/sci/ - Science & Math

[Anonymous No.11320296]

What went wrong with string theory? No big developments since Witten lobbed a boompill in there. Why?

[Anonymous No.11320299]

nobody gives a shit

[Anonymous No.11320302]

What did Witten do exactly?

[Anonymous No.11320334]

>>11320302

got his dick out

[Anonymous No.11320335]

>>11320296
bad luck, it's just not physical in any approachable sense. bad luck for humans

[Anonymous No.11320354]

>>11320296
string theory is low iq

[Anonymous No.11320367]

>>11320296
>lobbed a boompill
What does this mean?

[Anonymous No.11320387]

>>11320302
Show that the various forms of string theory were actually all equivalent to each other.

[Anonymous No.11320416]

>>11320387
you’re missing the other super important part of the second superstring revolution-in addition he demonstrated that string theories lead to one additional dimension, meaning there is a more fundamental theory called M theory which is 11 dimensional, and that theory has 11 dimensional supergravity as its low energy limit, meaning he united supergravity with string theory too

[Anonymous No.11321392]

bumping based Ed thread.

also just to add some content
> No big developments since Witten lobbed a boompill in there.
false. after the second superstring revolution we saw:
>black hole micro state counting from Strominger and Vafa
>Matrix theory from banks and fischler and shenker and susskind
>F-theory from Vafa
>ads/cft and in general gauge-gravity theory from maldacena
>amplituhedron from nima (though this isn’t particularly stringy but is a thing in the string community)
>dark energy stuff from kachru kallosh linde trivedi
>firewall stuff from mostly polchinski and hawking and susskind
>swampland stuff from vafa
>sabrina. just sabrina
>

[El Arcón No.11321397]

Witten never lobbed a boompill in there. It was the USA feds that lobbed cointelpropill in there.

[Anonymous No.11321407]

>>11321397
jon just stay in other threads. you always derail shit. go back on adding another 150 pages of nonsense to your manuscript on infinity-hat

[Anonymous No.11321481]

>>11320296
String theory is very, very, very gay

[Anonymous No.11321496]

>>11321481
project harder

[Anonymous No.11321498]

>>11320296
>Why?
The Vortex theory of our time.
Lots of meticulously collected nothing.

[Anonymous No.11321534]

>>11321498
interestingly, knot theory (in mathematics) was spurred on by vortex theory, and knot theory has found applications in string theory as well as other disciplines (like topology and even condensed matter theoretical physics). so even if string theory is wrong you can bet it is pushing mathematicians to put some nice results into the books that future physicists will open up in the library in however many decades before they need it for real applications. and that’s the worst case scenario.

[Anonymous No.11321660]

>>11320296
Imagine devoting your entire life and career to study a field which has the same prediction power as psychology lmao

[Hoaxfag No.11321687]

>>11320296
Guys I know this is a bitterpill, but ALL quantum mechanics from 1900 until now is a scam, I don't know what word to use, hoax? Fabrication? The meticulously crafted fantasy land of a groupthink scientific egregore, maybe an idealogical echolalia chamber, where everyone just agrees with each other because children are so terrified of being proven wrong.
And we are children at heart I guess. So adults can't handle being wrong either.
Quantum mechanics is an invalid field of science.
No evidence to suggest it's viable. No testable theories, all quantum mechanical experiments have failed.

There is no quantum technology, that's just pop-sci. Lasers, transistors, computers etc, none of them use anything quantum.

Quantum mechanics is a god for atheists.
All your gods a lie.

[Anonymous No.11321736]

>>11321687
Ok :)

[Anonymous No.11321772]

Witten got outed as a member of the national alliance, all of his research has been expunged.

[Anonymous No.11321785]

>>11320416
Reminder that supergravity and string theory are literally made up borderline schizophrenic buzzwords without real meaning or impact in the real world

[Anonymous No.11321817]

>>11321785
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supergravity

[Anonymous No.11321822]

>>11321817
>In theoretical physics, supergravity (supergravity theory; SUGRA for short) is a modern field theory
>In this theory there is this one theory

Cringe

[Anonymous No.11321915]

>>11321687
teh fuck is this

[Anonymous No.11321954]

>>11321687
If that picture is a troll it's an effective one, I'm mad.

[Anonymous No.11321956]

>>11320296
There's no way to prove it. It's basically just a Grand Unified Theory cult that lets everyone believe they've finally "solved" reality.

[Anonymous No.11322197]

>>11320296
>What went wrong with string theory?
They failed to realise they violated important principles of scientific process and just continued the madness.

[Anonymous No.11322457]

>>11320296
String theory in nutshell:
If you don't understand physics, then add a new dimension.

[Anonymous No.11322466]

[Anonymous No.11322509]

>>11322457
>>11322197
It's like that 1+1=3 troll comics, just pile up whatever mathematical apparatus until answers check out. "Science".

[Anonymous No.11322525]

>>11320296
>why didn't my favourite meme receive any new sequels recently?
umm, I don't know. Maybe because further bullshitting would get too ridiculous? Not all memes can become unironically as widespread as the darwinian model.

[Anonymous No.11322956]

>>11320296
Why Is this 40 years old dead theory so attractive for plebs and popsci fans?

[Anonymous No.11323188]

>>11322956
quite to the contrary, it is popular among real theoretical physicists but as evidenced by this thread it is hated on by brainlet plebs

[Anonymous No.11323207]

>>11320296
Ads/cft correspondence is the next big thing that bridges string theory to black holes and hence quantum mechanics

[Anonymous No.11323214]

>>11323188
as anything else rational

[Anonymous No.11323216]

>>11321392
good post

[Anonymous No.11323223]

>>11323188
Theoretical physicists are not physicists, they are just overvalued math teachers.

[Anonymous No.11323231]

>>11323223
theoretical physicists are the only real physicists, the rest are just glorified engineers

[Anonymous No.11323246]

The truth is, there are two kinds of people when it comes to string theory:

1. Physicists smart enough to understand string theory who work on stringy topics.

2. People too dumb for string theory.

The third kind, physicists smart enough to understand ST but choose to work on something else, basically do not exist. That should tell you everything you need to know about them brainlets who trash ST on the internet. They are not good enough to even have an opinion on the matter.

[Anonymous No.11323257]

>>11323231
>>11323246
0 testable predictions since it's inception, even after the 11 dimension reduction fail.
That's literally parapsychology.

[Anonymous No.11323262]

>>11323257
That is the nature of the subject, not particular to string theory, you brainlet. Rigorously testing quantum gravity theories may not be technically possible for centuries, if ever.

[Anonymous No.11323263]

>>11323188
>>11323214
I think the issue is that people with only a vague interest in science associate the idea of a good theory with someone like Einstein or Newton - guys responsible for the *best* theories. Pre-university schools don't emphasize just how shocking and monumental it was to discover a theory that was not only immediately useful, but also impactful in multiple areas of study. We've been spoiled by geniuses that only show up every 300-or-so years.

[Anonymous No.11323264]

>>11323246
Then explain why loop quantum gravity has gained as much traction as it has

[Anonymous No.11323270]

>>11323264
LQG has basically no significant traction. LQG is a tiny academic circlejerk done by a relatively small group of physicists who are not good enough to study ST and who cite each other. There has been hardly any real progress on it since it was proposed. And there will not be, as it is a fundamentally flawed idea.

[Anonymous No.11323279]

>>11323270
>fundamentally flawed
Isn't that true for any untestable physical theory? The flaw for both is a complete lack of real-life experimental data.

[Anonymous No.11323419]

>>11320416
Nobody's forgetting Joe

[Anonymous No.11323424]

>>11321534
>even if string theory is wrong you can bet it is pushing mathematicians to put some nice results into the books that future physicists will open up in the library in however many decades before they need it for real applications
This

[Anonymous No.11323655]

>>11323279
the fact neither are testable right now isn’t a fundamental flaw. i don’t know what anon is specifically referring to but i see LQG as a failure mostly because it isn’t a unified theory of everything, it’s just a bozo way of trying to quantize gravity in an ad-hoc way (conversely string theory actually predicted gravity by accident before anyone realized it and thought the spin-2 particles it implies were a problem at first) and it doesn’t unite anything about gravity with the standard model except by saying “well yeah standard model on top of our crap, just stick it in” without any hints of how GUT theories of particle physics or supersymmetry or dark matter work. so it’s a complete one trick pony that goes nowhere. and aesthetically it is hideous, it basically has a discrete spacetime that only preserves lorentz invariance by implying that it’s a complete jumbled mess instead of e.g. a nice grid, whereas string theory says that space time emerges from a beautifully smoothe and conformally invariant worldsheet

[Anonymous No.11323751]

>>11323655
no one really believes in the "grand theory of everything" right? There's always going to be another nook or cranny

[Anonymous No.11323786]

>>11323751
first of all “theory of everything “ and “grand unified theory” mean two different things. grand unified theory refers to the idea that just like electromagnetic and strong forces unify at around 1 TeV due to the Higgs mechanism (proven experimentally since 2012), that the strong force should join electroweak theory at some higher energy. it leaves out gravity as well as most of everything outside particle physics.

a theory of everything is a grand unified theory plus gravity. string theory is an example. however, that doesn’t mean everything is settled. just all four of the forces we know about so far. which is hopefully everything but maybe not. maybe e.g. dark energy is just a cosmological constant separate from everything else.

moreover, even if we had the theory of everything, it wouldn’t predict lots of stuff. it wouldn’t predict the weather (it’s too chaotic) or even why superconductors form when you cool certain metals (as far as we can tell BCS isn’t derivable even from a ToE. it is emergent.)

so a theory of everything just means we’ve figured out all the building blocks and their rules, but since the rules are so rich it means there is plenty of more theorizing left to work out

[Anonymous No.11323791]

>>11323751
first of all “theory of everything “ and “grand unified theory” mean two different things. grand unified theory refers to the idea that just like electromagnetic and weak forces unify at around 1 TeV due to the Higgs mechanism (proven experimentally since 2012), that the strong force should join electroweak theory at some higher energy. it leaves out gravity as well as most of everything outside particle physics.

a theory of everything is a grand unified theory plus gravity. string theory is an example. however, that doesn’t mean everything is settled. just all four of the forces we know about so far. which is hopefully everything but maybe not. maybe e.g. dark energy is just a cosmological constant separate from everything else.

moreover, even if we had the theory of everything, it wouldn’t predict lots of stuff. it wouldn’t predict the weather (it’s too chaotic) or even why superconductors form when you cool certain metals (as far as we can tell BCS isn’t derivable even from a ToE. it is emergent.)

so a theory of everything just means we’ve figured out all the building blocks and their rules, but since the rules are so rich it means there is plenty of more theorizing left to work out

[Anonymous No.11323804]

>>11321687
Based

[Anonymous No.11323838]

>>11323655
>right now
It has required the absolute peak of human ingenuity to fill out the standard model, and the first step was to devise incredibly specific predictions of what to look for and where. How would we even begin to start with strings? A super DUPER hadron collider (that can somehow see in 1-dimensional space)??

[Anonymous No.11323840]

>theory is 40 years old
>no valid scientific observations to speak of
lol

[Anonymous No.11323843]

>>11323188
exactly this. most of the popsci brainlet idiots seem to refute the theory and call it a bullshit

[Anonymous No.11323848]

>>11323231
this in a nutshell. it's easy to press a button once someone with brain comes up with the theory

[Anonymous No.11323870]

>>11323838
well, one prediction of the standard model is that gravity doesn’t exist, spacetime is minkowski, black holes don’t exist, light doesn’t curve, mercury’s orbit doesn’t precess, and GPS should give wrong predictions. clearly the theory isn’t correct in these assumptions.

string theory provides a framework to preserve the standard model while preserving these GR predictions. and not only in an ad-hoc way, but in a very tightly constrained way that works despite tons of probable near-pitfalls. and it did it all by accident as said before:
>>11323655
so clearly the standard model needs some refinements, and string theory is basically a miraculously successful minor refinement that reconciled it with gravity using a fairly small and benign change to the problematic basic physical assumption that “particles” are the minimally more complicated version of what we assumed they were

[Anonymous No.11323876]

>>11323870
>a fairly small and benign change to the problematic basic physical assumption that “particles” are the minimally more complicated version of what we assumed they were
i should rephrase this
> a fairly small and benign change to the (problematic) basic physical assumption that “particles” are 0 dimensional, instead they are the minimally more complicated (but less problematic) version of what we assumed they were (they are instead 1 dimensional up close)

[Anonymous No.11323891]

>>11320296
because string theory is wrong

[Anonymous No.11323898]

>>11323891
no, smolbrain is wrong. not to mention he credits his career to Epstien in his book

[Anonymous No.11323924]

>>11323262
>the nature of my theory is that it is impossible to test it rigorously bro
hehe nice one

[Anonymous No.11323932]

>>11323876
So how do you think we'll ever detect a non-3D object? Or will we only get an abstruse computer readout after we smash a bunch of quarks together real hard, or split a neutrino or some shit?

[Anonymous No.11323989]

>>11323932
computer readouts are how particle physics works nowadays. gone are the days where the trigger system caused a film camera to take a picture of a track in a chamber. now we use computers to trigger and record sensor outputs. that is just a fact of particle physics since say the 1980s

either way, it doesn’t matter for string theory or any theory of quantum gravity so far. none of them make any predictions at any current experiments. and for the foreseeable future the current theories will never make that kind of prediction for contemporaneous colliders. so there are two hopes: either the theorists work their theories out well enough that they can actually make new low-energy predictions, (low energy meaning on the order of current experiments) or they make predictions at medium energies and an accompanying revolutions happen in experiment which make “medium” energies possible. like a muon collider for example

[Anonymous No.11324016]

>>11320302
Fucked adam friedland

[Anonymous No.11324036]

>>11323989
But smashing shit is still the go-to procedure? I was thinking we might switch it up with some jostling or rotating, or really anything other than more collisions. I mean, if you have an object made out of tiny, simple 3D shapes, smashing the object apart will eventually isolate an individual shape. If you have an object made out of strings, uh, honestly I'm stumped here.

I know quantum physics isn't supposed to be intuitive, but it is certainly convenient that particle accelerators are always part of the answer....

[Anonymous No.11324050]

>>11324016
you know what you did

[Anonymous No.11324074]

>>11324036
smashing muons or protons (even proton sub-constituents like quarks) at 13 TeV is not nearly high enough energy to get down to planck-scale or near-planck scale dynamics. Planck mass is like a trillion times more energy.

[Anonymous No.11324157]

>>11321687
based af

[Anonymous No.11324303]

>>11320296
his daughter got blacked by a male bonobo and he stopped doing any research

[Anonymous No.11324332]

>>11321392
>amplituhedron
https://arxiv.org/abs/1612.04378

[Anonymous No.11325032]

here is a great layman-level explanation of M-theory:
https://youtu.be/4xgx4k83zzc

[Anonymous No.11325169]

>>11324016
>>11324050
Fellow cumboys

[Anonymous No.11326266]

bumping string theory thread

this time i have no good content to add besides noting that Lenny and Banks have nothing recently said stuff along the lines that even though they are heroes of string / M theory that they both believe it is not the theory of our universe but that a newer better theory is needed, and that it needs to be built using all the lessons we know know about string theory and M theory and duality. so get to work zoomers, quit playing on twitch and tiktok and hit those pencils to the paper so you can learn what being an adult means

[Anonymous No.11326271]

>>11326266
*have recently
donno why i freudian slipped a “nothing” in there