What are your thoughts on theoretical strings?

Do you believe these 10 dimensional strings exists? That they tube up so it would appear as a four dimensional object? Are these strings actually the smallest particles of the universe, and is the heart of space-time?

 

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I don't believe any of that for the simple reason that there has been no experimental observation of anything like it. Physics is an experimental science, and theory cannot jump ahead of experiment. As far as I'm concerned, unless there is experimental observation of something or a very compeling reason why something SHOULD exist (i.e., a prediction in an experimentally confirmed theory that has not been observed) that it shouldn't be regarded as existing at all.

If they observe more dimensions or something like that, I'll change my tune with no apologies for doubting in the beginning.

 

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Hum,
Well it's the `flavour of the day`...
That Vulcan way of thinking may have worked in the past...
But nowadays we're using elegance` and `beauty` as tools, er, as well as pure maths...

And we are starting to evolve experiments that may hint at extra dimensions and the quantization of space-time...
http://www.arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0407416

 

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I have no idea what any of the above means...

Vulcan way of thinking...

You mean basing a science whose purpose is to model physical phenomena observed on observed physical phenomena rather than wildly conjectured ideas dreamed up by people who really didn't have any idea of how to test the stuff when it was being dreamed up?

 

Yes, i suppose so.

But this situation is similar to the events that lead up to the discovery of the neutrino
The classical physics of that day had no way to verify < and some said impossible to verify > its existence...

The link i provided shows an innovative experiment that maybe improved upon.

It may be wrong; it may put upper limits on certain parameters,
But that’s what leading edge science today does...

if it secures funding
and ask more questions
and perhaps answer a few others
Then its ok by me...

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Heh, consider that the beauty of it. There is a very high probability that it can never be "proven" or "disproven." If strings exist they would be so incredibly (an understatement) small that there is just no way we could ever see them, ever. Think of it more as a concept (more of a means to an end, the end being a unifying theory) than something physical, kind of like the same way that the model of an atom doesn't really look like an atom...except we know the details of atoms; maybe a bad example.

That's a bit redundant. What isn't an experimental science? Science is experimental, that's basically the definition of science. If it cannot be tested or observed, it is not science. Some consider string theory to be more of philosophy than science because of that, but what we hope to gain from string theory is a unifying theory...science.

In all honesty though, I don't really care for string theory. It just doesn't appeal to me. That's where I got out and started walking

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It is very interesting though, and crazy. But no more crazy than quantum mechanics...so hey...

 

I do like this discourse. I do agree with PhysM...

 

Actually to address the issue of the neutrino, its existence was posited because energy and mass seemed to disappear in some nuclear reactions, so Wolfgang Pauli posited that there must be some difficult-to-detect particle flying around, and sure enough in 1956 (twenty-five years after Pauli predicted them) they were found.

Neutrinos are a good example of experiment encountering something strange and theory giving an explaination that later proved to be correct. So really the neutrino is a good example of something that has a compeling reason why it should exist, and then experiment finding it.

I don't like the idea of inventing something that doesn't exist so that we can make a bunch of predictions of a physical theory, because we fundamentally only know of their existence through some mathematical conjectures that have little basis in reality. A theory like that would be hanging by a thread and would probably fall apart if some new physical effect were to be discovered after the theory was essentially finalized. It's bad science to do something like that.

 

I agree with PhysMachine. Theory shouldn't stretch too far beyond experiment and observation, even with our high confidence in mathematical power.

 

Hum,

Well experiments should be made to <b>disprove</b> a theory.

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But as i see it the highest energy scattering experiments currently happening can reach a resolution about a thousand times smaller than a proton, and even at that size you cant see any breakdown of the `components` or structure in a lepton or quark(s), they`re featureless point particles.

But point source particles of would imply infinite energy (fluctuations)in the vacuum; so they can’t be! There has to be a `thing of a limited size` there...Matter in its most fundamental form can't be point like... the options are a globe, glob, (fuzzy or not fuzzy) and other variations of topographical shapes...including loops and string things...and they are a thousand times smaller than proton.


But, perhaps this page will explain more eloquently what i mean...
http://66.102.11.104/search?q=cache...res/klein99.pdf superstring experiments&hl=en

 

I always thought that these types of things were part of theorectical models, it doesn't matter if they exist or not it's the model thats important.
Even though they are not really theory because they can't be disproven.
It's funny how people always seem to need discrete objects to model discrete objects.

 

maybe i misunderstand something. will someone who does show my mistake please? Okay:

A "quantum state" might be described as a condition in which a statistic is effectively in multiple states at the same time? Is that close? Okay if so, wouldn't extra dimensions explain that directly, in that a phenomenon in a compactificated or "bigger" dimension could appear from our dimensionality to be in multiple states at one time, since we're only 'feeling' or "seeing" the edge of that dimension (or dimensions). Hmm. That has to be wrong I'd think, so please help me out.

 

Hum,
At face value
That seems to imply multiple dimensions.
A very simple solution, indeed...

So each dimension would `contain` a different state...
And there are an (lets say) infinity amount of states...
That means there are infinite dimensions.
Hummm,
Perhaps, if we try to `collect` these states into just a hand full of dimensions (with these extra (an infinite amount)`states` being described by the dimension) we may be able to reduce the amount of extra dimension needed?

Perhaps that could get reduced to 100 or 26, or ten, or just three...???

Another approach is that it's easier to describe the three particle families (there are, say, 17 different types) as being produced by these dimensions and each dimension has a (infinite) scalar aspect to them that w0uld describe the different states?

So using this simple idea it seems we may have at least 17!
Er but some of those of course are mirror duplicates, er, as in Supersymmetry (type I superstring /heterotic

So if we use supersymmetry we can break down (on paper) the number of `extra` dimensions to just a wholesome 10



[Disclaimer: i believe in m-theory]

 

I believe that frames of existence coexist, thus all is relative to the origin of a given frame of motion as per existence, and that one's existence can create another fast moving frame from which another and another moving frame of photons or packets can be deployed.

Since no one has ever seen a photon, I thereby tend to believe that photons are essentially quantum strings of one dimension (one dimension being invisible to our 3D existence), though individually capable of hauling about and/or conducting a minute amount of mass.

Such as being recently argued within the folloing topics:

The relative velocity of photon and moving frame:SR heresy.
http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?t=38582

Superconducting Photons via Atomic Oort Zones
http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?t=37921

 

Yeah it seems so simple that I can't believe big scientists haven't thought of it. If so, then what's the error?

However to extend the idea slightly, that is exactly why quantum states "collapse" when they interact with an observer.. the act of observation is like stating "I'm standing and looking at it from over here", so it no longer appears at multiple states, but one "falls out" because of the angle you are looking at it from. When measuring position of an electron, you can't know its spin because it's in a 'higher dimension'. You know it has both properties and they exist there, but focusing on one leaves the other out of reach due to the nature of your focus on the other property. That's why you CAN'T measure both at the same time because one is literally unavailable. You can only force one to 'show itself' at a time. Crappy explanation but maybe some analogy of that idea is along the right lines. Then again, that seems overly simplistic.

 

@wesmorris

i have to think about what you said.

@bradguth
Hum, i think that the human eye is able to detect a single photon.

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But, seriously, are you saying that this one dimensional string thing is whizzing about at light speed in our 4d space-time?
or are you saying that it is stationary (?) and the way it interacts with the 4d space-time makes it appears like it`s moving at light speed?

could it not be a case of it being like a `density wave` moving through a sea of strings ?

 

The single photon interacts with the cone and/or rod within the eye. However, that of a darn good eye and of it's healthy pathways to the brain needs perhaps 10 photons worth.

My eyes are nearly shot, and since I'm down to my last three brain cells, in which case I'd require perhaps 100 photons as delivered over a duration of perhaps 100 ms, thus 1 photon/ms for at least a tenth of a second; I'd see that.

Actually, I'm not the least bit certain that photons are even moving, more like nearly resting, and because of a few atoms being sufficiently aligned so that they form a chain of FIFO nodes, as from atomic Oort zone to atomic Oort zone, essentially conducts the packet along, much in the same way as a copper wire conducts electrons, whereas the incoming electron is not of the same outgoing electron. At least that way the FIFO transference of the photon/packet loses little if any of it's original energy, nor shifts frequency, except for the aspect of it's originating frame of existence that's obviously coexisting with our frame of existence, neither of which are traveling in the same direction.

Now I'm confused. I still operate in 3D, whereas you're operating in 4D. How did you manage that?

"could it not be a case of it being like a `density wave` moving through a sea of strings ?"

You bet.

 

hum,
sry,it`s in a 4D curved Riemannian manifold .

Yes, perhaps your right about needing 10 photons to register a signal...but what about the astronauts that see flashes in their eyeballs?
A cosmic ray?
They're usually ultra high energy protons, er, or not (larger nuclei)...

 

Good grief,
Those "astronauts that see flashes in their eyeballs" if not from "high energy protons" were most likely the result of hard X-Ray dosage, as those eyes were not naked to the outer environment, thereby of what's solar/cosmic TBI worth of influx was reacting to watever substance between the rod/cone of the eye and of what the raw environment has to offer.

Now that you mention it; Oddly when entirely away from the shielding benefits of even a thin atmosphere, as well as having absolutely no mangitosphere to boot, while being entirely surrounded by 1e6 m2 worth of much worse off substances, as for such reacting badly from solar/cosmic influx, thus creating loads of TBI dosage of hard X-Rays, and supposedly of the sorts of closed-eye detections of those flashes of light, as such never once became recorded on the much more sensitive yellow emulsion of Kokak film.

In fact, the horrific amounts of near-UV and UV/a never skewed a damn spectrum worth of anything.

Addressing a few of those pesky photographic details; http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-photo-entro.htm
NASA uses LLPOF anti-flak to protect Apollo butts; http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?t=38195

There's other ongoing arguments, on a fairly wide range of topics as summarized in the following UPDATE index, although I'm sharing a bit further outside the box than most individuals would care to venture.
Regards, Brad Guth (BBCI h2g2 U206251) http://guthvenus.tripod.com/update-242.htm

 

The spin of an electron could be thought of as an "extra dimension" in the sense that it's another degree of freedom, but that's like saying we live in six full spatial dimensions because we have three degrees of freedom of position and momentum.

We call particles "point particles" even though they obviously aren't point particles because as far as we can see they ARE points, and that approximation works really well. A "theory" can be falsified, and the standard model as a theory has stood up pretty well to scrutiny, even though it's not "right" per se.

String theory (which is the topic of this thread) basically takes a look at the standard model and tries to duplicate its results, but it keeps running into all these problems, such as having to introduce a bunch of higher dimensions that NOBODY has seen yet. My opposition stems from the fact that it makes all these assumptions without basing it on anything anybody has found or published experimentally, and such a theory has no legs to stand on.