String Theory Being Attacked Again

Moving Beyond String Theory


By Mark Anderson
02:00 AM Sep, 26, 2006
Ask any credentialed nerd what the ultimate theory of physics is, and chances are they'll reply, "string theory."

In string theory -- an idea that's been around since the late 1970s -- the universe is a 10-dimensional place, with six of those dimensions curled up inside themselves like a cat in front of a fireplace. All particles and forces are different resonances and vibrations of these 10-dimensional strings.

Strings are far from the only game in town. There are other, potentially equally promising approaches to unifying physics' two seemingly incompatible visions of the cosmos: general relativity and quantum mechanics.

String Theory

Well, if there are ten dimensions,as the string theory postulates, what keeps six of them curled? There must be some force that is keeping the other six dimensions from presenting themselves. Right?

Attacked? How is it being attacked when everything Scientists are saying about it is true? It's not testable through any method we know now currently. If you read the article more indepth, it details several more likely Unification theories, like Quantum Loop Gravity for one(it's Falsifiable), and that Twistor String Theory is another: A non hyperdimension string theory, that retains most of String Theories "elegant maths" and it's falsifiable as well, giving it something all the other String Theories don't have, a leg to stand on.

With that said, I still think String Theory makes a lot of Philisophical sense. I hope it drives theorists fowrard at the very least.

[edit on 28-9-2006 by sardion2000]

'All strung up' is the title of a review in The Economist of 14 September 2006 of two books questioning the preeminence of string theory -- Not Even Wrong, the book reviewed in the Wired article you linked to, and The Trouble With Physics by Lee Smolin.

You can find another article about these books and the 'attack' on string theory here.

I don't have an opinion on this -- or rather, I haven't changed the opinion I had in the eighties, when I first began hearing about string theory: namely, that I don't understand it and it seems pretty far-fetched to me.

Well assuming that life is what it appears to be, I would think that there are more dimensions than we can even imagine. One has to realize that we are being bombarded, as individuals, with massive amounts of information per second. I have heard estimates that we are being bombarded with something like 400 billion bits of information per second, yet we are only integrating 2000 bits of it into our consciousness. Most of that integration is just involving our environment,body and time.

If that is indeed the case, then there is just a whole lot we don't and never will know. I am not an expert on the "string thory," actually I know very little about it, but I can tell you that what it seems to imply seems very posssible to me.

String theory is soooooo last decade...

look up M theory... it was a blast from the past, that seems to be much more accurate now...
its what all the hot, young QPers are vibrating over these days...

10 dimensions... nope... 11!

en.wikipedia.org...

lanl.arxiv.org...

The facinating-interesting part of M-theory to me (I'm not a physicist), is that the M could stand for Membrane.

Most of us might think of a membrane as part of a cell. We were all taught in biology class that the outer "protective wall" of the cell is the membrane structure. In M-Theory, it could be that our own 3 (spatial) dimensional universe is the membrane of a "higher dimensional bulk."

This makes our vast universe look tiny and insignificant. If you are philosophical or religious in nature then try and wrap your mind around that. That's a mighty God indeed. In fact, according to M-Theory.... the Big Bang isn't even a special event. There are higher dimensional universes crashing into eachother all the time.

M-theory and String theory are not the same thing. M-theory is the updated or successor form of the string theory. M has 11 dementions and S has 10. The membrain is the idea that with one extra demation (10 to 11) is that one string(or partical) could create and entire univers by its self or something like that.

[edit on 29-9-2006 by halfmask]

M theory was also before string theory, but was given no credence, because it was just too far out...

now, after the string theory has been searched to death, they (the scientists) decided that the unknowns in string theory, could be answered with M theory...

and membrane is an excellent way to look at this...

Someday, someone will create a quantum microscope, that can look into an atom, and find a galaxy...
or someday, we might discover, that we have lived our human evolution (along with our universal time scale) , in the relative dimensional plane, of the great creators kleenex...

the earth looks flat from down here, but we know it is a sphere...

Originally posted by LazarusTheLong
M theory was also before string theory, but was given no credence, because it was just too far out...

now, after the string theory has been searched to death, they (the scientists) decided that the unknowns in string theory, could be answered with M theory...

and membrane is an excellent way to look at this...

Someday, someone will create a quantum microscope, that can look into an atom, and find a galaxy...
or someday, we might discover, that we have lived our human evolution (along with our universal time scale) , in the relative dimensional plane, of the great creators kleenex...

the earth looks flat from down here, but we know it is a sphere...

You know, I once had a high school friend who told me that if you look at the atom and the way the neutrons and protons and all of that stuff is arranged, you get the impression that everything is just miniature universes. Science,at least at the quantum level, is beginning to infer much the same.

I often wonder what happened to that guy. It's been about ten years ago since we had that conversation, but I can remember it like it were yesterday.

Atoms don't look like solar systmes. They look more like a flower head, to let ya know. The model you are thinking of is the very very simpalized version. Mabye the universe does look like a flower. Who knows?

Originally posted by halfmask
Atoms don't look like solar systmes. They look more like a flower head, to let ya know. The model you are thinking of is the very very simpalized version. Mabye the universe does look like a flower. Who knows?

There is actually a theory that instead of the universe beginning with a "big bang" it just sort of "bloomed" into existence much like a flower does.

Originally posted by SpeakerofTruth

Originally posted by halfmask
Atoms don't look like solar systmes. They look more like a flower head, to let ya know. The model you are thinking of is the very very simpalized version. Mabye the universe does look like a flower. Who knows?

There is actually a theory that instead of the universe beginning with a "big bang" it just sort of "bloomed" into existence much like a flower does.

To bad there isn't a way to check. Lol. We may never know but, there is a chance that the human soul is really imortal and we could have all of time to find out. Then again we could end up wondering for all of time.

Originally posted by halfmask
To bad there isn't a way to check. Lol. We may never know but, there is a chance that the human soul is really imortal and we could have all of time to find out. Then again we could end up wondering for all of time.

That which is hidden will be revealed.

[edit on 1-10-2006 by SpeakerofTruth]

[edit on 1-10-2006 by SpeakerofTruth]