Slashdot Mirror
Has Physics Gotten Something Really Important Really Wrong? (npr.org)
Slashdot reader schwit1 quotes an article from NPR:
Some researchers now see popular ideas like string theory and the multiverse as highly suspect. These physicists feel our study of the cosmos has been taken too far from what data can constrain with the extra "hidden" dimensions of string theory and the unobservable other universes of the multiverse... it all adds up to muddied waters and something some researchers see as a "crisis in physics."
The article quotes Roberto Mangabeira Unger and Lee Smolin, the authors of a new book arguing that "Science is corrupted when it abandons the discipline of empirical validation or dis-confirmation. It is also weakened when it mistakes its assumptions for facts and its ready-made philosophy for the way things are." And according to this analysis of the book, what they're proposing is "to take a giant philosophical step back and see if a new and more promising direction can be found. For the two thinkers, such a new direction can be spelled out in three bold claims about the world. There is only one universe. Time is real. Mathematics is selectively real."
The article quotes Roberto Mangabeira Unger and Lee Smolin, the authors of a new book arguing that "Science is corrupted when it abandons the discipline of empirical validation or dis-confirmation. It is also weakened when it mistakes its assumptions for facts and its ready-made philosophy for the way things are." And according to this analysis of the book, what they're proposing is "to take a giant philosophical step back and see if a new and more promising direction can be found. For the two thinkers, such a new direction can be spelled out in three bold claims about the world. There is only one universe. Time is real. Mathematics is selectively real."
He wants his Multiverse back.
what they're proposing is "to take a giant philosophical step back and see if a new and more promising direction can be found.
OK, good advice, now do it. If you think there is some massive new physics to be discovered, then discover it. When you do, you will be admired and respected for generations, instead of mocked by me on Slashdot.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
How is turning science into a religion going to help? A good hypothesis must be disprovable--assumed to be false even.
We're one hundred years on and only now observing gravitational waves. As long as the mathematics are sound, what's to stop theorists from continuing to peruse esoteric topics?
Science needed to be popularized. But people hate being told no. What does science do? It stops saying no. But at the same time, it stops being science.
Thanks, string theorists.
String theory, multiple universes, complexity, quantum teleportation... these are to Physics what Division I football is to college, which is to say, it sells tickets and opens purse strings. No one is going to buy a book on Newtonian physics and relive their junior year in high school. But let Brian Greene write something crazy and out there about a "Holographic Universe" or somesuch and the peeps will scoop it up, and maybe even decide to become physics and math majors, and there are lots of worse results than that. So let the alumni donate for the football team, and let the googley-eyed high schoolers all plan on high-paying and fulfilling careers as Quantum Mechanics. It puts butts in the seats...
How is assuming a universe over a multiverse better? At least according to Occam's razor, it is not simpler. It assumes a selection rather than a probability distribution.
What clues point towards the one rather than the many?
I have spent the last 14 years of my life studying fundamental theoretical physics and mathematics. I find a lot of the research in cosmology very unappealing, because it is way too speculative and far-fetched (multiverse, eternal inflation, bounce, cyclic cosmology, etc). And the mathematics behind these things is very primitive and simple, there is no elegance.
But string theory is different. Although it has not been a success phenomenologically, it has led to many beautiful results in mathematics and field theory, such as Mirror Symmetry and AdS/CFT. Further research in string theory is definitely worthwhile, and Lee Smolin is unreasonably biased against it. These other "quantum gravity" approaches that Smolin champions are completely disconnected from any kind of real physics, and they have not led to any kind of deep mathematical insights.
Super interesting idea. Article summary missed the point. The point is: We may not be able to determine the nature of the universe as it relates to quantum particles, experimentally. Are the ideas any less valid, if we can't prove them experimentally (by, say, going back in time, or visiting alternate realities)?
I don't respond to AC's.
There was a time when humanity believed that everything could be explained by mechanics.
Higgs was ridiculed for good 50 years.This is no different.
String theory evolved great deal from where it was first formulated, thins that were not good are already invalidated.
There is no crisis of physics here, jut a massive layer of incomplete work.
Few points to add.
"There is only one universe" - sounds like theological clam. And just as unconfirmed ad multiverses.
"Time is real" - Einstein might disagree. Time is the imaginary part in the complex equations of space-time.
"Math is selectively real" - Only f the reality is defined by the capabilities of our brains and our technologies,
String Theory and Multi Verse is philosophy at this point. Much like religion, not probable, even if you use math.
that the "promised" sci-fi ideas of warp drives and colonizing space just will never happen, ever. This goes against the prevailing Western mindset of eternal progress and growth. Therefore physics and reality must be wrong.
What, you dint know?
Yeah. In Brazil, an evangelist religious prick is on the command of the ministry of science and technology. What happens is that content related with religion is being censored in Brazil. I'm not being able to find articles on Wikipedia related with paganism for example, because jesus freak head pesophiles are being ignorants about other people's way of belief.
Pretty sure we live in a simulated universe so any results could be misleading due to possible interactions with yet unidentified 3rd parties.
I suggest we continue with the double slit experiment. Mix it up a bit more, do completely random things with the experiment. Maybe you'll create a glitch in the matrix :)
in this universe, please go kill yourself
No. Climate change and income inequality are easily provable by science. We're talking about grown-up things that are much more difficult, if impossible to prove.
I don't respond to AC's.
"Extra dimensions are the epicycles of Modern Physics" -- Mark Maughan
Mathematics is selectively real
I quite agree with this. Oftentimes, mathematics is rather complex.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
The article mentions hidden dimensions and other universes in the same sentence. This is a pet peeve of mine. In Multi-dimensional quantum mechanics the dimensions are additional directions. They are not other universes and the combination of the two in one sentence is either intentinally muddying the water, or the person writing the article is not familiar with the mathematics involved and should not be taken seriously. The standard Cartesian coordinate system used to describe our universe in it's basic sense contains x.y, and z, directions, a set of values that many of the programmers on Slashdot are familiar with. Multi-dimensional physics just adds more of these in an attempt to explain the very real observable quantum effects that Newtonian physics and relativity cannot explain and never will. We currently know more about the Andromeda galaxy than the Milky Way because it is difficult to describe an object when you are inside it. Getting a third person look at the universe, even if it is just a mathematical trick, is probably the easiest way to describe it. The refusal to do so is probably not going to go very far. What the emergence of time means is also not what they are describing it to be and should not be looked upon as a valid argument. In a holographic quantum view of the universe it could be considered similar to a wave propagating through a substrate, but also be akin to a temporary chemical reaction wave, where the structure of the substrate is momentarily changed while the wave propagates through. This temporary excitation of the substrate generates the universe we live in. The movement of the universe's propagation is in the direction of time. My take on the hidden dimensions is that instead of viewing them as hidden, we should look at them as directions in which the particles we are made of have a zero width. The reason we cannot travel in time is not because the directions don't exist, it's because the particles we are made of have a zero width in that direction. We would have to be made of something else, and when we went backwards in time we would effect leave our current universe. Other particles, such as the elemental particle of gravity have a non-zero width in one of these direction. What we should really be talking about is the fact that relativity CANNOT describe the orbital trajectories of any stars accurately. The lack of a theory to accurately explain a basic observable fact is more problematic than the inability of technology to currently test the most advanced physics problems. Once our ability to manipulate quantum effects (such as the creation of a working quantum super computer - looking at you google) and we can create technology that is based on quantum mechanics then maybe we will be able to test the theories. Second failure of current theory that I don't think is spoken of enough is the failure of the planck observatory to detect the effects of gravitational waves on the cosmic microwave background. There were several stories about the waves being detected but second looks at the data supporting this cast serious doubt. Since we have now confirmed the existence of gravitational waves and their effects have not been observed as inflation predicts, then the current theory of the big bang they reference at the beginning of the article (we can describe the universe up to a bit before it's creation) is in fact not supported by current experiments and should be rethought. Instead of taking a step back from quantum mechanics we need to take a second look at the non quantum component of physics as it is currently not supported by current data.
The time where you could find new physics in your average lab is mostly over. We often need huge, one-in-all-mankind projects like the Large Hadron Collider, the Hubble telescope and various other huge, super-powerful or super-sensitive systems to make experimental progress. They're massively expensive and take forever to create so maybe once a decade there's a new source of data. Meanwhile there's a ton of professors looking to research something, what's cheap to do? Computer models. Computer simulations. Not that I'm saying we know everything, far from it. But there's what we know, what we don't know and just a very thin slice that we're actively experimenting on right now. And we have our best and brightest working at CERN etc. it's the rest that need to justify their existence.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Mathematics is not real at all. And it is entirely real. It studies implications of assumptions. The assumptions do not at all have to be based in reality. Ask your favorite mathematician about axiom of choice if you don't believe me on that one. Math is based on a priori deductions. These deductiosn do not need to be and, in fact, cannot be verified through observations. Sometimes the conclusions which are made from mathematical assumptions match the observed reality. And then scientists try to see if the underlying assumptions on which those conclusions were based also match reality. Sometimes they do. Sometimes they don't. Without empirical validation, science remains unproved and a-priori-based hypothesis. Only observation can make it a posteori conclusive.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
I guess that String Theory is knot for everyone---especially empiricists.
Sounds like they invented another religion.
But string theory is different. Although it has not been a success phenomenologically, it has led to many beautiful results in mathematics and field theory, such as Mirror Symmetry and AdS/CFT. Further research in string theory is definitely worthwhile, and Lee Smolin is unreasonably biased against it.
Yes, string theory is a bit different in that it hasn't been able to make any testable predictions, which makes it non-science. Science is based on the idea of experimental evidence, and falsifiability. It isn't science, it isn't physics.
Now it very well may have some beautiful results in mathematics. Maybe it will have applications and effects on topology, cryptography, who knows. But those things are mathematics, not science.
I tend to agree with Smolin that string theory, as currently presented (and I understand it), is not a scientific theory, even though it is interested and deserves its own mathematical research. The problem is, string theory gets the ratings, so we have more cosmologists and string theorists as professors physics, taking the few positions (and associated funding!) away from people that want to be true experimental physicists. That's where the semi-outrage is.
String Theory shares many similarities with Dark Energy. That being we have fuck-all clue about what any of it actually is, we just have fancy maths to try explain what we see.
Both of them are missing massive amounts of physics that the majority of the universe seemingly demonstrates.
We don't have the resolution to measure either of them in any meaningful way.
We likely won't for many a good couple decades or more if we don't allocate more funding to the discipline.
We only just managed to detect gravitational waves after years of nothing. And Higgs.
But both of these are nothing compared to the efforts that might be needed to figure out String Theory. (Dark Matter is in-between, on current estimates, but there are so many to choose from we simply don't know for sure)
But it might never even be accurate.
While science is about constant revision and improved accuracy in our representation of the processes around us, String Theory might be totally wrong. (and, at best, might be what Newtons gravity is like to Einsteins gravity)
Regardless, we have a long way to go.
Even Einsteins equations cannot be used to accurately represent the universe and will probably be revised in the coming decades when we get new satellites and sensors up and running. (see the GPS problem)
https://xkcd.com/397/
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It's the study of the universe, which is interesting, and has some nifty things to say about the ontology of particles, but so does philosophy, to be honest.
If it can't be disproven, it's not science. It might still be a cool area of study, but not all fields of study are science.
Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
Highly fundamental physics tends to rely on government granting bodies for funding. Since a lot of their outputs are not of immediate technological relevance (tell me one real impact of showing that the universe expansion is accelerating), they have to talk about the almost religious aspects of the work -- finding 'the truth', the ultimate fate of the universe, whatever. So of course the advocates of a point of view overstate its worth; because the value is almost intangible at this early stage of understanding. Add to that the way in which for a lot of these very smart people these fundamental questions are more like a cool mathematical game, where the underlying 'correctness' of the theory plays a distant third to (1) this is some cool, beautiful mathematics and (2) look how clever I am. Any number of coherent mathematical structures can be built up; the question is, do they agree with observation, and I think it is true that some of the theories put forward don't have enough points of contact with reality. It is important that we have a few smart humans investigating these questions. Part of the problem is that it really should be just a very few, insightful people, pushing those boundaries, not whole rafts of grad students that will have nowhere to go once their dissertations are done. So you add all that up and what you get is pretty theories that are not grounded but can't be, but which _should_ be being looked at but which (to fund the excessive numbers of people studying them) have to make claims that are unrealistic.Then they are viewed as genuine attempts to explain the universe rather than the mathematical games that they really are, and they lose whatever cred they might have had.
I am a working Physicist, by the way, though not a particle physicist or cosmologist. I do condensed matter physics, the field that gave us useless things like silicon chips and superconductors and never appears on TV documentaries. Yes I have an ax to grind.
Time is real. Oh shit, I'm so fucked.
There is only one universe.
Time is real.
Mathematics is selectively real
Hollywood wants a new fiction.
The quantum reality of the higgs field means that it can have a value of zero in empty space when experiments create/observe it. In the multiverse, the higgs experiments will find a value of zero in many universes, instantly wiping out these universes. Since, most of these experiments are successful in normal universes, it is normal universes that are being wiped out, Since we live in the surviving universe, each experiment results in us existing in more abnormal universes, including Trump and Hilary and this thread.
When Einstein came up with Relativity, there was no way to falsify it, so it wasn't real science. But just about everybody who understood Relativity also understood that it wouldn't always be that way...tools would come along that could either prove it or disprove it.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
defy physics rules, so they had to stretch the physics to make it fit.
If you limit your worldview to that which is falsifiable, you are left with a non-functional worldview.
Here is the well-analyzed and thoroughly-examined conclusion to the Logical Positivism movement, run aground several decades ago. The conclusion will be the same for the next dozen "let's make everything truly scientific" media-hailed theorists.
This is the best, sanest, least biased post in the thread
---Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A START
What kind of title is that.
The crisis in physics is due to people refusing to believe what instruments and physical measurements reveal. Thinking the universe is what we see and conforms to human intuition when we can't even perceive 0.01% of the spectrum of light, not to mention all of the fields and 99.9999% of the particles around is the problem. We know space is so flat that the actual universe is 1000 times larger than what we can observe.
The universe is far more strange than everyday human observation. Insanely bizzare fundamental basics of reality is nearly a given. Deal with it.
A theory that can't predict anything, that has an automatic 'out' seems pathological. String theorists may point out that they have proven that there are only so many consistent parameters for their theories, but it still seems there are no falsifiable predictions.
It's like someone saying the time-complexity of an algorithm is O(m^a^b^c). You then say - wtf? and they say 'Great news, we've proved that c can only be between 9 and13!. You then say integers? and they say 'Uh, NOOOOOO you idiot, obviously they are rational numbers. Did you know that c=9 7/13 has some fascinating characteristics!. So you then say what about a, b and c and they say 'rational numbers between 4-8'... we think.
ONE universe has been OBSERVED
If you are going to play the game of "ah, but my multiverse idea has not been DISPROVEN, and the observations of the one universe we see are not incompatible with the multiverse idea", then you are in the very same realm as most religions. Nothing in the observed universe disproves or is incompatible with most religions (the actual teachings, not the phoney straw-man versions that opponents usually erect as the facades of those religions). Nothing in the observed universe opposes Buddhism, the observations simply fail to prove Buddhism. Nothing in the observed universe opposes the actual Biblical texts of the Jews or Christians (which contrary to the claims of the illiterate/lazy do NOT claim the Earth is flat, or 6K years old, or located at the center of the universe, or that dinosaurs and man coexisted, etc), the observations simply fail to prove them. Even things like the age of the universe and light from distant stars do not disprove a Judeo-Christian creation tale; if you presume the existence of an all-powerful God able to create every particle and photon in in entire universe, then it's irrational to assert that such a God cannot decide where those particles and photons start out, or to presume that such a God could not do all that in some particular time frame. Don't bother responding with arguments about Biblical creation stories, because I'm not asserting one here, I am just pointing out that these multiverse/hologram/string garbage sandwiches are no more supported by actual evidence and that some of the arguments used to make them APPEAR better supported actually only provide the illusion of superiority, usually by pretending things about the religions to pretent that those are even less-supported.
Sure, you can do some math related to holograms or string theory etc, but that does not make any of these things real. They guys who built that tourist attraction ark used math too, taking dimensions from Biblical texts. The fact that the Biblical dimensions for that ark work and produce an impressive structure, and possibly even a sea-worthy vessel (though that one is a land-based structure) means NOTHING about whether such a vessel ever actually existed in the past, or even if it did that it ever floated. Math works. Math and numbers can correlate with a thing or an idea. This does not mean that the math and the numbers validate the thing or idea that they can be made to correlate with.
Oh, and Occam's Razor is just that: a Razor. A tool. It's not a law. It's a reminder to not over-think a problem, and it's sadly over-used.
Which is simpler: "Things burst into flames because there is a supply of oxygen and fuel and a sufficient amount of heat" or "Things burst into flames because the Gods are angry". Oh, I know, you'll respond that Occam's is often cited to include thing like "all other things being equal" but that too is open to interpretation. It's NOT a "law" like the "law of universal gravitation" which is notably lacking in such vagaries and therefore not open to such interpretations.
Richard Feynman wrote in the introduction of one his books that one easy way to find out of a theory is bad is to look at its complexity If it isn't simple, it is most likely wrong. He went on to talk about how strange the orbital mechanisms and mathematics were before Kepler found the correct and simple solution to the problem that disproved nearly everyone in the field. With that he ends the introduction and delves into quantum mechanics.
How far has physics fallen, when theorist divas get insulted by the fact that their multiverse ideas are not backed up by the data?
http://backreaction.blogspot.c...
(Pls read till the end when Sabine, an accomplished theorist herself, mentions the Streisand effect).
Climate change provable? And here I thought only AC trolled that hard.... or perhaps you were educated at a government school and were never taught the scientific method. Ignorance before evil.
Proves you get only in math.
In physics you falsify.
GR and the standard model so far have survived every possible falsification attempt that physicists could think off.
To an ever frustrating degree, as this means there is no experimental hint to guide theorists, who have been ever further wandering off into Lala land.
Who is going to be stuck burying the dead cat?
Science you do it.
GR and the standard model so far have survived every possible falsification attempt that physicists could think off.
Assuming that dark matter actually exists and isn't something that is caused by a flawed model.
The physics analysis is not a controversial at all. The big controversy here is over what should be funded.
Cosmologists and quantum theorists are in good company when it comes to leveraging popular fantasies for fame and fortune. I'm a condensed matter physicist, and about every five years for a very long time we have discovered a material "stronger than steel," or that "will replace silicon."
This is now the culture of science (not just physics) because we have allowed basic research to become a profit center. Universities and (to a lesser extent) companies do not pay for scientific research any more, they get paid to do scientific research. Dig in to a university budget some time. The government is the only customer that matters in this world, and that all-important customer only cares about publications (peer reviewed articles, mass media, whatever). To keep our jobs, we have to be very good at telling stories and painting a picture of the future.
This is key because the customers for basic research used to care about actionable information first, and publicity second. We've reversed that.
The result is that most basic researchers are essentially professional science bloggers. Illuminating possibilities is a lot more interesting and lucrative than proving (or disproving) things.
1. let go of any genesis type theories. Just because we need a beginning and an end does not mean the universe does. ... lol.
2. See the universe as infinite, border less and stretching beyond any horizon possible. It's just not measurable by human standards.
3. Focus on exploring not the farthest but our nearest objects. We still need warp drive
Bach says it all.
https://briankoberlein.com/201...
at least not natural science. Since physics is supposed to be part of natural science, it also isn't physics. String theorists can do their natural philosophy all they want, it certainly is not a "crisis of physics". Just like people who make highly unscientific claims like "there is only one universe".
The best model should bubble to the top until a better model is proposed. Multiverses and extra dimensions can produce models that "explain" (fit) observations, but they arguably lack parsimony and/or conservation of material/dimensions.
Maybe we are in an epicycle-like stage where we get into the habit of throwing more layers of circles at the problem (planet movements) until the next Copernicus/Galileo/Newtons come with cleaner models and formulas.
Is it that Galileo II hasn't arrived yet, or are we just circle-happy out of habit such that Galileo II is caught up in it also? (or ignored.) Hard to say. Keep an open mind and play with odd ideas.
Table-ized A.I.
String theory is still pretty young. Yes, it has problems. It's very possible that it will be entirely thrown out and replaced with something else, eventually. I welcome healthy debate over the scientific method (I have to, it's one of the rules of said method), but I think some of this is blown a bit out of proportion. Physics being in "crisis" is a bit much.
We had gravity wrong for almost 300 years. Remember Vulcan (not related to Star Trek)? Somehow I think this will be sorted, we just need hard work, perseverance, and maybe another Einstein or two.
Only crack the nuts that crack. You don't put the ones that don't crack in the sack.
Firstly: particle physics is far from the only branch of physics and it makes zero sense to judge the "philosophical foundations of physics" by particle physics alone.
Secondly, it is hardly uncommon to have experimental measurement abilities and theorising out of sync. It was only about 75 years after the Schroedinger equation was proposed that we got anything like direct physical confirmation of the shape or orbitals.Gravity lenses confirming general relativity were observed well after the theory was published. And so forth.
Given how far outside our current experimental and observational abilities the current crop of particle physics lies, a century until we can come up with experimental or observational make evidence does not seem excessive. It's just the way things are.
In the mean time there is plenty of time to get to grips with the theoretical difficulties of getting useful predictions out of string theory. We have seen progres, but another century doesn't seem excessive here either.
Why can't we let people get on with it ... and focus on more "mundane" physics like quantum mechanics? It's not as if that's anything like a dead branch of investigation either.
If a theory produces no verifiable predictions then it is philosophy, not science. If parallel universes have no effect on this universe, then it doesn't matter whether they exist or not.
And as a mathematician - mathematics is not "real", and never has been. Numbers do not physically exist, no one claims they do. But as abstractions mathematics can be a very useful tool in describing reality. As long as you understand the limits of your model. If for instance you were to say "Space has to be infinite because a plane is infinite" you need to prove that a plane is a good model for space - you can't just assume it.
These physicists feel our study of the cosmos has been taken too far from what data can constrain with the extra "hidden" dimensions of string theory and the unobservable other universes of the multiverse... it all adds up to muddied waters
And muddied sentences. "too far from what data can constrain"?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
There might be lots of universes, but since anything that can exchange energy with our universe is part of our universe, the other universes cannot be detected. They are irrelevant.
It is the interpretation of the mathematical measurement of the wave. There are many different interpretation and the Copenhagen one is the one I use (parsimony does not need multiple universe - wave function just collapse). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... until falsification through experiment of one or the other it is all a question of taste and how uch you want to use parsimony in your interpretations.
But again : all those are multiple interpretation of a mathematical artifact, the measurement. That those guy in with their book do not seem realize that and place it on the same level as string theory shows they are themselves "out there".
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
And what IS the evidence then for there being only one universe?
Same goes for time being real.
The article does not provide evidence for this, thus contradicting its own demand for evidence.
It is just bla bla blah.
the authors of a new book
enough said.....
But your not allowed to say it's wrong,think of how many usless jerks there are out there who insist otherwise,they would all have to find something else to piss about with,gawd,they might web be forced to try and do something productive..
The mice got it right...
But the answer is still 42..
we used ghosts, spirits, and other things to explain the world and the universe. These days we use quantum physics, multiple dimensions, and parallell worlds and times.
I seriously do not think that scientists actually believe there are parallel universes. Those ideas have probably always been highly suspect by everyone.
In a documentary however, no wonder they try to seem cheerful about this, because it could be important for a lot of reasons, like what the universe is and how subatomic particles work and stuff.
I worry that the math used for that kind of science, can be used for backdooring todays and future's crypto solutions. I strongly suspect that mathematicians and cryptologists are more than happy seeing things just work, and maybe being efficient, than being secure and sensible approaches to anything crypto.
This is a crisis of high energy physics, not physics in general. For example, condensed matter physics is doing just fine on both the theory and experimental side. :)
And by the way, we also have cool particles: Cooper pairs, Dirac fermions, (probably) Majorana fermions. Just to name a few
-- Sincerely, condensed matter physicist :)
Truth is hard to deal with.
Because your mind makes a lot of shit up.
Excellent book about the history of moder physics by Lee Smolin.
The problem is that the Mathematical frameworks from the beginning of the last century are still being explored. Many theories sschould actually not be considered theories but rather experiments in equivalence classes of theories.
The fact that popular science jumps on every meta-theory and claims that it explains anything does not help.
But string theory is different.
Ok, why? If string theory is so different from other bits of cosmology then why is it that nobody can seemingly generate any testable predictions from it?
Although it has not been a success phenomenologically, it has led to many beautiful results in mathematics and field theory, such as Mirror Symmetry and AdS/CFT.
So you are saying it's generated some interesting math but hasn't been demonstrated to have any relationship to physical reality as we know it, even in theory? If so then it isn't science. If it cannot be falsified by experiment then it isn't science. (allowing for the fact that current technology may not yet permit testing of course) It's just pure mathematics. There is value in that but until it can be tied to observable phenomena then it's just a curiosity and possibly a false trail. So how do we prove that string theory is something more than mathematical masturbation?
These other "quantum gravity" approaches that Smolin champions are completely disconnected from any kind of real physics, and they have not led to any kind of deep mathematical insights.
Explain to me how string theory has been tied to any "real physics" in the sense that it has provided testable predictions. Even theoretically testable predictions if we don't have the technology yet. I have no dog in this fight and I'm certainly not a physicist but everything I know about string theory seems to indicate that it is purely abstract with (so far) no demonstrable relationship to anything we can measure. (Not that any of the alternatives have proven to be any better...) I could not care less whether it has led to "deep mathematical insights" which I read as mathematical proofs with no relationship to actual physics. I do care whether it will lead to a deeper understanding and better models of physics beyond the Standard Model and General Relativity.
We may not be able to determine the nature of the universe as it relates to quantum particles, experimentally.
We experimentally test all sorts of things in relationship to quantum particles all the time. Having trouble parsing the point you are trying to make here.
Are the ideas any less valid, if we can't prove them experimentally (by, say, going back in time, or visiting alternate realities)?
If we cannot prove something experimentally (even in principle since we something lack the technology) then it is not science.
it all adds up to muddied waters and something some researchers see as a "crisis in physics."
Why is it that when there's disagreement, discussion, critical thinking, debunking, dissension, and other nasty differences of perspectives, approaches, analysis, or understanding that such is considered to be a "crisis in (insert science discipline here)?"
We only think of such disruptions as "crises" if we view science as a collection of proven (or highly probable) conclusions. The conclusions are not science; at best, they are based on probable though still questionable results of scientific work. Absent experimental proof, the ideas remain just ideas, though some ideas are more plausible than others given their ability to explain known data. Debating the plausibility of ideas, the methodology of experiments, the relevance of results, and the validity of conclusions based on those results is integral part of the process. Muddied waters is not a crisis; it is just more science.
There was a time when humanity believed that everything could be explained by mechanics.
There also was a time when people believed that gods could explain everything. Some still think this. We learn and we move on.
Higgs was ridiculed for good 50 years.This is no different.
Who ridiculed Peter Higgs? He made a hypothesis about the Higgs Boson (and he wasn't the only one) and it took us about 50 years to find experimental proof. I've never heard of anyone who ridiculed him for it. Won him a Nobel Prize. If that is ridicule, sign me up.
String theory evolved great deal from where it was first formulated, thins that were not good are already invalidated.
Swell. Wake me up when it provides a testable prediction about anything. Nobody outside a few mathematicians gives a shit about whether it has "evolved a great deal".
Mathematics is totally UN-real. A total mental construct and a very useful tool because of that. Almost everything in mathematics is provable (Gödel not withstanding)
A good, if old, book on this is One Two Three... Infinity by George Gamow
Physics uses this mental construct to build hypotheses that can be tested
One problem with current Physics is that it is using the construct and assuming that anything that can be derived MUST be real even if not testable
The other problem (which cannot be blame on mathematics) is adding things like dark matter to make their equations balance.
Not everything will succumb to the Scientific Method. Case in point, History. Not everything can be evidenced by experimentation, or in this case though "empirical validation." Think of it this way, how can you measure a "string?" What would you use to sense its properties? It would be similar to measuring the force applied by an ant's leg using a truck suspension spring. Actually not that close. That isn't to say there is anything wrong with the Scientific method, just that it too has a scope of applicability. Once we leave the realm of particles, we have no more tools. In fact most of the "empirical validation" done to discover things like the Higgs Boson are based on missing energy. So we wrap a particle around a hole in the experiment. Not exactly what I would call "empirical" but those who call for the dismissal of mathematically based theories use such techniques themselves repeatedly.
Everything (nonetheless nothing and something) is fully logically cleared up in the nascent Reality Waveform Theory, which you can conveniently freely read at: https://spiritwave.wordpress.com/reality-waveform-theory
RWT even justifies Einstein's instincts against quantum physics, while fully preserving the tried-and-true results of that well-established area of physics.
Never to yank my own chain that I don't own (or such), but no science-minded person should avoid understanding RWT.
Sines of Impending Sines
DC fixed this back in 1986.
And in 1994.
And in 2005.
And in 2008.
And they're fixing it now.
I tell you what, from what I've seen, the script writer on this version of reality is a hack of the lowest caliber. And lately he stumbles from one ridiculous crisis to another without resolving anything.
I mean, have you seen that storyline about the tech billionaire that is single-handedly remaking both space travel and the auto industries? Preposterous!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
"Some researchers now see popular ideas like string theory and the multiverse as highly suspect"
Try empirical evidence has dispelled the myth of string theory. It's dead. A lot more than a few researcher thought string theory was suspect.
I blame journalists pushing string theory to heights it did not warrant. It became the Kim Kardashian of physics theories, famous for being famous with no substance.
So NPR you are not helping. Popularity does not indicate substance.
Does String Theory make any testable predictions, yet? Or is it still just being used to tie disparate ideas together with maximum hand-waving?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Multiverse theory utterly breaks down when dealing with stochastic events and processes.
If I buy a Powerball ticket, I win in an INFINITE number of universes.
I lose in an infinite number of universes which is precisely 292 million times larger than the infinite number of universes in which I win.
I don't even exist in an infinite number of universes which is 11 octillion times larger than the infinite number of universes in which I exist but do not win the Powerball.
The "universe" doesn't exist in any familiar sense in an infinite number of universes which is 43e35 times larger than the infinite number of universes in which I do not exist but the universe as we see it does.
Sorry, but there is strong indications that time does not actually exist. Time is only a perception, and effect of motion through space. And that the speed of light is only a result of reading the information obtained of the speed through space.
Well, back in 1932 the physics community jumped on the quantum bandwagon and kind of dropped classical physics.
Nuclear forces were discovered, and Gravity was still active...
There is still a lot of classical physics that needs to be investigated.
And quantum is a strange way to do physics anyway.
Like any tool, it works for some things, not for others.
And the electron is still a mystery.
Shouldn't this article be a post in the recent article, "Is Rational Nation Ruled By Science A Terrible Idea" (https://yro.slashdot.org/story/16/07/10/1520234/is-a-rational-nation-ruled-by-science-a-terrible-idea)?
that the doors of academia needs to be open for people who are not "String Theorists." For too long the "String Theorists" cabal have destroyed the careers of people who dare to criticize String Theory. What is need is to allow people to propose any crazy theory they want as long as they propose experiments that can verify or falsify their theory.
experiments and observation is just religion.
The whole problem with modern physics is that we think these are physical problems.
Physics had a run (for about thirty years) where it was so spectacularly successful in the merger of theory with experiment (in the realm of elucidating the sub-atomic zoo) that we forget all about the surrounding social contract.
Just like shrinking the silicon transistor, it was always apparent that the good times would ultimately hit an economic limit, if not an actual physical limit. The value of a new CERN times ten is vanishingly small compared to a new LIGO times anything. I say this even in off chance that CERN discovers new physics.
The social contract that enabled us to fund CERN was the old falsifiability construct. You really knew whether the emperor was wearing clothes.
Not so with the multiverse. It may be that physics needs an infusion of new philosophy, having so spectacularly squeezed out the QED/QCD motherlode (at viable economic scale).
But society can no longer tell whether the multiverse emperor is wearing any clothes, so greater society needs to get out of the funding game.
By all means, continue supplying Sheldon with a blackboard and chalk, if he insists on delving into the multiverse perspective. But no billion dollar toys.
Falsifiability = publicly funded billion dollar toys
No falsifiability = living in your mother's basement eating ramen noodles, with the exiting possibility of cracking the code and earning eternal glory
Falsifiability is as much about the social contract as it ever was about physics.
There's nothing wrong with entertaining all these crazy (or really neat-o) ideas. There's nothing wrong with developing them. There's nothing wrong with suspecting one of them might be right.
But please, for fuck's sake, stop calling them fucking Theories!
That word already meant something. Your completely untested hypothesis, no matter how cool it is, is not a Theory. If you're going to call the string and multiverse ideas "theories" then (I am dead serious) you might as well let Creationism into the fold too. Creationism is no worse, because you've taken away everything that makes science be science.
Now, is that a price you want to pay? Hell no. So watch your mouth and stop using the the "T" word so lightly. (You can still sound cool and use a fancy word to the press, if you want. Watch: "String Hypothesis." See? That wasn't so hard.)
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
"Has Physics Gotten Something Really Important Really Wrong? " The answer to this question is invariably "Yes". Even if THIS PARTICULAR thing isn't entirely wrong, the fundamental "scientific method" ensures that there will ALWAYS be SOMETHING that's really wrong.
However, I've been pretty sure that most of the "multiverse/string theory" stuff has been fundamentally flawed because there is no actual DATA to support it. Mathematical models are fun and pretty, but they all rely on assumptions and simplifications, and we can never really know in advance that our assumptions and simplifications have any correspondence at all to "reality".
So why is it that the climate changes if climate change is not provable???
Or did you mean "AGW climate change"? Because thats provable too: climate changes due to anthropogenic causes that lead to a warmer climate.
CO2: from human actions burning fossil fuels
GW: temperature trends increasing beyond the current approachable trend without ACO2
Ergo: proven AGW.
"but we can confirm existence of one universe."
Citation needed. Personally I can't confirm that this universe exists but if you can then I would be interested to know how.
How very ignorant and droll. It would be impossible to even conceive the existence of a universe if you didn't exist, and if you exist then where you exist is called a universe. Sometimes things are so obvious and simple that people who are expecting something complicated, no matter how otherwise intelligent they may be, will be incapable of seeing it.
The culture - years of study, gaining tenure ( Aademia only here), in a relatively small community... and the whole thing is a very political and competitive society.
Then there's the money. Have to include the latest buzzwords in the grants applications, and include the preferred coauthors.....
Outside of the latest, shiniest, and greatest research subjects - very little physics is supported. So if the breakthroughs come from
any research not part of the latest bandwagon, it will have to be unfunded. So not likely to ever be done, until the circle makes a full revolution.
Math is NOT physics. It is a tool, just like a monkey wrench. ( Yes, I know it has it's own glamour, but that is in the realm of pure math...)
And String theory has some inherently non-physical aspects which are not ompatible with reality.
It actually looks like the grant funding has become a bunch of Star Trek and Star Wars fans who grew up and still hope for all that magical high-tech.
(As well as Pentagon people who want the latest magic weapon... )
We ( physicists ) may get larger colliders, telescopes, and more funding. But the breakthroughs will probably not come from all of that.
Einstein would not get funded today if he went against the popular trend. He didn't when he was doing his research, either.....
This guy is a complete nutjob. He's from human sciences and he sucks even at that. Don't listen to a single word he says. Don't say you have never been warned.
Is the interviewer an idiot? Or are the scientists writing the book just out for publicity? I don't really care.
Of course String Theory and the Many Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Physics are controversial; they are unproven, possibly unprovable, hypotheses, and I don't know a single physicist who says otherwise.
Does that make it a "crisis in science?" Were Newtonian mechanics and Special Relativity "crises?" If so, we need more crises, not fewer.
Unobservable theories that fit mathematical models are really important. It keeps us reaching for unattainable goals. Why is that important? Because we make so many discoveries along the way. It would be like, while trying to figure out what's inside a black hole, we happen to discover a way of generating gravitational waves. The main point of this article seems to be that there's no point pursuing any science with unobservable subjects. People once thought the same about Astronomy - that the ROI isn't worth the effort. In fact, some still do which is why NASA had it's outer solar system exploration budget slashed in 2013. ROI isn't the point when it comes to science where the investment may yield unexpected returns, often by accident. The problem is, you can't have that fortunate accident unless you're set-up to make it. In fact, String Theory research as already yielded practical methods in computational methods and quantum field theory. I hope string theory sticks around, not necessarily because I think we will ever be able to observe alternate/higher dimensions, but the mere act of research has already led to worth-while tangentially related discoveries.
If string theorists can reduce the set of consistent parameters to something that can make a prediction, great. If they can take a subset and make a prediction that's falsified, great. From my position of ignorance, string theory looks more like a new language or formalism to describe physics than an actual theory.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
An assumption of one universe might happen to match the human limitations of observing universes, but it also arbitrarily assumes there's some condition that limits the number of universes. Since we have never discovered such a condition, shouldn't someone using empirical evidence as their standard therefore assume that there is no limit?
I don't know that simply making ideas understandable is a good standard on which to judge theoretical science theories.
In fact one might argue that one of Einstein's most "intriguing" yet understandable thought experiment was the so-called E-P-R paradox (that foreshadowed the demonstration of the effect of quantum entanglement). In this quite reasonable and understandable paper he and his cohorts attempted to argue that a wave function could not encode the full description of reality because of the consequences, there was something else required. By using math, they basically forced the hand of those that favored the Copenhagen interpretation of QM to accept what was then considered absurd.
This makes the reality of P and Q depend upon the process of measurement carried out on the first system, which does, not disturb the second system in any way. No reasonable definition of reality could be expected to permit this.
Of course as we know, it didn't end up going the way they thought it should go (regardless of how strong of personality they had or how understandable their argument was).
There's a saying that gets kicked around theoretical physicists: "Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it." -Niels Bohr
Science may have been really wrong with this: empiricism. It might be that there is a complex interaction between consciousness and physics. Physics takes both their senses and the 3-d universe for granted, as neither can be proven nor have been explained.
Newtonian mechanics can't explain the flat structure of spiral galaxies -- you either have to posit another dimension miraculously imposing an incredible amount of order on random bits of energized reactions in a incredibly random spot in the universe OR some complex interaction with consciousness that man doesn't understand.
There are indeed major, gaping problems in physics: it cannot explain the origin of the Big Bang any better than Christians can explain God AND it has not used its *own* methods to account for the Creation story: multiple dimensions of Time can account for 5000 years of Biblical history -- or even a billion years of natural history occurring in 1 day of Biblical time. Such resolutions solve much of the discord between science and religion.
When you want that solved, call me.
...He comes from the future.
I think the problem is that by the very nature of it, it can't produce falsifiable predictions (if I'm understanding the arguments correctly). If a beautiful string-theory framework could produce something that COULD produce a falsifiable prediction, I think everyone would be super-happy, but I don't think it can do that either - at least I don't think anyone has successfully demonstrated anything like that.
It been more than 40 years and nobody seems to have done that. Compare that with any number of other 'beautiful frameworks' that produced falsifiable predictions (e.g. Relativity (both Special and General)). Even the weird stuff has often produced falsifiable predictions.
I'm not even sure what string-theorists think the end-game is. Do they actually believe they will discover some new theory of everything? Or have they given up?
Identify the real error in physics -> there is a great big one in general relativity. Below the speed of light the theory is one of the most accurate in physics.. Above the speed of light it becomes a complete nonsense. The problem is that the geometry of dimensional time is fundamentally incompatible with a stable FTL spatial geometry.. But without a stable FTL spatial geometry the universe itself essentially does not exist.
An any physics where you have a stable FTL geometry you also get an FTL Simultaneity - which rules out both the relativity of simultaneity and dimensional time, at least on large scales..
Restrict dimensional time to quantum scales and you get a new quantum interpretation of general relativity and a new physics where classical physics, quantum mechanics, general relativity, and FTL physics all fit perfectly together. Completing the puzzle is a new model of quantum FTL physics which only really requires one mind bending thing- the speed of light is zero at quantum scales. Quantum strangeness is simply a result of FTL interaction. (Wave like = FTL, Particle like = STL, Superposition of 2 = FTL, Superposition of 1 = STL) Photons are time differentiated tachyons, all massed objects are gravitational singularities, and quantum scale space time is the single unifying principle in physics. (ie. a G-U-T) Of course this model is still in development and still a work in progress..
Below the speed of light Special Relativity is one of the most accurate theories in physics - above the speed of light..
That was my point about Occam's Razor. It's often tossed-out as a trueism, or a trump card in an argument. The people using it often seem to not fully understand it.
Then comes along something terribly bizarre: somebody offers a more-complex answer not required by observed evidence and tries to apply Occam's Razor.
Yikes
The distance between what we know and what we don't is jagged and uneven across all of physics.
For Instance,
Can we explain how the "single photon at a time" version of the dual slit experiment still manages to produce interference patterns? They are being interfered with by _something_ and it's not photons we produced or can account for.
Personally I think you should bring science back to the pop culture thinking of the 50s and 60s. When science was just a tool you used to fix a problem like a hammer, or a screwdriver. We're trying so hard to get to mars now in 2016, we were there all the time in the 60s, Santa Claus even taught the local populace the meaning of Christmas. There was not a thing you couldn't throw 'Science!'tm. at to solve. And there sure were a lot less insufferably boring ted talks to listen to about it too.
Physicists are all about extra dimensions, but suggest that electricity or magnetism plays a role in our macro universe and you're laughed out the door.
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