Recently, String Theory has gotten alot of press. There was a Nova special on PBS about it among other shows and books on the subject. The public has become aware of it, so when I tell people I'm in physics, often they'll ask me about String Theory. Now personally, I'm not really smart enough to understand what String Theory is really all about, except to say that it is a GUT (Grand Unification Theory) that tries to link up quantum and relativity. Basically, I tell people that I think it's a load of shit that has no real reason to be called physics. Physics has to be testable, which is why physics is an empirical science and not philosophy or mathematics. String Theory has been around for about 30 years now, and no one has come up with a way to test it. Einstein came up with special relativiy in 1905 and general realtivity a little later and I think the theory was tested for the first time in 1927 or 22 years later. So as far as I'm concerned, the deadline for string theory is about up. I mean there hasn't even been a POSSIBLE experiment proposed, like something that COULD be done, but CAN'T be done today because of technological immaturity- something that relativity DID have around the time of it conception.
Here is an article that does a good job of summing up my beef w/ string theory:
Why String Theory Sucks
Tuesday, September 26, 2006
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1 comment:
i guess that's the attitude i've taken with a lot of modern physics. if it doesn't produce a prediction (about something real) then you're basically word-erbating. or matherbating. either one doesn't feel as good as the real thing.
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