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The Man Who Invented the 26th Dimension
StartsWithABang (3485481) writes Based on all the experiments we've ever been able to perform, we're quite certain that our Universe, from the largest scales down to the microscopic, obeys the physical laws of three spatial dimensions (and one time dimension): a four-dimensional spacetime. But that's not the only possibility mathematically. People had experimented with bringing a fifth dimension in to unify General Relativity with Electromagnetism in the past, but that was regarded as a dead-end. Then in the 1970s, an unknown theoretical physicist working on the string model of the strong interactions discovered that by going into the 26th dimension, some incredibly interesting physics emerged, and String Theory was born.
Here at discount dimension warehouse you can get 27 dimensions for the price of 26. We honor all competitors empirically undemonstrated theory coupons. More dimensions for your money.
Not to detract from his contributions to science, but the photo of him in the Medium article makes him look like some sort of Parakeet Wizard. How he stayed sane with 40 parakeets in his house is something I will never understand.
Why not postulate an infinite number of dimensions?
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
Proposing an idea that explains a previously unexplained observation isn't pseudoscience. It can certainly be wrong, and should be treated as such until experimentally tested.
But pseudoscience lives in a special realm, where it wraps itself in the verbiage of science, while not sharing the methods and intent. String theory very clearly falls into the "not testable yet" category, rather than the "designed to resist testing" category that weapons grade bullshit enjoys.
Huh?
How is a theory that attempts to describe the laws of physics *not* science?
Not only does a 2nd time dimension allow for actual time travel (in a one dimensional universe you can't change the order of anything - you need a 2nd space dimension to hop over or around someone in front of you - so a second time dimension allows for time travel).
But also it make it a lot easier to understand why we do not SEE the 5th or higher dimension, let alone confirm it with scientific instruments.
I can look up/down, North/South, and East/West, but I can not look past/future. So it makes sense that I also can not look t2+/t2-.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
How could be unknown if "A study in 2009 ranked him as the 14th most influential physicist in the world for the period 1967-1973.", or was he unknown at the time, which is common for anyone before popular ideas? Unknown in the general public is anyone but Einstein.
To quote I kan reed:
'String theory very clearly falls into the "not testable yet" category, rather than the "designed to resist testing" category'
Neither is an assertion about the absolute limit on speed in the universe(really: devise a test for that).
At some level, science is about creating a model that explains existing observations. Testing that model, looking for violations is essential but the postulation of an internally coherent parsimonious system that matches what we already see is science.
You can spin equations out the wazoo (math) but it doesn't mean they model any natural phenomenon in particular (physics).
is his name. Not sure why the summary left it out.
That's easily defended. All physical theories are math. That's it, there's nothing more to them. We interpret mathematical theories using a model, i.e., in this case, the universe. Some theories are consistent with the model, some are not. Those that are not, are no less scientific because they describe what cannot be the case. All that is required of a mathematical theory is that it be consistent.
Einstein's general relativity a mathematical theory. Astrophysicists are still constructing tests to see how valid it is. Any testing is only as good as the resolution inherent in the physical system used for testing. In that sense, you could say that general relativity will forever be just a mathematical theory, it can never be fully tested because we'll never have infinite resolution (if that even makes sense). Mathematical theories of physics are merely scribbles on a piece of paper. We manipulate the scribbles and when we see our manipulation mirrored or represented in the Universe, we say the theory describes that part of the Universe. However, the representation is only up to a certain epsilon, so it is more accurate to say the theory describes the representation only up to the limit of resolution of our tests.
I know I shouldn't feed the trolls, but it deserves to be said.
In no way is String Theory anything like Phrenology. Trying to develop a model that unites both the large scale and the small scale is incredibly difficult. Quantum mechanics and relativity are complex enough without trying to unify them. String theory and super-symmetrical models have a basis in advanced mathematics, but the question is whether or not the model matches the immensely complex reality.
Even if it doesn't work out, studying the problem advances our knowledge of the known universe and modelling it in mathematics. That's how science works, you make a hypothesis and you attempt to test it and then you reform your hypothesis. The current problem right now is finding a way to test it. A failed hypothesis is not something to laugh at, because what you learn from that failure helps you forms a new and more accurate model.
The scientific model is quite simply:
1) Develop testable hypothesis (aka theory)
2) Develop experiments/observations to test hypothesis
3) Perform experiment/observations
4) Repeat
Anyone who participates in any of these steps is performing science. It took a while to find practical tests of String theory given it's extreme generality, but several have been suggested and a few have even been performed, ranging from the scale of planetary motion to LHC data.
"String theory is untestable" is one of those easy to remember phrases that keeps you away from a great amount of interesting information:
1) "String theory" is actually a family of related theories that make different predictions, where they're advanced enough to do so
2) They're neither as a class, nor individually, a priori untestable
3) They're theories of high energy physics, so what predictions they do make will be difficult to test on currently existing hardware
4) The mathematical tools to make sense of the theories and make predictions are novel themselves
String theory is at a stage kind of like parachuting early-20th-century physics into the 15th century. It's not relevant at length scales where we can easily make observations, but we don't have the necessary cognative or physical tools to write it off either. Have we been handed relativity, or the aether? We can't say because we're not smart enough yet.
Now, as a matter of expediency I'd argue that any self-respective physicist should dedicate himself to advanced models that are a little closer to home and might act as stepping stones to string theory's energy scales, but since when has any self-respecting scientist been led away from a beautiful hypothesis by pragmatism? Much less a physicist?
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Just sayin'.
A theory is not proven. It is just a hypothesis that has not been disproven, despite repeated attempts.
String theory can't be dumped; because it is just an intellectual exercise to find mathematical systems that return the same statistical shadow as quantum mechanics. As they see more statistical shadows, they refine their math. The ones that predicted yet unobserved statistical shadows gain credibility.
Doesn't mean their are actually multidimensional strings vibrating. But perhaps their is a mathematical cousin to vibrating strings operating at a quantum level (as circuits are cousins to structures).
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
The problem with string theory isn't that it doesn't predict anything. The problem is that it predicts nearly everything and shows no particular bias towards one prediction over another. Pretty much any experimental result that comes out can be accommodated by string theory.
It is interesting. It may one day help to describe an actual theory (making it string toolkit rather than string theory) it may spur thought along new lines, but it isn't a very good theory.
The one thing string theory does predict strongly is supersymmetry, but that was already predicted by less extreme theories. The whole thing may turn out to be moot if LHC can't scare up a supersymmetric particle.
gtall wrote:
Actually, you have that exactly wrong: Einstein's theory of special relativity was a direct attempt to explain a specific experimental result, the negative results of the Michelson-Morley interferometer experiment to verify the existence of the liminiferous aether. The Michelson-Morley results were published in 1887, and Einstein published special relativity in 1905.
just a ghost in the machine.
Unscientific
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
The theory of relativity wasn't testable when it was first proposed. Part of the reason Einstein never got a nobel for it was that it wasn't until the 1970's that there was real firm experimental evidence for it.
There's a distinction between something that can never be tested and something that can't be tested now due to technological limitations.
String theory was devised as a mathematical model that seems to describe a workable universe which may, or may NOT be our universe. Problem is that we know that the Standard Model cannot be the complete picture but so far we have no experimental data to use as a starting point to figure out what lies behind it. When we finally do get a hint of new physics some of the new math being invented by String Theorists is going to be very useful weather or not String Theory itself correctly describes our universe.
The theory of relativity wasn't testable when it was first proposed. Part of the reason Einstein never got a nobel for it was that it wasn't until the 1970's that there was real firm experimental evidence for it.
There's a distinction between something that can never be tested and something that can't be tested now due to technological limitations.
You mean the observations Eddington took in 1919 confirming light bending in accordance with predictions by general relativity didn't take place? From the Wikipedia entry:
"Eddington's observations published the next year[5] confirmed Einstein's theory, and were hailed at the time as a conclusive proof of general relativity over the Newtonian model."
Also, relativity made a number of testable predictions. From the wiki page on the theory of relativity:
"The predictions of special relativity have been confirmed in numerous tests since Einstein published his paper in 1905, but three experiments conducted between 1881 and 1938 were critical to its validation. These are the Michelson–Morley experiment, the Kennedy–Thorndike experiment, and the Ives–Stilwell experiment. Einstein derived the Lorentz transformations from first principles in 1905, but these three experiments allow the transformations to be induced from experimental evidence."
Obviously the testing of the theory still continues as we gather more data from around the universe, but to say there wasn't firm experimental evidence until the 1970s isn't correct.
Until string theory makes some testable predictions it's just mathematical and philosophical wanking.
Enigma
"All problems in computer science can be solved by another level of indirection" - David Wheeler
"All problems in physics can be solved by another dimension" - Some jackass
Is 26 dimensions better or worse than 26 levels of indirection?
The issue there is that more parsimonious theories already predicted everything that has been tested in string theory.
The problem is that practically any experimental outcome can be shown to be a 'prediction' of string theory. String theory predicts nearly anything and everything depending on where you set the constants. It is far more descriptive than predictive.
It's not a total waste, it's just premature.
Exactly, that's why the Standard Model is so resilient and unsatisfactory at the same time. A collection of facts glued together by bits of knowledge and mathematical modeling.
Achille Talon
Hop!
Very well put - I was trying to figure out how to say this, but that nails it.
String Theory is a toolkit - an infinite set of theories. You can specify some of the tunable parameters and get a specific testable theory, but there's no non-arbitrary way to do that. So many physicist-decades sunk into something which "might be useful one day".
You can say it's all math, not physics, and so uselessness is fine, but then the problem is it's pretty bad math - no elegance, most equations aren't solvable yet.
String theory started as an attempt to simplify the standard model to a few primitives, but it has totally failed in that regard.
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