r/science • u/thebelsnickle1991 • 2d ago
Physics String theory, conceptualized more than 50 years ago as a framework to explain the formation of matter, remains elusive as a provable phenomenon. But a team has now taken a significant step forward in validating string theory by using an innovative mathematical method
https://www.nyu.edu/about/news-publications/news/2024/december/physicists--bootstrap--validity-of-string-theory-.html478
u/fang_xianfu 2d ago
Call me back when they validate it using experimental evidence supporting a prediction it made.
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u/jointheredditarmy 1d ago
Yeah I was gonna say with all due respect I don’t think more “mathematical inevitability” is what string theory needs
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u/ManikMiner 1d ago
I feel like unproveable theories aren't much use to anyone. Ill be glad of the day I never hear about String theory again
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u/peachstealingmonkeys 2d ago
"we're going to move the goal posts" theory.
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u/jointheredditarmy 1d ago
With enough dimensions you can fit any observation
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u/SeaAdmiral 1d ago
Just one more dimension bro I swear it'll be the last one cmon just one final one
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u/Ytrog 1d ago
Isn't that the same as overfitting or am I missing something?
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u/jointheredditarmy 14h ago
Yea that has been the debate for a long time. String theorists swear it’s not and I’m not smart enough to debate them. I’m just a stats masters and there’s a lot of PHDs on the other side
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u/FireMaster1294 1d ago
Nah nah nah this one is totally different bro. Trust me. You can tell it’s for real this time because we’ve been able to prove our other mathematical theories with an innovative yet still mathematical theory
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u/tokynambu 2d ago
The advantage of its being strong theory is that they can plait it into rope and then use that to pull the goalposts to a new location.
String theory just shows that theoretical physics is intellectually bankrupt: non-theories that make no testable predictions and are incapable of experimental verification are just worthless. Physicists like to mock the humanities (sokal et al) but presumably like offices without mirrors, as their work is just as valueless and just as intellectually worthless as the most ludicrous post-structuralist.
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u/Thundahcaxzd 1d ago
The vast majority of theoretical physicists do not work on string theory.
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u/jay791 1d ago
Using science language, shouldn't it be called string hypothesis?
Hypothesis becomes theory once it's proven/confirmed, right?
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u/Wiggles69 10h ago
They have constructed a mathematical model that describes a universe where it is a theory.
the model also predicts that hamburgers eat people in such a universe.
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u/ignigenaquintus 1d ago
String “theory” gets a lot of media attention but it’s rather niche for theoretical physicists. It’s true that ruined a lot of talent of the prior generation by sending them to study a dead end.
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u/KingVendrick 2d ago
I am going to assume that, as every thing string theory, this is not really a validation of string theory
woit, as usual, is not amused
https://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=14298#comments
maybe moderators could just ban discussion of String theory?
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u/Kind_Singer_7744 1d ago
I'm not a physicist so it's hard for me to judge but string theory is starting to feel like phrenology. A pseudoscience that was spawned from a reasonable but inaccurate assumption that went on for way too long because people who bought into it just couldn't let the idea go.
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u/mrpoopistan 1d ago
There's nothing wrong with the idea that string theory might be worthwhile. After all, there was a huge burst of science in the late 1800s to the present day that came from some really "Wow, there's no way that math can right or practical!" mathematics that started boiling up in the 1600s and 1700s.
The question is how much correct math can you have in a field of inquiry without seemingly any of it yielding anything remotely testable that eventually shows up in hard science?
I mean, most of the math from D&D works out. Does that make it an accurate description of the universe? Maybe string theory is just a self-consistent play universe.
That said, it is worth remembering that a lot of of stuff like imaginary numbers seemed trippy at one time, and lots of smart folks never thought it would yield anything practical. And lots of extremely smart people who could do the math at the time thought we'd never find anything like black hole. Heck, the concept of zero went down a tougher road than you'd expect if you aren't familiar with its history.
I'd argue that criticism of string theory has crossed into heavy-handed territory these days. If people want to play with the math, let them. Maybe the science will connect with a couple of centuries from now.
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u/Risley 1d ago
People say this but math is math. People want to complain but they are free to point out where the math is wrong.
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u/Quantum13_6 1d ago
The math isn't wrong. But physics is physical. It doesn't matter how correct the math is. If it does not agree with experiment, the math might explain some kind of universe that could exist. But that universe is certainly not the one we actually live in.
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u/The_Humble_Frank 1d ago edited 22h ago
the problem is the math can be 'correct', but still nonsense.
Like in geometry, structurally, adding a point to a point is the same as adding a vector to a point, but only one of them actually makes sense.
String theory went about it by going 'how do we make the math work?' (figuring out how many dimensions do we need for the math to work), rather than starting from describing observations in the world.
EDIT:doe to do Edit 2: removed repeated word
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u/cristovski 1d ago
String theorists just don't wanna admit that they spent their careers doing nothing and going nowhere with unusable untestable theories. Send that grant money elsewhere
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u/incoherent1 2d ago
"physics cares about math, but math does not care about physics" - YouTuber: Up and Atom
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u/AlphakirA 1d ago
I love science and try to soak up everything, but I'm far from a scholar. That said, why such the disdain for string theory here? Is it generally considered bad science or too speculative?
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u/Infinite_Escape9683 1d ago
It doesn't make testable hypotheses. It's more of an interesting mathematical framework than a physics theory. Which would be fine, except certain science communicators have been blowing smoke for the last 40 years that it was just a few years away from a grand unified theory (or already was one), so now you get guys like the one upthread claiming that all physicists are intellectually bankrupt. That's why people hate string theory.
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u/grahampositive 1d ago
I don't have "disdain" for string theory and I'm a bit surprised at the strongly negative reaction here, but to answer your question, 2 basic issues:
*String theory in any of its forms has yet to demonstrate a single piece of experimental evidence, nor has it made any falsifiable predictions
*The theory itself postulates several "compactified" extra spatial dimensions beyond the 3 we can measure, which are predicted by the theory to be many orders of magnitude smaller than a nucleon. This is possibly beyond the limits of experimental testing and is also unparsimonious.
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u/Bunkerman91 1d ago
Because for 40 years now string theorists have been touting it as if they’re on the verge of a massive breakthrough that will revolutionize physics.
All the while they have no test, no hypothesis, and no evidence.
But the general public only heard the hype, and in a lot of their minds physics=string theory. And they just see hype and empty promises.
Alongside the slow societal trend towards anti-intellectualism this is a problem because it makes physicists look like hucksters and con men.
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u/AlphakirA 1d ago
Thanks, I appreciate the response. Do you have any suggestions, reading material wise? Any leading theories either you or the scientific community in general lean towards?
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u/fang_xianfu 1d ago
Personally I consider it fundamentally unscientific. The interesting piece of science for me is when a theory makes a prediction and that prediction is shown to be true. Like the discovery of the cosmic microwave background, or the Higgs boson.
String theory makes no testable predictions, so as science, it is completely uninteresting to me. It's a toy, basically, until then. Toys are great! But they're not important.
And then on top of that, I'm tired of hearing about something I consider unscientific, in scientific contexts.
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u/fox-mcleod 20h ago
It isn’t science.
Science is the process of comparing explanatory theories using methods like empirical testing and rational criticism in order to better explain what is observed.
String theory is an outgrowth of a slide into a kind of philosophical error called inductivism which presumes science works by merely observing patterns and modeling them. This is a basic kind of error in epistemology, but most physicists don’t study much philosophy.
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u/El_Grande_Papi 1d ago
conceptualized more than 50 years ago as a framework to explain the formation of matter
This a weird way to word what string proposes to do, but I guess technically correct? Also, string theory originated as a pre-QCD theory to describe strong interactions, making the wording even weirder/potentially incorrect.
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u/TheStigianKing 1d ago
Theoretical physicists have given up trying to validate string theory as a theory of everything that explains the real universe we live in.
Instead they've wasted science funding dollars chasing its exploration as a fun maths jaunt in hypothetical universes with cosmological constants that differ from the one we live in.
It's a disgrace and has more or less paralyzed actual scientific progress in physics for the past fifty years.
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u/No_Flow_7828 22h ago
I feel like most of the people clowning on string theory in these comment sections have no idea what they’re talking about
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u/BlueRajasmyk2 20h ago
Yeah, my understanding is that the only promising potential theories of Quantum Gravity we have (that don't have major, definite contradictions with reality) are String Theory and Loop Quantum Gravity.
Of course this doesn't mean one of them is necessarily correct, but calling them a waste of funding is way overblown.
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u/No_Flow_7828 20h ago
LQG has lost a lot of ethos over recent years due to the lack of an appropriate continuum limit
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u/sunplaysbass 1d ago
First thing I’ve heard about string theory in a good while. It was a hot topic 20-25 years ago or so. Then faded out. 11 dimensions required…
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u/ACBorgia 1d ago
The paper is actually pretty interesting, it basically says that under certain strong conditions the only theory that emerges is very similar to string theory, however if the conditions are relaxed other solutions can arise
Also it's good to be aware that these theories are really complex and deal with very high energy things so it's not surprising we don't have testable predictions yet, but this kind of mathematical work can give constraints on what theories are possible so we don't waste time on the mathematically unsound ones
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u/DogsBeerYarn 1d ago
Is the innovation that they're using a slightly different strategy to make up unprovable nonsense that, if it were somehow true but complete unobservable, might have an outside chance of supporting it? Like the last 18 times anyone made progress on string theory.
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u/fox-mcleod 20h ago
Mm, more math. That’ll solve it.
As someone on the philosophy of science sidelines it’s painful to watch a whole generation of careers get thrown away on the inductivist error. Like a year of Popper or Hume would have solved this out of the gate.
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u/ShredGuru 2d ago edited 1d ago
Is string theory still a thing? Are we still doing that?
Theoretical physics is basically sci-fi? Yeah?
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u/non_person_sphere 22h ago
All these comments saying string theory bad but nothing actually explaining this paper or why it's incorrect/unhelpful.
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u/xbjedi 1d ago
Some things/theories are not 100% provable now, due to our current understanding and the limits of the math we use. That's ok, we're just trying to make sense of the world as we are able to know it currently. Each step we take will either help affirm or disprove those ideas, and either result is important to help us come to the truth. Maybe, generations from now, we'll come up with something definitive, from new discoveries or exceptional geniuses applying new math.
I saw a short video of a theoretical physicist speculating that perhaps wormholes are a part of the very fabric of the universe and that could explain some of quantum physics. It's really an exciting time!
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