Is String Theory Even Wrong?It is best described by Wolfgang Pauli's famous phrase, "It's not even wrong." String theory not only makes no predictions about physical phenomena at experimentally accessible energies, it makes no precise predictions whatsoever. Even if someone were to figure out tomorrow how to build an accelerator capable of reaching the astronomically high energies at which particles are no longer supposed to appear as points, string theorists would be able to do no better than give qualitative guesses about what such a machine might show. At the moment string theory cannot be falsified by any conceivable experimental result... With such a dramatic lack of experimental support, string theorists often attempt to make an aesthetic argument, professing that the theory is strikingly "elegant" or "beautiful."
by Peter Woit
American Scientist
March-April 2002
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Peter Woit
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String Theory: An Evaluation
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Is string theory even wrong?
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