Stephen Hawking on M-Theory

[Justtristo]

I read an article quoting Stephen Hawking saying that he believed M-Theory to be is the only candidate for ‘‘a complete theory’’ of the universe.

http://education.theage.com.au/cmspage.p...ersion=100

[theVOID]

Sure, it's the only candidate because it's essentially the only anywhere near completed model we have. There is always Garret Lisi's E8 theory but it's got a lot of problems, for instance he needs to achieve some intricate symmetries between leptons and bosons which as many physicists say is not like adding apples and oranges but apples and thunderbolts.

I'm a huge fan of M-Theory, it's just more surprising and fascinating the more you learn about it, and there might just be some evidence for it in cosmology, depending on whether or not the phenomenon of Dark Flow is adequately confirmed - It was predicted by string theorists prior to turning up in the WMAP data, so that kind of predictive power impresses me immensely.

Another favourite of mine is the Holographic Principle, that really fucks with my head, I can't begin to comprehend it beyond it's description of black holes and even that is dense, but that applied to the entire universe, the thought that my 3D experience is a projection from a 2D vibrating surface encompassing the universe is truly mind boggling.

[Justtristo]

Sure, it's the only candidate because it's essentially the only anywhere near completed model we have. There is always Garret Lisi's E8 theory but it's got a lot of problems, for instance he needs to achieve some intricate symmetries between leptons and bosons which as many physicists say is not like adding apples and oranges but apples and thunderbolts.

I'm a huge fan of M-Theory, it's just more surprising and fascinating the more you learn about it, and there might just be some evidence for it in cosmology, depending on whether or not the phenomenon of Dark Flow is adequately confirmed - It was predicted by string theorists prior to turning up in the WMAP data, so that kind of predictive power impresses me immensely.

Another favourite of mine is the Holographic Principle, that really fucks with my head, I can't begin to comprehend it beyond it's description of black holes and even that is dense, but that applied to the entire universe, the thought that my 3D experience is a projection from a 2D vibrating surface encompassing the universe is truly mind boggling.

I know only a little about M-Theory and virtually nothing about the Holographic Principle. I need to read more about it in the very near future.

[The Grand Nudger]

It is all very interesting stuff isn't it. I just finished reading The Grand Design, (as well as re-reading A Brief History of Time and The Universe in a Nutshell)

[theVOID]

Sure, it's the only candidate because it's essentially the only anywhere near completed model we have. There is always Garret Lisi's E8 theory but it's got a lot of problems, for instance he needs to achieve some intricate symmetries between leptons and bosons which as many physicists say is not like adding apples and oranges but apples and thunderbolts.

I'm a huge fan of M-Theory, it's just more surprising and fascinating the more you learn about it, and there might just be some evidence for it in cosmology, depending on whether or not the phenomenon of Dark Flow is adequately confirmed - It was predicted by string theorists prior to turning up in the WMAP data, so that kind of predictive power impresses me immensely.

Another favourite of mine is the Holographic Principle, that really fucks with my head, I can't begin to comprehend it beyond it's description of black holes and even that is dense, but that applied to the entire universe, the thought that my 3D experience is a projection from a 2D vibrating surface encompassing the universe is truly mind boggling.

I know only a little about M-Theory and virtually nothing about the Holographic Principle. I need to read more about it in the very near future.

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

[lanceromega]

Sure, it's the only candidate because it's essentially the only anywhere near completed model we have. There is always Garret Lisi's E8 theory but it's got a lot of problems, for instance he needs to achieve some intricate symmetries between leptons and bosons which as many physicists say is not like adding apples and oranges but apples and thunderbolts.

I'm a huge fan of M-Theory, it's just more surprising and fascinating the more you learn about it, and there might just be some evidence for it in cosmology, depending on whether or not the phenomenon of Dark Flow is adequately confirmed - It was predicted by string theorists prior to turning up in the WMAP data, so that kind of predictive power impresses me immensely.

Another favourite of mine is the Holographic Principle, that really fucks with my head, I can't begin to comprehend it beyond it's description of black holes and even that is dense, but that applied to the entire universe, the thought that my 3D experience is a projection from a 2D vibrating surface encompassing the universe is truly mind boggling.

I know only a little about M-Theory and virtually nothing about the Holographic Principle. I need to read more about it in the very near future.

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...

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.

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...

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

[The Grand Nudger]

Hard to keep up isn't it..hehehe.

[lanceromega]

Hard to keep up isn't it..hehehe.

Wiki while it a good place to start, it has many failings..

[The Grand Nudger]

Yeah I wiki'd the model you mentioned, looks like a pretty detailed page, bm'd it for later perusal...so I can get more up-to-date on my out-of-dateness.

[Anomalocaris]

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

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.