Slashdot Mirror
New Calculations May Lead To a Test For String Theory
dexmachina writes "A team of theoreticians, led by a group from Imperial College London, has released calculations that show string theory makes specific, testable predictions about the behaviour of quantum entangled particles. Professor Mike Duff, lead author of the study from the Department of Theoretical Physics at Imperial College London, commented, 'This will not be proof that string theory is the right "theory of everything" that is being sought by cosmologists and particle physicists. However, it will be very important to theoreticians because it will demonstrate whether or not string theory works, even if its application is in an unexpected and unrelated area of physics.' In other words, string theory may finally have shed its critics' most common complaint: unfalsifiability. However, given the second most common complaint, I can't help but wonder: which string theory?" Update: 09/03 23:34 GMT by S : Columbia University's Peter Woit, author of the Not Even Wrong blog, says these claims are overblown, and adds that a number of string theorists said as much to Wired.
It seems I may have jumped the gun on this one. My bad for being such an easy mark of sensationalist pop science headlines.
As a physicist, I do get a bit annoyed at the constant attacks on string theory in public media.
Let me just state a few points please:
* We have Quantum Mechanics for the realm of the very small
* We have General Relativity for the realm of the very heavy
* Both of these theories fit observational data and work very well
* The two theories contradict each other in the case of very heavy and very small object (e.g. tiny black holes)
So, we need a new theory that gives the same predictions at QM and GR in the realms that we can measure them. This is where string theory etc comes in. But we do not yet have experimental data for very heavy and very small objects. If you want to complain about string theory not being testable, then accept that your same complaint is going to apply to EVERY grand-unified-theory that we know of.
Conclusion
=========
If you complain at string theory, then PLEASE state what you are proposing. What is the use in complaining when you have no alternative? The main scientific proponents against String Theory also just happen to have their own pet theories (e.g Quantum Loop Gravity) which are in an even worse situation.
If you complain about string theory taking so long, then what do you expect? It has taken 16 years just to do a single experiment (The LHC).
The only way we can make String Theory etc testable is by further research. If you dislike, please propose a better solution rather than just complaining.
TL;DR - People complain at string without proposing anything better.
Just for the record: Gödel did not proof math to be not consistent. He showed two things:
1. That in every axiomatic system strong enough to capture aithmetic there necessarily are true sentences that can be expressed with the means of the system but cannot be deduced from the axioms (he presented a method to construct such sentences).
2. You cannot deduce a system's consistency from the axioms of such a system. (Which is something completely different from prooving that math is not consistent).
Well, propositional logic can be proven to be consistent (there are no contradictions) AND complete (all true propositions can be proven out of the axioms), so can first order predicate logic (in the PhD dissertation of Gödel, 1929).
To construct arithmetic out of logic, we however need second order predicate logic. Gödel (1930, published 1931) showed that axiomatic systems in second order logic are either incomplete (true non-provable sentences can be constructed) OR they are inconsistent (containing contradictions).