String Theory, at 20, Explains It All (or Not)

The New York Times ^ | December 7, 2004 | Dennis Overbye

[mikrofon]

May the Schwarz be with you!

[bayourod]

A string walks into a bar. The bartender says "We don't serves strings in here. Get out."
The string walks outside, musses himself up, makes a couple loops around himself and reenters the bar.
The bartender says "Hey, aren't you that string I just threw out?"
The string replies,"No, I'm a frayed knot."

[Semper]

The lesson, he said, may be that time and space are only illusions or approximations, emerging somehow from something more primitive and fundamental about nature...

I like this. It allows for the view that the fundamental reality and nature of existence is that it is spiritual. This material, mortal, earthly perception of existence is an illusion and when we allow the influence of spiritual reality to come into our experience (the reality that Jesus Christ demonstrated - overcoming every human problem and limitation) we realize our true nature and existence as spiritual "children of God" - spiritual offspring of a spiritual Source.

[AdmSmith]

Thanks for posting this. Lubos Motl at Harvard has written about this article at his blog http://motls.blogspot.com/

Lubos regularly writes comments on String theory, but politics as well, he is a conservative (Sic!)

[snarks_when_bored]

Yeah, but I want to differentiate between things that we know HOW to test, but CAN'T until we achieve some new technological milestone (like a more powerful supercollider, or probes that are light-years away), vs. those things for which we can't even devise a good gedanken experiment to validate/invalidate.

I sympathize with that point of view. But I've recently been reading the history of the Dirac equation. That equation, which predicts the existence of anti-electrons (positrons), was developed by Dirac from just fooling around with trying to put special relativity together with the new quantum mechanics of Heisenberg and Schrödinger. Dirac played around until he got something interesting, then was able to predict some spectral deviations that non-relativistic QM couldn't predict...and he also got the prediction of anti-matter, too, which was a neat plus (er, minus?). Anyway, the Dirac equation turns out not to be right, but it was right for its time, and now it has been re-interpreted in Relativistic Quantum Field Theory as an operator equation, and all is well (within its range of applicability).

The point? We don't always know where our mathematical imagination, guided as far as possible by physical insight, is going to lead. Sometimes the mathematics and the physics get out of phase (which seems to be happening now); but I trust that that will be taken care of in the future.

[BikerNYC]

...but it is this admission which, so far, makes it tantamount to religion.

Not religion, it keeps it on the level of mathematics with no evidence that the equations describe reality.

[snarks_when_bored]

...and he also got the prediction of anti-matter, too, which was a neat plus (er, minus?).

Actually, in the case of the positron, it was a plus!

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

That Edge site is interesting.....taking a serious branch here:

"WHAT KIND OF A THING IS A NUMBER?"

[snarks_when_bored]

You wrote:

The lesson, he said, may be that time and space are only illusions or approximations, emerging somehow from something more primitive and fundamental about nature...

I like this. It allows for the view that the fundamental reality and nature of existence is that it is spiritual. This material, mortal, earthly perception of existence is an illusion and when we allow the influence of spiritual reality to come into our experience (the reality that Jesus Christ demonstrated - overcoming every human problem and limitation) we realize our true nature and existence as spiritual "children of God" - spiritual offspring of a spiritual Source.

Please note that the quote you cited ends with the words "something more primitive and fundamental about nature", where by 'nature' is meant 'the physical world'.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

You want reality......ever see a real Alexander Horned Sphere?

[beezdotcom]

Not religion, it keeps it on the level of mathematics with no evidence that the equations describe reality.

Ahem. If they weren't proffering that the equations describe reality, then your assessment would be quite correct.

However, they believe, without any evidence. Hmmm.

[beezdotcom]

Sometimes the mathematics and the physics get out of phase (which seems to be happening now); but I trust that that will be taken care of in the future.

I, too, share the same 'faith' that string theory will turn out to be more than an interesting diversion. (Hmm. There's that pesky word again...)

[BikerNYC]

No. Has anyone?

[BikerNYC]

What, exactly, are they believing? The article is pretty clear that physicists do not know whether or not String Theory describes how the universe works. It would be nice to know, one of them commented.

[snarks_when_bored]

beez, most of ordinary life is based on what Santayana called 'animal faith'. Far be it from me to deny the obvious. However, scientists are (or ought to be) ultimately willing to over-throw their pet theories if evidence and argument convince them that they're mistaken. The key is to come up with theories capable of being mistaken (Popperian falsifiability)! Science does this almost all of the time; religion, I'm afraid, never does.

[Semper]

Please note that the quote you cited ends with the words "something more primitive and fundamental about nature", where by 'nature' is meant 'the physical world'.

Yes. And I contend that the primitive and fundamental reality of the physical world is that it is illusion. It is the nature of human consciousness to draw firm conclusions from incomplete information and appearances. I call it "flat earth" thinking. Physical appearances have lead to incorrect conclusions about the nature of existence throughout human history. The more we learn about physics the more the illusionary nature of the physical world is revealed.

[maestro]

Your# 43.....nope.

....experience (the reality that Jesus Christ demonstrated - overcoming every human problem and limitation) we realize our true nature and existence as spiritual "children of God" - spiritual offspring of a spiritual Source.

Jesus (the Creator-Blood-Redeemer God, second Eternal person of the Trinity

[Jesus was NEVER a pre-existing angel or spirit creature,...neither were we human creatures]...

There NEVER was a time Jesus did not exist!

There WAS a time when we creatures and all creation Did Not Exist!

When Jesus incarnated (God became FLESH) He Bodily/Materially RESURRECTED from among the dead ones....(St. Luke 24:39)

At His 2nd comings......believer too will resurrect same as He,.....Bodily!

Angels have only single-natures and are created spirit creatures,...

......Humans are creatures having BOTH Material and spiritual natures...

ie.,......we creatures are NOT God,....never were....The creation is NOT God-the-Creator,...

The INFINITE Creator-Redeemer-God created thisFINITE universe,...Ex-Nihilo ( From/out of NOTHING)...

Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah!

(Tonight is 1st lighting!)

Hanukkah Tree.....Hanukkah is another of Jesus' MIRACLES!

Shalom Shalom!

See the unique LIGHT of The World, Creator/God Jesus!.....that ain't natural light!

:-)

[ImaGraftedBranch]

However, scientists are (or ought to be) ultimately willing to over-throw their pet theories if evidence and argument convince them that they're mistaken. The key is to come up with theories capable of being mistaken (Popperian falsifiability)! Science does this almost all of the time; religion, I'm afraid, never does.

Really? Explain how evolution is testable (you can't). Science proceeds one death at a time.

[Southack]

"The cosmological constant is back...it seems to account for the accelerating cosmic expansion..."

No, it doesn't account for the expansion of the universe. Not at all. Not even close. Add the cosmological constant back in to GR and you get a *static* universe, per Einstein's 1919 paper...something that Edwin Hubble conclusively disproved in the 1960's with his direct observations of our expanding universe.

All of this back and forth nonsense with GR and String Theories just goes to show that our current crop of scientists will try *anything*, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid saying that either GR or QM is bunk. Putting the CC back into GR, 4 decades after Hubble, now *that* is funny!

Yet one of those two theories *is* bunk. They are mutually exclusive, after all.

[maestro]

Your# 59......Amen!

They are mutually exclusive, after all!

:-)