Evidence for String Theory? 258
Izeickl writes "PhysOrg.com is reporting that scientists working at a neutrino detector nicknamed AMANDA at the South Pole report that evidence for string theory may soon be coming. Extra dimensions predicted by string theory may affect observed numbers of certain neutrinos and this is what the scientists will be looking for. The article further states 'No more than a dozen high-energy neutrinos have been detected so far. However, the current detection rate and energy range indicate that AMANDA's larger successor, called IceCube, now under construction, could provide the first evidence for string theory and other theories that attempt to build upon our current understanding of the universe.'"
Re:Now we know.. (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:well is it (Score:2, Interesting)
Heim theory? (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually (Score:2, Interesting)
I think you were joking, but astrophysicists extracted a surprising amount of information [arxiv.org] from the 19 neutrinos observed from Supernova 1987A.
Falsifiable (Score:3, Interesting)
If you find internal consistency (within the dogma of a religion, including their trusted documents) and external consistency with the outer (earth/cosmos) and inner (conscience/mind) world, then you can start taking it seriously.
Ordinary Christianity has its share of mystery and hyper-rational statements (that is, statements that seem to be beyond 19th century rationalism to fully unpack/understand), it seems to be extremely falsifiable and, to different degrees depending on your presuppositions, provable.
But that's just me.
Sigh (Score:5, Interesting)
The fact is, pretty much nobody knows what the hell Heim theory predicts. Most of his theory was never published or reviewed by his peers. We don't even know if his theory is self-consistent, whether the predictions hyped by New Scientist or the Internet "Heim appreciation society" that's pushing it are actually predictions of the theory, etc. For that matter, hardly anybody knows what the definition of the theory is.
Just because some people have made a bunch of wild claims about what Heim theory can predict, doesn't mean it's something to get excited about. Nor does Heim's reputation. Schroedinger himself thought he had come up with a unified field theory, called a big press conference, privately spoke of winning a second Nobel Prize. Some reporter asked Einstein what he thought, and he responded with a carefully worded response to the effect that one shouldn't get the impression that physics is like unstable Third World dictatorships, always experiencing revolutions. Schroedinger's theory didn't pan out and the two stopped corresponding for over a year.
Re:wake me when this matters to us 3d people (Score:5, Interesting)
You essentially ask: what use is fundamental physics research?
You can't ever predict what applications fundamental research will have on technology. Sometimes, things are immediate: after Roengten discovered X-rays in 1895, the medical application was obvious. On the other hand, in 1905 Einstein predicted that objects moving fast experience time dilation relative to stationary objects. In 1915 he also predicted that the same would hold for objects higher up in a gravitational well. This was completely irrelevant to then-current technology: Nothing man-made moved faster than 500mph, or got high enough off the ground, and anyway time couldn't be measured accurately enough for these effects to matter. Swing around to the 1980s. The US government is now launching the GPS system, which depends on exteremly precise timing synchronization between a satellite in orbit and the unit on the ground. It turns out that the two relativistic time-dilation effects have to be taken into account for the system to work at all. Who'd have thunk this in 1915?
Moreover, progress is usually incremental. No single discovery will "cure HIV" or give us infinite energy. New physics beyond the standard model might have technological applications in 80 years. Does that mean we shouldn't discover it today?
Re:well is it (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:well is it (Score:1, Interesting)
That turns out not to be the case. M-theory is still 11-dimensional, though the usual compactification scheme of getting down to 4 large dimensions can be employed. You may be getting confused by his work [arxiv.org] showing how to use twistors to relate perturbative (supersymmetric) gauge theories to string theory. (Anyway, the dimensionality of M-theory is tangential to the question of its falsifiability.)
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:wake me when this matters to us 3d people (Score:3, Interesting)
Socialism? I thought that stopped decades ago...
I find one potential use for those extra dimensions - a place where emotions, ghosts and the whole paranormal zoo can reside. There's quite a bit of stuff there which has no space whatsoever in Newton or Einstein style universes, but which people routinely relate to in a more or less systematic way. Would be nice to have a rational explanation for this stuff :)
Re:Falsifiable (Score:2, Interesting)
There is a difference between "provable" and "falsifible". Science never *proves* something right. It only fails to prove something wrong. Only mathematics and philosophy prove anything, and even those proofs are founded on unproven axioms with unknown truth value. (Sure, 2+2=4 is true, but is 2 true? When's the last time you saw a free-range two?)
The current body of scientific theory at any given time is the simplest theory that has not yet been falsified by the observed data. Given Occam's Razor, this means that the current body of theory is the most likely to be true of any known theory. That is only a probablity, not a certainty.
"God exists" is unfalsifible, given most definitions of God. He's basically a benevolent version of Laplace's Demon, so could hide from any search we mere mortals could construct. However, "God does not exist" is falsifible. "God does not exist" is simpler than "God does exist" - you have fewer entities. What Creationists/ID "theorists" claim is that they *have* falsified the theory that "God does not exist". But I believe (and most Slashdotters would agree, methinks) that nobody has convincingly falsified the "God does not exist" theory to this date. So, the likelist theory to be true is that God does not exist.
However, faith allows us to believe in statements that are not likely to be true. This is called "prudential justification" in philosophical circles. One example of this is Pascal's Wager. Admittedly, it's a *bad* example, because Pascal screwed up the theology (it takes more than just belief to get into heaven, so an incorrect choice *will* cost you some). But you could resurrect it by saying that believing that God exists makes me *really* happy, while believing that God doesn't exist makes me *really* sad.
Just don't expect us to share your faith-based belief though. The existence of God might affect peoples' feelings in different ways...
Re:wake me when this matters to us 3d people (Score:2, Interesting)
I think Einstein did a good job of visualizing the 4th dimension (or space-time). I work in the time domain myself, for instance when I compose music. My point was that "perhaps our terms of understanding other dimensions are limited", at least by our framework of representation.
Re:wake me when this matters to us 3d people (Score:2, Interesting)
Unfortunately, this point is not made very often recently. Probably because scientists fear that this argument is all too easily dismissed as weak or a lame excuse. I think it is not. Otherwise one could next argue that theatres and galleries are useless and that we should print nothing but text books and reference manuals.
Re:Don't get your hopes up (Score:1, Interesting)
Analogously, there could be extra dimensions at each point in our 3-dimensional space that are curled up too small for us to notice that we're moving in them. Only with a super-powerful "microscope"(usually, a particle accelerator) could we see that they're there.
Re:well is it (Score:5, Interesting)
No, that really IS the case [sfgate.com] from a lot of physicists' POVs.
One problem with the theory is that according one physicist's paper, string theory offers 10 to 500th power different universes all with different physical properties and with many different kinds of forces. String theory practioners -- dare I say worshippers -- use this to say that our universe is merely one out of 10 to the 500th power different possible universes. Some flakes, like Michio Kaku, think we can colonize a new universe through a wormhole with light-speed traveling single-atom nanobots containing the technological and cultural seeds of a new civilization to avoid the heat death of our own universe. [sfgate.com] (This article is why I'll never respect Michio Kaku's words ever again. How did this man ever get a reputation for understanding physics?)
Other physicists rightly point out that if they theory can handle an almost uncountable number of alternate universes with alternate sets of forces and physical constants, then it doesn't actually predict anything useful since you can't figure out how to predict anything about our own specific single universe has and that its not falsifiable because any new observations we find can be retrofitted into the theory by playing with and changing the math as has happened numerous times since the theory's inception.
Of course, string theory may be right. The philosophical problem is that many of our best minds are spending all their time on a theory that can't be proven or disproven with current technology. Some of the experiments needed to confirm or deny string theory will take super-colliders capable of generating energy on a scale far beyond even a type I civilizaions' resources (the theoretical energy densities needed to tear matter down to its component strings).
Since its practioners frequently disdain the necessity of experimental verification, since it's useless as a predictive tool, and since it can be retrofitted for any information that conflicts with it that we'll be able to achieve in the forseeable future, string theory is for all practical purposes nothing more than a math-based religion.
Re:well is it (Score:2, Interesting)
And what in that article violates known physical facts? It's speculative, but theoretically possible in string theory, which is a physical theory.
Really? Please, name these practitioners and give examples of their "frequent disdain". It's not true of any string theorist I've met.
I largely agree with the rest of your post, though. String theory has a real paucity of useful predictions. Calling it a "math-based religion" is going too far, though. Reconciling various theoretical inconsistencies and paradoxes in our current theories is an accomplishment of no small importance, if only because no other theory (predictive or not) has been able to do as much.
Re:Falsifiable (Score:3, Interesting)
Unfortunately your "fallacy" fails even a cursory examination. The two verses are written in different languages at different times in different styles to different audiences about different things. I suppose if you try hard enough you could find something contradictory (if you try and do the same with other ancient documents, modern scholars will treat your findings with contempt).
Deut 24:16 says (ESV): "Fathers shall not be put to death because of their children, nor shall children be put to death because of their fathers. Each one shall be put to death for his own sin."
The whole book of Deuteronomy is a vassal treaty between a stronger party (God) and a weaker one (Israel) that follows the exact form of other treaties of the day. The parties are introduced, conditions are laid down for the period of rule, expected behaviour and punishments for deviations are discussed, and "out clauses" are specified. 24:16 is one of the miscellaneous laws that Israel were expected to obey and it emphasises that personal responsibility for capital crimes remains with the person and the person alone - unlike other cultures of the day where the whole family was slaughtered along with the miscreant. Understanding all the nuances of this law takes years: you need to know the history of Israel, the form of vassal treaties, the structure and purpose of OT Law and you should at least be able to read it in the original. But from the translation and the context, it's pretty clear: if you're guilty of a capital offence, you are the one that dies - and no-one else.
John 3:16 (ESV) says : "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life."
OK, I see the "fallacy." Sons are not to be put to death for the sins of the fathers! Is that it? Well there's a major problem with that view and it is this: Jesus was executed in accordance with this law! Neither his mother nor earthly father nor any of his brothers were killed when he was found guilty of blasphemy. He and he alone went to the cross.
If you're trying to say claim that the laws God gave to Israel during the time of Moses now suddenly apply to God himself and his relationship with his Son 1200-odd years later, then you a) haven't listened during vassal treaty class (treaty rules NEVER apply in reverse) b) need to point out evidence of God the Father's "sin" somewhere (Jesus is dying for the sin of his Father remember?) and c) have possibly missed the point that Jesus was not guilty of blasphemy but voluntarily laid down his life on behalf of others.
Conclusion: not only is this not a valid objection, it actually sheds some light in the other direction: whatever the Jewish leadership of the day did wrong, they were certainly not guilty of violating the Mosaic law on personal responsibility when they handed Christ over to the Romans to be executed.
Re:Sigh (Score:5, Interesting)
Now, there is NO paper or source code available which does this. Hermetism, no thank you, this is the strongest indicator that its simply bunk.