String Theory Put to the Test

secretsather writes to mention that scientists have come up with a definitive test that could prove or disprove string theory. The project is described as "Similar to the well known U.S. particle collider at Fermi Lab, the Large Hadron Collider, scheduled for November 2007, is expected to be the largest, and highest energy particle accelerator in existence; it will use liquid helium cooled superconducting magnets to produce electric fields that will propel particles to near light speeds in a 16.7 mile circular tunnel. They then introduce a new particle into the accelerator, which collides with the existing ones, scattering many other mysterious subatomic particles about."

Flexible Theory

[Lucan Varo]

Wasn't string theory compared to C? A horribly complex construct that could be made to match any of the customers problems (test results) no matter how complex?

Life, The Universe, and Everything

[eviloverlordx]

42.

Did anyone honestly think that the answer would be different?

XKCD Has a great take on this...

[Acy James Stapp]

http://www.xkcd.com/c171.html [xkcd.com]

Re:Flipping Philosophies?

[skoaldipper]

I say, kill all the particles and let science sort 'em out...

Large what collider?

[elliott666]

Oh...Large Hadron Collider. If it was in the Castro district I would really be suspicious.

Re:Flipping Burgers?

[kfg]

String theory always seemed to be the most complicated mathematical way you could "force" a unified field theory into existence by adding as many dimensions and undefinable, physically meaningless constants as possible.

And the essential problem in trying to falsify it is that it's so bad it's not even wrong.

KFG

Re:Bah

[Bluesman]

Actually, ALL of the experimental data in the universe could do that.

Re:You can't prove a theory

[giminy]

Thank you.

Please vote to give this article the scientificmethodcantproveonlydisprove tag :).

Cheers,
Reid

Bye, everyone!

[Rob T Firefly]

November 2007? Sure, what the hell, I've had a good life.

So, who wants to loan me large sums of money? Pay you back in December?

debate still rages?

[mugnyte]

  It thought this was cleared up years ago:

  Scanning/Copying based on a terminator byte pattern is fraught with error and is definitely not secure.

  Buffer sizes are terribly problematic when left tot he caller to check on overflow. It must be in the methods, and thus part of the data structure. (see point above).

  Strings these days are UTF-7 or 8, which makes them an even better candidate for a object-based construct rather than a memory map.

I'd like to point out the....oh, wait...

Why not use ten dimensions but make them bigger?

[spun]

Nigel: As you can see, our theories all go to eleven, right across the board. Look: eleven, eleven, eleven.
Marty: Does that mean it's better? Is it any better?
Nigel, well, it's one more, isn't it? Most blokes, their theories only use ten dimensions. They're at ten, where do they have to go from there? When we need that extra push over the cliff, you know what we do?
Marty: Put it up to eleven?
Nigel: Eleven. Exactly. One more!

The trick is projection

[benhocking]

Impossible to visualize? Yep.

Not at all. You merely have to project one of the dimensions down so that you're only considering a 10-dimensional space.

Re:You can't prove a theory

[truthsearch]

Please vote to give this comment the concatenated-words-need-hyphens-to-be-readable mod :).

High-energy physics - fun, fun, fun!

[TheWoozle]

In what other endeavor can you persuade people to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to build complicated machinery and pay you a salary based on the following (roughly paraphrased) prospectus:

"You see, what we'll do is accelerate some shit up to within a hairs-breadth of the speed of light then smash it into some other shit and see what happens."

Gotta love those wacky physicists! ;-)

Re:Flipping Burgers?

[ColdWetDog]

Thanks, but my head still asplode.

Proven String Theory

[WED Fan]

String Theory was proven on July 16, 2003, and confirmed after peer review and over 20 separate duplicated efforts, including a lab in Dallas, Texas.

Proven: When you need a piece of string to tie something up, and you find a piece of string in a junk drawer, it will always be too short for use, or too long and when cut to the appropriate length, the remaining piece will be too short for further use.

A similar, but as yet unproven theory is in testing: When you have a piece of string and measure it by "eyeballing" it will always be too short for actual use.

Re:Proofs are for mathematics

[stevesliva]

How often have we heard someone claim that we shouldn't allow something because it has never been proven to be safe?

Indeed, especially with regard to GMOs. Safety is a testable theory though, and "proven safe" is generally the third option of "lies, damn lies, and statistics."

Mythbusters

[Cervantes]

it will use liquid helium cooled superconducting magnets to produce electric fields that will propel particles to near light speeds in a 16.7 mile circular tunnel. They then introduce a new particle into the accelerator, which collides with the existing ones, scattering many other mysterious subatomic particles about.

This is why the Mythbusters should not be allowed to design scientific equipment. I can picture Adam dancing about in girlish glee even now...

Oh, lighten up.

[Quiet_Desperation]

We can have a raffle! How will the LHC destroy us? Check one: [ ] Microscopic black holes [ ] Trigger collapse of the false vacuum [ ] Strange matter [ ] Magnetic monopoles [ ] Disruption of the Wigner observer cascade causes a universal system reset [ ] God notices and stuffs us all into Carlsbad Caverns

Re:Flipping Burgers?

[jaweekes]

Thou shalt have four dimensions. No more, no less. Four shall be the number of thy dimensions, and the number of the dimensions shall be four. Five shalt thou not have, neither thou have three, excepting that thou then proceed to four. Six is right out.

Re:Flipping Burgers?

[Kadin2048]

When I first tried to post this I got a message saying that "This user does not exist, no matter how much you want him to." Anecdotal evidence suggested that I do, in fact, exist, since I think, I think, so I attributed the result to experimental error and reran it; failing to falsify my existence in the process.

Keep running the experiment; eventually you'll get the outcome you expect.

Re:Bah

[Dragonslicer]

Of course, how would one know when they got there?

They'd see the sign for the restaurant. It's pretty tough to miss.

Re:The trick is projection

[cain]

Impossible to visualize? Yep.

Not at all. You merely have to project one of the dimensions down so that you're only considering a 10-dimensional space.

Then just project that down so you're only considering a 9-dimensional space. Easy.

Then just project that down so you're only considering a 8-dimensional space. Easy.

Then just project that down so you're only considering a 7-dimensional space. Easy.

Then just project that down so you're only considering a 6-dimensional space. Easy.

Then just project that down so you're only considering a 5-dimensional space. Easy.

Then just project that down so you're only considering a 4-dimensional space. Easy.

Then just project that down so you're only considering a 3-dimensional space. Easy.

Then just project that down so you're only considering a 2-dimensional space. Easy.

Then just project that down so you're only considering a 1-dimensional space and you get this --> .

So where's my freakin' Nobel?

Re:Bah

[the_bard17]

Nah... there's a restaurant.

Favorite Dimension?

[crhylove]

WHAT is your favorite DIMENSION?!?!

"10... no, wait 11!.... AUUUUGGGGHHH"