String Theory always was in Trouble
Physics Saturday, December 31, 2005 . This is a SciScoop post by juanR
One would emphasize that recent Landscape trouble has emphasized the problems of string theory. Before 2005 there was a tendency to believe that string theory was a “fantastic approach,” and it never was a serious candidate as a theory of quantum gravity.
String theory always was in trouble but in the past, the debate and the criticism to obvious technical errors and inconsistencies was only published in specialized literature accessible to specialized scientists. Fortunately, criticism to string theory is today published in mass media, and the public can know the truth about string theory ’success’. For example, Robert B. Laughlin, 1998 Nobel Prize-winning physicist says
People have been changing string theory in wild ways because it has never worked.
Therefore, i would personally rename New Scientist title to Is today string theory more in trouble that yesterday or similar one.
Susskind proposes anthropic reasoning and string theory as the only approach to understand the cosmological constant. Well this is not correct, the flaws of the anthropic reasoning are being discussed in a number of sites.
However, scientific approaches to understand the nature of the cosmological constant are being published on specialized literature. Canonical science (via tau-frame dynamics) also agrees with the hypothesis of a strong link between cosmological parameters and microscopic mass, but it is not clear the role of the graviton there. In any case, we already know that the graviton concept arising in string theory is, naturally, incorrect.
I repeat again, by no means the stringy Landscape argument is the only possible way to explain cosmological constant. In fact, one may note that any Landscape way is not a scientific explanation, just metaphysical one. Landscape is just a return to so-called magic era before modern science born.
—
Additional comments on anthropic nonsense, scientific criticism, technical data, and useful links and references are available on canonical science today entry.
A previous short reply to the interview is available on the New Scientist thread: Does the man who invented string theory make a good job of defending it?
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8 Responses to String Theory always was in Trouble
juanR
January 17th, 2006 at 2:01 pm
Hi,
If number of votes is +4 for acepting and -2 for rejecting such as appear listed in the board of Moderate submisions(link above) and this post has already achieved 6 useful votes, why is not posted still? What is the error?
January 18th, 2006 at 2:29 am
Who knows the way of Scoop Juan. I suspect that a flag is attached by the system to each submission and my changing the threshold’s later didn’t affect that flag, but I don’t know. I’ve only been running the site for a year and have still only scratched the surface of its inner workings!
I’ve sent your item now…
juanR
January 18th, 2006 at 5:43 am
Thanks by the interest!
Really this is an amazing situation.
January 18th, 2006 at 1:47 pm
What’s an amazing situation? The fact that you’re article finally got posted or my lacking of insight into the inner workings of Scoop?
juanR
January 24th, 2006 at 11:53 am
I mean that it is amazing that often computers’ behavior appears to be illogical one.
For instance, all of us think that any post would be approved after obtaining 4 votes and rejected with a -2 score according to above rules but now we saw a case where that was not true. I imagine that may be some kind of bug of the board software you use. It appears like if submissions were really computed using some other score outside of the claimed (4, -2).
Personally, i also have got problems with my blogger software for Canonical Science Today. For example, an interesting bug i have detected is that if you begin any new posting in default font (Times) and after change the font to readable webfont (Verdana) the board software change everything in your new post except the last paragraph!
Any subsequent formating of the entire new post or even of the single differently formated paragraph is ignored by the blogger console and the news updated to the server in two fonts: Times and Verdana!
I do not understand still why the console ignores any post-formating command i send. However, i was able to learn by myself (via try and error) that i can force the formating to Verdana when i modify the HTML code directly by hand once the post is submitted to the server!
Whow!
juanR
January 24th, 2006 at 12:07 pm
The board says that this post has 8 comments then i have searched them for reading/reply. I do not find them.
Now i am seeing that the board says that of 8 comments 5 are “topical” and 0 are “hidden”. 5 + 0 = 5.
What about missing 3 comments? Or is this another bug and total number of comments are just the 5 i can really find?
January 25th, 2006 at 3:18 am
Hi JuanR
Not sure what happened with your post. I changed the voting thresholds *after* you’re post had already reached a certain level, I’d have assumed it would have jumped to its final destination instantaneously but obviously not. I set it to post manually and it now shows in the Section Stories in the right-hand column. Not all votes are created equal, some have a flag associated with them to say “post to section only”.
Not sure about the comments thing…I can see all of them in the list. Is it that editorial comments show up only to editors…wouldn’t that be logical?
db
Sweetwind
January 25th, 2006 at 12:26 pm
Hi juanR, “topical + hidden = total comments” only if you have hidden comments. I think the real equation here is “topical + editorial = total comments” (currently, 7 topical + 3 editorial = 10 total, I guess it will be 8 topical + 3 editorial = 11 total after I post this) but if you have your preferences set to display the editorial comments, you will always have 0 hidden. That’s my guess, anyway! :-)