CapitalistImperialistPig

We've now had about 45 years of string theory, and many of the long time practitioners have made big Russian bucks, courtesy of Yuri Milner. What we don't have is what we like to call results. The gold standard in science is prediction - prediction of new and verified physical results. String theory has not been shy about making predictions: supersymmetry, and extra dimensions, for example, but so far neither has made itself known. For now, that leaves String theory in the place where the atomic theory of Democritus sat for 25 centuries or so - tantalyzing but unproven and unprovable. The LHC was designed to find the Higgs, and it seems to have done that. Nonetheless, many string theorists were convinced that it would produce sparticles - some even bet on it. So far, no go. The LHC is being juiced up a bit, so there is still hope, but the fact is that nobody even has a clue what the energies are at which supersymmetry should be found. Unless that can be remedied, it see...

Phil Gibbs has four of his reasons in a guest post at Lumo's place. I can't share his enthusiasm for the Multiverse, but the other reasons have some force. He points out that failure to find clear signatures of ST in currently accessible energy domains would hardly be a refutation. It's possible that string theory today could be like atomic theory in the time of Democritus - true but millenia away from testability.

String theorists are very smart. We know this because: (a) you need to know a lot of physics and even more math to understand string theory (and Math is Hard ! - Barbie) and (b) because they keep telling us so. Because people (Ok, their moms and other string theorists, anyway) have always told them they are so smart, some string theorists have found it convenient to set themselves up as experts in all sorts of stuff - climate change, for example. And volcanology. CNN at least is convinced. Lubos finds CNN interviewing Michio Kaku , string theorist and science popularizer, about the Yellowstone supervolcano (more Yellowstone here and here ). Not that I blame Michio. If Rebecca Hillman or other hot Anchorette wants to interview me, I'm available. I can talk about anything, including superstrings, the Superbowl or volcanology - and I even experienced the last big Yellowstone quake. Actual volcanologist Erik Klementi was not amused . I guess he wanted to be interviewed. Or ma...

The arXiv is one of the great developments in the history of scientific publication. It's very unfortunate then, that it, or at least part of it, was captured by anti-scientific cranks with no tolerance for criticism. Some time ago, some string theorists thought it would be a good idea to allow trackbacks from the papers to blogs referencing them. This was OK until some Stalinist string theorists noticed that some blogs referencing the papers actually criticized not only the papers, but the whole string theory program. The problem, it seems, was Peter Woit. Peter has an amusing update of the situation today . It seems that an anonymous new blog (started by Peter) with the proper attitude of deference (called " String Theory Fan" ) does meet the rigorous scientific standards needed to qualify for trackbacks, even if Peter's blog doesn't.

Relying on the recommend of the Lubonator in a very laudatory review posted to his blog and Amazon, I bought David McMahon’s String Theory Demystified and started going through it. Perhaps you are familiar with the following “derivation:” 1 = Sqrt (1) = (-1)*(-1)*Sqrt(1) = (-1)*(i^2)*Sqrt(1) where i is the imaginary = Sqrt(-1) = - Sqrt(i^4 * 1) = - Sqrt(1) since i^4 = 1 = - 1 Truly an impressive result – even more so when you notice that steps 2-5 are utterly superfluous. I mention this because David McMahon, in his book “String Theory Demystified,” uses the exact same trick to deduce that x * Sqrt(- m^2 / x) = - m * Sqrt(-x), (I have simplified a bit - he has lots of subscripts and superscripts and manages to throw in both more steps and a couple of cancelling sign errors.) (Pages 27-28, and yes, it did take him most of two pages). This is hardly an inconsequential aside. The procedure is intended to illustrate how the so-cal...

Eric Mayes, writing in a comment on Cosmic Variance claims to have a paper coming out Monday that derives the MSSM from string theory, complete with lepton masses and neutrino mixing ratios (at least for known particles). Very exciting if true - especially if their derivation gives masses for particles not yet measured. I'm not sure what the status of the measurement of neutrino mixing ratios is. We can now competely derive the MSSM from string theory, including the quark, tau lepton, and neutrino mass matrices and mixings (see our paper on Monday), so these people should sit down and be quiet. I don't know if this is truly legit, but there does seem to be a real Eric Mayes at Texas A&M. UPDATE: Via Wolfgang , the paper is here .