he meant but now that you mention it it's likely he was saying what you suggested.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
Excuse me, but that is downright irresponsible. After reading this part of the sentence I'd fallen off my chair with my eyes watering. The clamour associated with the event greatly disturbed my neighbours, who promptly filed a complaint with my landlord. Consequently, I myself would like to complain about the damage done to my reputation as an inhabitant of this tenement and as an upstanding citizen.
Seriously though, and meaning no offence, calling a crummy hypothesis such as the Electric Universe a theory in any scientific sense is giving it a lot more credit than it deserves.
I'm entirely incompetent to discuss physics, but you've pointed to a website that claims that "neither relativity nor quantum mechanics are physics." I understand scepticism of string-theory, but those are some serious claims. Anyways, you should probably read about Big Bang cosmology on wikipedia; it's a pretty good start to help with your confusion. You know, with reality.
Where is the list of things quantum theory is required to answer and who put "Why does mass exist?" on it?
...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.
The former says "the world is pixelated, not infinitely divisible", the latter adds "and those pixels might not really be there."
Sure, it's a layman's simplification. But you can't just wave your hand and say "sure, QM is confirmed" and not provided even a single solitary link.
Cosmologists are finding that it is impossible to square string theory with Einstein's theory of General Relativity after all. Some say this could even lead to the abandonment General Relativity...
... if only to ensure that string theorists
around the world do not lose their jobs.
Really? I did.
...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.
Some versions of string theory do make a genuinely interesting prediction. They predict a particle that hasn't actually been observed. A large class of the most studied string theories require adding just this one particle to the standard model, and it has to have spin 2, and mass 0.
That's a great candidate for a graviton, which is also being predicted for some other reasons. When some of the most aestetically interesting versions of string theory turned out to predict not just any particle or whole family of particles, but that specific one, many physicists got more interested in those theories.
However, general and special relativity don't actually predict gravitons - Einstein was able to treat gravity as a strain inherent in space-time and not as something mediated by a particle at all, and get some very testable results. Quantum Mechanics doesn't really require Gravitons either. Actual particle accelerator experiments have satisfied various symmetry theories from just the particles observed, and this again doesn't include gravitons.
There's no practical way to build an accelerator that could even theoretically reach the energies needed to test unification of all four fundamental forces, and gravity is the odd man out that we have no expectation will be integrated by either accelerator experiments or astronomical observations.
Proof of a mediating particle for gravity would still not prove any of the string theorys, but it would give the likelyest of them some fairly strong support. For now, we're stuck - a theory looks mathematically beautiful, and actually makes a prediction, but we aren't sure yet if that prediction is ever going to become testable, and on the other hand we have no categorical proof the prediction is fundamentally untestable. A test would be nice, but so would a stronger reason for saying there could be no test than just that we aren't yet a type 2 civilization, with the energy of a whole galaxy to use, so we are limited by the economics of it.
Who is John Cabal?
For example there has been ongoing debate for many years now between people who are searching for dark matter and proponents of MOND.
Just some questions about the above:
a) If MOND is about an extremely small acceleration in F=MA, couldn't that be experimentally verified rather quickly by putting a paperclip a certain distance from the moon or the earth? Or something like that. MOND is something like I would have hacked in CMP252 and seems like it can't possibly be right.
b) I'm assuming that they measure the rotation of a galaxy by looking at its stars red shift? But, what if, for whatever reason, stars farther out from the center of the galaxy just happened to be older / younger, so that, they would have a different color of light but not necessarily be doppler shifted? Or is my understanding of red shift completely wrong - like you know that there ought to be a hydrogen line at a certain spot, but if its moved over, you know what the shift is? Is star light that precisely measured from millions of light years away?
This is my sig.
String theory, as I understand it, explains a very large number of potential universes depending on a set of values that can just be chosen arbitrarily. Given such a state vector, one can make falsifiable claims. However, since there's no way to determine which state vector should describe our universe, that doesn't mean much.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Someone else can deal with the implementation details, I'm just the ideas guy. And I must admit, the main complaint I have about string theory is the endless crappy pop science documentaries with pictures of flashing loops of string that it's spawned.
Dark matter was one of many hypotheses that explained galaxy rotation rates. Of all of those hypotheses, the dark matter hypothesis best predicted the COBE data (and the COBE data gives a matter to dark matter ratio to 2 significant digits, cosmology with 2 significant digits still boggles my mind).
So, "dark matter exists, and is about 80% of matter" is a pretty good hypothesis right now. This has little to do with particle physics. There are of course several ideas about what dark matter might be that model well for matter distribution in the universe, but that's not the same as a verified prediction. I don't think there's any sort of strong hypothesis about the actual particles of dark matter, just a lot of ideas looking for testable predictions.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
There, fixed that for ya.
I don't therefore I'm not.
Actually, isn't that exactly what science is?
Hypothesis, test, revise. It's adherence to a dogma that isn't science.
I Ain't a String Physicist, but as far as I understand it, these different state vectors of which you speak, are what originally gave rise to the five different, predominant string theories. If I'm not mistaken, the goal of M-theory is to unite the five into one theory without arbitrary variants.
Nice troll. ;-)
But seriously, I agree entirely. I came across this a while back, and it sits pretty well with me. Of course most people will say it's ridiculous and laugh it off because <insert derision but provide no sensible argument>.
Either that or they will respond by arguing that it can't work because the combination of a few observations and <insert theory (note: *theory*)> doesn't allow it.
Most folks discussing these things are like primary school kids discussing cars. They don't actually know what they are talking about, but they like to imagine they do and tend to agree on a favourite. Any kid who disagrees is stupid.
I don't therefore I'm not.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
flying apart but they're all knotted again and that's the part the string theorists don't like; being in a strange, topless/bottomless joint without any charm at all.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
And dark matter is needed only because the current gravity-only model fails miserably without it. Dark matter was not predicted by the Standard Model, it was bolted onto it after it was realized that large-scale structures could not be explained without it (i.e. with only the visible matter, our galaxy should fly apart according to the gravity-only viewpoint). This is precisely the pattern by which epicycles were added to the old geocentric theories to explain away observations that suggested that it was wrong. Compare this to the truly successful predictions, (you know, the ones that were mentioned before the effect was observed?) such as gravitational lensing or time dilation, it should be obvious that something is wrong with the dark matter picture. Name for me some "current research" other than string theory (which cannot be tested in the foreseeable future, making it more closely resemble metaphysics, not science) that is doing anything other than revising theories to fix them when a new, unpredicted observation breaks them. In other words, the theory is being revised but the assumptions and thought processes that led to that theory are not. The arrogance that "we can't possibly be missing something fundamental because this time we finally get it!" certainly isn't being revised either. Dark matter, dark energy, black holes, and other things that have never been directly observed are added after the fact wherever they are needed to explain away inconsistencies when they are found.
Perhaps different approaches to the Standard Model get plenty of funding, but this is still a monoculture. This is not a competition among different theories to find out which is the most useful and makes the most successful predictions; this is a competition among different interpretations of the same theory.
And answering my opinion about the current state of physics research by talking about who has the right to speak, which island I am on, how out of touch I am, and who is an "armchair physicist" is supposed to show me the error of my ways? This might make you feel better about yourself but it's not very convincing (I won't bother pointing out what it says about your character or your level of discipline). I get it, if you just assert something strongly enough, it magically becomes true! Your single paragraph was low on facts but had plenty of expressions of your indignation that I would dare to question your sacred viewpoint, some content-free statements like "... turned upside down in the last century and changed pretty dramatically over the last 20 years," and a general display of exactly the type of hubris that hinders real progress. It's like you're personally offended that I don't see things the way that you do, which is quite a bit different from trying to correct what you perceive as my incorrect beliefs.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
...that is so bad it doesn't even deserve to be called pseudo-science. I'll just finish the quote for you. You obviously fell off your chair before you could get to the end.I might as well quote from my own reply, which said "this part of the sentence". As said, no harm intended.
And just get rid of both string theory AND inflation.
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
Inflation is only a tentative theory, that has no evidence in favour of it. People only believe it because it is supposedly a 'simple' explanation of some things that we can observe today (e.g. uniformity of the microwave background). However it is not so simple; e.g. there is no firm theory of what caused inflation to start in the first place.
It gets talked up a lot more than it is actually worth.
I read a few of the arguments from the page, just to know what you are talking about.
Neither Einstein's relativity nor quantum mechanics are physics so we cannot use them as a foundation for our new model (although we should find that the mathematics that works in the real world still applies).We have to discard "modern" physics and return to the classical physics of a century ago. This, perhaps, is the greatest hurdle - to discard our training and prejudices and to approach the problem with a beginner's mind.
whew! I'm so glad we can at least keep mathematics - or some part of it - because reinventing physics without it would be problematic
We must "go down" one more level and propose that all subatomic particles, including the electron, are resonant structures of electric charges of opposite sign that sum to the charge on that particle....The electron is not a fundamental, point-like particle.It must have structure to provide its dipole magnetic field.... The same model applies to the proton and the neutron.
So all the particle physics results indicating the existence of quarks are fictional? Well if we had known they didn't exist we wouldn't have spent so much time and money pinning down their properties.
When we accelerate electrons or protons in an electromagnetic field they become less responsive to the fields the more they are accelerated. This has been interpreted as an increase in mass. However, charges have no mass.
I (and particle physicists) much prefer E^2 = (pc)^2 +m^2*c^4 where m is the rest-mass; an unchanging invariant property. only the momentum p has relativistic terms in it.
The notion that matter can be annihilated when normal matter meets antimatter is a confusion of language. Matter can neither be destroyed nor created nor can matter be exchanged for energy. Einstein's E = mc2 refers to mass, a property of matter, not matter itself.
The most collapsed form of matter is the neutrino, which has a vanishingly small mass. However, the neutrino must contain all of the charges required to form two particles - a particle and its antiparticle. This symmetry explains why a neutrino is considered to be its own anti-particle. A neutrino may accept energy from a gamma ray to reconstitute a particle and its anti-particle. "Empty space" is full of neutrinos. They are the repositories of matter in the universe, awaiting the burst of gamma-radiation to expand them to form the stuff of atoms. The weird "zoo" of short-lived particles created in particle accelerators and seen in cosmic rays are simply unstable resonant systems of charge.
We must abandon our peculiar phobia against a force acting at a distance. And we must give up the notion that the speed of light is a real speed barrier. It may seem fast to us, but on a cosmic scale it is glacial. Imposing such a speed limit and requiring force to be transmitted by particles would render the universe completely incoherent.
Holy friggin' hell. check out http://www.physicstoday.org/vol-56/iss-10/images/p48fig1.jpg or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:First_Gold_Beam-Beam_Collision_Events_at_RHIC_at_100_100_GeV_c_per_beam_recorded_by_STAR.jpg image created at RHIC. Think about what standard physics implies about the result versus "Electric physics"
Electric Physics
1. individual gold atoms are accelerated perhaps to >c
2. energy is added into some electric fields within the atom
3. the electric fields do not interact with any neutrinos until the atoms near each other
4. the electric fields interact with thousands of undetected neutrinos at the exact point where the atoms collide (kind of
The reason why the three links point to the same Web site is because that post was not intended to be research (you can do that on your own); it was intended to display a viewpoint I have encountered and find to be interesting (but FYI a link to a synopsis is found on their main page). I'm less concerned with whether the Electric Universe theory is correct and more interested in whether we are willing to question what we think we know. I would like to see more work done on alternatives like this. I believe that in terms of cost-benefit, the possibility of a truly new discovery is worth the effort this would require.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
>> Noodles are weak, wimpy string posers unable to carry...
It's "poseurs", you big brutish freedom-fry eating macho pirate!
And while we're at it, I always preferred the term "Flying Pasta Monster" - so much more an elegant
label for an elegant theory.
.
- aqk
F U
String theory can accomodate any observation, because it's a Chimera: Just dicker with the dimensions and any empirical inconsistencies evaporate like a fart in the wind. Add or subtract a dimension, change the way the "strings" curl around all the phantom dimensions, and nearly any conclusion is possible. That's why string theory is unable to make a single falsifiable prediction: It makes lots of them, and then when they turn out to be false, the theorists just twist the strings in a different direction.
Of course! It's 1764.
-Mike
I'm sorry; I don't know what I was thinking!
There's nothing more annoying than pontification from ignorant armchair physicists.
I understand your irritation, but there is no need to insult Stephen Hawking.
I was too hasty. I'm sort of a science zealot. which is bad if I don't read things right.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
Mmmm the comment above reminds me of a discussion with a colleage that had a major in physics.
He just finished a book about string theory that indeed supported this point of view:
The author (don't ask me the name, I am unable to remember) worked on early string theory himself. However, he later doubted his very work as no experimental proof could sustain it. He also mentioned the mathematical beauty of string theory and the fact that people became enamoured with it rather than looking for experimental proofs. This hypnotism lead a number of proeminent physiscist to accept this as the Truth and the author says that it is now very difficult not to "believe" in string theory in labs as you would be catalogued as outsider and therefor have more touble to get researtch funding.
Not beeing in the field, I would not be competent to judge this. However, fundamental physiscs is pretty intersting as an amateur.
One of this out of the boxes ideas was that he would introduce another limitation beside the c speed limit and the quantic physics uncertainties ( speed / position) : he states that space itself is not a continum but dimentions cannot be lower than the planck constant and that any system that is smaller to this dimensions is outside physics laws and cannot be understood because such a system would be below an event horison that would bar every attempts for any measurement.
Doing that he make the supposition that black may be systems where matters collapses below this limit and then could be the singularity that COULD trigger another big bang in another dimension.
Seems to be very wild to me but the ideas are fascinating.
I agree with the GP that you really have been living under a rock. Dark matter exists.
Welcome back to reality. A cup of tea?
Crap. Didn't get the link right. http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/space/08/21/dark.matter/index.html
Its easy. Because they're WRONG. Maybe when people stop saying "What about THIS alternate theory!?!" and start taking physics and astronomy classes, making relativistic corrections in experiments and in your data, knowing where teh data came from, and it matching perfectly with everything else, they can talk.
String theory is very mathematical and I have my personal issues with a number of aspects of it -- but these issues stem from the excessively nonlinear requirements on earlier calculations to derive current models. But its a damn sight better than nothing at all -- and even if some of the spin-offs are *almost* religions in their untestability, at least they're looking for a way to test themselves.
By the way: gravity does travel at the speed of light. Its why orbits follow images -- you *never* see something "where it really is", you always see its light-position. Enter Brehmßtralung radiation (a purely relativistic effect). It also does bend space-time; its why there's gravitational lensing. It also does radiate gravity waves: we have detectors set up for them and pulsar orbits can be observed to decay with that energy radiating. We also have detected dark matter where there is no visible matter. Same gravitational lensing I'm sure you believe doesn't exist.
This idiocy-fixing brought to you by basic university-level astrophysics.
Blog
30 years is not a long time! The experiments themselves are taken that long - the LHC (Large Hadron Collider) alone has taken 20 years.
I don't get these people running around going "omg it's 30 years, and they haven't solved the universe yet". jeez.
String theory has produced a lot of useful science and mathematics. Even if string theory is wrong (which it probably is) it is needed to expand our understanding. It is not like a car journey where you chose a road then have to double back if you took the wrong turn.
Actually it's a bit stronger than that. Most models of string theory do predict something that we haven't seen yet (Higgs Boson for example) which can be looked for (The LHC that will be finished next year after 20 years of work).
:)
However other models also predict Higgs Boson. So if we don't find the Higgs Boson (aka 'God particle') then we know (mostly) string theory is wrong, afaik. If we do find it, then it doesn't really confirm string theory, since there are 'simpler' explanations for it (standard model).
I hope that jumble of thoughts makes sense
They predict a particle that hasn't actually been observed... it has to have spin 2, and mass 0.
When physicists talk about "predictions", we are referring to those that can be tested; all others are irrelevant. This spin 2 particle that string theory "predicts" is sort of a red herring; it doesn't predict anything about how the particle should interact, so even if we DID observe a spin 2, mass 0 particle, one could not say it validates anything about string theory.
What bothers me the most about this posting (the main post, not the parent) is that it tries to put string theory and inflation on equal footing. This is extremely misleading. The predictions of inflation are very specific and have been well-supported by precision measurements of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). String theory, on the other hand, makes no predictions, and has no supporting evidence. The GP's comparison of string theory to a religion is right to the point: as Nobel-laureate Sheldon Glashow said about string theory, "If there is a model that cannot be tested, is that science? Or is it philosophy?"
The book sounds like Lee Smolin's The Trouble With Physics which I read a couple of months ago.
Then again, it also sounds like Peter Woit's Not Even Wrong which I've not read.
There is a growing trend of slagging off string theory and string theorists :)
I say we take-off and slashdot the site from orbit... it's the only way to be sure
And you are the primary school kid who takes the opposite opinion from what the adults and the other kids say, because you like to be alone?
I read through the link. The first half is just a rehash of general relativity, written to sound as if physics was wrong ("There is no gravitational force! woooo!") when it's just saying exactly what physics says now.
He argues some stuff about the red shift coming from spacetime curvature, although I can't see how he accounts for the evidence that shows our spacetime is extraordinarily flat.
His figure 6 describes the whole idea of big bang, big crunch, big bang cycle. But I don't see how he copes with the usual problem of entropy. The big crunch has much much higher entropy than the big bang - you need some way to restart entropy.
He says that these explosions account for the background radiation, but he's way seems to offer no prediction of the temperature etc. However the standard physics model correctly predicts the ratios of matter from the background radiation.
Bah I'm bored going through it now. But it seems to keep going on like this. If he submitted this to a journal, it would be torn apart.
However, most theories would probably be torn apart too, so I'm not rejecting it as useless. But he's got a _long_ way to go.
30 years is not a long time. Be patient little rabbit.
Although this story begins with the proposition that string theory isn't adding-up, inflation itself is susceptible to some probing criticism. For example, neither the relative uniformity of the present universe nor its "lumpiness" (required for matter to form galaxies) are in any way required results of inflation; even the slightest variation in the initial quantum fluctuations thought to be responsible for the non-uniformity produce wildly different outcomes. That our universe came out the way it did, with physical laws and characteristics necessary for galaxy formation (and hence life), is statistically highly improbable. In fact, some inflationists have posited that there is a perhaps an unlimited number of expanding regions of space where these characteristics have not obtained, regions that will never intersect because space itself expands faster then the edges of these individual pockets. Further, inflation doesn't say much about the enormous amount of energy that is required to drive inflation; how does a force that acts so powerfully suddenly disappear and give way to the cause of today's much slower expansion?
An alternative to inflation that preserves much of string theory (at least M theory) is put forth in a book by Paul Steinhardt and Neil Turok called "Endless Universe." http://www.amazon.com/Endless-Universe-Beyond-Big-Bang/dp/0385509642/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/102-2736756-6626517?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1189688680&sr=8-1 The book details some of the intellectual and experimental hurdles in the development of inflation and advocates a cyclic universe with periodic collisions between closely-spaced dimensions. Although the book is non-technical (and I surely would not understand the math if it were included) the authors claim that every prediction inflation makes is equally well predicted by their theory. Additionally, some of inflation's more problematic results are avoided. According to the authors, the WMAP team has predicted that future experiments will be sufficiently sensitive to make measurements of phenomena that have different predictions under inflation and the cyclic model.
In any event, the book is a stimulating read.
I think you mean Not Even Wrong. :)
You are not the customer.
MOD Parent up.
This is really very important to not lose track of what is an observed phenomena and what is an "inferred" phenomena, based on current theories to explain other observations.
Similarly Big Bang is not an Observed Phenomena, but expansion of the universe is an observed phenomena, which along with other phenomena predict a Big Bang.
To put this in perspective even Dark Matter and Dark Energy are not observed phenomena, they are simply inferred to explain galactic and extra galactic rotation curves, and accelerating cosmic expansion respectively.
There are so many inferred phenomena that it is quite possible to get convinced of the inferred phenomena as if it was an observed phenomena.
Well I know inflation is at least partly to blame for my shoe-string budget...
I wonder if string theory can explain why people feel the need to share any interesting or debatable fact they come across with slashdot, even if the information is multiple years old...
This spin 2 particle that string theory "predicts" is sort of a red herring; it doesn't predict anything about how the particle should interact
On the contrary, string theory predicts a unique interaction for the graviton.
String theory, on the other hand, makes no predictions, and has no supporting evidence.
That's a silly claim. There are plenty of string models which make predictions. The problem is in distinguishing them from the predictions of existing quantum field theory models.
So, to put your post in a nutshell a non-physicist can understand, String Theory == Jam Tomorrow.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
One of the sharpest critiques of string theory is that it isn't really one theory -- it's many, many theories (something like 10^500), depending on how the hidden dimensions are wrapped up.
That's not a critique of string theory, and it's not true either.
String theory is one theory, but with many, many ground states.
This doesn't make it any worse than existing physics such as the Standard Model, which really is one theory out of the infinitely many possible quantum field theories you can write down.
But therein lies the problem: no matter how an experiment turns out, one can cook up a version of string theory that agrees with it!
That's not true. In fact, it's harder to cook up a string theory to explain an experiment than it is to cook up a quantum field theory: there are low energy effective field theories you can write down that can't be obtained from any string theory.
What we really need is a meta-theory (M-theory?) that tells us *which* string theory to use, but so far it doesn't exist.
It would be nice, but we don't really "need" it. There is no such meta-theory which tells us that the Standard Model is the "right" quantum field theory, but that doesn't make the Standard Model or QFT useless. It just means that you have to do experiments to determine which one is right (or rather, which ones are not wrong). Welcome to science.
There once was a race, who, despite the laws of the universe,
tried to compute chaos, putting it into mathematical systems.
They are now known as "The race that used too many resources on too little,
and hence became extinct".
I think it is commendable to try and figure out that which can't be figured out,
but in the end, "the abyss also gazes into you".
You live and you learn; some just choose not to...
No, it isn't. It makes no verifiable or falsifiable claims, and therefore isn't science.
But if that were true, it couldn't very well be inconsistent with inflation, which is based upon verifiable observations about the universe, could it?
Read all about it on Bad Astronomy, http://www.bautforum.com/against-mainstream/61876-gem-rank-1-unified-field-proposal.html. I know I should put it up on the physics archive, but they don't let fringe folks toss pdf's up there about a rank 1 field theory for gravity and light (yes, I figured out how the spin 2 graviton lives in the charge coupling term, if anyone here groks that issue). The test is to measure bending of light around the Sun, but six orders of magnitude better than needed to show Einstein was right, Newton was wrong. The GEM theory predicts 12% more bending, 0.8 microarcseconds, than the Schwarzschild metric. If we detect gravity waves, and measure them along 6 different axes, GR predicts the waves are transverse, and GEM predicts they would be longitudinal or scalar waves. Let the measurements decide!
doug
quaternions.com
Working on new views of old physics at http://VisualPhysics.org
Sound like you are trying to have it both ways. Inflation theory was developed to account for observations about the universe. So if string theory cannot support inflation, then it is not going to be consistent with those observations. Which indicates that observations of the universe can be used to test string theory.
> Electric Universe is a scientific theory that is so bad it doesn't even deserve to be called pseudo-science.
Patent-leather science then?
Actually, I think the notions propounded by the advocates of the "Electric Universe" are just classical electrodynamics applied to inter-planetary and inter-stellar scales. The main point of these advocates boils down to: Please stop forgetting about electrostatics when you look at the sky. Seems sensible to me. Now as to whether or not any specific phenomenon for which someone proposes an electro-magnetic mechanism is correctly thus understood -- well, that's going to be a separate, open question in each specific case. What is truly anti-scientific is to discount an explanation on an ad hominem basis, or because it is offensive to the traditions of the culture -- including the inbred culture of peer review, particularly when competing theories represent a threat to one's funding sources.
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
There is such a meta-theory, and it's called experimental science. Since IIa is inconsistent with both dark matter and inflation, progress is best served by allocating investigative resources to other theories. Thus, this is a practically useful result. Moreover, it may form the template from which other results, which eliminate larger classes of string theories, can be derived by abstraction, generalization, or clever virtuoso tricks. Ultimately, some number of string theories will remain without a sufficient refutation to discount their investigation. The number may be large, small, one or zero. If the number is over-unity, they may admit abstraction, such that a single formalism can be used to make all measurable predictions of any/all theories. This is sheer speculation, but it is consistent with the history of the theory. But even if such an abstraction never emerged, and we were stuck with multiple multually inconsistent theories, each consistent with all practicable observations, this would not be a terrible thing. There's no reason to think that science can determine all physical truths unambiguously -- quite the contrary.
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
You have a really bizarre picture of science. You don't have to predict everything in advance when doing science. When you do fundamental research you are defining the arena in which you think other phenomena take place. You don't expect to predict the existence of every single little thing that appears in that arena, you merely have to make sure that there is room in your arena to contain everything that you find. Similarly in biology, you can have a really good understanding of how genetics is explained by DNA, but you don't expect that model to predict what new species you'll find next time you go exploring in the Amazon. You only start worrying about your DNA theory when you find that the next species you find in the Amazon doesn't have any DNA. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence - but that there might be matter out there that is hard to detect (but not impossible, and it even appears to be mappable) is hardly an extraordinary claim.
> Dark matter, dark energy, black holes, and other things that have never been directly observed are added after the fact
Black holes were never added after the fact, they are extrapolated from known and well tested physical models. Dark energy arises in a natural way from general relativity as soon as you add in a cosmological constant term. As Einstein had no justification for removing that term in the first place, it's entirely reasonable to work with this hypothesis. The existence of dark matter is being deduced using the same method that has been used through the centuries to detect things like the planets Neptune and Uranus - modifications to the expected path of gravitating bodies explicable through the postulation of other, as yet unseen, matter. What's being "added after the fact"? This is normal everyday science.
> Perhaps different approaches to the Standard Model get plenty of funding, but this is still a monoculture.
Pick up and read some physics papers. The Standard Model is barely even discussed in the majority. Consider the vast number of papers on supersymmetry, a symmetry that isn't even present in the Standard Model. I suspect that you don't even know what the "standard model" is. Not just the details of it. I suspect you don't even know what broad category of thing it is. There's nothing wrong with not knowing stuff, we all have to start out that way, but most of us have the sense to find out what we're talking about before we criticize the work of others.
> dare to question your sacred viewpoint
Please spare me the cliches about scientists defending sacred physical beliefs. I am defending no particular physical model here. I'm merely pointing out your ignorance about current trends in physics and stating that if you bother to read current research you'll find that (1) there is an incredible proliferation of papers on fundamental physics with a wide variety of different ideas and (2) what you call "bolting on" is simply ordinary physics as it's been practiced for centuries. I'm not using the word 'ignorance' as a form of insult. It's merely a statement of fact.
> content-free statements like "... turned upside down ..."
Doesn't look content-free to me. There have been amazing advances in physics over the last 20 years. I've no idea what this has to do with indignation. It's a suggestion to you to get out of your armchair and have a look at what's been going on in physics recently. Dip into arxiv.org to see the diversity of work going on all over the world - whether it's the unification of disparate String Theories into a unified M-theory or the way the wackiest predictions of quantum mechanics have been borne out by the subtlest of mesoscopic experiments. That way, you can stop your own content-free blathering and make a contribution yourself rather than simply moaning about other people.
And sure - there are all kinds of problems in the physics world right now. But you'll need to do some more work before you understand what they are.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
I've never watched a pop science documentary about String Theory. I wonder if I'll get to the end of my life without every having watched one.
The only thing that bothers me about String Theory is that people aren't agnostic enough about it. You either believe or you don't, and if you show the slightest interest in it you must be a believer. If you mention something stringy in the presence of anti-Stringists they'll jump down your throat, and vice versa. Well I'm a String Agnostic, and I'm proud of it. I studied it, loved it, thought it was the best thing since sliced bread, but doubt it describes the world we know.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
... expansion of the universe is an observed phenomenaThere are so many inferred phenomena that it is quite possible to get convinced of the inferred phenomena as if it was an observed phenomena. Indeed! The expansion of the universe is an inferred phenomena - we cannot see it growing because it is too big. We see a variety of spectra from a variety of resolvable features in our telescopes and infer, rightly or wrongly, that everything is moving away from us and from *that* inference then infer that the entire universe is expanding.
To even be considered a valid scientific theory they have to be able to explain the most basic and fundamental observations. Electric Universe can't do that. I can't explain anything. It says that a comet's tail is charged particles arcing away from the comet as it comes closer to the sun, and this is why you get an anti-tail, the opposite charged particles go the other way. Why? Where does this magical charge come from? Why don't the solar winds work this way? Solar winds are always moving away from the sun, and contain both positive and negative charged particles. What is the source of the neutrinos we have detected coming from the Sun?
EU Cannot give an explanation for any of these questions, and the stuff that it apparently does give an explanation for we already know and have an answer for. It isn't science.
No, I'm the kid who says "screw cars" and goes and plays "Monkey" with some other kids.
All of the arguments you present are interesting, but they are all based on theories and models or are based on observations based on theories and models and observed using aparatus that operate from within our little piece of the universe with our rules that are again based on existing models.
The existence of atoms is not certain. Granted, we can build equipment that takes measurements which seem to confirm that they do exist, but that is all based on extrapolating observations from our experience.
I'm not saying that all of that is wrong, but I don't accept that it's certainty. Our understanding of the universe is based on models and models are representations of aspects of nature in which we have interest. A model SR-71 some hobbiest has put together with glue and covered in stickers is not a real SR-71. The thing I find funny about so many "experts" is that they will argue that a model is fact and ridicule anyone who questions it.
I prefer to keep an open mind, and sometimes wonder whether the rules of nature bend throughout the universe. What if the laws vary so subtly that probes sent into deep space couldn't possibly detect they changes for another thousand years, but our furthest observations are so wildly distorted by thier remoteness that by the time a probe could get there, it would resemble a banana and taste like chicken?
There's nothing wrong with questioning the status quo, and in fact that is how major scientific breakthroughs happen. The rest is technological and/or academic.
BTW, this the bit that I don't quite buy. I don't believe in spacetime. Yeah, he has a long way to go, but it's still any interesting and aesthetically pleasing model IMO.
I don't therefore I'm not.
Could someone explain to me what the justification behind unifying all of the fundamental forces is? I'm sure that it would be nice from a physical standpoint to have all of the forces be different facets of one fundamental force, but what if they aren't? Is there any groundbreaking research going on that assumes differently?
> The existence of atoms is not certain. Granted, we can build equipment that takes measurements which seem to confirm that they do exist, but that is all based on extrapolating observations from our experience.
:-D
I'm not really sure what you mean. You know that we can practically "see" an atom with a scanning tunnelling microscope? http://www.physics.uci.edu/~wilsonho/Physics%20Today%20On%20The%20Web%20-%20Search%20and%20Discovery_files/chasfeb1.jpg for example
If you feel that this is just "extrapolating observations from our experience" then you can say the same thing about, well, anything. You can't trust that the Sun exists, that that arms exist, and so on.
How does that saying go? It's always worth having an open mind, but not so open that everything falls out
> The thing I find funny about so many "experts" is that they will argue that a model is fact and ridicule anyone who questions it.
Who argues this? I bet you can't find any (real) scientist saying this.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
You just confirmed my point. I mean the 1st thing about atoms. Check the model. I don't believe atoms are real, but I accept they are useful. Many thanks.
Seeing as how I cannot prove I exist and yet my awareness confirms existence, I can only assume that what I call knowing power is a factor of /.
BTW, if a cat shits on your lawn, blame Schroedinger,
Aaaaaaaw shit.... here am I, all knowing, and some cat shits in my boot and....
I don't therefore I'm not.
So is there anything that you do know?
When you say that you don't believe in atoms, does that mean that you are more certain that they don't exist than that they do? If so, how can you possibly justify your beliefs?
"The COBE data doesn't line up with expectations."
Are you kidding? Maybe we're not speaking of the same thing? When I say "the COBE data" I should point out I specifically mean the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation curve measured by the FIRAS instrument, which the big-bang theory predicted should be the spectral curve of a 2.7K black body. If there is a more stunningly perfect fit between a theoretical prediction and experimental data in the history of science, I should like to hear of it.
And as an aside, of course nothing predicted dark matter. Dark matter is a theory. Nothing predicts theories. Theories predict data.
Based on the astro-physicists I have known, you are incorrect. They have all absolutely delighted in kicking around whatever odd-ball cosmology theory someone could come up with to figure out how it fails. Which is generally not too hard as there is currently a lot of different data that fits with the standard model, and an alternative has to explain all that.
When I say "I don't believe in atoms" I'm not saying "I believe atoms don't exist". Elvis Presley is dead, but not all of the class of dead people is Elvis Presley.
I'm saying the atom is a model that helps us understand the universe; it's a useful mental construct rather than a concrete fact. Without humans to assert them, atoms don't exist, even if the effects we attribute to the existence of atoms remain. How could we possibly know fo certain that the universe doesn't instantly turn into a giant marshmallow the moment humans stop looking?
My whole point through this entire thread is that the only constant immutable fact in the universe is change and when pouring scorn on other theories, just remember the "facts" on which you base your arguments are also theoretical.
I don't therefore I'm not.