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Post by captainzman on Mar 20, 2011 19:57:05 GMT
String theory has been around longer than I've been alive, but I'm astonished at how complicated (I might even say convoluted) it has become. It doesn't seem to be any closer to solving any problems either. Lately, it seems it has much more detractors than supporters. Is there anyone here that has any hope for the theory?
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Post by Al Moritz on Mar 21, 2011 18:31:07 GMT
I have no hope for the theory. I had none already before I read Smolin's The Trouble with Physics (highly recommended), and now I am certain it is a dead end. It is a first in science that more than 30 years after postulation of a hypothesis there is no evidence whatsoever in favor of it, and still thousands of scientists are working on it. As an experimental scientist I am appalled about the disconnect to observation and experiment (what science is all about), and so is the famous experimental physicist Sheldon Glashow: www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/elegant/view-glashow.htmlIt is a crazy world. It will be a rude awakening when finally the last hope is broken and everybody, slowly but surely, will realize that string theory is a failure. The latest LHC experiments, looking for supersymmetry, do not look promising at all, see Peter Woit's blog: www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=3462and this link: snipurl.com/27o708 |
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Post by Al Moritz on Mar 21, 2011 18:32:15 GMT
(LHC = Large Hadron Collider)
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matt
Clerk
Posts: 18
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Post by matt on Mar 24, 2011 19:53:43 GMT
Al Moritz,
Is there a competing hypothesis you prefer? I'm not being snarky asking this it's just string theory is the only one I've heard of that most scientists have seemed interested in. I recently read an article on E8 having something to do with a unified theory but it seemed like mostly media hype (it helped that the theorist was a surfer with a phd). Do you think there's anything to any of the other ideas?
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