String Theory: Right or Wrong?

[Guille]

ok, this is the final discussion to understand the position of athe members of the forum about string theory.

Do you agree with it or disagree? Why? In what?

Do you think that generally string theory is right or wrong? why?


I hope that from this thread we can get a general position as web page forum in regaridng the theory.

[Juan R.]

Well, after of more than 30 years, string theory is in a died way.

Notinhg has been derived (in a rigorous definition of term). There is no derivation of standard model, there is no derivation of black hole entropy, there is no quantization of gravity nor derivation of Einstein general relativity, etc.

What is today rigorously derivable from string M-theory: nothing.

String theory does not unify the forces, does not explain the families of particles, not explain macroscopic 4D spacetime, is not full compatible with Einstein GR, nor predict the masses, nor the coupling constants.

String theory does not solve the renormalization problems of quantum fierld theory, does not explain the big bang, nor inflaction nor mistery of cosmological constant, nor explain why universe look 4D, etc.

The mith of prediction is that, a mith. Very recent work has showed that there around 10^100 vacua and terefore all predictive power of string theory failed. Stringys looked for a miracle the last 3 years. This year a number of results have laready shows that one cannot predict nothing from string theory. Therefore there is no theory.

The number of people believeing in string theory is decaying at a high rate. This year Witten plans to do no significant work in string theory research. He now is working again on QCD.

For more information (do not exhaustive and at a nontechnical level) I recommend to interested reader

www.canonicalscience.com/stringcriticism.pdf

It is "old" and does not include very recent work in the form of "no-go theorems".

"Even so, the study of these vacua has become more and more popular over the last year or two, with many arguing that, no matter how big the number is, at least it's finite, so you have improved over the standard model, which has continuously tunable parameters. This argument was made in the panel discussion at the Perimeter Institute a month or so ago. Also, a finite number of vacua allows you to study their statistics, by assigning a weight one to each possible vacuum state and getting a probability measure by dividing by the total number. You can then engage in wishful thinking that this probability measure will be peaked about certain values, giving a sort of prediction." "The new paper gives a construction of flux compactifications of type IIA string theory, and in this case the authors find an infinite number of possibilities. This should kill off any hopes of extracting predictions from string theory by counting vacua and doing statistics."


"With this new result, the infinitesimally small remaining hope of getting predictions out of the string theory landscape framework has now vanished. It will be interesting to see if this slows down at all the ever-increasing number of string theorists working in this field."


The may 23 a new string paper by Dine appeared.


The second paragraph of the paper admits that the infinite number of states destroys this research program, but deals with this by saying that the author will just ignore the problem for now:

"If this (infinite number of states) is true, many of the ideas discussed in this paper will have to be reconsidered.... the discussion of this paper will be predicated on the assumption that the number of relevant states in the landscape is finite and naive statistical ideas can be applied."

This is usual string research working model. Make hypotesis A and obtain conclusions, if it is shows that hypotesis A was wrong simply ignore it. This is the reason of that after of more than 30 years of intense study and public claims, string theory has done exactly nothing.

[AntonioLao]

I am one of those who prefer working with the simplicity of physical dimension less than 3; for this, I cannot peacefully relate my preference with what is being done in string theories. This is not just because of the complex mathematics that I need to understand but also the assertions from string theorists that all higher dimensions above 4D are hopelessly hidden from our view. String theorists are simply saying that with their math, they can "see" the inside of zero.

[Epslion]

String Theory; may or may not be true, no can say for sure (that is for sure). I am swayed neither way, although I do allow myself to think on the matter from time to time. I have come up with some possible solutions to the problems stated by Juan R. (String Theory predicting masses and making it compatible with General Relativity). These are all on the assumption though that String Theory is correct. If you would like to read it here is the link, http://www.toequest.com/forum/showth...=3432#post3432

[Juan R.]

String Theory; may or may not be true, no can say for sure (that is for sure). I am swayed neither way, although I do allow myself to think on the matter from time to time. I have come up with some possible solutions to the problems stated by Juan R. (String Theory predicting masses and making it compatible with General Relativity). These are all on the assumption though that String Theory is correct.

It is easy to see that string theory is wrong (in fact string theory does not exist, it was substituted years ago by brane theory and recently by M-theory, but the name "string theory" is still used for marketing purposes . Simply one observes Nature, next one formalizes that in a mathematical framework and then compare mathematical framework with that of string theory. The result string theory is completely wrong. It is only a question of time that was broadly accepted.

In the past string theorists claimed that string theory was THE FINAL theory. 20 years ago began to have doubts about its power and some began to research in other fields. Last year many string theorists abandoned the field and this year people begin to openly admit that string theory may be wrong (e.g. Brian Greene NOW is open to idea string theory can be simply wrong). In fact, i did serious criticism of string theory in the 2003 and was seriously critiqued. Last and this year some of most important leaders in string theory are saying i said then.

In next 10 years, it will be commonly accepted that string theory was a waste of time.

the problems stated by Juan R. (String Theory predicting masses and making it compatible with General Relativity). These are all on the assumption though that String Theory is correct.

Often one heard that string theory cannot be verified because one would need an acelerator of galactic size. This is false, before explain new phenomena at Planck scale, string theory would explain all of phenomena that we already know at usual scales.

The long-standing crisis of string theory is its complete failure to explain or predict any large distance physics. String theory cannot say anything definite about large distance physics. String theory is incapable of determining the dimension, geometry, particle spectrum and coupling constants of macroscopic spacetime. String theory cannot give any
definite explanations of existing knowledge of the real world and cannot make any definite predictions. The reliability of string theory cannot be evaluated, much less established. String theory has no credibility as a candidate theory of physics.

String theory fails to explain even the existence of a macroscopic spacetime, much less its dimension, geometry and particle physics.

Even if some particular macroscopic background spacetime is chosen arbitrarily, by hand, string theory still fails to be realistic at large distance.
The large distance limit of string theory consists of the perturbative scattering amplitudes of the low energy string modes, which are particle-like. But the particle masses are exactly zero, and the low energy scattering amplitudes are exactly supersymmetric. String theory fails to provide any mechanism to generate the very small nonzero masses
that are observed in nature, or to remove the exact spacetime supersymmetry, which is not observed in nature.

String theory works for an universe with supersimmetry and graviton-like "matter". Experiments show that is not our Universe. String theory works just in paper nor in reality.

The failure of string theory to generate nonzero small particle masses (i.e. real particles) is a consequence of its failure to resolve the continuous degeneracy of the manifold of spacetimes.

String theory was claimed to reduce all of physics to one single parameter. The reality is that in real papers in real journals, there is more than 10000 parameters for extracting any prediction from string theory. Thereforem nobody can predict nothing from string theory.

As said in several ocassions string theory is incompatible with general relativity (in fact string theory is background dependent and the supposed background independent version, M-theory, has not been formulated still, therefore M-theory is the name of a supposed theory to be developed still!!!! This arrogance is common in string theory community) and even if someday string theorists achieve the derivation (real derivation) of GR from string M-theory, last works published past year begin to suggests (i am sure) that Einstein general relativity is not the correct theory for gravitation. Therefore, even if string theorists achieve the miracle of deriving GR from "string theory", thet will derive a not very correct theory!!!

I'm sorry.

P.D: For more information in the dozens and dozens and dozens of failures of string theory and why is a waste of time you can read my nontechnical work

http://www.canonicalscience.com/stringcriticism.pdf

[subversion]

To be rather blunt, and not to mirror Juan's sentiments too nearly, I think that string theory is pure rubbish. Mainly it suffers from having no intuitive basis. What was the intuitive insight that caused someone to come up with string theory? To me it just seems like they pulled it out of thin air. Also, string theorists don't exhibit much discipline the way they ad hoc manufacture all these new dimensions as it suits them. As string theory has been touted, logic has been forgone.

hey Guille, can we make this thread into an anonymous poll? I'm really interested in seeing a graph that shows the demographics of peoples opinion regarding string theory. In addition, you never stated your own opinion about string theory. What is it?

[Guille]

SuBvErSiOn,

I am sending a PM to Robert because I went to edit but nothing about this appears.

I started to thread to see the opinions of others. Something I learn since I was small is that I will learn more hearing than speaking in a conversation. Especially in a conversation where I am probably the youngest and probably the rest of the conversationalists have my age multiplied by 2, 3, 4...

Still: I used to be convinced (from reading The Elegant Universe) that string theory was correct, and although not verifyable yet, I believed that what they said was mostly true. This was caused because Greene is very smart and takes the reader by his explanations, etz, and assures you that everything is going very well, that there is agreement of what the theory is, and most importantly, that soon string theory will be verifiable.

All these are wrong and untrue. string, or M-theory (who knows if they allready have another name....like Mring theory (lol)) has not been proven empirically and can't and will be impossible to do that for a several years (the LHC at CERN won't have enough tevs to see particles as strings).

Now, I know about Heim theory, which is provable, proved, more predictiv, more effective, more logical, less inventional, less free.....And what is, I think, and that nobody here can disagree, the most important difference between Heim theory and M-theory, which is, that the creators of the first one, were, although strictly probably more inteligent, much more modest about the limitations of the theory. M-theory is going to see the "CLOSE" singal on the door of scientists' labs, investigation centers, etz... It's just a question of.... TIME.

May the force be with you Sub.

[Juan R.]

I'm really interested in seeing a graph that shows the demographics of peoples opinion regarding string theory. In addition, you never stated your own opinion about string theory. What is it?

Probably you will see a great interest on it from USA people and few or nothing from Europe people. At least that is the usual distribution in research centers often. String theory is also usualy publicited in journals and magazines (New York times) but i don see that publicity in typical European ones.

People in America takes string theory research like a class of "cold war". Instead of developing new bombs or airplanes for showing USA "supremacy", they are demonstrating his power like super country from science advances. Of course the rest of countries do jokes on real status of string theory. Number of people working in string theory at spain is small.

[Guille]

Probably you will see a great interest on it from USA people and few or nothing from Europe people. At least that is the usual distribution in research centers often. String theory is also usualy publicited in journals and magazines (New York times) but i don see that publicity in typical European ones.

People in America takes string theory research like a class of "cold war". Instead of developing new bombs or airplanes for showing USA "supremacy", they are demonstrating his power like super country from science advances. Of course the rest of countries do jokes on real status of string theory. Number of people working in string theory at spain is small.

I agree. I still have not met 1 single Spanish person interested or who even knows about string theory (out of toequest). And I don't even imagen of getting to know someone working on it....

ps: My post 800!

[Juan R.]

Still: I used to be convinced (from reading The Elegant Universe) that string theory was correct, and although not verifyable yet, I believed that what they said was mostly true.

Greene lacks true in his book in a desesperately atempt to obtain more funding for string theory research, because it is being closed.

String, brane, F, M, NCST, and the new stwing theory, etc, etc, etc. are proved experimentally. For example, all predictions (supersimetric particles, proton decay, mm range dimesions, cosmological constant, inflactionary issues. etc.) of string theory were false. The prediction of cosmological constant is off of experimental value by 10^50. This is the poor prediction that any theory of physics has done newer.