What is really crippling the progress of string theory?
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Anonymous2015-11-22 11:32
The fact that it's not a theory, and all the work on it has already given up on following the scientific method in order to arrive at a real theory. The entire matter is really a coup inside the theoretical physics industry, where a bunch of worthless mathematicians took the lead, and all they do is sit around totally absorbed in their math, oblivious of the previous need for, oh gee I dunno, RUNNING EXPERIMENTS to test hypotheses in order to ultimately support a real theory.
Personally I suspect that the entire physics industry just matured and found itself looking for the easy way out. Physicists were unable to find a link between relativity and quantum mechanics, despite decades of trying. So they were looking like fools. String 'theory' gave them the opportunity to work pretty much forever on physics without looking like fools to the common man for their inability to actually come up with a workable theory. Job security, forever. The new paradigm in physics is that you can sit around and play math games and never actually spark any experiments or verification process of any sort... and you still get paid your salary and your grants keep getting funded. *But there are no results.*
Hell, that's the dream of K-12 unionized educators in public systems, and they achieved that dream a long time ago. They get paid for no results, or results that are so piss poor that rational socio-economics would have fired all those people and blacklisted them from the industry due to their massive incompetence.
Anyway, to day, string 'theory' has produced no predictions, and in fact is unable to produce them, be design. It's not a theory; it's a way for about 1500 physicists worldwide to collect paychecks even though they don't actually produce. We've about the same number of string 'theorists' today as we did in all of physics when Einstein was working in the Swiss patent office. The industry became bloated.
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Anonymous2015-11-22 12:16
Same for dark matter and dark energy which they just made the fuck up when they saw that the movement of galaxies and the rate of universe expansion didn't obey their theories.
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RedCream2015-11-22 15:29
I agree with every word you said, >>1-san, but you are plagiarizing, hence thoas are not yoar oariginal words and I must nao demand that you admit yoar roal.
(For the duration of this discussion I will drop my RedCream persona.)
The answer to your posting is: Not exactly.
Dark Energy is a just a thing that was named since there is an effect in the universe that must be accounted for. Nobody has any real idea what it might be, but the effect still exists: The speed of the universe's expansion seems to be increasing, as indicated by ancient supernova data.
Dark Matter is much more firmly based in physicality. Galaxies rotate, move and bend light in ways that suggest they have far more matter in them than is 'visibly' indicated. Hence, that matter is considered 'dark' with respect to all previous means of detection. What remains now is for physicists to contrive means of detection of this matter, and there've been tiny advances on that front. The movement and effects of galaxies just aren't in question; where the matter is, and what the matter is, ARE in question.
To understand about Dark Matter, read up a few books on the topic. We can generally divide the search into three categories: Cold gas, massive compact halo objects, and weakly-interacting particles.
since there is an effect in the universe that must be accounted for
Or in other words, something didn't obey the dominant theories. So in order to save those theories, they invent some gobbledygook that isn't detectable in any way and that doesn't affect any other theories, but saves that one theory. It's like if I couldn't find my underwear and made up some invisible dwarves who stole it.
but the effect still exists
But the effect does not imply the existence of dark energy except within a particular theory. Change the theory and there will be no need to invent any dark matter. Inventing made-up things which cannot be cross-checked by unrelated experiments just to satisfy the dominant theory wreaks of dogma, not science. Neutrinos were hypothetical particles invented just to save the laws of conservation, but eventually they've built detectors for them, so now we can talk about neutrinos as real, tangible particles, and even give Nobel prizes for discovery of their mass. But where are detectors for dark energy? What proves that it's even a thing and not a mathematical artifact?
in ways that suggest they have far more matter in them
Once again, they suggest that only within the current consensus theories. Change the theory, and there won't be anything to suggest any "dark matter".
All I'm saying is that the speed of the expansion of the universe seems to be increasing, and has the profile of: Decelerating, reaching a minimum around 5-6 billion years, and then it's accelerated. That's all we know at the moment, hence physicists are simply proposing there's a type of energy in spacetime itself that drives the expansion. "Dark Energy" is just a placeholder for a known effect. Everyone admits that we don't know what it is, or even if it's something real. Detecting DE itself might be faintly confirmed by more intensive examination of long-run photons... but again, it's just observing the effect of DE on the photons. We'll have a slightly better idea of how DE acts, but no better idea at all about what DE really is. Of course, we could say the same about spacetime itself. Nobody knows what it is, merely that we exist in it. We don't "detect" spacetime.
Change the theory, and there won't be anything to suggest any "dark matter".
I urge caution at this point. All attempts to modify Newtonian dynamics (MOND) have failed, since in performing such modifications to account for large-scale mass, the modifications break ND when applied at other scales. So physicists HAVE been trying to change the theories; it simply isn't working. The simpler answer is that there's one or more forms of matter that we've missed in our largely optical and radio sky surveys.
Again I urge you to read a few books on the matter (I make joke!) to see why the approach of physicists today in searching for Dark Matter is very sensible.
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Anonymous2015-11-22 23:01
How long is a piece of string?
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Anonymous2015-11-23 2:21
Saying dark matter/energy are nothing is like someone in the 1700s saying that gravity is nothing. Unlike string theory, both dark matter and dark energy are observable as somethings that needs accounting for and the words serve as placeholders until the something can be defined more precisely -- just like Isaac observed apples falling consistently and had to account for that phenomenon despite being unable to define how gravity worked or what it was.
I can see why you majored in engineering and not English.
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RedCream2015-11-23 5:23
There's a very difficult thing about Dark Energy that makes it hard to detect at other than supergalactic scales. The speed of the expansion of the universe over Human scales is very, very small. Each linear meter of space is expanding at roughly 10-18 m/s. Protons wobble in their nuclei much more fiercely than that speed. That speed equates to roughly a lightyear growing longer by a few centimeters per second; note that a lightyear is about 1018 centimeters long.
Those sort of speeds are ridiculously smaller than our instruments can detect, and they have no measurable effect on matter at those scales. Over the scale of our galaxy, the expansion speed rises to about a kilometer per second, and that sort of speed is still swamped by stellar movement which is on the order of 100 km/s.
It's only over galactic scales that the speed starts to appear in the data on frequency shifting of light.
Hence, we look for evidence of DE at the scales where it appears: Supergalactic scale. And that's all we've been able to know about it. Further examinations are taking place today that involve very detailed observations of long-range photons, since they've crossed billions of lightyears. We don't have reliable conclusions yet from such data. Give it a few more years.
>>3 >>5 >>8 >>9 >>13 If you're implying that there is some sort of superiority amongst your argumants than anyone elses in this thread,, then I implore you to remember that we'll all be dead soon.
Here is a secret from the Ontologists: new physics doesn't really exist until some smart brain develop a new set of rules that is completely coherent with our universally accepted current set of rules, before that point things are still undecided!
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Anonymous2015-11-23 19:29
String theory would advance much quicker if we stopped ending them with the null bit.
>>18 To remind you to be humble in the face of God's true glory. It's all very well playing silly word games and indulging in one's misplaced sense of self-importance, as long as at the end of the day you admit it is all silly and no match for God and His truth.
"String theory" isn't a theory. It cannot be verified nor falsified via experiment, and doesn't make any predictions (which are then to be verified or falsified via experiment). It's not science. And yet, about 1500 "scientists" are working on it worldwide. These scientists are largely in the pay of governments. It's a scam. It's a pure burglary of the taxpayers.
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Anonymous2015-11-27 18:32
>>9 In that case, I advise you to read a book on general theory of relativity and why it cannot be reconciled with the quantum theory. Physicists have no qualms using fundamentally contradictory theories and do not call either of them "failed", but Newtonian dynamics is somehow a sacred cow? Exactly how can a theory which breaks down at microscopical range and also in areas of high density (where relativistic corrections are needed) be magically exempt from being challenged at intergalactical ranges? There are plenty of alternative theories out there that are weeded out by "scientists" clinging to dogma.
the approach of physicists today in searching for Dark Matter is very sensible
That it is. But talking about "dark matter" as if it were definitely a proven thing is not.
But talking about "dark matter" as if it were definitely a proven thing is not.
I agree to a certain and cautious degree. It's rational to conclude that with so many possible candidates for Dark Matter, given our galactic observations, something material must exist. It remains to find these things.
After all, "difficulty to detect something" is a clear problem in many areas of physics. For example we can't detect microbial life on warm wet rocky worlds around other stars, for example. We can't even detect those worlds themselves, at least more than indirectly. And yet, no educated man with an interest in the topic doubts the existence of microbial life on such worlds. Geochemisty just SCREAMS that such life tends to exist.
Dark Matter is a valid hypothesis. It but remains for us to detect the candidate objects. MACHO detection is ongoing but slow, and so far has actually detected MACHOs. It simply hasn't detected enough of them. That's why I say in a rational fashion that DM may be a range of objects, namely and categorically cold gas, MACHOs and WI(M)Ps.