Exploring Superstrings in the Lab 312
ultracool writes "Physicists at Utrecht University in the Netherlands have come up with a way of observing a superstring by utilizing Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC). A one-dimensional BEC in an optical lattice is rapidly rotated, causing a quantized vortex to form. The bosonic part of the superstring consists of this vortex line. Inside the vortex, they would trap an ultracold cloud of fermionic atoms. Hopefully this will allow observation of the supersymmetry between bosons and fermions, thus providing the first experimental evidence to support superstring theory."
Proving Superstring Theory would be useful . . (Score:3, Interesting)
What does that mean for us? Well, when Newton found physical laws that worked more generally than Aristotle thought, Physics was born and we were launched into a new era of science. Einstein's Special (and then, afterward) General Relativity made what we consider the modern era possible.
Quantum Physics and Relativity have always been at odds, though. After all, what makes gravity operate at a quantum level? Superstring theory is one of several "theories of everything" that would allow us to explain the world in more general terms--and in the past, every time that has happened, society and technology has taken leaps and bounds forward.
What will happen if we find out that Superstring theory really is the theory of everything? It's liable to be as outlandishly unthought of as space travel to the people of the turn of the 20th century.
Far Stringtopia (Score:3, Interesting)
Give me a break... (Score:2, Interesting)
The scientists are creating a system here that looks quite similar to superstring theory in some ways from a mathematical point of view. They have no way of observing "real" superstrings at these energies. While certainly interesting in its own right, this experiment can in no way provide experimental evidence that superstring theory really describes reality.
MOD PARENT UP! (Score:5, Interesting)
To use a computational analogy, they are simulating the equations of string theory using a BEC as the computer. So whatever results they get had better agree with string theory! They aren't actually testing whether these explain the world, just exploring the equations of string theory with an efficient computer -- the BEC.
Re:I suppose it makes sense to physicists (Score:2, Interesting)
I bring this up because it is quite possible to have a fermionic atom with a bosonic nucleus. Take, for example, Nitrogen-14. The 14, or course, means it must have 14 nucleons, making the nucleus a boson. However, Nitrogen has 7 protons. Thus, an N-14 atom will have 7 electrons, for a grand total of 21 fermions. With an odd number of fermions, the atom is a fermion, as well.
And, of course, there are also atoms with fermionic nuclei that are, themselves, bosons (Hydrogen comes to mind).
Re:I saw that episode (Score:1, Interesting)
Greene seems sleazy (Score:2, Interesting)
This may not be fair, but Greene struck me as kind of sleazy. Notice how he is both the narrator of the show, and also one of the people being interviewed. Also notice how he breezes past making concrete predictions.
Maybe this criticism isn't fair, and this is how all revolutionary theories look when they are young. But it just struck me that Greene was presenting this stuff as though it was allready laid in stone. He basically tells the narrative story of the triumph of string theory, going from a graduate students pet theory to... a bunch of theorists' pet theory.
String theory hasnt triumphed, isnt even in a position that it is possible for it to triumph yet. So what is Greene praising so boldly? A highly speculative area which is at this point only of interest to pure theorists, since it has (as of yet) zero predictive powers.
At one point I think the lack of evidence gets so painful that he points out that there are alot of researchers working in the field of string theory now. The number is just kind of dropped vaguely like "hundreds of researchers".
The best argument he has for its validity is that it looks promising to alot of people. After all this talk about how modern physics is so confusing and counter-intuitive he circles around and uses intuition (admittedly professional intuition)to justify why this new way of doing things is better.
STRING THEORY IS NOT A THEORY (Score:2, Interesting)
String theory is just a bunch of theoretical constructs which may some day be put together into something useful.
Imagine the concept of "forces" without F=ma. "All the motion we see is actually caused by these things called forces, really. Every time something moves a force was involved."
Pretty useless, it basically is just a tautology: small things aren't electrons and quarks etc, they are actually strings. Every time you see anything it isn't what you think it is, it is really a string or group of strings which happen to behave exactly like what you think it is. Great. So... what?
Alot of people seem to be excited because of the mathematical richness of this area. I am not even nearly competent to evaluate this directly, but thinking back to basic proofs that everyone has done in highschool, if you slip up you end up proving something like "0=0". Maybe this promising mathematical complexity is purely in the math and has no physical meaning. The 21st century equivalent of epicycles.
Re:STRING THEORY IS NOT A THEORY (Score:1, Interesting)