Stephen Hawking on M-Theory

[Autumnlicious]

For a counterpoint, read Lee Smolin. In Lee's opinion, string theory is a mathematically indulgence disguising itself as a scientific theory, which has severely handicapped actual productivity of theoretical physics for 30 years by pushing every more untestable musings that makes no specific prediction, thus despite making ever more fantastic claims of infinite promise, had in reality made the last 30 years the only 30 year period since Newton when nothing new has really been added to the fundation of physics.
He also argued that strong theory blighted 2 whole generation of physicsts by training them to favor mathematical cleverness and extravagant visualizing over intellectual vigor of the testable hypothesis.

When I interned at the Santa Cruz Institute for Particle Physics at UCSC, one professor, this elderly gentleman of eighty or so, hobbling around with such care that one might've suspected a slight breeze would've done him in, came with us to lunch at the local pizza place. As I sat down next to him, still interested from his talk on cosmology and traditional particle physics, I asked him "So what do you think, about this string theory thing."

Right then, he turned to me suddenly, and said: "Frankly, I think it is a load of shit." and resumed eating.

Being a rather unjaded high school intern (compared to the jaded motherfucker I am now), needless to say I was utterly caught off guard by his candor. And suppressing a slight laugh too.

[Anomalocaris]

When I interned at the Santa Cruz Institute for Particle Physics at UCSC, one professor, this elderly gentleman of eighty or so, hobbling around with such care that one might've suspected a slight breeze would've done him in, came with us to lunch at the local pizza place. As I sat down next to him, still interested from his talk on cosmology and traditional particle physics, I asked him "So what do you think, about this string theory thing."

Right then, he turned to me suddenly, and said: "Frankly, I think it is a load of shit." and resumed eating.

Being a rather unjaded high school intern (compared to the jaded motherfucker I am now), needless to say I was utterly caught off guard by his candor. And suppressing a slight laugh too.

Except Lee Smolin was a noted string theoretician. He thinks string theory is magnificient, it's beautiful, he's proud of his contribution to it. it's just not real science. He thinks string theory makes grand promises which has no significant testable predictive power, it has been pushed as the wave of an indefinite and probably very far-off future at the expense bread and butter science whose validity can be tested and whose contribution to physics can thus be made concrete. He thinks that those entiring the field of theoretical physics in the last 20 years have mostly been shunted off into strong theory as the only real future of theoretical physics has in effect created a talent gap of at least 20 years amongst people who treat physics as a real science.

[Autumnlicious]

It was just an anecdote that I thought was fun to tell, Chuck.

If we're gonna throw names around, I'll toss out Bill Atwood as the professor who utterly stopped a young me with his down-to-earth response.
REF: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/GLAST/...d-bio.html

Grow a sense of humor, silly.

[Justtristo]

Read some work by Leonard Susskind, his books are awesome.

The book "The Black Hole War" about his battle with Hawking on whether or not black holes destroy quantum information is my excellent and describes a lot of relevent concepts in physics, the other one "The Cosmic Landscape" is less specific and deals with 'the illusion of intelligent design'.

http://www.amazon.com/Cosmic-Landscape-S...t_ep_dpt_2

Thank You for the recommendation, I will surely read them some time soon.

[theVOID]

actually that not true, it not the complete model or theory but an all incompassing one. Basically M theory includes all the major GUT such as the 5 various string, super Gravity and S8XS8. The main problem is that it is so broad that it cannot not make any independent predictions that we can test to verify if it truely correct...

That isn't entirely true, Dark Flow was predicted by string theorist Laura Mersini-Houghton in 2006, two years prior to Alexander Kashlinsky discovering the phenomenon in the WMAP data - The actual data essentially matches the predictions.

Lately Cern and other Major Partical accelerators has collected data that seem to fall away from all the major GUT that M theory embrace, instead it appears the data matches the prediction of a subset of SuperSymmetry theory called MSSM (Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model ).
this would be a major Blow to M theory.

Interesting, what exactly were the observations that contrast M-theory? I was lead to believe that supersymmetry in M-theory posits essentially the same particle-pairs as the supersymmetric standard model.

the Holographic Principle, depends on symmetry that is only observe in anti Desitter universe, which many observations indicate that our universe is not, but it make useful mathematical models that help M theorist tackle major issues dealing with Structure of Space time. Another blow to the Holographic Principle came recently when Observation of several Frequencies of light from a distant Quasar fail to show any indication of a fine structure of space time, at least at a scale of Planck length or greater...

The holographic principle shouldn't show such a thing if I remember correctly, the observations from within the projection should be "blurry" so no detail at a plank scale should be resolvable. We should see a blurring of particles and forces at around 10^-16 metres, much smaller than Plank length - This is because the volume of the projected sphere of the universe is much larger than the number of quibits than can be contained on the surface, so the bits inside the projection must loose detail and be made of larger chunks relative to the plank sized quibits on the surface. http://scienceblogs.com/purepedantry/200...phic_p.php

Also the De Sitter universe, spacetime as a flat region, is only necessary for the 2D brane that generates the projection, from within the projection we should see a spheroid that is finite yet infinitely traversable - This reconciles both the observations of a spheroid universe and the mathematical contention that the net energy must be zero.

So at the moment MSSM is the leading candiated for a Grand unfication Theory..

It's certainly appealing in that it requires no major new axioms in physics, but I don't think it's going to hold up. At least it's falsifiable and can be verified by experiment in the not too distant future.

For a counterpoint, read Lee Smolin. In Lee's opinion, string theory is a mathematically indulgence disguising itself as a scientific theory, which has severely handicapped actual productivity of theoretical physics for 30 years by pushing every more untestable musings that makes no specific prediction, thus despite making ever more fantastic claims of infinite promise, had in reality made the last 30 years the only 30 year period since Newton when nothing new has really been added to the fundation of physics.
He also argued that strong theory blighted 2 whole generation of physicsts by training them to favor mathematical cleverness and extravagant visualizing over intellectual vigor of the testable hypothesis.

I always admire a good counterpoint, I'll check it out, though I highly doubt that string theory has anything to do with the lack of discoveries - most physicists I've read on the subject put such a thing down to the lack of ability to probe high energy and small scale phenomenon - The deeper we get the further and fewer between new fundamental discoveries are likely to be. Seeing as the mathematics of the standard model has all but been resolved the lack of experimental grout seems much more a factor.

And don't be so quick to say that string theory makes no testable predictions, there are at least a few that may be within the realm of testability, as I stated above Dark Flow was predicted by string theorists before it was observed, that predictive power while being in no way a definite conformation for the truth of the model is certainly impressive.

[Anomalocaris]

The problem with string theory's predictive power as I understand it is, those of it's predictions which can be tested in the foreseeable future are not unique, nor do they flow uniquely from string theory, nor are they required to be true if string theory as they are currently constructed are to be true.

So string theory lack falsifiability. I personally know a winner of Nobel prize in physics whose work in symmetry and field theory were vital to both the standard model and string theory. He was the director of one of the institutes of theoretical physics where some of the more important string researcher did their works. He advises really talented young students to avoid a career in theoretical physics because in his opinion the politics of the academic physics is such one could get a tenured position without being a dedicated string researcher, and while string research may generate many interesting advances in mathematics, it is unlikely to generate the sort of durable, verifiable fundamental advance in physics that would crown the career of anyone entering the theoretical physics field now.
He contrast the state of theoretical physics now extremely unfavorably with the state when he entered the field in the late 40s. He consider that time to have been an golden age in which development along multiple fronts are encouraged, while phycists were rigorous with the concept of testability, and were humble about the implication, while they now are cavalier with testability, and extravagant and over-reaching with implication.

[theVOID]

The problem with string theory's predictive power as I understand it is, those of it's predictions which can be tested in the foreseeable future are not unique, nor do they flow uniquely from string theory, nor are they required to be true if string theory as they are currently constructed are to be true. So string theory lack falsifiability.

Sure, string theory can account for essentially any phenomenon at the scales we presently deal with so it isn't falsifiable given our current ability but that isn't the case when dealing with higher energy physics - One notable prediction would be that of string harmonics, given it turned out to be false I believe there would be no way to reconcile string theory with observation and yes, it is something that we would only see at much higher energies than presently accessible.

It could also be falsified if Quantum Mechanics or General Relativity were falsified, but I think we both know the chances of that are fuck all.

Regardless, we have some empirical support for the notion in the prediction and conformation of Dark Flow, so until such time as we can confirm more of the unique prediction it remains a viable candidate and interesting model but little more.

I personally know a winner of Nobel prize in physics whose work in symmetry and field theory were vital to both the standard model and string theory. He was the director of one of the institutes of theoretical physics where some of the more important string researcher did their works. He advises really talented young students to avoid a career in theoretical physics because in his opinion the politics of the academic physics is such one could get a tenured position without being a dedicated string researcher, and while string research may generate many interesting advances in mathematics, it is unlikely to generate the sort of durable, verifiable fundamental advance in physics that would crown the career of anyone entering the theoretical physics field now.

Interesting, that's a bit of a flip from the time where a person couldn't get taken seriously for studying it.

He contrast the state of theoretical physics now extremely unfavorably with the state when he entered the field in the late 40s. He consider that time to have been an golden age in which development along multiple fronts are encouraged, while phycists were rigorous with the concept of testability, and were humble about the implication, while they now are cavalier with testability, and extravagant and over-reaching with implication.

Sure, but that could also be explained by the fact we have all but reached the limits of our technical abilities. Tell me, what discoveries can you conceive of being made given our technical limits that could lead to the "verifiable fundamental advance in physics that would crown the career of anyone entering the theoretical physics field now"?