Warning: I'm stoned and drunk. Went to Wiki first but is waaay too much right now... _______________________________________________________________ String theory is like a begging dog around a Christmas dinner table, waiting for quantum mechanics to at least throw it a bone. But what are the mathematical strides it has made?
My understanding is that experiments being conducted that involve smashing gold particles at high speed to try and find out what's going on inside a black hole are leaning towards validating string theory.
I guess what I'm asking is: Is string theory a science or mathematics? :EDIT: I think this should maybe be in the philosophy section. Ehhhhh this is another but f*ck it, can't make myself any more stupid. When, why and how was it decided that Zero become a real number.
It's a hypothesis. It probably won't ever be any more than that. I thought that being stoned and drunk usually didn't go together very well?
Maybe I'm thinking of like Newton and Calculus, the coolness stuff of math? And I'm actually not drunk, it's just one beer tastes so sweeter when you're stoned.
...and actually, you're not thinking either are you? Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
It was a joke. I don't know what else to say about string theory. It's a theory whose time has never come.
It's a great hypothesis. It has the potential to explain a lot of things very, very nicely. But to turn it from a hypothesis into a theory requires it to make predictions that are potentially falsifiable. If they are not falsified, then we are on our way to a theory. Unfortunately, any observable evidence of it is a long, long way off. (Which is kind of true of God, too.)
From what I understand (and it is very little) strings are not physical in the sense of a close-cut grassy lawn, but more like a field of near infinitely small open or closed loops of non-physical (maybe units of pure potential) energy, each which somehow vibrates in accordance to its configuration. A fundamental field of chaotic wavelike functions. Hence the name "foamlike" . But strings are not bubbles but 1 D potentials. When vibrations of different loops are compatible (such as harmonics in sound) they may form a compound harmonic vibration, which then is translated into a wavelike or possibly spiral function. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! perhaps somewhat similar to this illustration. https://images.search.yahoo.com/yhs/search;_ylt=AwrTccYyiTRaSwQAx3IPxQt.;_ylu=X3oDMTByNWU4cGh1BGNvbG8DZ3ExBHBvcwMxBHZ0aWQDBHNlYwNzYw--?p=string theory&fr=yhs-adk-adk_sbnt&hspart=adk&hsimp=yhs-adk_sbnt#id=206&iurl=http://www.phys.ens.fr/~troost/beyondstringtheory/mtheory.jpg&action=click There are many more representation of strings, but they all seem to have a dynamic function, some which know to occur in reality. Is it possible that the Higgs field might be part of a string field? The Higgs boson is unobservable but can become manifest at high energy impact. I suspect that the hypotisized "string field" itself consists of even smaller objects, and that the Higgs field is a hierarchical result of string interactions emerging from the fundamental string field, if it exists at all.
It depends. Can you stretch a piece of string, and is it still a piece of string if you can stretch it infinitely?
One would have to assume an infinite wavelength. As I understand it, the longest wavelengths are missing from the BB echo, which would indicate a finite size of the source, as a wavelength cannot be longer than the object (string) which generates it. However it can be near infinitely small (Plank scale), which is were the string field is suspected to exist. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/String_theory
String theory is a failure. Peter Woit wrote a book: "Not Even Wrong: The Failure of String Theory and the Search for Unity in Physical Law" https://www.amazon.com/Not-Even-Wro...eory and the failure of unity in physical law
Yes, the universe consists of unrelated "bits and pieces"? You would not even exist if it were not for super-novae billions of years ago. According to David Bohm this parsing is exactly the problem and will never lead us to a TOE. Read, "Wholeness and the Implicate order"
I don't understand that question. Why would a string have to be stretched at all? All it need to do is vibrate in accordance to its configuration. Were not talking about guitar strings. We're talking only about harmonics.
Perhaps sometimes we cannot "see the forest for the trees". Often we discover something, which either also confirms another theory or disproves it, or amends it into a larger more comprehensive theory.