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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.
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...
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.
There is no crisis of physics here, jut a massive layer of incomplete work.
that is a crisis.
furthermore there has been hardly any real progress in resolving this incomplete work/problems, for several decades.
you seems to have got confused.
"There is only one universe" - sounds like theological clam. And just as unconfirmed ad multiverses.
but we can confirm existence of one universe.
existence of others should only be included in theories if there is confirmation, not because its easier to do maths, by assuming multiverses, when working on some pure theories.
"Time is real" - Einstein might disagree. Time is the imaginary part in the complex equations of space-time.
depending on personal authority, however great , is not part of science.
your last sentence says a lot about what is wrong . theoretical assumptions should not be taken for unquestionable facts.
"Math is selectively real" - Only f the reality is defined by the capabilities of our brains and our technologies,
when you abandon empirical validation, which is what your claim implies, you are in the field of pure unfalsifiable theory, and thus theology.
gods or ghosts(and many other things) are also defended with claims about limits of our brains and technologies.
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.
https://xkcd.com/397/