Why String Theory Is Not Science (forbes.com)

StartsWithABang writes: Earlier this month, a conference was held devoted to the question of whether untestable scientific ideas like string theory and the multiverse are actually science or not. While many opinions were stated and no one changed their mind, the answer is apparent: unless you're willing to change the definition of science to include "this thing that isn't science," then no, string theory is not science. It's a theory in the sense of a mathematical theory — like set theory, group theory or number theory — but it isn't yet a scientific theory. Of course, it could become science, but that would require that it actually do the things a scientific theory does: make testable predictions that can be validated or falsified.

Comments

Only if you Exclude Technological Limits

[Roger W Moore]

The condition for science is that it has to be testable in principle, NOT that it has to be testable within the limits of current technology. When Higgs came up with his theory there was no accelerator capable of testing it (although we did not know that at the time). So would that make the Higgs mechanism non-science until the 21st century when we built the LHC? Clearly not. So, unless String theory is completely untestable in principle, regardless of potential future technological advances, it is science albeit science which is currently impossible to test with current technology.

Re:Only if you Exclude Technological Limits

[Anonymous Coward]

What if their goal isn't to make a testable prediction that diverges from the current best theory, but merely to explain more elegantly what's already explained? Shouldn't that count as scientific progress too?

After all, heliocentrism didn't make any prediction that a sufficiently elaborate theory of epicycle couldn't explain, it merely stated that the equations of motion were simpler if you put the Sun at the center.

Re:Only if you Exclude Technological Limits

[hey!]

The classic example used by logical positivists in the early 20th century was any conjecture about the far side of the Moon. Until we developed spacecraft any statement about the half of the Moon we can't see would have been untestable in practical terms, but it would have been testable in principle.

Re:Only if you Exclude Technological Limits

[sjames]

But that's not what string theory does. Instead, it predicts everything. No, not everything we have observed, EVERYTHING. No negative or positive finding tests string theory, it just suggests more knobs to twiddle. The one shining hope is that if we don't find supersymmetry, it is dead as a theory since it cannot accommodate a universe without.

It could be forgiven all of that if it made things more tractable, but it doesn't.

Re:Only if you Exclude Technological Limits

[mbone]

The condition for science is that it has to be testable in principle, NOT that it has to be testable within the limits of current technology. When Higgs came up with his theory there was no accelerator capable of testing it (although we did not know that at the time). So would that make the Higgs mechanism non-science until the 21st century when we built the LHC? Clearly not. So, unless String theory is completely untestable in principle, regardless of potential future technological advances, it is science albeit science which is currently impossible to test with current technology.

String theory is arguably not science not because it makes predictions we cannot test, but because it basically makes no predictions at all. Originally, when people realized the importance of 10-dimensional manifolds (i.e., of theories with 6 compact dimensions), there was a lot of excitement as people thought (and confidently said) that there would be one and only one suitable such manifold, which would have led to concrete (if maybe hard to test) predictions. But, now, there is a huge number (order 10^500) of such manifolds known, each basically allowing for a separate theory, and we have no idea which could be the right one.

Also, there is the pesky fact that predictions have been made about the foundations of string theory (that, for example, the LHC would detect the supersymmetric partners of existing particles), and they have not been born out by experiment,

Having said that, my personal feeling is that string theory is science, but science that is unlikely to be fruitful. Eventually, unless this changes, something else will come along, and it will cease to be the center of attention for theoretical physics.

Re:Only if you Exclude Technological Limits

[Fragnet]

You don't mean everything, you mean anything.

Re:Only if you Exclude Technological Limits

[shaitand]

You realize this is exactly the same problem higgs had. Just because we don't have the tools to perform the experiment yet doesn't stop it from being science. It doesn't magically blossom into being science when build the equipment to test it.

Re:Only if you Exclude Technological Limits

[lgw]

As I understand it, String Theory has one fundamental (and very odd) premise: that all particle masses are integer multiples of the Planck mass, with all known particles having a rest mass of 0, plus a bit of rounding error (OK, it all sounds fishy to me, so maybe I don't quite have that right). Anyhow, the discovery of particles with about 1 Planck Mass (obviously not point particles) would be an experimental triumph. And who knows what dark matter is - maybe there's a surprise waiting.

But other than that exceedingly far-fetched idea, I don't see any way string theory won't be abandoned at this point.

Re:Only if you Exclude Technological Limits

[Ramze]

The problem is that its equations are quite elegant and simple -- because its goal was to unify the fundamental forces... and by doing so, created so many variables, functions, and possibilities, you can describe just about any universe that might exist. Each particle exists in 11 dimensions with varying degrees of freedom -- and we have few hints at the shapes of those hidden dimensions. Pinning it down to our universe is hard -- really hard. Like 10 ^ 99 possibilities hard. And, there's still the possibility that it's wrong, but there are a very long list of possibilities to go through before they can figure that out. Even if they find one that matches perfectly, just because the math agrees doesn't mean it says anything about how the universe really works -- just that the math works.

But, say you want to describe fundamental forces -- easy... the equations for light, gravity, strong force, and weak force look identical in string theory except for a function tacked on the end -- same for particles and their properties. (Also, as the energy level reaches a certain point, the forces converge towards a point where they are all equal.... as if they are all aspects of the same force that split into different dimensions.)

The same sort of thing was done to predict the Higgs. Equations were written as if all particles were massless plus some function based on interaction with the Higgs. Without the Higgs, the equations were ugly and none of the equations for the particles looked alike, but factor in the Higgs, and they all fall beautifully into place as identical plus some Higgs function. So much was based on this math, that it was understood that it HAD to be right -- years before the particle from the field was discovered.

The irony is -- string theory is a bit like creating epicycles to make the Earth the center of the solar system in the sense that string theory was created to unify the forces -- and in doing so, necessitated the creation of multiple curled up dimensions. It made some things very easy by postulating something strange. Einstein described gravity as the curvature of spacetime, and this gave string theorists the initiative to do the same with the other forces. It may be right -- it's probably right... it looks right in how elegant the math is... but... there's no way to test it -- yet. The theory says more about what can be rather than what must be, so it'll be a while before it matures enough to be called true "science."

Re:Only if you Exclude Technological Limits

[DrJimbo]

What if their goal isn't to make a testable prediction that diverges from the current best theory, but merely to explain more elegantly what's already explained? Shouldn't that count as scientific progress too?

An excellent question! Yes, more elegant explanations of existing phenomena are definitely a big part of science. The unification of electricity and magnetism is an example . But that unification led to new predictions that the non-unified models did not. Yet, even if string theory was able to make the same predictions as the standard model and no new predictions then, hell yeah, it is would be science. The problem is that it makes no predictions. Well, to be more accurate, it makes way too many predictions which is pretty much the same thing.

You see, explaining what has already been explained involves making testable predictions. String theory does not do this which is why it is not science. That doesn't mean it is worthless to pursue.

Re:Only if you Exclude Technological Limits

[Ramze]

Problem is, supersymmetry (SUSY) is the only theory that even attempts to explain why the masses of particles are as small as they are -- including the Higgs particle. Without SUSY, the Higgs, W, and Z bosons become nearly infinitely massive due to loops in their feynmen diagrams. It's the SUSY that cancels out infinities in a lot of equations to make the string theory results make sense.

Many expect SUSY particles (sparticles) to start showing up at a multiple of the Higgs mass -- say... close to the Higgs mass or an order of magnitude higher, but not much higher. Sparticles are a good candidate for dark matter, but they're unlikely to be detected by the LHC.

Also, we know that string theory can give the same answers as other quantum theories for known values... so it's not "wrong" so much as it's a different way to do the same math... but ST requires SUSY because it's a necessary result of the math. If you compute a universe that allows both bosons and fermions, then for each boson, there is complementary fermion and vice versa -- only SUSY predicts that they have the same mass, but clearly they don't -- so the symmetry is broken.

If no sparticles are found at higher energy levels, then someone will have to explain what's wrong with particle physics in general -- because the math works.... so, what is it about the math that is correct that we're incorrectly interpreting as reality? Even if string theory is discounted in favor of another theory... you can wipe out the theory, but not the math. The math is just a different formulation of a problem to get the same answer. If I say 3 + 2 = 5, and the 2 is the sparticle in my theory... then when we find sparticles don't exist, what the heck is it that I'm adding to 3 to make it 5 ?!?!? There must be some unknown physics that string theory is describing as super particles that may actually be something else we don't understand. We don't even know why the symmetry is "broken" in the current theory to begin with.

Re:Only if you Exclude Technological Limits

[sjames]

The math happens to produce known correct answers if you twiddle it right, but so what? There are many incorrect equations that when constrained tightly enough happen to give a few right answers for all the wrong reasons. Given a set of data points, you can always construct an equation that contains all of them. What's 11-6? AHHA!, it's 5, that's exactly the number we were looking for!

You don't need anything so exotic as string theory to have the math suggest odd reflections of reality. I've seen it in a simple high school physics problem. Find the roots of a simple equation to decide if you must brake or accelerate to avoid the train and when must you do it. You get a positive and a negative real root. You toss the negative one since time travel is disallowed in this test. But it does satisfy the equation, doesn't it? So do the imaginary roots, but what do they even mean?

Not to mention the FFT with it's reflections and imaginary parts everywhere.

The mathematics of string theory MIGHT prove to be a toolbox for expressing an actual theory symbolically, but don't get the symbols confused with the theory or you'll end up in numerology like Pythagoras did.

Re:Only if you Exclude Technological Limits

[radarskiy]

"Expanded solar-system limits on violations of the equivalence principle" James Overduin, Jack Mitcham and Zoey Warecki, Classical and Quantum Gravity, Volume 31, Number 1. IOP: http://m.iopscience.iop.org/ar... arxiv: http://arxiv.org/abs/1307.1202

"Four-Qubit Entanglement Classification from String Theory", L. Borsten, D. Dahanayake, M. J. Duff, A. Marrani, and W. Rubens
Physical Review Letters 105, 100507. APS: http://journals.aps.org/prl/ab... arxiv http://arxiv.org/abs/1005.4915

"Permutation orbifolds and holography", Felix M. Haehl, Mukund Rangamani Journal of High Energy Physics 2015:163 Springer: http://link.springer.com/artic... arxiv: http://arxiv.org/abs/1412.2759

"Quest for the Perfect Liquid: Connecting Heavy Ions, String Theory, and Cold Atoms" Barbara Jacak, John E. Thomas, Clifford Johnson, Symposium at tahe AAAS Amual Meeting 2009 https://www.bnl.gov/aaas09/per...

Re: Climatology

[Anonymous Coward]

Didn't take long for the peanut gallery to weigh in.

Re:Wouldn't it be more properly referred to as

[nashv]

Exactly. It is a model. It might even be a useful model with some explanatory power. But the same can be said of many belief systems. The only difference is that the other belief systems have been shown to be inaccurate by showing their contradictions with reality. With string theory, we are not aware of any specific such contradiction yet.

I don't think we should have any problems with models, as long we understand very clearly that they are only models. Like Newton's laws - they are strictly inaccurate but as approximate models of reality that are valid under some limited set of conditions, they remain useful.

Re:Climatology

[phantomfive]

No. Climatology, even if you are the biggest skeptic, makes testable predictions all the time. For example, predictions that the earth will be two degrees warmer in 100 years. That is completely testable: it will take 100 years to test it, but that's irrelevant.

An untestable theory is one that can never be tested, even with infinite time and resources. For example, "the universe was created as-is five minutes ago." Maybe that's true, but there's no way to test it. Even if you had a time machine, it still couldn't be tested. There is no experiment that can be imagined to test this.

In the case of string theory, the author claims that string theory makes no predictions that distinguish it from the standard model. That is, if you perform an experiment, you will not know if it is supporting string theory, or if it's just a natural result of the standard model.

Re:This has been known for a long time

[vux984]

I think cargo cults are pretty science-ish.

The observed a correlation between airports and cargo planes arriving.

The formed a hypothesis that constructing something that looks like an airport and control tower would bring the cargo airplanes.

They tested the hypothesis, by building the airport etc. It didn't work.

They (correctly) knew that something made the cargo planes come; so they tried to improve their emulation of the airport operations etc.

Sure if was fundamentally wrong. But it WAS the scientific method in action. Observation, hypothesis, experiment...repeat.

Its no different than heliocentric astronomy. We kept trying more complicated and elaborate constructions to predict the planetary motions, but it just kept failing because it was wrong.

Re: Climatology

[Anonymous Coward]

Aye, there's the rub. First, only one planet. Second, difficulties with the "awhile" parameter. Make it too short and you're just testing long-range *weather* forecasts which is not where the controversy is. Make it too long and the theory changes so that the argument becomes "that's an old model, we know better now". Do they really know better, or are they just moving the goal posts?

I think climatology is in a grey area in this regard. In theory, it's testable and thus science. In practice, it's political, not well tested, and thus not living up to its potential as science.

Does explanation have a role in science?

[UpnAtom]

David Deutsch argues that it is core:
https://www.ted.com/talks/davi...

Also, string theory is surely as testable as quantum mechanics. It's just currently impossible to say which is more valid.

The original meaning of begging the question

[radarskiy]

They start with the premise that string theory is untestable, and come to the conclusion that it is untestable.

Re:The sad state of climatology

[radarskiy]

You seem to be confused about which side is taking a lot of money to fudge the data.

Re:Wouldn't it be more properly referred to as

[losfromla]

There are too many floaty numbers inserted and whenever the numbers don't work more floaty numbers and dimensions are added in to make the "theory" work. Books written about this "Not even Wrong", "The Trouble with Physics". There may be others, those are just two I am familiar with.

http://www.amazon.com/Not-Even...
http://www.amazon.com/Trouble-...

No difference = equivalent

[Roger W Moore]

The author claims that there is no test that can be done that would prove String Theory true as opposed to other theories.

Unfortunately the author has proven many times that he does not understand particle physics in previous posts. The problem with String Theory is that there are far too many possible theories to consider (last count I heard it was around 10^500) to make detailed, concrete predictions. The second that we get an experimental signature for something like String Theory that number would collapse and theorists would be able to start studying the detailed predictions of a vastly smaller number of models. This would undoubtedly lead to some clever theorist coming up with signatures unique to String Theory which other, competing models would not have.

If you can't come up with ANY difference it would mean that the theories must be mathematically equivalent for all situations which are possible. We have had this happen in physics before. Matrix mechanics and wave mechanics are both different ways of doing the same Quantum Mechanics. Nobody worries about which is the "right" way because both make mathematically equivalent predictions.

Re:The sad state of climatology

[Fragnet]

Government grants to institutions + the money available to speculators like Goldman Sachs through trading idiotic carbon credit schemes, makes it pretty one-sided. And then of course the energy companies themselves get in on the act, hovering up huge subsidises (again from the tax payer - notice how it's always muggins who pays the bill?) for "clean energy" and we have a winner.

Re:Climatology

[phantomfive]

Yes. Astrology makes valid, testable scientific predictions. Therefore it is a scientific theory (or hypothesis, if you like it that way).
It is unfortunate that it has been proven false many, many times, but not every scientific theory has to be true.

Re: Climatology

[davester666]

Somewhere on Earth, it's cold. Therefore global warming can't be happening. If it was happening right now, it would be warm everywhere. QED

The concept is often unscientific

[Kjella]

For example, the theory that all matter is made up of small, indivisible bits (atomos) is unscientific. Whenever you find a new smallest building block (atom) there's a chance you'll find they're built by even smaller blocks (a core of protons and neutrons surrounded by electrons) and that protons again are made from even smaller particles (quarks). And maybe the quarks are built from superstrings. And maybe the superstrings are build from something we don't even have a name for yet. That doesn't make them bad ideas to guide scientific research and design experiments. Just like causality is a rabbit hole with no end, even if we could explain the whole formation of the universe back to the Big Bang we'd always be looking for what caused the Big Bang. And what caused that which caused the Big Bang. Scientific exploration is an educated guesswork, you take some observations and try to find a system or pattern or formula and if the results don't contradict reality, great. It's obviously even better if you can predict something new, but if I find that E = mc^2 and show a few reproducible examples it's up to the rest of the scientific community to find a contradiction where E != mc^2. I feel it's a bit like that with superstring theory, if we got multiple theories that both come to the same results then either they're different formulations of the same model or there will be distinct differences that are at least hypothetically testable.

Re: Climatology

[lgw]

You're joking, but that is actually what a "Warm Earth" (i.e., not an ice age) looks like: no year-round ice anywhere. It doesn't get much warmer at the equator, but it gets a lot warmer at the poles.

Re:Climatology

[istartedi]

The problem with judging climatology based on average temperature after X years is this: All you have to do is come up with a hand full of models in a reasonable distribution around where we already are. The more models, the better chance you have of being "uncannily accurate". See the problem? It's just like the old stock market trick of finding 256 analysts who make buy/sell recommendations on 8 stocks. Then you interview the "genius" who made 8 correct calls.

In the case of climate, the model is much more convincing if you judge it based on more data points. We want to see a model that has a very close match to the *curve* of the actual data.

In the case of stock-market analysts you want to see enough picks over a long enough time frame so that the odds of the analyst being lucky as opposed to good are astronomically low.

Re:This has been known for a long time

[Karmashock]

Except it doesn't work.

Watch the video again. Cargo cult science "looks" like science... only it doesn't work.

You can't get around that. This is what ultimately stopped sophists from dominating western philosophy. Stoic Empiricism.

It. Does. Not. Work.

You can spin your theories till your head spins off... it won't work if you don't do it properly. And if you don't do it properly then it isn't science.

And because I'm sure you're going to presume to nitpick me here and thus miss the entire point... let me be very clear... sure, you can run an experiment to test something and have that test come out negative and that is still science. However, the point with both cargo cult science and cargo cults is that they didn't stop. They had "faith"... and that faith made it not science because when the evidence came back that the hypothesis was bunk... they just doubled down.

What you see in pseudo science is the same thing... they start saying things like "well we can't get that evidence so we don't need it" or "well other people agree with us so we don't need evidence" or some other excuse as to why evidence isn't needed or even contrary evidence should be ignored.

No. You either have the evidence or you have no evidence. That is the tautology of that situation. A lack of evidence is a lack of evidence. End of story. Period. Good day, sir.

Best way to convert a "non-science" stickler

[doug141]

If you find yourself talking to a person who dismisses talk of multiverses or string theory as no better than talk of the supernatural, just ask them what a person would see while falling into a black hole. They will proceed to tell you their version. Then ask if someone outside the hole can ever verify anything they just said. They will say no, communication won't work from inside an event horizon to the outside. Then ask, if everything they said is all based on conjecture and extrapolating known laws, and can't be experimentally verified, why do they feel it merits discussion?

Re:String theory is gibberish

[painandgreed]

Tiny vibrating strings? That explains everything! But why not tiny vibrating llamas? I bet the math would still work out, plus that would make the theory somewhat interesting.

Step 1: Assume string shaped llamas.

Re:The sad state of climatology

[plopez]

The coal industry, natural gas industry, oil industry, big agriculture, real estate agents who sell ocean front properties or places where hurricanes are common, etc.

This is of course true

[Bruce66423]

The fact that the unthinking moders of /. have reduced this to zero is a sad reflection of the lack of understanding of what constitutes science. The reality is that most of geology and palaeontology are on the same level as history, as being theories about recorded facts, rather than 'science'. This doesn't make them worthless - as a hard scientist who is now working for an MA in history I've got a dog in this race - but their claim to be 'science' is dubious.

Re:This is of course true

[Oligonicella]

Straw argument. You can study evolution with no references to geology or paleontology at all by just studying soft tissue in the lab.

You're correct though, that's historic evidence of evolution. Those phenotypes were modified by changes in the gene sequences like those we've seen happen in labs. And some of those gene sequences we've extracted, mapped out and compared to living organisms. So evolution is a proven.

Re:This is of course true

[Kjella]

The reality is that most of geology and palaeontology are on the same level as history, as being theories about recorded facts, rather than 'science'. This doesn't make them worthless - as a hard scientist who is now working for an MA in history I've got a dog in this race - but their claim to be 'science' is dubious.

Everybody knows history can't be independently reproduced and verified in the lab, but I think you're underestimating the value of scientific research to lend credibility to a particular version of it. Like if a woman claims you made her pregnant, a DNA test would be a good start. Of course she might have stolen a tissue from a hotel room where you entertained yourself. Or she's got a genetics lab that can create a sperm cell from a strand of hair. It's not absolute proof and even if it were written down, the next historian can only read about it being done but not reproduce it. Maybe the recorded facts are a falsification. But if you're talking about a theory like that a gigantic asteroid killed the dinosaurs, well then finding and investigating the impact crater, estimating the age and size and composition, simulating the environmental impact and so on is what makes it a lot more credible that this was an extinction level event than saying "Big boom. Dinos die. Least that's what me thinks."

Re:Evolution

[Oligonicella]

You do not understand what evolution is. "Create life" is not in the description.

Re:Climatology

[whoever57]

For example, predictions that the earth will be two degrees warmer in 100 years. That is completely testable: it will take 100 years to test it, but that's irrelevant.

Actually, the 100 years is very important. The actual prediction is more likely to be something like: "if we continue to burn fossil fuels at the same rate, then ...". The prediction relies the values of other factors, which are not controlled. An experiment in which all the variables are not controlled is not a valid experiment.

Re:Climatology

[shaitand]

"Astronomy is Astrology what Chemistry is to Alchemy, or what Newtonian Physics is to Relativity."

Whoops I flipped the ordering around somewhere in the middle here and fixed above. You got the point anyway ;)

Re: Climatology

[Vitriol Angst]

Everything you said just annoys me.

Liberals don't receive any more money from government than do Conservatives. I can't speak for everyone, but WE don't ask for "bigger government" just to get more -- a lot of us might not get welfare. We just have a bigger tribe; meaning, we care about things beyond our family, team, church, country. People. None of us want "more regulations" -- just the RIGHT ones. You know who sponsors most of the regulations? Big companies. You know who does MOST of the Medicare fraud? About 70% or more (if memory serves) by large institutions. "Big" government means nothing. There are about 1 million people employed due to Bush (OK, half of them, maybe) who are in the security, intelligence, and other cloak and dagger organizations. I want that to shrink because MY THEORY of human behavior is the best security is being fair to people and they will not blow you up because they have a shared future and a stake in the community they are now a part of. It's not 100% perfect, but it's a lot better (with historic justification) than the security via intimidation and heavy handed law enforcement.

"view it as a humanitarian crisis so you can convince yourselves (ie rationalize) you are doing the right thing despite fleecing citizens through idiotic taxes, regulations, etc." None of those whine points have much to do with each other. How is Climate Change NOT going to cause a humanitarian crisis? People who can't eat or who are displaced by rising tides or drought will go where they can survive. Not being able to live is a Humanitarian issue, a million people migrating is a crisis. Regardless of "Liberalism" or "Democrat" -- it's going to happen.

"idiotic taxes, regulations, etc. whose costs get passed down to them despite being levied on evil oil companies."
So by this logic, no taxes and no regulations would make things great. I don't like idiotic taxes. Government pays 54% of the bill for medical care in this country, and we spend about 4 times more per person than Germany. I'd much rather pay about 10% more in taxes and stop fearing sickness or retirement. So we pay MORE to get crap. Your co-pay usually is the real value of the service, and the Insurance companies negotiate and pay, then charge the doctors and hospitals more for insurance and pay radio show hosts to talk about torte reform. If they were good for the system; why would they have incredibly huge profits? Paying less than you paid for the insurance is how you make profit. It's an idiotic system. Hospitals also can vary over 9 times in cost for the same procedure -- the competitive market to lower costs is not in effect.

What's idiotic is those Republicans who think they can have two Santa Klaus's. They can get stuff which they happily take advantage of, and not pay for it. Patriotism and fairy dust solves everything. So while you might hear about this or that wasteful boondoggle -- just understand those are tiny fractions of the budget, and usually it's due to a politician paying back a supporter on the country dime. Like the Republicans just in office paying 10X more for mercenaries and failing consultants to provide services that the military provided. That raked in a lot of cash. Just tell us where you would cut the budget to reduce the stupid. Would you let seniors die of starvation or go homeless? You want to shut down the military? How about roads and water? Education? Law enforcement? I mean, seriously, can you just look at a budget sometime and not see that things are allocated for things you get a benefit from?

"costs get passed down to them despite being levied on evil oil companies."
If something costs a certain amount, and every company gets charged the same amount, it becomes the cost of business. IF the costs get passed on, then people will need higher wages, companies that depend on Oil or whatever will raise prices. It's been shown that over time, it creates no real burden as the market adjusts to the higher prices of whatever good. Less oil might be used.

On the other hand, if th

Supersymmetric Corrections

[Roger W Moore]

Problem is, supersymmetry (SUSY) is the only theory that even attempts to explain why the masses of particles are as small as they are -- including the Higgs particle. Without SUSY, the Higgs, W, and Z bosons become nearly infinitely massive due to loops in their feynmen diagrams.

Not quite. Only the Higgs is affected since it is the only scalar particle. Its mass does not become even vaguely close to infinite they just get dragged up to the Planck-scale at 10^19 GeV. SUSY is not the only possible explanation: Large Extra Dimensions solves the problem by reducing the Planck scale to ~10 TeV or so (but introduces other problems like why do protons appear stable).

Sparticles are a good candidate for dark matter, but they're unlikely to be detected by the LHC.

Only the lightest sparticle is good candidate for Dark Matter and, if produced, it can be detected at the LHC by the missing momentum which is carries which is a typical signature in almost all SUSY searches. However to confirm that it is Dark Matter we need the underground experiments to see it as well since all the LHC will be able to tell is that it lived long enough to escape the detector i.e. about 50ns if travelling close to the speed of light. However to be Dark Matter it needs to be stable enough to last ~13.8 billion years without appreciable decay.

If no sparticles are found at higher energy levels, then someone will have to explain what's wrong with particle physics in general

That depends. Suppose I tosh a coin and keep getting heads. How many heads in a row do I need to get before you become suspicious that something is not right (e.g. that I'm lying or tossing a two headed coin)? 10 heads in a row? 20 heads? Even if you are suspicious how many heads do I need to tosh before you are certain that something is wrong? This is the problem that the Standard Mode faces. It is not impossible that the light Higgs came about by really phenomenal luck but the chance of that happening is about the same as tossing ~110 heads in a row. In my subjective opinion that means that there must be some physics we are missing but this is a subjective opinion and you still cannot completely rule out that it could be just down to phenomenal chance.

Re: Climatology

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a liberal and I'm not asking for big government at all.

Also you are speaking of a larger "tribe" as if you have some greater humanity than others. Well I don't trust you. I'd rather we have a society that has collectivised the protection of individual rights and doesn't require armchair warriors to bleat in comment sections to keep us safe or focus on causes to affect change.

You're not a liberal and are misusing the term.

Re: Climatology

[TapeCutter]

[climatology] is yet to make a successful prediction.

1. Polar amplification.
2. Stratospheric cooling

You now have two well known examples of large scale natural phenomena first observed in climate models, there are many more, google is your friend, my community service is done.

Re:The sad state of climatology

[Fragnet]

I have studied what the scientists say about this for ten years. But I've also made a point of studying what the sceptics say, looking at the model results compared to actual reality and squaring the science with the hyperbolic press and political statements. Let me tell you, there's a huge discrepancy here. It's almost as if the science is (on the whole) being manufactured to order. This isn't new. It happens in social "science" all the time.

Re: Climatology

[Gr8Apes]

Seems they have been doing predictions for a while, and the time frame is set: Transitions between glacial and warm climates — and back again — might come in a matter of only a few centuries if not faster. So as you can see we have not even approached a single test's time frame, although the effects of the predictions appear to be happening more or less.

Re:Climatology

[dryeo]

Actually some of the basic premises of astrology have been proven correct.
Premise number one is that you can use the stars as a calendar, I doubt that anyone would deny that now.
Premise number two, that the time of birth affects someones success in life. Originally the idea that someone born in times of plenty (varies in region and livelihood) will have more success then someone born in times of famine such as late winter. Not sure of studies on this but it seems reasonable and worth studying. Presently there has been studies that show that children born closer to the beginning of the school year have more success then those born towards the end of the school year. So time of birth does affect success in life.
Premise number three, that the stars are causative in the success in life department. This is where astrology fails but the premise was worth following given numbers 1 and 2 above.
There was also the predicting the movements of planets that astrology got good at and predicting the future which was mostly a failure though the calendar part did allow some climate predictions such as colder in winter type of predictions.
So mostly astrology failed due to mixing up causation and correlation.

Re: Climatology

[Fragnet]

Who's going to study or publish papers rubbishing this stuff? Someone who wants tenure? Someone keen to attract government money to his institution? It's interesting, isn't it, that most sceptics (Judith Curry and Richard Lindzen are rare exceptions) are retired academics.

With respect to models not matching the actual temperature rise, here's a paper. Does that sate your lust, or are you going to find a reason to dismiss it because it goes against your already strongly held opinions?

Re: Climatology

[dywolf]

since when have you ever cared about substantiated arguments?
especially on the topic of the climate, where you repeatedly make unsubstantiated, and even well disproven, statements, even within this very thread ?

no choice but to throw the BS flag on that play.