Nobel laureate admits string theory is in trouble

astro · December 18, 2005, 4:58am

Interesting article via Fark.

“WE DON’T know what we are talking about.” That was Nobel laureate David Gross at the 23rd Solvay Conference in Physics in Brussels, Belgium, during his concluding remarks on Saturday. He was referring to string theory - the attempt to unify the otherwise incompatible theories of relativity and quantum mechanics to provide a theory of everything.

“The state of physics today is like it was when we were mystified by radioactivity”Gross - who received a Nobel for his work on the strong nuclear force, bringing physics closer to a theory of everything - has been a strong advocate of string theory, which also aims to explain dark energy. “Many of us believed that string theory was a very dramatic break with our previous notions of quantum theory,” he said. "But now we learn that string theory, well, is not that much of a break.

Shagnasty · December 18, 2005, 5:10am

I hear been hearing little glimmers of speculation that things were in trouble as well. String theory has provided few testable hypotheses and it predicts over 1 googel completely different possible types of universes. It is a poor theory on those marks alone.

I just hope they come up with something right because I really want to know the answers.

Aeschines · December 18, 2005, 5:25am

This was done in GD recently. Too lazy to search, though.

Quartz · December 18, 2005, 11:54am

String theory? Frayed knot.

Ok, someone had to say it.