Scientists at Towson University in Towson, Maryland, have identified a practical, yet overlooked, test of string theory based on the motions of planets, moons and asteroids, reminiscent of Galileo's famed test of gravity by dropping balls from the Tower of Pisa. The Towson-based team presents its finding today, January 6, 2014, between 10 a.m. and 11:30 a.m., at the 223rd meeting of the American Astronomical Society, in Washington, D.C. The work also appears in the journal Classical and Quantum Gravity. Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2014-01-scientists-theory.html#jCp
String theory hype debunker and informative physics blogger Peter Woit is already out with the debunking. It's a little technical, I'm not a physicist. What I get is that the "test" is correct but not especially meaningful nor expected to produce any surprises. Maybe someone with more physics knowledge can shed some light. This sort of thing seemed to be dying down (2013 required a record low number of “This Week’s Hype” postings), but 2014 is starting off with the usual promotion by physicists of nonsense about how they have “found a test for string theory”. More ... http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=6561
hxxp://xxx.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/01/140106094718.htm Science daily article on the possibility of testing the equivalence principle with a 3-star system.
