Slashdot Mirror
String Theory in Two Minutes
An anonymous reader writes "Most of us have heard of string theory, many of us know what it is and some of us may even be experts in the field. But could you explain it in two minutes? Discover Magazine recently had a contest to do precisely that: create a two minute or less video of everything you need to know about string theory. You can view some of the best entries (video) as well as the winning video: String Ducky!"
string theory in less than a paragraph. strings "vibrate" in higher dimensional space. [specifically M-theory suggests 11 dimensions] energy states are quantised, including mass at some level. String theory's ultimate goal is to eliminate infinities and non-sensical probabilities that result from the current standard model. Also, at some level the forces merge into a single force, this force splits at lower energies which may cause some very interesting phenomenae [spatial expansion for one] one of the major hurdles to string theory is gravity. why is it as weak as it is? what are the consequences of higher dimensions to its relative strength etc. [even some theoretical work suggests gravitons leak between dimensions] very little of it is testable at the moment, one major prediction that could in principle be tested is that of varying velocities of photons according to energy/wavelength. the models suggest that a lag of around a minute or less over a distance of several billion light years while this isn't unique to string theory.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
I'm a string theory expert now. not really, but I found the video informative.
IMAGE VERIFICATION IS EVIL!
...I'm a physicist and frankly I don't see the reason why should somebody waste time explaining a theory to the vast public that hasn't been proved right for over than 30 years now. It's quite beautiful (from the seminars I have attended) but... not verified by experiement...so... let's create some hype for the masses to consume and maybe publish a book or two and some opeds with the NYT!
Scientific value vs. politics = 0 - 1 this morning...
Yam, yam, uga booga, yam, yam, yade, yade, uga booga, yam, yam, yade, yade
String "theory" is not a theory at all, it is merely a hypothesis. It will not become a "theory" unless and until it can be tested by experiment! Come on, people! I am not nitpicking: the scientific among you know the difference. Do not accept the name "string theory" at face value. That is just String Propaganda.
And if that were not bad enough, there are other hypotheses, such as MoND (Modified Newtonian Dynamics) that explains most if not all what is explained by the string hypothesis, without having to imagine all those other dimensions. In fact, it is so much simpler than the string hypothesis that Occam's Razor is practically screaming, "No! Over here, you idiots!"
Yes, there are problems with MoND, but there are very big problems with strings as well. The fact that an idea is popular in the media or has been around longer is not evidence that it is true, any more than the others.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
One thing that is a huge theme throughout the Bible is the worship of God through music. God created music. He likes it. He thinks it's beautiful. Like God (since we're made in His image) we like music too. Yet from a materialist perspective, I can find biological reasons for many senses we have. Women look good because of an innate imperative to procreate. Food tastes good because we need it to build our bodies and for energy. Smell's attraction can be good to motivate us toward mates and food. The sense of touch can be exhilarating for many obvious biological reasons too. But sound is unusual in the context of music. Why do rhythmically and harmonically organized vibrations of air sound good? What biological imperative is fulfilled by music? Then I got to thinking about this. String theory. The entire existence of everything in the universe is explained the best (so far) by a scientific theory known as string theory. Is music the hint that God gave us to how He did it all? Consider, only string theory so far can explain the 4 dimensions we can conceive (length, width, height and time) but also the electromagnetic force, gravity, the weak sub atomic force, the strong sub atomic force in addition to the 4 dimensions. It postulates that the difference in protons, neutrons, electrons and all other sub-atomic particles can be explained as being different vibrating little strings. This theory can explain other things like dimensions beyond our 4. It postulates other dimensions as many as 6 though 26! It can explain things like black holes, wormholes, parallel universes and other cosmic anomalies. In other words, everything can be explained by the way little strings vibrate. Is it a Grand Unifying Theory (in physics known as a GUT) of everything? You can break a longer string that is a neutron down to a shorter strings that are combinations of quarks. Quarks are particles even smaller than our basic hadrons (neutrons, protons and electrons). They're explained as the constituents of these larger particles. They're tinier strings in theory. The very fabric of the universe can be explained as an analogy of music? Is it all organized vibrations in harmonies and rhythms? Maybe. Worship music certainly must transcend the vibrations of air molecules in heaven. Sound here is limited to a wave propagating through air at 769 mph at sea level atmospheric pressure and at an ambient temperature of 70 degrees F. It has to be beyond that in eternity. That's a crude physical limitation. Then does music point to its originator? Is this the hint He gives us on how it's all held together? Is it the key that points to the beauty of God Himself? Is it that simple? I think so and it maybe. I see a pattern emerging. This is just one little gray wet bag of warm protoplasm trying to makes sense of it all. Now, how 'bout them Dodgers? http://discovermagazine.com/twominutesorless?bcpid=716091875&bclid=686943766&bctid=687029421 Rudeman
Oh, yeah! Wise guy, huh? Woob woob woob woob! Nyuk! Nyuk!
- EHT (Extended Heim Theory) allows to easily calculate particle masses using only some physical constants. You can check this Heim Mass Calculator: http://www.daimi.au.dk/~spony/HeimMassFormula/HeimCalculator
- Succesful prediction of masses of neutrinos.
- Prediction of Heim-Lorentz force which most likely is being observed in ESA experiments performed by Dr. Martin Tajmar.
During these experiments artificial gravity is being created.
- ESA news about Tajmar experiments http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/GSP/SEM0L6OVGJE_0.html and some other news.
- M.Tajmar recent papper which references EHT (Droscher&Hausner): http://arxiv.org/pdf/0707.3806
- Theoretical explanation of Tajmar Gravito-Magnetic experiments by Droscher&Hausner: http://www.hpcc-space.de/publications/documents/LauncherSymPaper2007-0-42JHCorrected22April.pdf
- Reasonable explanation why CMB Cold Spot appears to be cold without mumbling about Dark Matter/Dark Energy, thanks to Heim's corrected gravitional law.
- EHT explains why it appears that there is not enough mass observable in the Universe without using Dark Matter concept.
- EHT most likely explains weird effects measured during Gravity Probe B experiment, see: http://www.hpcc-space.de/publications/documents/FieldPropulsion.pdf.
- Droscher&Hausner paper about space propulsion based on Heim theory http://www.hpcc-space.de/publications/documents/aiaa2004-3700-a4.pdf was awarded by AIAA in 2004.
Now, I would like to ask a question.This paper also contains proposal of modified experiment which will allow to verify if EHT is true and also allow to build very effective propulsion engine for spaceships. See this article: http://www.newscientistspace.com/article/mg18925331.200
These effects are in agreement with Martin Tajmar findings, see: http://arxiv.org/pdf/0707.3806
Are there any similar achievemets of Strings Theory?
If you want to know more about EHT please refer to wiki page and this huge discussion thread.
/Z
Every theory has to fight with data which don't seem to fit. Theories are rejected, when the problems become overwhelming or if somebody comes up with an alternative, which has the at least the same power and can explain some of the difficultiers. Seems this didn't happen up to now.
I don't know who this guy is, but when reading this on his page (as criticism about the current explanation for gravity):
it is quite obvious that this guy didn't understand even the basics of the General Theory of Relativity. I made a similar logical error - when I was fifteen, after reading some popular science books without understanding what exactly they were talking about. There are other parts in his text, where he clearly - and with no doubt left, shows that he has no clue about what Relativity is about. Although I am not an expert on it, I studied physics and had a course in General Theory of Relativitiy - and it is obvious that he made errors like somebody who never had a formal introduction into Relativity. And frankly, I don't care the least about people who criticize a theory when they have only a vague, layman's understanding of it - which in this case is even severely flawed.
If we learn something new that blows an old theory away, we start with new hypotheses and continue from there. We use it as a learning experience to continue exploring what makes things tick. The anti-science rhetoric of the creationists think this is a flaw, which always confused me. Creationists want everything to start and stop with the idea of god, which isn't even a hypothesis (it's totally untestable!). How a creationist can be happy with such a non-answer as 'god' is astounding to me, personally. The concept of god answers no questions, and encourages us to stop looking for answers.
MOND predicts Galactic Rotation curves very well. That is all there is to it. It is a law not unlike Kepler's laws and must be explained by any gravitational theory, just like Newtonian theory did for Kepler's Laws. It doesn't work very well on larger than galactic scales and the real underlying theory may behave differently at larger scales. There are known problems at Cluster scales.
String theory on the other hand is just a mathematical framework which tries to build reality from a single basic structure 'string'. The Mathematics requires many dimensions (or variables) to become consistent. The real problem with the theory is that there have been no significant successes in relating its results to reality. Some of its predictions like Super Symmetry which looked very appealing have been proved to be false. Recently it has been determined that there are infinite number of string theories, some of which can be used to model bits of reality, but never all by the same theory. This is a big problem. Now String Theorists say that all string theories are part of a superset which they call M-Theory. The real funny thing about M-theory is that nobody knows what it is. And even more interesting is that nobody is working on it. It is expected to reveal itself at some time in the future when the time is right. So String theory is now in a state of working on other problems while waiting for the revelation.
On a positive side String Theory has given some very powerful mathematical tools to physicists for probing the Unified Gravity problem. LQG has benefited a lot from these tools. I wish that String Theory was termed as a mathematical theory instead of a physical one.
"Ducky" won because "The Problem with Math" pointed out the fundamental flaw of string theory. There's no way to measure or prove string theory. I don't need a two minute video to sum it up for you... I can do it in three sentences:
We have a finite ability to observe small particles, but our observations tell us smaller particles must exist. String theory is simply mathematics run amok in an attempt to explain something we are currently unable to observe. It's something we've invented to fill the gaps in the same way sailors long ago imagined sea monsters and the edge of the Earth.
Now, who can compress that into one line of perl? ;)
I agree with most of what you said, but with a couple of modifications.
A scientific theory is falsifiable, yes, but not necessarily easily falsifiable with current technology. If we need a bigger particle accelerator to falsify it then it's still a theory. Things like ID are non-falsifiable under any circumstances because no matter what you observe there's always an escape hatch -- God is screwing with you.
It's pretty hard to think up an experiment to test the "macro"-evolution that creationists are always harping about, and most of more general evolution is pretty hard to test as well. That doesn't mean evolution isn't a theory.
I'm not going to address whether string theory is over hyped or over funded. That's a political question. It is a theory, actually a collection of theories. Falsifiable predictions are also starting to be made using it. Some members of the string theory family have been pretty much discarded because they don't hold up, and other members of the family are being tested by experimentalists as we speak. They predict photons of different wavelengths will travel at slightly different speeds, and some versions predict that the extra dimensions are big enough to be observed by recent attempts to measure the gravitational constant for very small objects.
"A idea which cannot be tested in any known scientific manner at the moment "
Einsteins theories couldn't be tested 'at the moment' either.
That fact in no was discredits the theory.
In fact a predictions from string theory has come true. Yes it's only 1 data point.
Test for string theory have be proposed, but those kinds of tests take a lot of time to set up. Many years.
As for Peter Woit:
"First, string theory predicts that the world has 10 space-time dimensions, in serious disagreement with all the evidence of one's senses. "
Seriously, one of his complaints is that he can not physically see other dimensions, or that we would, as a species, have some need to sense them. I can't see infra red, but it exists.
AS for quoting Wolfgang pauli, that's just bad form in that context.
There are many well established, very smart people who claimed Einstein was wrong. There have been some changes, and many indications about string theory since 1958, so maybe he would have a different view?
I use Einstein as an example to help people understand that none of these naysayers have anything that disproves it, they just don't want to believe it. Hopefully some tests will be done in the next few years that will either:
A) Show some predictions in a repeatable test or
B) The prediction will fail, and we can close the book.
In the mean time, both sides of this discussion need to watch out for the 'Argument from authority ' logical fallacy.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on