String Theory: Now Circling the Drain

Real Clear Science ^ | October 30, 2014 | Tom Hartsfield

[C19fan]

The largest physics experiment ever built is now testing the nature of reality. String theory, supersymmetry and other theories beyond the Standard Model are under scrutiny. More than 10,000 people have been involved. Total cost is nearing $10 billion. This, of course, is the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), which helped discover the Higgs Boson.

Simultaneously, the ACME experiment, run by a team of less than 50, built for a few million dollars (and much, much smaller), has created a more precise test of these advanced theoeries. This experiment hinges on an extremely painstaking and precise method to picture the shape and size of electrons.

[The Cajun]

Bookmark.

[reed13k]

well given light is considered to be both photons and waves:

From the standpoint of the photons the light will disperse over space using the cube rule and eventually a distance from the source will be reached that there is a gap between photon packets where light will not be detected.

From a wave standpoint the energy will disperse over the space based on the cube rule and eventually will reach a distance where the energy level in the wave is not detectable.

Both treatments say that yes we’d eventually get to the point that we wouldn’t be able to detect the light without a very very very long shutter speed that would be longer then the life of the person waiting for the picture.

but yeah I’m with you - how do we know? Personally I don’t think we do.

[aquila48]

” Your space-time centrism is showing.”

You do have a point there, though, I’m open to non-materilistic answer if a sufficiently persuasive argument is presents and materialistic causes are methodically eliminated.

Stephen Myers makes such a case for “intelligent design in his “Signature in the cell”

[chesley]

I read an interesting book recently

http://www.amazon.com/Mathematics-Loss-Certainty-Oxford-Paperbacks/dp/0195030850/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1414693984&sr=8-1-fkmr0&keywords=the+end+of+certainty+math

“The Loss of Certainty” about uncertainty creeping into mathematics in 20th century.

If you read it, let me know what you think.

[chesley]

see my post 44 below

[kosciusko51]

I'll have to take a look at this. I've read the author before, as I gave my wife a copy of his Mathematics for the Nonmathematician.

(I know, I'm such a romantic!)

[JoeFromSidney]

Excellent book, and you don't have to be a physicist to understand it.

[hattend]

I am no astro physicist. But I am an Engineer.

Is that you, Wolowitz?

PS: Your wife is hot.

[Chuzzlewit]

“and who created the creator”

good question! don’t even know if there was a creator.. I’m on the fence. I can be persuaded either way.

[chaosagent]

” This is where a creator comes in,
one would think.”

And who created the Creator?
________________________________________________________

No one. It’s turtles all the way down.

[SunkenCiv]

Before the LHC was ready, the last months of operation of one of the now-closed older facilities in the US tried to preempt the LHC and looked for the Higgs. They were able to rule it out. Anything the LHC is uniquely capable of doing is not replicatable, and isn't actually doing science. Thanks C19fan.

And from the FRchives:

...The properties and mass of the LHC's Higgs boson suggest that physicists will soon find superpartners for particles, and that we have begun to connect string theory to the real world... -- Particle physics is at a turning point [ Higgs boson and String Theory ]

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[backwoods-engineer]

Sorry, your question has no meaning outside of linear spacetime, as the Creator did not have a making.

[samtheman]

Are you eventually going to have to rename the String Theory Ping List?

:)

[SunkenCiv]

That would be difficult, considering how many threads *rimshot!* are in the keyword.

[samtheman]

Good one

[MHGinTN]

Excuse the intrusion, but may I comment upon something in your post? ... "... maybe we can always divide matter into smaller parts and get smaller and smaller."

There is a smallness threshold beyond which attributing spatial reality to a thing has no meaning since the smallest expression of dimension space has been calculated by Mister Planck. Below this threshold we have the quantum field, which I propose is actually spatio-temporal resonance resulting from the initial conditions of the origin of the dimensions space and time (God creating). Haisch, Rueda, & Putoff have derived F = ma for the quantum field, thus sourcing inertia and therefore gravity as arising from the state of the quantum field. I propose that the resonance at the level of 'point-moment' is in fact the origin of the quantum field and dimension Time has variable expressions co-existing within the spacetime bubble that is our Universe. But I digress, sorry ... below Planck's length there is no 'thing' of spatial characteristic, so we will not be deriving smaller and smaller beyond that length.

[MHGinTN]

Thanks so much for the link .. it is fun to read Richard’s words and hear him speaking them in your head and see his contortions as he delivers his message.

[aquila48]

How do you know that?

[Octar]

I have always believed that the objects billions of light years distant “discovered” by our most powerful telescopes probably aren’t there anymore and have been gone for billions of years. At best, objects we see are not the same now. We will never know. The universe might be smaller than experts think it is.

[Tenacious 1]

I have always believed that the objects billions of light years distant “discovered” by our most powerful telescopes probably aren’t there anymore and have been gone for billions of years.

Interesting hypothesis. However, matter = energy. Energy is neither created nor destroyed, it is only transferred. Therefore, whatever was there billions of years ago is now something else. Shouldn't it all still be moving in the same direction though?

At least those are the laws or physics in our part of the universe.