Sage-Tips

Is string theory at a dead end?

This startling accusation has been made by frustrated physicists, including several Nobel prize winners, who say that string theory – which seeks to outline the entire structure of the universe in a few brief equations – is an intellectual dead end. Both theories work well – but they are incompatible.

Can string theory be disproved?

With any theory, it’s typically easier to disprove it than to prove it, although one criticism of string theory is that it may have become so versatile that it can’t be disproved.

What does M stand for in M theory?

Modern attempts to formulate M-theory are typically based on matrix theory or the AdS/CFT correspondence. According to Witten, M should stand for “magic”, “mystery” or “membrane” according to taste, and the true meaning of the title should be decided when a more fundamental formulation of the theory is known.

How hard is it to solve string theory?

The landscape of string theory contains a lot of possible solutions, the hard part is find the right one (or a family of those, who knows). A lot of work is being done not with full blown string theory but with super gravity which is basically the low energy effective field theory following from string theory.

Is string theory an intellectual dead end?

This startling accusation has been made by frustrated physicists, including several Nobel prize winners, who say that string theory – which seeks to outline the entire structure of the universe in a few brief equations – is an intellectual dead end. Two new books published in America question its very basis.

Is string theory an obsolete theory?

‘Far from a wonderful technological hope for a greater tomorrow, string theory is the tragic consequence of an obsolete belief system,’ said Stanford University’s Robert Laughlin, winner of the 1998 Nobel prize for physics. For a theory that purports to explain the entire structure of the universe, such a high-level attack is very serious.

Is string theory real or pseudoscience?

Many physicists consider string theory our best hope for combining quantum physics and gravity into a unified theory of everything. Yet a contrary opinion is that the concept is practically pseudoscience, because it seems to be nearly impossible to test through experiments.