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String theory is in trouble?

R

RichardE

Banned
Nobel laureate admits string theory is in trouble
10 December 2005
From New Scientist Print Edition. Subscribe and get 4 free issues.

"WE DON'T know what we are talking about." That was Nobel laureate David Gross at the 23rd Solvay Conference in Physics in Brussels, Belgium, during his concluding remarks on Saturday. He was referring to string theory - the attempt to unify the otherwise incompatible theories of relativity and quantum mechanics to provide a theory of everything.

?The state of physics today is like it was when we were mystified by radioactivity?Gross - who received a Nobel for his work on the strong nuclear force, bringing physics closer to a theory of everything - has been a strong advocate of string theory, which also aims to explain dark energy. "Many of us believed that string theory was a very dramatic break with our previous notions of quantum theory," he said. "But now we learn that string theory, well, is not that much of a break."

He compared the state of physics today to that during the first Solvay conference in 1911. Then, physicists were mystified by the discovery of radioactivity. The puzzling phenomenon threatened even the laws of conservation of mass and energy, and physicists had to wait for the theory of quantum mechanics to explain it. "They were missing something absolutely fundamental," he said. "We are missing perhaps something as profound as they were back then."
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http://www.newscientist.com/channel/fundamentals/mg18825293.700

So what exactly is he saying? I start university next year and have always been reading up on latest physics ect, as it interests me greatly. So what he is saying is that we are still missing a fundamental theory? Can anyone who is involved in Physics comment on this?
 
What he's saying hasn't changed since it's inception, and that is that it is as of yet unprovable, unverifiable. It's just a bunch of math equations that work out fine but may or may not be describing our universe. I can model an imaginary fictional landscape on the computer all descibed by mathematical equations but that doesn't make it real.

Also I'd like to add that "Nobel laureate admits string theory is in trouble" is a very misleading title given the fact that no new information is given in that article's synopsis. I hate journalists that want to grab people's attention by misleading the public.

First they misled their readers by touting string theory as the end all be all uniter of big and small and now they want to grab your attention by shouting the opposite. The truth perhaps lies somewhere in between.
 
The statement "But now we learn that string theory, well, is not that much of a break" is quite different from saying string theory is untestable. It is possible that in another part of the speech he complained about untestability but it is hard to see how that is compatible with the view that string theory is not much of a break from quantum mechanics.
 
What's missing is "God" factor.
"Intelligent design" that is beyond human comprehension.
Its about time for scientists swallow the bittersweet, or "poison", depending on their degree of atheism.
 
Originally posted by: designit
What's missing is "God" factor.
"Intelligent design" that is beyond human comprehension.
Its about time for scientists swallow the bittersweet, or "poison", depending on their degree of atheism.
Click to expand...

:roll:
 
Originally posted by: designit
What's missing is "God" factor.
"Intelligent design" that is beyond human comprehension.
Its about time for scientists swallow the bittersweet, or "poison", depending on their degree of atheism.
Click to expand...

well then, hopefully a few decades from now, we'll become gods. 🙂
 
"intelligent design" may have it's space here. these things are way too small to be seen/tested. i doubt that they have any effect on us. all i'm saying is that beyond a certain point, anyone's guess is as good as the others. both being able to simulate reality.
 
Originally posted by: designit
What's missing is "God" factor.
"Intelligent design" that is beyond human comprehension.
Its about time for scientists swallow the bittersweet, or "poison", depending on their degree of atheism.
Click to expand...

300 hundred years ago..if you told a person what DNA was..they would call you crazy, as God just made your body, don't worry, we will keep on discovering everythingm and the religious nutjobs will have to swallo that bittersweet or poison pill that god is just wishfull thinking.
 
Anyone ever read "Faster Than the Speed of Light" by Joao Magueijo? He note that the big hurdle to a unified theory is that the speed of light is always a fixed speed. He hypothesizes that if the speed of light varies then the conflict between Einstein and Quantum Mechanics disappears.

It's an interesting thought.
 
what about M Theory? Saw it on discovery. Beyond the fact I know little to nothing, apparantly it is like string theory but this time everything is based on these huge membrane places one trillionth of a milimeter thick (ie: we can't see it). Supposedly some girl up in Harvard got things to make sense by calculating weird stuff like gravity as a force is so weak here because it is leaking over from an alternate paralell dimension and all her work was supposed to have made sense. Obviously I can't attest to the math as it seems it is largely founded on theoretical mathematics (and if you've ever tried to read a math journal its just a long essay 😉) but I wonder if it has any impact on this
 
Originally posted by: silverpig
Originally posted by: designit
What's missing is "God" factor.
"Intelligent design" that is beyond human comprehension.
Its about time for scientists swallow the bittersweet, or "poison", depending on their degree of atheism.
Click to expand...

:roll:
Click to expand...

What's missing is the Jello factor. I have this bowl of jello in my fridge that is a superintelligent shade of blue. It is responsible for changes during key times in the development of the universe. This Jello factor is why we are all here at all. Although I can't prove any of this generations of my anscestors have told me it is true so it must be. Furthermore I know it's true because none of you Scientific whacko's can provide even one shred of evidence against it! So there.

I'm going to sue my local school district now because they refuse to teach this.
 
At this point, string theory is all theoritical and is therefore always "in trouble." I'd be willing to bet that there are dozens of applications of the same general string theory principals (ie our universe is based on strings) each offering different equations that vary by different degrees. Until we have some cold hard data, any one of thoes models may or may not be the correct one. Only time will tell.

Headline grabbing article++
 
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