String theory

[Mr Awe]

^^ I don't care for the "too beautiful" type of arguments. Our sense of beauty probably doesn't include something like the unpredictable fuziness of quantum theory, but that's true! So, it's not such a good indicator. Nor do I buy the arguments about it being ugly. Our sense of beauty, or the lack of it, just is not a good indicator of truth. The earth centered theory with crystal spheres and all was beautiful, it even predicted the movement of the stars very accurately, but it was not true!

I don't think there's any way for anyone to predict how it will all shakeout with string theory. Either the future evidence will support it or not. If I had to guess, I'd say that it's likely that even if the gist of string theory is correct, the theory itself will be highly changed. There's just no way that something like that can be plucked out of thin air and be mostly correct. Ok, they did put a lot of thought into it and did run simulations to predict the number of dimensions. And, string theory did intentionally try to resolve problems in other theories. But, the solutions and ideas weren't based on evidence and so the liklihood that they're not correct is particularly high. But, they did include some good ideas and we can see how it fits into new data as it comes in. I wonder if the new particular collider will give any answers?

I'd go so far as to say that the reason that string theory appears so beautiful is that it is mostly a product of the human mind and not so fettered by reality. And, most minds will try to create something it consideres beautiful. So, it's more akin to a work of art than anything else. (Although, I still consider it to be a part of science because it produces a universe consistent with ours and it produces testable hypotheses.) I think that's what is behind the beauty of it but is not and indicator of it being true necessarily.

Mr Awe

 

[Locutus of Bored]

This is more appropriate for the SciTech forum.

 

[YellowSubmarine]

I prefer Gnomes.

 

[FlyingLemons]

String theory is an interesting theory: it's given us a few very useful results including the AdS/CFT correspondence which gives insights into the strong force, and it might give insights into the theory of superconductors. However, as a predictive theory it's some way off yet.

 

[YellowSubmarine]

I wouldn't call anything coming out of string theory a “result”. A result is something that you can either verify experimentally, or at the very least you can support with theoretical/mathematical evidence that is based on something experimentally confirmed. String theory has neither, pure mathematical results have no bearing in science. You can't split the Earth into two Earths of the same size by cutting it into a few pieces and reordering them.

 

[John O.]

You can't split the Earth into two Earths of the same size by cutting it into a few pieces and reordering them.

lol. Banach-Tarski. I see what you did there.

Primer?

It's important to be very specific any time the scientific method and theory vs. experiment is being discussed because there are some semantic rubs that really get in the way of meaningful discourse.

To suggest that string theory isn't experimentally verifiable is in some ways true and but in others it's a little misleading. If you're talking about the traditional and albeit slightly naive order in which physicists prefer things to go - i.e., a model is proposed, worked out in extensive detail mathematically to produce a physical prediction, and then that prediction tested - then no, it has not done that.

But if you're asking the question whether string theory can explain existing physical phenomena as adequately as the canon of the Standard Model, the answer is definitely a 'yes'. If you then go a step further and ask if string theory can explain pre-existing phenomena where the Standard Model gets a little fudgy, the answer approaches 'yes'.

One of the problems with this fact being accepted by physicists unequivocally as definitive proof that string theory is more than a metaphysical lump of psuedo-osteopathic physics is that "Standard Model" physics encompass the complete works of hundreds even thousands of physicists working today and it is not all together popular to go around talking about all the places that the Standard Model is lacking; at least not in professional publications. It's a commonplace enough recruitment poster when it comes to physics lectures, books and TV specials for laymen because it's more exciting to talk about physics if there are unanswered questions - but once you start getting into the academic environment, there are those whose entire prestigious careers are founded on the rock solid validity of this ugly, jumbled mess we call the Standard Model - consequently, pointing out 1 or 2 funky corners of physics that string theory resolves more eloquently is something of a dangerous proposition.

That said, few years ago there was talk about it unifying condensed matter physics and nuclear physics. Took some digging but I found the article:

http://physicsandphysicists.blogspot.com/2009/02/string-theory-predicts-experimental.html

Stuff related to behavior of lithium 6 under supercooled conditions. In any event, 'no', String Theory hasn't - say, explicitly predicted the existence of a particle at a specific energy we can look for. It did, however, I believe, accurately predict the neutrino mass in close agreement with an extremely sophisticated, drawn out and difficult experimental process that only concluded about 10 years ago and that should be considered something of an accomplishment.