Perhaps the solution is to push String Theory out of physics departments into math departments. But, the moment ST produces a testable prediction (as math often does) then one would likely want it in physics departments. Regardless, this video actually appears utterly pointless -- in that no point was made other than to update the current state of the well-known controversy.
"Unraveling" String Theory? 10 mins of personal opinion without any attempted reason why String Theory is somehow flawed. When approximations of Feynman Diagrams began to take on theoretical textures, and a few clever folk realized that time slices of these things could look like bits of string with inherent elegant mathematics, then folk began to think of the world as perhaps actually being bits of string. ST is mathematics that is worthy of investigation equal with math. What's the contest?
The 'regular' Standard Model demands that all bosons are massless. But the guage bosons have mass and are actually very heavy. The first article on the Higgs boson was written in 1964. The paper attempted to explain why the gauge bosons have mass. 1964 was what? 50 years ago? There is definitely historical stagnation in physics in terms of experimentation. This could be due to economic factors rather than superstring fanaticism.
@otonanoC Stagnation due to economic factors? I don't think so, because e.g. there are several billions pured into the LHC in CERN to search for the Higgs boson. Theorical-Particle and Solid state physics get much more funding than Astrophysics for example. Imo, the problem is that the whole Standard model may require replacement, and Quantum Loop Gravity could do that GR-QM-GUT unification job better than String Theory.
The "regular" Standard Model predicts that all bosons are massless. The paper on the Higg's boson was written in 1964. The paper tried to describe why guage bosons have mass. That was what? 50 years ago? There is definitely historical stagnation in physics in terms of experimentation.
The "regular" Standard Model predicts that all bosons are massless. The paper on the Higg's boson was written in 1964. The paper tried to describe why guage bosons have mass. That was what? 50 years ago? There is definitely historical stagnation in physics in terms of experimentation.
Excellent. Not only good scientific discussion but an excellent commentary on where our society is today. This will be interesting to view this video in ten years. Thank you for the posting and making me think.
Excellent. Not only good scientific discussion but an excellent commentary on where our society is today. This will be interesting to view this video in ten years. Thank you for the posting and making me think.
Great Post! EPSRC (Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council) has officially cut funding to mathematical sciences like String Theory, only statistic now. My research which was published in the Indian Journal of Science and Technology (Peer-Reviewed) showed a clear computational link between quantum structures and the motion of binary stars without Strings. The posters comments also extends to the science journals where String Theory sit and block more valid competing research.
@BinaryStars100 Sorry that this happened to you dude, but these times are hard for pure theoricists. People don't see the long term usefulness of developing new math tools. Subbed btw.
@Neueregel I don't believe in pure physics. I believe in pure physics as a step in a process to prove its validity. The proof is in the lab which ultimately leads to new technologies. Pure physics as an end is philosophy which is sometimes useless. My paper showed the mechanics of quantum process on a large scale. If it was just a theory String Theorist would not have feared it. There is a lot of theorist only one can be correct. And it's not String Theory. FACT!
@BinaryStars100 Only one can be correct? What about many theories (under the umbrella M-Theory) as the multiple sides of the same coin?? Yes, String theory doesn't yet apply for falsifiability criteria. However all String Theory maths insofar, work neatly. (check the numerous papers by Witten et al, and countless other Archiv.org teams. (except some problems on white holes' entropy) You just can't ditch a whole theory like ST. Loop quantum gravity is also not solid all, experimentally speaking.
@Neueregel My paper was published in a science and technology journal and presented at Sofia Technical University's applied physics department (Physic Conference). My paper's about reality. Archiv paper's are generally not peer-reviewed. Who says we can't ditch a whole theory. If you want to save part of it, test it and modify based on experimental test not mathematical consistency. Anything can be made mathematically consistent. In fact, Ed Witten should read my work.
@BinaryStars100 Hey again: 1. It's ArXiv and not Archiv. 2. 'generally not peer-reviewed?' Well, 80%+ of Arxiv papers go on to be published on major journals like Astrophysical Journal, MNRAS, etc. 3."Ed Witten should read my work"? Come on man, that's a bit way too much to ask.He has 1500+ published papers on theoretical physics and the highest h-index for physicists in the world.What's your reference or impact on science?1 published paper in Bulgaria will NOT make Witten read your work.Sorry.
@Neueregel I think you mispelled ArXiv as well. Witten is in the publishing business, it is the world of citations, impact factors and grant proposals. How many of the 1500+ are significant to science? Enstien's paper on the Photoelectric Effect was one worthy of a Nobel Prize. Academia is impressed by publications. Private sector research is impressed with results. I got results. String Theorist got 30+ years of excuses worthy of getting fired in private sector research.
@BinaryStars100 Anyway, besides spelling there are more important things.I apologise for that remark.I think we are NOT in a position to judge a 60-yr old physicist with 30+ years of publications. Science history will judge Witten better. Besides, if Strings will ever be discovered in the next decades, Witten will ASAP be given the Nobel Prize along with Gazzaniga et al. - Private sector is mostly impressed by performance and perspiration rather than results especially in such theoretical fields
@Neueregel Bell Labs is a private research entity, EPSRC is a government funded entity and both had a strong interest in fundamental research until now. They know what theoretical physics has become. We can't all be Einstein but we can protect our field for future generations. Mathematicians like Ed Witten the Field Medalist works hard to protect the field of mathematics. Einstein will be remember as a great physicist who gave future generations something to build on.
@BinaryStars100 I agree with you, though some people call String Theory a pseudoscience because it cannot be empirically tested or falsified. What's your opinion on this? Thx.
@Neueregel String Theory started as a science attempting to explain the strong force. The Standard Model's explanation was preferred and String Theorist lost or were unable to get work. As a pseudoscience they avoid the empirical test that cost them dearly. It is now a money game until there is no more money for any fundamental theoretical physics. The mathematicians will go back to a health maths department & theoretical physics will have to be rescued by the applied physics departments.
@BinaryStars100 Only one can be correct? What about many theories (under the umbrella M-Theory) as the multiple sides of the same coin?? Yes, String theory doesn't yet apply for falsifiability criteria. However all String Theory maths insofar, work neatly. (check the numerous papers by Witten et al, and countless other ArXiv.org teams. (except some problems on white holes' entropy) You just can't ditch a whole theory like ST. Loop quantum gravity is also not solid all, experimentally speaking.
[...] as somewhat of a mathematical catalyst- it has brought forth a wealth of new ideas and approaches to problems in within pure mathematics, and for that I think its study is worth it.
When it comes to your issue with funding and positions, however, I agree- ultimately we cannot determine if any of this is true at the moment, so it would be wise, in my opinion, for other possibilities to be pursued just a vigorously (and likely with mathematical pushes as well, to be fair).
Well, first thing- I see one practical use for string theory (probably not practical in the everyday, average Joe sense that you presumably mean, but I still think it is very practical). I am currently working on a PhD studying string theory, however my background was entirely in mathematics (and I was advanced to candidacy for my PhD in pure mathematics before switching to the physics program- mostly just because it was more interesting to me), and I can tell you that string theory has [...]
I believe I heard you say it doesn't really relate to anything relevant in the "real world". However, I think finding the origin of gravity would be a great scientific triumph. I also believe that if we continue study, all the knowledge we have about string theory (very little at the moment) will not only grow , but find a practical use in the "real world". It may also prove (or strongly imply) that modern (classical) physics is wrong, wouldn't you like to know?
nice video tho i was wondering why stephen hawking has so much faith in m theory or string theory to where he thinks its gonna b proven the theory of everything .... sounds like he's taking a religious step of faith for this scientific philoshy which is unusual for a scentific mind like hawkings or am i missing out on any new scientific breakthroughs
i liked this video at first. it was simple. also the big bang theory reference was nice. but it just kept going down hill after politics was mentioned. you say you lecture this stuff? and you're complaining about bias! i don't know much about string theory and was hoping to learn something about it. this video did help a little but the title is very misleading
PS: On the question of whether string theory makes predictions, well it does! As long as you have a non-religious definition of predictions. In fact here is a paper that may be especially relevant in about 36 hours from now:
arxiv,org/abs/1112.1059
(change the comma to a period to get the url of course)
@cloffff As soon as rumors started floating around that there were strong indications of a 125 GeV Higgs, a bunch of string theorists started publishing papers "predicting" it. It's truly amazing--string theory has been around for 30 years, and COMPLETELY BY COINCIDENCE, string theorists started coming out of the woodwork just before the combined data announcement with their "predictions."
@acr08807 There was one major prediction involving string theory that I know of, and that was Gordon Kane et al's work on M-theory phenomenology (1112.1059). It was the one that got the most attention and deservedly so. If thats the one you're thinking of, they made essentially same prediction, 127 GeV, in their powerpoint presentation from months earlier. There are other papers in that sequence too
These (flawed) sociological arguments only exist because of the lack of good physical arguments.
@cloffff Kane posted 1112.1059 on December 5, after the combined analysis rumors were out. That makes it a postdiction, not a prediction. His August presention slides (I wasn't at the talk) says "Single light Higgs boson, mass about 127 GeV unless gauge group extended." That's at tan beta > 7, if you look at the graphs. Where does the tan beta > 7 assumption come from, because that's not in his slides.
@cloffff I'm a physicist, not a sociologist. In my opinion is that the theoretical basis of the sociological study of physics, like string theory, is so nebulous as to produce no useful predicitons, and therefore explains nothing. I'm also not a stickler for prediction as a test of good science--there's nothing wrong with fitting a model to observation to see where it leads.
@cloffff My point isn't that string theory is wrong, it's that it can be used to predict just about anything. There are supersymmetric and non-supersymmetric string theories. If we discover that SUSY is right or wrong, will that validate string theory? If someone were to discover that Oompah Loompahs are real, no doubt some string theorist would show that string theory predicted them, too. A hypothesis that can explain anything explains nothing.
@cloffff Anyway, Kane said on Motl's blog that, if his model is correct, LHC will find gluinos with unique decays "in the coming months." That is a real (albeit not detailed) prediction, and if we see the gluinos, I'll be back here eating a lot of crow. On the other hand, if we don't see them in the next couple of years, will you admit that string theory turned out not to have predicted a Higgs around 125 GeV after all?
@acr08807 The predictions of Kane's work apply to the compactification scenario of string/m-theory. It assumes that the matter content below the compactification scale is that of the MSSM. So while it applies to a very large portion of the viable stringy scenarios, but its not generic to all of string theory. So if after the next few years , if we dont see gluinos, then sure Id agree the Higgs prediction doesn't apply and we've likely ruled out (or disfavored) a significant class of scenarios.
@cloffff Is there any experiment or set of experiments that you can imagine that, if they produced a certain set of results, would make you say string theory is wrong, but that would not disprove the Standard Model or General Relativity?
@cloffff String theorists bat around the number that there are around 10^500 possible string vacua (no, I have no clue where they got that estimate). So if you rule out all but one in a million, we're down to 10^494. That's the string theory definition of progress.
@acr08807 There's actually also another scenario im watching very closely (1112.3024) based in F-theory, it predicts excesses in the high-#-of-jet events, fitting a very minor but emerging excess that is being seen. LHC may already have the data to support it, and if they do, the particular set of extra particles it needs would be visible at 14 TeV. That is very close to how Ive imagined the string-experiment connection might look. Might be an optimistic case, but shows what is possible...
@cloffff You probably don't accept a word that I say, but I'll tell you the dirty little secret of the HEP phenomenoligists (and not just string phenomenologists, it's true of the entire field). When they're not calculating backgrounds for real events, they spend their time creating outlandishly unlikely models in the hope that one of them will agree with experiment.
@cloffff These models usually surface when there's a "very minor but emerging excess" somewhere in the data. Almost all of those VMBEEs turn out to be "very major non events" when the experiment has collected enough data for the event to emerge. So I wouldn't get my hopes raised too much.
You say we should focus on "more practical" theories, but unfortunately this means youre closing the door on the entire question of how QFT unifies with gravity. This unification inevitably involves the Planck length, so any viable candidate theory *will* have these huge experimental challenges.
Physicists are some of the most skeptical, incisive and inquisitive people on the planet, & if their group think is at all a problem, getting lay people to weigh in is most certainly not the solution.
In my opinion its pretty much hopeless to assess ideas like string theory without first understanding pretty much ALL of the prerequisites, especially: quantum field theory, and general relativity. The truth is that string theory generically predicts all kinds of phenomena that agree with our world, and those predictions could not have been "engineered", even though they are historically post-dictions: general relativity, non-abelian gauge theory, hierarchical yukawa couplings...
...(cont) A way this was explained to me by someone who knows a lot more about it than me, is that you can use string theory to approximate many complicated problems in quantum field theory and come up with real (testable) solutions. A string theorist may instead think that actually string theory is the real truth, and the current description the approximation, and THAT is the currently untestable claim, but it doesn't change the fact that string theory can be used as an important tool.
Also, I think I'm right in saying that string theory did not begin as an attempt at a theory of everything, and that is not where most of its applications stem from today. I attended a talk by a string theorist recently who was very keen to point out that string theory does have important practical applications today. Ads/Cft correspondence can be used to model complicated problems in quantum field theory as gravitational problems, which makes them more easily solvable...
I'm sure it's true that String Theory when viewed as a candidate for a theory of everything makes no currently testable predictions, I think this is true of ANY quantum theory of gravity, due to the fact that gravitational effects are so small at the level of particle physics. Are you saying that we should therefore not fund quantum gravity research as much as we do, even though it is clearly the biggest gap in our understanding of physics, or are you picking out string theory specifically? Why?
What you are saying is very alarming. However, I see no change in sight. Therefor, It will take another Einstein (so-to-speak) who can establish a credible theory using mathematics and no funding...a hobby scientist. Then, that theory will be completely shunned and silenced until it reappears several years later. Then the scientific community says "Well, what-do-ya-know, he was right all-along." This is the usual trend it seems.
@cunnidvd The are devils. It's about money=truth. That's why they get funded. If this idea can be substantiated, then lies are the exclusive means of judging values.
@14sJakeB190 Michio Kaku is, sorry to say, not the be all and end all of intelligence. He tends to wander quite a bit into the "this is cool, therefore it must be true" way of thinking.... and hell, he thinks free will exists in a literal physical sense, which is just silly...
This presentation is just stupid denialism: you don't get it, so you latch onto whatever false assertions you hear that claim falsely to refute it. Unscientific.
@zapwhizzmusic Not sure what you mean since I'm not even ATTEMPTING to refute anything, yet alone claim to actually succeed at refuting anything... but thanks for watching none-the-less.
I thumbed your video up merely after reading this comment of yours alone, before I watched the video. Your humility and acknowledgement about what you are NOT claiming to prove or assert instantly show you are not a typical internet troll-conspiracy-idea-believer. (I fight a LOT of Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) deniers. They are the worst fanatics and cultists.)
What is the frequency of vibration of the strings? If it is the speed of light then they create mass according to E=mc^2?
How many strings are there in a photon,electron,etc? Do they move in space or they just propagate their properties to other strings (as the sound does in air)?
Can strings evaporate? Why?
How many strings do not "vibrate" in our 3 spacial dimensions? If so how strings are there in a Planck volume of our 3 large spacial dimensions?
@gespilk God isn't easier unless you can explain how god does anything. Otherwise it's just saying "we have no idea how it works, so let's just label it 'god' and ignore it", which is just lazy.
@AtheistInTheHat I agree with you, and I believe in God. Just saying so people stop judging. Pleaaase don't start a discussion whoever reads this, I will not respond anyway. :)
@gespilk the frequency can vary, but only in steps: each frequency leads to the properties of a different physical particle. The photon and electron are each a single string vibrating in different ways. The vibrations travel around the string itself only at the speed of light, which leads to very special properties of strings (conformal symmetry). All energy is equivalent to mass, so the more energetic vibrations correspond to heavier particles (electron heavier than a photon).
@gespilk strings are free to move in space, and only pass their energy to other strings by colliding with them. all these properties are not chosen by physicists as arbitrary hypotheses by the way: they are the only consistent properties given relativity and quantum theory. strings cannot evaporate, but two strings can join to form a single string, or a single string can split to form two others. example: an electron and positron collide and a photon is produced (two strings join to form one)
@gespilk another thing to bear in mind is that the vibrating strings are quantum, not classical entities (exactly as are the traditional point particles of particle physics). so we also have "loops" where, eg. two strings can spontaneously emerge from the vacuum provided those two then rejoin with each other and leave only a vacuum at the end. in the parlance, such strings are "virtual", not "real". but yes a "real" stringy process would stretch into the infinite past and infinite future.
@gespilk we believe now that even strings are only "brushing up against" the fundamental description - what string theory REALLY is a theory of is still a murky question - this is what M theory seeks to address. the strings are like excitations or ripples of a tapestry which is woven of something else, quite mysterious. i think your analogy of neurons firing as part of a richer background of consciousness-producing electrochemical brain activity is not a bad poetic image for describing this!
So string theory is almost a theory of something but we do not know for sure what it is.It feels like a nice bunch of equations that fits nicely together similar to the way Lego bricks fit together.At the end it may turn out to be just a mathematical toy for mathematicians like Lego or Sudoku is for the normal people.
How string theory would explain the Big Bang - that huge concentrated energy can not just pop out of nothing. Why it comes to existence fast but dissolves slow.
@gespilk I think that's quite a fair assessment - what I said above is also very important though in this connection: we're just not free to put in too many arbitrary hypotheses. But you're right that just because it fits incredibly beautifully together doesn't prove it must be true.
To explain the big bang is in a way the whole point: to do that we need a quantum theory of gravity and that is what string theory was invented to provide. What answer it gives is still not clear however...
This is possibly your best video to date. I've felt the same way for quite a long time. String theory feels like a religion. If it fails to make a testable hypothesis, no one should believe it.
@bishop8000 Thanks! I find string theory insanely interesting..but yeah...untestable ideas can be fun, and even useful in learning things...but should not (in my opinion) be the focus of anywhere near as much attention as String Theory has been getting for a long, long time. :D
@AtheistInTheHat Untestable ideas are useful in the quest to improve our understanding, but they should never pass peer review unless there's real-world evidence to back them up. Years ago I came up with an analogy to explain... My hypothesis is that in-between every nanosecond, time literally stops throughout the universe, and matter is frozen. Interesting idea right? But is it true? How would you ever know? Is it science? No. So should it be printed in science textbooks? Definitely not.
@bishop8000 As a particle phys'ist, I have a vested intereste in not liking string theory. However, quite honestly, I think the pursuite of string theory is interesting, but useless.
well..10 minutes to say that -accoridng to you- string theory is less scientific than other theories and complaining about why you did not receive a grant?
and the only argument you bring are 2 minutes from a tv comedy show?
Great presentation! I wonder, were there any in your audience who wanted to argue with you about this? I didn't realize how bad the funding biases had become...
@Tioliah It was pretty well received actually, though I'm not sure anyone from the physics department (it was at Carleton University in Ottawa) was in attendance, heh. Got a a comment about the potential of Supersymetry and such but no actual "String theory is awesome, stfu!" comments or anything like that. :)
Total garbage. Tangential thinking...He admits he doesn't understand the mathematics so how can he make judgments.
mishigreene 2 weeks ago
Perhaps the solution is to push String Theory out of physics departments into math departments. But, the moment ST produces a testable prediction (as math often does) then one would likely want it in physics departments. Regardless, this video actually appears utterly pointless -- in that no point was made other than to update the current state of the well-known controversy.
loneislander 3 weeks ago
"Unraveling" String Theory? 10 mins of personal opinion without any attempted reason why String Theory is somehow flawed. When approximations of Feynman Diagrams began to take on theoretical textures, and a few clever folk realized that time slices of these things could look like bits of string with inherent elegant mathematics, then folk began to think of the world as perhaps actually being bits of string. ST is mathematics that is worthy of investigation equal with math. What's the contest?
loneislander 3 weeks ago
The 'regular' Standard Model demands that all bosons are massless. But the guage bosons have mass and are actually very heavy. The first article on the Higgs boson was written in 1964. The paper attempted to explain why the gauge bosons have mass. 1964 was what? 50 years ago? There is definitely historical stagnation in physics in terms of experimentation. This could be due to economic factors rather than superstring fanaticism.
otonanoC 1 month ago
@otonanoC Stagnation due to economic factors? I don't think so, because e.g. there are several billions pured into the LHC in CERN to search for the Higgs boson. Theorical-Particle and Solid state physics get much more funding than Astrophysics for example. Imo, the problem is that the whole Standard model may require replacement, and Quantum Loop Gravity could do that GR-QM-GUT unification job better than String Theory.
Neueregel 1 month ago
@Neueregel
Fruit Loop Quantum Gravity
otonanoC 1 month ago
@otonanoC Math FAIL! Y U NO DO CORRECT MATH? O_o
fugitive247 1 week ago
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The "regular" Standard Model predicts that all bosons are massless. The paper on the Higg's boson was written in 1964. The paper tried to describe why guage bosons have mass. That was what? 50 years ago? There is definitely historical stagnation in physics in terms of experimentation.
otonanoC 1 month ago
The "regular" Standard Model predicts that all bosons are massless. The paper on the Higg's boson was written in 1964. The paper tried to describe why guage bosons have mass. That was what? 50 years ago? There is definitely historical stagnation in physics in terms of experimentation.
otonanoC 1 month ago
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Excellent. Not only good scientific discussion but an excellent commentary on where our society is today. This will be interesting to view this video in ten years. Thank you for the posting and making me think.
jbatt1234 1 month ago
Excellent. Not only good scientific discussion but an excellent commentary on where our society is today. This will be interesting to view this video in ten years. Thank you for the posting and making me think.
jbatt1234 1 month ago
Great Post! EPSRC (Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council) has officially cut funding to mathematical sciences like String Theory, only statistic now. My research which was published in the Indian Journal of Science and Technology (Peer-Reviewed) showed a clear computational link between quantum structures and the motion of binary stars without Strings. The posters comments also extends to the science journals where String Theory sit and block more valid competing research.
BinaryStars100 1 month ago
@BinaryStars100 Sorry that this happened to you dude, but these times are hard for pure theoricists. People don't see the long term usefulness of developing new math tools. Subbed btw.
Neueregel 1 month ago
@Neueregel I don't believe in pure physics. I believe in pure physics as a step in a process to prove its validity. The proof is in the lab which ultimately leads to new technologies. Pure physics as an end is philosophy which is sometimes useless. My paper showed the mechanics of quantum process on a large scale. If it was just a theory String Theorist would not have feared it. There is a lot of theorist only one can be correct. And it's not String Theory. FACT!
BinaryStars100 1 month ago
@BinaryStars100 Only one can be correct? What about many theories (under the umbrella M-Theory) as the multiple sides of the same coin?? Yes, String theory doesn't yet apply for falsifiability criteria. However all String Theory maths insofar, work neatly. (check the numerous papers by Witten et al, and countless other Archiv.org teams. (except some problems on white holes' entropy) You just can't ditch a whole theory like ST. Loop quantum gravity is also not solid all, experimentally speaking.
Neueregel 1 month ago
@Neueregel My paper was published in a science and technology journal and presented at Sofia Technical University's applied physics department (Physic Conference). My paper's about reality. Archiv paper's are generally not peer-reviewed. Who says we can't ditch a whole theory. If you want to save part of it, test it and modify based on experimental test not mathematical consistency. Anything can be made mathematically consistent. In fact, Ed Witten should read my work.
BinaryStars100 1 month ago
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Neueregel 1 month ago
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@BinaryStars100 Hey again: 1. It's ArXiv and not Archiv. 2. 'generally not peer-reviewed?' Well, 80%+ of Arxiv papers go on to be published on major journals like Astrophysical Journal, MNRAS, etc. 3."Ed Witten should read my work"? Come on man, that's a bit way too much to ask.He has 1500+ published papers on theoretical physics and the highest h-index for physicists in the world.What's your reference or impact on science?1 published paper in Bulgaria will NOT make Witten read your work.Sorry.
Neueregel 1 month ago
@Neueregel I think you mispelled ArXiv as well. Witten is in the publishing business, it is the world of citations, impact factors and grant proposals. How many of the 1500+ are significant to science? Enstien's paper on the Photoelectric Effect was one worthy of a Nobel Prize. Academia is impressed by publications. Private sector research is impressed with results. I got results. String Theorist got 30+ years of excuses worthy of getting fired in private sector research.
BinaryStars100 1 month ago
@BinaryStars100 Anyway, besides spelling there are more important things.I apologise for that remark.I think we are NOT in a position to judge a 60-yr old physicist with 30+ years of publications. Science history will judge Witten better. Besides, if Strings will ever be discovered in the next decades, Witten will ASAP be given the Nobel Prize along with Gazzaniga et al. - Private sector is mostly impressed by performance and perspiration rather than results especially in such theoretical fields
Neueregel 1 month ago
@Neueregel Bell Labs is a private research entity, EPSRC is a government funded entity and both had a strong interest in fundamental research until now. They know what theoretical physics has become. We can't all be Einstein but we can protect our field for future generations. Mathematicians like Ed Witten the Field Medalist works hard to protect the field of mathematics. Einstein will be remember as a great physicist who gave future generations something to build on.
BinaryStars100 1 month ago
@BinaryStars100 I agree with you, though some people call String Theory a pseudoscience because it cannot be empirically tested or falsified. What's your opinion on this? Thx.
Neueregel 1 month ago
@Neueregel String Theory started as a science attempting to explain the strong force. The Standard Model's explanation was preferred and String Theorist lost or were unable to get work. As a pseudoscience they avoid the empirical test that cost them dearly. It is now a money game until there is no more money for any fundamental theoretical physics. The mathematicians will go back to a health maths department & theoretical physics will have to be rescued by the applied physics departments.
BinaryStars100 1 month ago
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@BinaryStars100 Only one can be correct? What about many theories (under the umbrella M-Theory) as the multiple sides of the same coin?? Yes, String theory doesn't yet apply for falsifiability criteria. However all String Theory maths insofar, work neatly. (check the numerous papers by Witten et al, and countless other ArXiv.org teams. (except some problems on white holes' entropy) You just can't ditch a whole theory like ST. Loop quantum gravity is also not solid all, experimentally speaking.
Neueregel 1 month ago
What university did you graduate?
rubbersoul0854 1 month ago
[...] as somewhat of a mathematical catalyst- it has brought forth a wealth of new ideas and approaches to problems in within pure mathematics, and for that I think its study is worth it.
When it comes to your issue with funding and positions, however, I agree- ultimately we cannot determine if any of this is true at the moment, so it would be wise, in my opinion, for other possibilities to be pursued just a vigorously (and likely with mathematical pushes as well, to be fair).
LeonhardEuler1 2 months ago
Well, first thing- I see one practical use for string theory (probably not practical in the everyday, average Joe sense that you presumably mean, but I still think it is very practical). I am currently working on a PhD studying string theory, however my background was entirely in mathematics (and I was advanced to candidacy for my PhD in pure mathematics before switching to the physics program- mostly just because it was more interesting to me), and I can tell you that string theory has [...]
LeonhardEuler1 2 months ago
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I believe I heard you say it doesn't really relate to anything relevant in the "real world". However, I think finding the origin of gravity would be a great scientific triumph. I also believe that if we continue study, all the knowledge we have about string theory (very little at the moment) will not only grow , but find a practical use in the "real world". It may also prove (or strongly imply) that modern (classical) physics is wrong, wouldn't you like to know?
xXDJcapdabblerzXx 2 months ago
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xXDJcapdabblerzXx 2 months ago
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nice video tho i was wondering why stephen hawking has so much faith in m theory or string theory to where he thinks its gonna b proven the theory of everything .... sounds like he's taking a religious step of faith for this scientific philoshy which is unusual for a scentific mind like hawkings or am i missing out on any new scientific breakthroughs
Gdude899 2 months ago
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Gdude899 2 months ago
i liked this video at first. it was simple. also the big bang theory reference was nice. but it just kept going down hill after politics was mentioned. you say you lecture this stuff? and you're complaining about bias! i don't know much about string theory and was hoping to learn something about it. this video did help a little but the title is very misleading
anaRANDOMbanana 2 months ago
PS: On the question of whether string theory makes predictions, well it does! As long as you have a non-religious definition of predictions. In fact here is a paper that may be especially relevant in about 36 hours from now:
arxiv,org/abs/1112.1059
(change the comma to a period to get the url of course)
cloffff 3 months ago
@cloffff As soon as rumors started floating around that there were strong indications of a 125 GeV Higgs, a bunch of string theorists started publishing papers "predicting" it. It's truly amazing--string theory has been around for 30 years, and COMPLETELY BY COINCIDENCE, string theorists started coming out of the woodwork just before the combined data announcement with their "predictions."
acr08807 2 months ago
@acr08807 There was one major prediction involving string theory that I know of, and that was Gordon Kane et al's work on M-theory phenomenology (1112.1059). It was the one that got the most attention and deservedly so. If thats the one you're thinking of, they made essentially same prediction, 127 GeV, in their powerpoint presentation from months earlier. There are other papers in that sequence too
These (flawed) sociological arguments only exist because of the lack of good physical arguments.
cloffff 2 months ago
@cloffff Kane posted 1112.1059 on December 5, after the combined analysis rumors were out. That makes it a postdiction, not a prediction. His August presention slides (I wasn't at the talk) says "Single light Higgs boson, mass about 127 GeV unless gauge group extended." That's at tan beta > 7, if you look at the graphs. Where does the tan beta > 7 assumption come from, because that's not in his slides.
acr08807 2 months ago
@cloffff I'm a physicist, not a sociologist. In my opinion is that the theoretical basis of the sociological study of physics, like string theory, is so nebulous as to produce no useful predicitons, and therefore explains nothing. I'm also not a stickler for prediction as a test of good science--there's nothing wrong with fitting a model to observation to see where it leads.
acr08807 2 months ago
@cloffff My point isn't that string theory is wrong, it's that it can be used to predict just about anything. There are supersymmetric and non-supersymmetric string theories. If we discover that SUSY is right or wrong, will that validate string theory? If someone were to discover that Oompah Loompahs are real, no doubt some string theorist would show that string theory predicted them, too. A hypothesis that can explain anything explains nothing.
acr08807 2 months ago
@cloffff Anyway, Kane said on Motl's blog that, if his model is correct, LHC will find gluinos with unique decays "in the coming months." That is a real (albeit not detailed) prediction, and if we see the gluinos, I'll be back here eating a lot of crow. On the other hand, if we don't see them in the next couple of years, will you admit that string theory turned out not to have predicted a Higgs around 125 GeV after all?
acr08807 2 months ago
@acr08807 The predictions of Kane's work apply to the compactification scenario of string/m-theory. It assumes that the matter content below the compactification scale is that of the MSSM. So while it applies to a very large portion of the viable stringy scenarios, but its not generic to all of string theory. So if after the next few years , if we dont see gluinos, then sure Id agree the Higgs prediction doesn't apply and we've likely ruled out (or disfavored) a significant class of scenarios.
cloffff 2 months ago
@cloffff Is there any experiment or set of experiments that you can imagine that, if they produced a certain set of results, would make you say string theory is wrong, but that would not disprove the Standard Model or General Relativity?
acr08807 2 months ago
@cloffff String theorists bat around the number that there are around 10^500 possible string vacua (no, I have no clue where they got that estimate). So if you rule out all but one in a million, we're down to 10^494. That's the string theory definition of progress.
acr08807 2 months ago
@acr08807 There's actually also another scenario im watching very closely (1112.3024) based in F-theory, it predicts excesses in the high-#-of-jet events, fitting a very minor but emerging excess that is being seen. LHC may already have the data to support it, and if they do, the particular set of extra particles it needs would be visible at 14 TeV. That is very close to how Ive imagined the string-experiment connection might look. Might be an optimistic case, but shows what is possible...
cloffff 2 months ago
@cloffff You probably don't accept a word that I say, but I'll tell you the dirty little secret of the HEP phenomenoligists (and not just string phenomenologists, it's true of the entire field). When they're not calculating backgrounds for real events, they spend their time creating outlandishly unlikely models in the hope that one of them will agree with experiment.
acr08807 2 months ago
@cloffff These models usually surface when there's a "very minor but emerging excess" somewhere in the data. Almost all of those VMBEEs turn out to be "very major non events" when the experiment has collected enough data for the event to emerge. So I wouldn't get my hopes raised too much.
acr08807 2 months ago
You say we should focus on "more practical" theories, but unfortunately this means youre closing the door on the entire question of how QFT unifies with gravity. This unification inevitably involves the Planck length, so any viable candidate theory *will* have these huge experimental challenges.
Physicists are some of the most skeptical, incisive and inquisitive people on the planet, & if their group think is at all a problem, getting lay people to weigh in is most certainly not the solution.
cloffff 3 months ago
In my opinion its pretty much hopeless to assess ideas like string theory without first understanding pretty much ALL of the prerequisites, especially: quantum field theory, and general relativity. The truth is that string theory generically predicts all kinds of phenomena that agree with our world, and those predictions could not have been "engineered", even though they are historically post-dictions: general relativity, non-abelian gauge theory, hierarchical yukawa couplings...
cloffff 3 months ago
Will you make a video on quantom mechanics?
1sunzaud 3 months ago
@1sunzaud I'll probably make a video or 10 on different Quantum Mechanics related things on my new channel at some point, yeah.
ThisParticularBrad 3 months ago
YOU insufferable lying bastard!!!!....Kidding..lol..It sure is starting to smell like incompleteness nowadays more than ever tho...
bdogshredder 3 months ago
...(cont) A way this was explained to me by someone who knows a lot more about it than me, is that you can use string theory to approximate many complicated problems in quantum field theory and come up with real (testable) solutions. A string theorist may instead think that actually string theory is the real truth, and the current description the approximation, and THAT is the currently untestable claim, but it doesn't change the fact that string theory can be used as an important tool.
wowsa0 3 months ago
Also, I think I'm right in saying that string theory did not begin as an attempt at a theory of everything, and that is not where most of its applications stem from today. I attended a talk by a string theorist recently who was very keen to point out that string theory does have important practical applications today. Ads/Cft correspondence can be used to model complicated problems in quantum field theory as gravitational problems, which makes them more easily solvable...
wowsa0 3 months ago
I'm sure it's true that String Theory when viewed as a candidate for a theory of everything makes no currently testable predictions, I think this is true of ANY quantum theory of gravity, due to the fact that gravitational effects are so small at the level of particle physics. Are you saying that we should therefore not fund quantum gravity research as much as we do, even though it is clearly the biggest gap in our understanding of physics, or are you picking out string theory specifically? Why?
wowsa0 3 months ago
Interesting, I hadn't heard of Loop Quantum Gravity before this video. In your scientific opinion, what are the merits of String Theory?
JonasAlbrecht 3 months ago
is that sperm?
xTSxALLDAY 3 months ago
What you are saying is very alarming. However, I see no change in sight. Therefor, It will take another Einstein (so-to-speak) who can establish a credible theory using mathematics and no funding...a hobby scientist. Then, that theory will be completely shunned and silenced until it reappears several years later. Then the scientific community says "Well, what-do-ya-know, he was right all-along." This is the usual trend it seems.
asalamulekum 3 months ago
Great presentation!
jackman1234567898765 3 months ago
You didn't really get into string theory or talk about WHY it should be replaced.
yamenhawit 3 months ago
I will admit I am sorely under qualified to moment. But this many years with no experimental basis is not a therory it is a postulate......
ferdonandebull 4 months ago
this is just political...
ShashwatBlack 4 months ago
if it is not testable it is not science
cunnidvd 4 months ago
@cunnidvd The are devils. It's about money=truth. That's why they get funded. If this idea can be substantiated, then lies are the exclusive means of judging values.
King0200Joe 4 months ago
lol You don't understand string theory.
There is no way some dude on youtube can dispute Michio Kaku lol.
14sJakeB190 5 months ago
@14sJakeB190 Michio Kaku is, sorry to say, not the be all and end all of intelligence. He tends to wander quite a bit into the "this is cool, therefore it must be true" way of thinking.... and hell, he thinks free will exists in a literal physical sense, which is just silly...
ThisParticularBrad 5 months ago
Well done. An intelligent young man indeed.
thesunflower42 5 months ago
Why strings? Why not squares or spaghetti hoops?
Themesticks 6 months ago
@Themesticks Frequency
14sJakeB190 5 months ago
1) String theory predicts super-symmetric particles
2) String theory has leads to breakthroughs in calculating heavy ion collisions
3) The funding problems stated would arise with any widely researched theory.
4) There is no complete Quantum Mechanical theory and an infinite number of possible ones.
I don't seem how your complaints have any merit. That is all.
amcnea 10 months ago
is that you peter woit ?
Edfiki86 11 months ago
@Edfiki86 Can't be. Peter knows that nobody's hiring string theorists right now.
acr08807 2 months ago
Question: Okay what woul that imply?
Correct answer: I dunno... Yet!
druzios 1 year ago 8
This presentation is just stupid denialism: you don't get it, so you latch onto whatever false assertions you hear that claim falsely to refute it. Unscientific.
zapwhizzmusic 1 year ago
@zapwhizzmusic Not sure what you mean since I'm not even ATTEMPTING to refute anything, yet alone claim to actually succeed at refuting anything... but thanks for watching none-the-less.
AtheistInTheHat 1 year ago 5
@AtheistInTheHat "nonetheless." look it up, professor.
DaJayManable 4 months ago
@DaJayManable Spell checking a 9 month old comment? Really? Ok then.
Also, the first word in a sentence is typically capitalized. Just fyi, since you're apparently into that kinda thing.
ThisParticularBrad 4 months ago
@AtheistInTheHat
I thumbed your video up merely after reading this comment of yours alone, before I watched the video. Your humility and acknowledgement about what you are NOT claiming to prove or assert instantly show you are not a typical internet troll-conspiracy-idea-believer. (I fight a LOT of Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) deniers. They are the worst fanatics and cultists.)
mphello 3 months ago
@zapwhizzmusic The funny thing is the only reason you think he doesn't get it, is because you don't get it.
BlueCosmology 1 month ago
What is the frequency of vibration of the strings? If it is the speed of light then they create mass according to E=mc^2?
How many strings are there in a photon,electron,etc? Do they move in space or they just propagate their properties to other strings (as the sound does in air)?
Can strings evaporate? Why?
How many strings do not "vibrate" in our 3 spacial dimensions? If so how strings are there in a Planck volume of our 3 large spacial dimensions?
What creates strings?
God is easier;)
gespilk 1 year ago
@gespilk God isn't easier unless you can explain how god does anything. Otherwise it's just saying "we have no idea how it works, so let's just label it 'god' and ignore it", which is just lazy.
AtheistInTheHat 1 year ago 33
@AtheistInTheHat He was obviously being sarcastic
gtas321 2 months ago
@AtheistInTheHat I agree with you, and I believe in God. Just saying so people stop judging. Pleaaase don't start a discussion whoever reads this, I will not respond anyway. :)
sinojtjej 2 months ago
@gespilk the frequency can vary, but only in steps: each frequency leads to the properties of a different physical particle. The photon and electron are each a single string vibrating in different ways. The vibrations travel around the string itself only at the speed of light, which leads to very special properties of strings (conformal symmetry). All energy is equivalent to mass, so the more energetic vibrations correspond to heavier particles (electron heavier than a photon).
commodoreherring 8 months ago
@gespilk strings are free to move in space, and only pass their energy to other strings by colliding with them. all these properties are not chosen by physicists as arbitrary hypotheses by the way: they are the only consistent properties given relativity and quantum theory. strings cannot evaporate, but two strings can join to form a single string, or a single string can split to form two others. example: an electron and positron collide and a photon is produced (two strings join to form one)
commodoreherring 8 months ago
@commodoreherring
So strings are like eternal, immortal entities almost god like?
Could all these eternal strings be a part of the "mind of god" similar to the way the neurotransmitters are part of the human consciousness.
gespilk 8 months ago
@gespilk another thing to bear in mind is that the vibrating strings are quantum, not classical entities (exactly as are the traditional point particles of particle physics). so we also have "loops" where, eg. two strings can spontaneously emerge from the vacuum provided those two then rejoin with each other and leave only a vacuum at the end. in the parlance, such strings are "virtual", not "real". but yes a "real" stringy process would stretch into the infinite past and infinite future.
commodoreherring 8 months ago
@gespilk we believe now that even strings are only "brushing up against" the fundamental description - what string theory REALLY is a theory of is still a murky question - this is what M theory seeks to address. the strings are like excitations or ripples of a tapestry which is woven of something else, quite mysterious. i think your analogy of neurons firing as part of a richer background of consciousness-producing electrochemical brain activity is not a bad poetic image for describing this!
commodoreherring 8 months ago
@commodoreherring
So string theory is almost a theory of something but we do not know for sure what it is.It feels like a nice bunch of equations that fits nicely together similar to the way Lego bricks fit together.At the end it may turn out to be just a mathematical toy for mathematicians like Lego or Sudoku is for the normal people.
How string theory would explain the Big Bang - that huge concentrated energy can not just pop out of nothing. Why it comes to existence fast but dissolves slow.
gespilk 8 months ago
@gespilk I think that's quite a fair assessment - what I said above is also very important though in this connection: we're just not free to put in too many arbitrary hypotheses. But you're right that just because it fits incredibly beautifully together doesn't prove it must be true.
To explain the big bang is in a way the whole point: to do that we need a quantum theory of gravity and that is what string theory was invented to provide. What answer it gives is still not clear however...
commodoreherring 7 months ago
@gespilk
1) Frequency is not velocity.
2, 3, 4&5) What currently the research is focused on, but not exactly.
6) God wants YOU to learn.
meteor4163 8 months ago
@meteor4163
What is frequency? unit of something per unit of time?
gespilk 8 months ago
@gespilk Yes, anything per unit time or just "per unit time" because the number of times/things has no units.
meteor4163 8 months ago
@gespilk Really? God of the gaps? typical.
ApatheticOmniscience 3 months ago
This is possibly your best video to date. I've felt the same way for quite a long time. String theory feels like a religion. If it fails to make a testable hypothesis, no one should believe it.
bishop8000 1 year ago
@bishop8000 Thanks! I find string theory insanely interesting..but yeah...untestable ideas can be fun, and even useful in learning things...but should not (in my opinion) be the focus of anywhere near as much attention as String Theory has been getting for a long, long time. :D
AtheistInTheHat 1 year ago
@AtheistInTheHat Untestable ideas are useful in the quest to improve our understanding, but they should never pass peer review unless there's real-world evidence to back them up. Years ago I came up with an analogy to explain... My hypothesis is that in-between every nanosecond, time literally stops throughout the universe, and matter is frozen. Interesting idea right? But is it true? How would you ever know? Is it science? No. So should it be printed in science textbooks? Definitely not.
bishop8000 1 year ago
@bishop8000 As a particle phys'ist, I have a vested intereste in not liking string theory. However, quite honestly, I think the pursuite of string theory is interesting, but useless.
allsaintsmonastery 1 year ago
@allsaintsmonastery "Interesting, but useless" sums it up quite nicely I think, yeah.
AtheistInTheHat 1 year ago
I for one prefer to examine and explore all possibilities before making any decisions! :)
TheGhostOfSabotage 1 year ago
@TheGhostOfSabotage I'm with ya there for sure.
AtheistInTheHat 1 year ago
well..10 minutes to say that -accoridng to you- string theory is less scientific than other theories and complaining about why you did not receive a grant?
and the only argument you bring are 2 minutes from a tv comedy show?
thanx for wasting my time.
boccadoro1978 1 year ago
@boccadoro1978 You're welcome.
AtheistInTheHat 1 year ago
Great presentation! Lee Smolin's book "The Trouble With Physics" argues these points and makes the issue very clear.
Aprilshowersss 1 year ago
@Aprilshowersss Lee Smolin is great, yeah.
AtheistInTheHat 1 year ago
@Aprilshowersss I've met Lee Smolin :-D Three Roads to Quantum Gravity is another good one by him.
Tioliah 1 year ago
@Tioliah That is WAY awesome! Smolin is one of my favourite scientists and authors. And yes IMHO 3 Roads is a classic. :D
If you haven't read "The Trouble With Physics" I HIGHLY recommend!
Aprilshowersss 1 year ago
@Tioliah That's an awesome book, yeah.
AtheistInTheHat 1 year ago
Great presentation! I wonder, were there any in your audience who wanted to argue with you about this? I didn't realize how bad the funding biases had become...
Tioliah 1 year ago
@Tioliah It was pretty well received actually, though I'm not sure anyone from the physics department (it was at Carleton University in Ottawa) was in attendance, heh. Got a a comment about the potential of Supersymetry and such but no actual "String theory is awesome, stfu!" comments or anything like that. :)
AtheistInTheHat 1 year ago