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Strings Link the Ultra-Cold With the Super-Hot
gabrlknght writes "Superstring theory claims the power to explain the universe, but critics say it can't be tested by experiment. Lately, though, string math has helped explain a couple of surprising experiments creating 'perfect liquids' at cosmic extremes of hot and cold. 'Both systems can be described as something like a shadow world sitting in a higher dimension. Strongly coupled particles are linked by ripples traveling through the extra dimension, says Steinberg, of Brookhaven. String math describing such ripples stems from an idea called the holographic principle, used by string theorists to describe certain kinds of black holes. A black hole's entropy depends on its surface area — as though all the information in its three-dimensional interior is stored on its two-dimensional surface. (The 'holographic' label is an allusion to ordinary holograms, where 3-D images are coated on a 2-D surface, like an emblem on a credit card.) The holographic principle has value because in some cases the math for a complex 3-D system (neglecting time) can be too hard to solve, but the equivalent 4-D math provides simpler equations to describe the same phenomena.'"
XKCD
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
Lately, though, string math has helped explain a couple of surprising experiments
Yes, that happens all the time. The problem with string theoy is not that it doesn't predict anything. It's that it predicts everything. At least, one of the innumerable variants will predict anything after it's happened. If anyone could pick out some predictions before they happen then that might be something to get excited about.
Yet another physical phenomenon fits the theory of everything. How about a prediction from string theory for once?
Just my $0.55 (US inflation, 1774-2008, for $0.02)
Can this be what brings string theory from realm of math into the realm of science? (testable hypotheses and all that)
"The point is that we have two different kinds of systems capturing the same kind of physics," says string theorist Clifford Johnson
Back in the day it was commonplace to construct analogs of mechanical systems, for instance, using electronic components. If the differential equations describing the two systems are similar, so will their solutions be.
That the topic is string theory is also reminiscent of how soap works. Half of a soap molecule is soluble in water, the other half insoluble - thus bridging between wet and oily substances. Very yin and yang.
Splunge for me too! I think it's a great-idea-but-possibly-not-and-I'm-not-being-indecisive!!
They better have use for this in the next version of Super Mario.
I still don't understand anything about string theory. Thank you /. for once more making me feel stupid.
yet more proof that the super-hot are ultra-cold?
Once you've put Octavarium by Dream Theater on and smoked a fat joint, this will make a lot more sense.
To you, at least.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
Hang on a minute... "Similarly, the extra dimensions that strings require would probably be far too small to detect by available methods." What? I was under the impression a dimension was like a mathematical axis, i.e. infinite in two directions...? I keep seeing a lot of articles on this sort of low level physics and mathsy stuff, and I'm not sure if I'm not understanding it because it is too complicated, but I'm starting to think the reporters are dumbing everything down and trying to explain complicated topics using nontechnical language, just throwing in the odd keywords to sound clever. There seem to be two extremes - sciencey news articles written by reporters which try to give a general idea to people who don't have a clue (It's something to do with holography, dimensions, strings and is far too complicated for you), and sources like wikipedia, which you need to already know what it's telling you to understand (I'm not saying that is a bad thing, I'm saying wikipedia is not good for teaching things - which it isn't supposed to be, I think). Can't I have something inbetween?
Mathematicians are big fat liars!*
"Big M"..."String Theory"...**
*ok, not really, but its fun to pick at them
** Yea... I could only think of two that bug me... so what?!
I say don't drink and drive, you might spill your drink. Before you get behind the wheel just stop and think.
String theory is ripe with predictions. The problem is we can't test most of them directly, hence the main problem - lack of falsifiability (see: not even wrong).
The thing is, "God did it" doesn't give you any equations or principles. String theory, while it may turn out to be completely wrong, at least gives us something to test.
...math for a complex 3-D system ...
was probably meant to be "complicated". "Complex 3d" means C^3... or (R+iR)^3 if you prefer.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
That still doesn't explain string cheese. :P
I am a person who entirely believes in science, and as an atheist I greatly disapprove of anything resembling faith. I hate to say it, but so much of this superstring, 11 dimensional stuff sounds more like faith, or religion, than actual hard science. None of what's talked about here sets out a testable hypothesis, and it sounds like they're just making up stuff the way religious people do, though using words like "dimensional" instead of "power of Christ" to explain what otherwise can't be explained (or explained within the bounds of their own premises).
I mock religion all the time. I have to hold science and scientists up to the same standard. I'd be a hypocrite to accept unprovable scientific mumbojumbo, interdimensional whatnots and all. at face value while discounting unprovable religious mumbojumbo all the time.
Stupid people make stupid things profitable.
They just make up math to cover everything.
None of it makes any sense, and no one understands it, it just fits what we observe.
When it doesn't fit, they add layers to the math to make it fit. It's not a theory, it's a table of data written in the most convoluted way imaginable.
And this whole hologram bullshit is retarded. A "news" story about a "new" "theory" of how our 3D universe may be a holographic projection of a 2D plane on the edge of the universe comes out every few months. It's bullshit, and they always make an analogy to holograms, which are 2D but store 3D information.
What fucking horse shit. Holograms are 3D (NOT 2D) and reflect light in 3D. To interpret a hologram, you read it as 2D data by viewing it from a single angle and alter the relative angle of the light incident on the surface to obtain more 2D data. Multiple sets of 2D data are then combined (by our magical eyes, or whatever reading device you want to use) and the 3D information is reconstructed. Effectively, a hologram compresses 3D data into thin 3D data, and analyzing it from multiple angles allows us to decompresses it decently.
The incompetence if fucking astounding, and I wish the fucking scientific community would just say GTFO to string theorists until they can produce an actual fucking theory. Too bad so many scientists are in desperate need of grant money and are afraid of being ridiculed ("lol it's ok if you don't understand it, most people don't").
I think the problem is that it is so complicated it predicts everything that can or could happen. So the math is interesting to apply after the fact--but you can't extract the real from the possible results through the math alone.
Having to many points is the same as having none at all. And that's what String Theory in its current form seems to be.
"Ultracold" here refers to degenerate Fermi gases, not Bose-Einstein condensates (BEC).
Here's a layman article:
A Fermi gas of atoms
Deborah Jin
Physics World, 2002
And the original publication by the Duke group:
Observation of a Strongly Interacting Degenerate Fermi Gas of Atoms
K. M. O'Hara, S. L. Hemmer, M. E. Gehm, S. R. Granade, J. E. Thomas
Science Vol 298, p 2179 - 2182 (2002)
If you want to be taken seriously, avoid descriptions like "a shadow world sitting in a higher dimension." It's a meaningless analogy that only serves to make your field sound like pseudoscience BS.
If it isn't testable it has no place in science.
Study it if it makes you feel good, but understand that you're not practicing anything scientific.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
Mathematical mental masturbation does not constitute a scientific theory. I need to see hypotheses and tests before I will even consider giving these models the honor of being called a theory.
And you wonder why so many people believe ID proponents when they say that Darwinian evolution is "only" a theory.
The thing is, "God did it" doesn't give you any equations or principles.
Sure it does! God(0)* = the universe! See? Beautiful, mathematical proof!
*Definition of the God function left as an exercise for the reader.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
...all claiming that String theory is not testable.
To these people, I'd like to point out that:
1] Not being testable with current technology is not the same as not making any testable predictions. Technology advances, after all, and there are predictions that were made by Einstein that are still being tested today.
2] It's flat out wrong to say there is no work being done to test String theory. The LHC will begin to unlock a number of answers in this regard.
I think Super Model Theory already has this covered.
"It's caused by forces" sounds an awful lot like "God did it"
"It's caused by atoms" sounds an awful lot like "God did it"
etc etc
To be pedantic, science does not require belief. That's the point. Anything that qualifies as science is replicable. You're supposed to be able to take the described starting conditions and the described procedure and end up with the described result. If you don't, either you did something wrong or it's not science. Worthwhile science tends to require very careful adherence to the descriptions, and then requires some serious thought to relate the results to the conclusion. It can be difficult to perform the thinking correctly. This is where belief starts to creep in where it shouldn't.
The difficulty of correctly relating results to conclusions gives rise to our current conundrum in physics. Relativity is a bunch of equations that make predictions which can be experimentally verified (we think). Quantum mechanics is another bunch of equations that make predictions which can be experimentally verified (we think). Take one set of those equations and start plugging them in to the other set, and everything goes whacky. You get infinite answers for things that we know darn well aren't infinite. Therefore there's something wrong. String theory arose out of mathematicians trying to reconcile the two sets of equations.
That seems to have been a bad idea. As you say, it can't be tested. So there are people out there who are questioning relativity and quantum mechanics. It may be that there is something wrong with one or the other or both sets of equations. They SEEM to work really really well. We talk to space probes using engineering that uses relativity. We build computer chips using engineering that uses quantum mechanics. The equations seems to describe their respective phenomena really well. So if there's something wrong with one or the other, it's a very subtle something. String theory starts with the premise that there's nothing wrong with either, and proceeds to cheat by postulating physical things that are theoretically undetectable.
I'm not so sure that was the right way to go. Both theories, and all of their predecessors, started out with the premise that there was something wrong with the earlier theory. The wrongness got steadily less with each successive iteration. This time, the wrongness is so tiny that nobody has come up with a way to isolate it in a hundred years.
My money is on something wrong with relativity. Quantum mechanics can be explored and demonstrated using built things, like computer chips. Relativity is much less amenable to exploration with built artifacts. Lots of it is pinned on seen things, particularly astronomical things. Historically, we've not been very good with seen things. We're much better with built things.
I'm not convinced that the behavior of ultra-cold and super-hot things require string theory to explain. This stuff is still very new, so it will be interesting to see what alternative explanations people can come up with.
Yah, that's the problem - every theology ever invented can be summed up with one line of code:
If ($cause == $unknown) { exit("God did it!); }
Of course, they all like to pretty it up by adding comments and redefining meaningless variables, but the end result is the same.
That posited that after we added "infinite energy" to a closed system (where the randomness was maximized), more energy would eventually result in all the states being in the high energy state (i.e. zero entropy, or randomness). That state would, indeed, be the same as the infinite lack of energy, in some way or another.
The article dorks up the notion of holography by associating it with 3-d holograms. The concept is that you don't need to know whats in the middle if you can draw a border around it and measure the surface of that border with sufficient resolution.
In "near field measurements" you are too close to the source to treat it as a simple point source, or a point source with directionality to its output. Normally you would have to be in the far field (at least several wavelengths of the frequency you're measuring or several times the physical size of the source) to be able to measure it using point receivers. Being in the near field you can't simply scale your measurement to farther distances using the normal spreading formula involving r^2 or r^3.
As an example, sticking a mic 4 inches away from a loudspeaker can't tell you what the sound level will be 100 feet away. Amusingly, the typical 1-meter you normally on stated SPL levels is too close for larger woofers.
Holographic measuring is the concept of putting an array of sensors in the near field surrounding the object and being able to extrapolate far field measurements. There are criteria for the number of required measurement points and spacing based on the distance and frequency you're trying to measure. From those measurements you can determine the far field measurements and make some calculations about whats inside the boundary. One technique is to take all those new measurements, amplitude and phase, and substitute those as individual point sources in calculating the far field sound levels.
It has always irked me how easily people misuse the word 'theory'. Until it is testable, with reproducable results, it will remain 'String Hypothesis'.
I think the issue with the testability of String Theory is as follows:
In a theory, there are generally variables. For example, in General Relativity, there are "constants" (called such because they are measured via experimental science) that emerge from the theory. These "constants" are actually variables in General Relativity (if you were to set them to different values you would have a different "universe"). However the important thing is that "variables" that we had yet to measure which the theory predicted would be certain values (given other variables which we had measured and plugegd into the theory) turned out to be consistent with what General Relativity said they would have to be when we did get to performing experiments to confirm their values (so far).
The problem with String Theory is that there are many variables (not a show stopper) but that they seem to need to be fixed at certain values to arrive at "our universe". One might say General Relativity did the same thing, but no, given a set of variables that we had measured, we got predictions on what the values of the remaining variables in the theory must be. This does not seem to be the case with String Theory where we have not found any good reason to set the variables the way they must be to get our universe's constants out of the theory.
Why is this important? Because String Theory MIGHT be correct (i.e. more accurate than General Relativity) but we have no indication of why the variables in the theory should be set the way they are (i.e. no experiment has been constructed as far as I know that will measure a value in reality and set it to a specific value in the theory). And even if that were to happen, it seems that it is possible to fiddle with the other variables in String Theory to again arrive at the model of our universe. So it seems that we would need to experimentally resolve each variable in String Theory independently which says to me that the theory has no predictive capability.
IANAP, just an enthusiastic amateur who is annoyed at the state of physics.
-- Humans, because the hardware IS the software.
As a rule, if you cannot test something today, and you don't have a working blueprint for a machine that, once built, can test your theory, then you don't really have a testable theory.
Okay, I get that string theory is much more elegant and being merely and engineer, mathematically well over my head, but this is getting a little ridiculous. I'm having a difficult time recognizing string theory as science.
Has string theory truly helped us understand anything better? If it has improved our understanding, what predictions of physical phenomena have come of this increased understanding of the physical universe? If your theory can only explain, not predict, aka No Predictive Power, then it is no better than pop psychology.
If the energy states required to test the theory are at a scale that is not physically measurable, what are we really talking about? That's not physics, man. That's metaphysics.
A lot of smart guys or no, string theory has yet to offer anything of real scientific vale and shouldn't be considered science until it does. Science has pumped decades of its best minds into this and its time we said enough. Those hundreds of PhDs should be considered PhDs in math, not physics.
1] Not being testable with current technology is not the same as not making any testable predictions. Technology advances, after all, and there are predictions that were made by Einstein that are still being tested today.
Yes it is true that certain implications of Einstein's theories have only become testable recently. But it is also true that others were testable even with turn of the 20th century technology. As I recall, an expedition was mounted to South Africa to test the prediction that the eclipse happening there would make it possible to actually measure a particular kind of gravitational lensing by the Sun. That the measured lensing agreed strongly with the theory was a strong confirmation. Einstein's theories also explained a precession in Mercury's orbit that Newton could not and explained the lesser degrees of it in the other inner planet orbits. By the early Seventies, it was even possible to directly measure time dilation with synchronized atomic clocks one moving in a jet liner and the other left on the ground.
In thirty five years, I would almost surely think that SOME aspects/predictions would have been practical to test.
String theories have been around for thirty five years and the LHC will only be able to test a subset of possible string theories leaving a great many safe from falsification by it.
Superstring theory claims the power to explain the universe, but critics say it can't be tested by experiment.
Creationism theory claims the power to explain the universe, but critics say it can't be tested by experiment.
This article really is not about string theory. The article is really about the math developed as people have explored string theory. It is this math that has been applied in explaining "perfect liquid" experiments.
Am I the only one who imagined some rope-based game for geeks to hook up with hot chicks after reading the title? I am? Ok.
It's got chicken legs...
Name one prediction of string theory that could be tested with any technology. In other words, name one prediction of string theory that if found false (in any way) would disprove string theory. I'll give you a better one: name one prediction of string theory.
And just to cut short one level of string-theory silliness: "there might be 11 dimensions, but if there's not then we can still make the theory work with four" is not a prediction.
Because of theoretical advances and other sources of investigation, most physicists believe that LHC will do nothing more than confirm the current most accepted version of the Standard Model. Doesn't mean we shouldn't do it, but this is different than earlier experiments of this type, where physicists were more exploring than confirming. And LHC will not be exploring the energy levels that most string theorists say would actually provide them useful information for further developing the theory (e.g. will not allow us to differentiate between an 11 dimensional and 4 dimensional universe).
So, basically, I agree with any of the other comments here that what we have is a bunch of cosmologists running around doing very interesting math, but not doing any useful physics.
You take take something obviously false like ghosts and attempt to compare it to whatever you'd like to cast disrepute on. Classy. Second, to have a ghost detector, you're required to first know that ghosts exist (otherwise then your ghost detector isn't really a ghost detector).
Also, you don't seem to recognize the long history of advances in science which were purely mathematical to begin with. For example: Black holes were first predicted mathematically, without any observations to back it up. Did scientists ignore it?. Hell no. Even neutron stars were originally just theoretical too. Whenever a physicist started doing calculations involving black holes or neutron stars, did people crap all over their work and berate it to the point of halting interest in the subject? Were they castigated for exceeding the bounds of the Theory of General Relativity?
Eventually we got the technology to test both of those ideas, and the vast majority consensus is that black holes and neutron stars exist. There's no evidence yet that rules out the possible existence of sufficiently convincing indirect evidence for string theory. Yes, direct evidence is unlikely, but we've got enough indirect evidence
Not only that but my own string theory related theory is that 99% of the posters here bitching about string theory do not have the necessary knowledge of physics and math to actually have a truly informed opinion about string theory. And of the remaining 1% I would venture that only a small fraction have gone to the necessary effort to actually properly evaluate it. But then it's so safe to try and look intelligent by chanting with the crowd; after all everyone around you believes you.
Here's a thought - the right to an opinion isn't a requirement that you have one.
The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny - Aesop
Another point that I think is invalid is the idea that string theory is able to make room to explain any result and therefore not testable. This can be said of any theory. Consider the standard model and all the articles posted on slashdot of observed particles that were not predicted. Do people think the standard model won't find room to accommodate them? People are harder on string theory than the standard model because it is so full of alien ideas. Can you imagine if string theory required, yet forbid the graviton like the standard model does? Sure there are theories of quantum gravity but they include axioms no less radicle than those in string theory.
And yet, people haven't given up on the theory of ghosts.
Actually, most physicists believe the LHC will fail to find the Higgs and in doing so give some hints as to why the Standard Model is broken.
Most physicists are optimistic like that.
How we know is more important than what we know.
My non-technical mother in law is interested in string theory but she has no clue what it's about, except that everything in the universe is made out of tiny "strings" that go into another dimension. She is a retired grade school teacher and knows what atoms and subatomic particles are, and she understands the idea of a line having zero width and a plane having zero thickness. I'm trying to come up with an analogy that will get across the basic idea.
Say the universe is two-dimensional, like the surface of a drum. No thickness, just a plane. Then say somebody outside of the universe pokes a needle through the drum head and pulls a piece of thread through it. The thread is one-dimensional, with no actual thickness, so the place where it goes through is just a point. Nobody who lived in the 2-dimensional surface could see the point because it has no thickness. But what if the thread vibrates like a guitar string... as it moves back and forth, the point where it goes through the drum also moves back and forth. The spot becomes a little line. If the string didn't vibrate exactly back and forth but kind of wandered around in a fuzzy pattern, the point would look like a hazy dot.
Because the string vibrates so fast, the people in the plane of the drumhead would never perceive it as a point, but only as a blurry spot (assuming they could see things that small).
That's what a subatomic particle is in our universe, except in 3 dimensions. Wherever a vibrating cosmic string passes through our universe, it forms a hazy dot-like pattern in space, which to us is a subatomic particle.
I know this is far from exact, but does it give enough of the general idea?
Perfect Holographic Liquid...Auuugghhh...
Sig this!
So I have a chance to be hooked up with Jennifer Anniston? I like this super hot-super cold hook-up!
Slashdot appears to have cut off a sizable chunk of my post, so allow me to continue with a 2nd post...
Yes, direct evidence is unlikely, but we've got enough indirect evidence to prove black holes & neutron stars exist, so it's not unreasonable to assume that we could find sufficiently convincing indirect evidence for string theory.
Lastly, the use of the world theory here is arguably legit. Not in a scientific context, but rather in a mathematical context. Ever heard of Set theory, game theory and chaos theory?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory#Fields_of_study_called_.22theories.22
Those are fields of math, and until there are experiments, arguably string theory is too.
Syntax error at ");"
Its all the same. Don't get me Wong....I mean Buddhist...... Its just that there's no distinction between human belief systems. Each asshole projects their own personal value judgments and language ambiguous flatulence of their digestive misconceptions. . . Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain...hes as big an idiot as that blow up doll in the string theory bikini - the big one the wizard inflated for .... aesthetics. Mockery makes assholes out of atheists and believers alike. Simultaneously we extract true science and logic from our other massive black holes, and yet we fail to see the similarity - The big holes that suck hard: every body has got one, only theirs' is more important. Theirs doesn't stink. They have their head up theirs. Their Big Hole is totally more important the closer you get to it, otherwise its totally hard to see. Black holes, Assholes, Exit Poles, Mythic Roles....their all just opinions .... and everybody, and every single one of you has got one. So, does it really matter that only A-Hole is actually smart enough to be right, and the rest are so stupid they believe exactly the same thing. If that doesn't make a fool out of God's atheism then he has got a bigger existential dilemma than Jean Paul Sartre. Or Gumby! Put that in your pipe hole and smoke it. Orifices !
Cause you're hot then you're cold
You're yes then you're no
You're in then you're out
You're up then you're down
You're wrong when it's right
It's black and it's white
We fight, we break up
We kiss, we make up
(you) You don't really want to stay, no
(but you) But you don't really want to go-o
You're hot then you're cold
You're yes then you're no
You're in then you're out
You're up then you're down
I was going to say poppycock until i saw they were using 4-D math.
Yes and no. I read the post and the poster displays an incomplete understanding of the what he's talking about. In some ways, he's wrong, but mostly he's incomplete. I suppose my reply was incomplete for no other reason that I was being a jerk and dismissive.
The first paragraph, nothing inherently wrong there.
The second paragraph about "we think" things have been experimentally verified is where it starts to go off the rails. Relativity and quantum mechanics have both predicted, verified and repeatable results of both experiments and observations.
I'm going to use relativity for a moment here because the OP states that he thinks something is "wrong" with relativity or somehow stands weaker footing than quantum mechanics, specifically because he believes that devices have not been built to explore and demonstrate. No.
Going back to my previous example, relativity predicts that for the velocity and orbit of a GPS satellite, there will be a time dilation amounting to a very small fraction of a second. There MUST be compensation for this discrepancy, otherwise, your GPS unit would be off by about 10kms a DAY. Is this an experiment? No, it's even better. The experimental confirmations took place before. This is an everyday practical application of the Theory of Relativity. We know that in these conditions, what we know holds to be true. There is nothing inherently wrong with either relativity or QM, because in their respective spheres, they work.
The fundamental concept that Areyoukiddingme is misunderstanding is that scientific endeavors are not predicated on the concept that the ideas of the present, and by association the past, are wrong. Newton's ideas as laid in the Principia are as fundamentally sound today as they were during his time. However, at the extremes of mass and speed, it starts to fray at the edges. Does that mean he was wrong? Negative. His understanding was incomplete , which is a very different thing from wrong. As Newton himself was standing on the shoulders of giants, others would build on his theories, all the way up to Einstein and those who followed him.
This is a very important nuance - the elimination of errors in our understanding is a side effect of the purpose of science, which is to increase our understanding. This is a constructive, not a destructive intellectual process.
Not to pick on you because I appreciate your attempt to explain this, but, if you think about it, a shadow does not exist.
It is an inappropriately named VOID.
Light is blocked by something else, to create what we incorrectly refer to as a thing (shadow).
I'm not a physicist, so my understanding is very limited, but the answer to you question is "probably yes".
The thing is the phenomenon string theory help understand and predict is not related to quantum gravity, for which string theory is developed. This thing called Maldacena duality and state that certain quark-gluon interaction have the same mathematical description as stringy black hole. Surprising thing is, that it seems such quark-gluon object - "dual black hole" was observed at RHIC collider. Why "seems" in that statement ? Because calculations, which fit to observed data, were very imprecise - they were made for different, though similar quantum theory. So now physicists puzzled, why so imprecise calculations fit experiment so perfectly.
Not to pick on you because I appreciate your attempt to explain this, but, if you think about it, a shadow does not exist.
That is more sophistry than scientific argumentation. You're simply discarding projection as a (valid) means of examining an object.
It is an inappropriately named VOID
To continue your sophistry, how can something be a void?
Light is blocked by something else, to create what we incorrectly refer to as a thing (shadow)
... which is still a valid way of examining that "something else", since we have no way to observe it or measure it directly.
It's a meaningless analogy that only serves to make your field sound like pseudoscience BS.
The miracle of pseudoscience has brought us fields and theories such as reflexology, chiropractic, magnet theory, global warming, scientology(ish), psychobabble, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radithor> radioactive medicinces , or the movement to close down the Large Hadron Collider.
Without psuedoscience, what would all the people in the world do if they wanted to get their neck cracked, their feet massaged, and their brain demagnetized while enjoying a nice UV cooking session and methodically fluffing L. Ron Hubbard's ego while enjoying a passive prostate warming and impeding scientific progress?
I mean sheesh, you have to give pseudoscience some credit...
Motorcycles, Robots, Space Gossip and More!
So it's like, 2^64 = 0?
The thing is, "God did it" doesn't give you any equations or principles. String theory, while it may turn out to be completely wrong, at least gives us something to test.
Wooooosh? No?
Granted, GP wasn't funny, but he makes a slightly valid point. String theory have not yet given us anything to test, although parent is claiming the opposite.
At the moment there are no falsifiable predictions that is actually possible to carry out. Thus you can make a (though somewhat extreme) comparison to religions.
I lost my sig.
The LHC has an off chance of indicating that some predictions may be wrong, but it's a long shot that an experiment in the foreseeable future will conclusively say one way or the other. So while you're right that string theory has given more equations than "god did it", it doesn't give us all that much more to test, which is the problem.
... "God did it", don't you think?
You give the Higgs boson too much credit, there are many other particles in the Standard Model that deserve recognition as well.
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
A modified standard model works for me
Of course it does. That's like saying that digital electronics theory works for you, no need to bother with analog electronics theory.
True, yet digital is nonetheless based on analog.
I'm by no means the biggest advocate of string theory, but obviously it is intended (regardless of its current incompleteness) to be a deeper level of description of the universe than is the standard model.
Even if string theory (or loop quantum gravity or spin foams) eventually succeeds at being a good theory of everything, it is quite possible, even likely, that it will continue to be more practical for most purposes to work in terms of a modified standard model.
We still make heavy use of Newtonian physics, after all.
But that doesn't mean that a theory of everything is pointless; its purpose is not identical to that of simplified working models.
Professional Wild-Eyed Visionary
The one thing I found strange about String theory is that it made Physicists study Algebraic Geometry (with Sheaves and such). Algebraic Geometry got started as a field when mathematicians tried to link up the algebraic properties of polynomial equations (what "algebraic solutions" does it have is one of the questions you might ask) with the differential/topological (how much curvature does it have, how many "multi-dimensional" pseudo-holes does it have -- think about the questions of curvature and "holes" you might ask about multi-holed doughnut in many dimensions -- this is a gross simplification, but I am grasping for intuitive analogies).
What I remember about Algebraic Geometry is that it was one of the harder fields of study in all of mathematics and only a few mathematicians in the world could wield the theory with any real authority and skill (Faltings is a famous such Mathematician). At the time it made me worry that maybe humans would never be clever enough to truly figure out the rules of the universe. Because if we are already have to understand some Algebraic Geometry to get a handle on the current most respected "theory of everything", what would happen if the "theory of everything" required one level of abstraction complication beyond that? There has been a constant progression of theories in Physics from the less abstracted to the crazier highly abstracted (quantum mechanics and general relativity already can only truly be understood by at most a few hundred people in the world). Maybe this time we are going beyond the ability of us poor human mortals to understand.
In defense of String theory, though it may give no predictions, it does give those who study it a feeling of "enlightenment", as if they are getting a potential intuitive understanding of how the universe is put together. Studying mathematics in general can create such a feeling (I think in general that is why mathematicians love their field of study), but it is way cooler to think that the theory and the real world might have some linkage. Also, from what I understand, competing theories all have the feeling of artificial glitchy repairs to existing theories without granting much enlightenment. If you give me a bunch of data, I can create an equation which will spit out the data. But if the equation does not offer insight into the nature of the data (for example, you cannot see that it is actually a "repeating wave pattern of visual distortions"), then though it may be useful, it really does not offer much in the way of "enlightenment".
Some may view the usage of the word "enlightenment" as an allusion to some type of religious feeling. That may be, but it is NOT connected to any type of statement that could be read as "this vision that I see is true and those who disagree with me are morally inferior beings and will be viewed as a lesser person by the higher powers that rule the universe". In fact I suspect that those who disagree with me about the worthiness of understanding mathematics may have spent more time worrying about their morality (as opposed to their "faith") and may actually be superior human beings (and may be viewed as such by the higher powers in the universe).
I'm not sure I follow what the incessant complaining about String Theory is. String Theory explains all data without being contradicted by any. If it is wrong, it will eventually be proven wrong when the correct theory comes around. Until then, if it proves useful and provides intuitive structures to understand things like entirely new phases of matter, it is serving a very real purpose. Despite this, I appreciate the skepticism of /. Science is skepticism. But let us never forget, science is also the ability to embrace things which once appeared wrong when new data suggests their correctness.
There is a strong historical bias implicit in the examples you give about phenomena that were first predicted purely mathematically. It is true that black holes were first conjectured mathematically before their effects were ever observed, but this success is an exception rather than the rule. Most physical conjectures that are based purely on mathematics are actually false: think of the ether, or any number of now forgotten theories of electricity and magnetism.
Because they are false, they are now forgotten, and because they are forgotten, it seems to you that mathematics alone has a better prediction track record than it really has had. But this is only because you (and I, and everyone) have been exposed to a disproportionate number of successful mathematical ideas.
String theory must be properly viewed as belonging to a long line of crazy mathematical ideas with a very low success rate. Comparing it with spectacular chapters of the history of science is highly premature.
You take take something obviously false like ghosts and attempt to compare it to whatever you'd like to cast disrepute on.
How do you know that ghosts are "false" without having it falsified ?