String theory, is seen as predictitoo oo many world or solutions. This is one aspect of landscape problem.
String theory was developped as a (approcimate but sound and physically acceptable, if strange) solution to mathematical issues of quantum gravity
This might be aleviated if we accept the universe evolved in different epochs or regions with different laws, breaking one of the pillars of science i.e isotropy & uniformit.
Still, could string theory be right?
String theory doesn't imply that it's necessary to break from traditional Newtnian ideas-that's, simply, wrong.
Newtonian mechanics is understood as a particular limit of relativistic mechanics, which is a particular limit, either of quantum field theory of particles, or of classical gravity-one example of which is described by general relativity. Classical gravity is the description of those natural phenomena, that are invariant under diffeomorphisms of spacetime. This fact implies that the quantum theory, whose classical limit is invariant under diffeomorphisms must be qualitatively different from the quantum field theory that describes non-gravitational interactions. The reason is that the group of diffeomorphisms-the gauge group of gravity-is a noncompact group, while the gauge group of the non-gravitational interactions is a compact group.
String theory, as it is understood today, allows getting a correct description of certain natural phenomena of our world right: (a) It provides a way towards the quantitative description of hadronic resonances at low energies (which is how it was discovered) and (b) it provides a consistent description of the degeneracy of the microstates of a certain class of black holes, Article Microscopic and Macroscopic Entropy of Extremal Black Holes ...
that may turn out to be of more than, just, mathematical interest: Preprint An observational signature for extremal black holes
and, finally, string theory doesn't imply that the universe evolved in different epochs with different laws-that statement is, also, wrong.
String theory isn't a particular theory, it's the theoretical framework for describing relativistic extended objects, just like quantum field theory is the theoretical framework for describing relativistic particles. The Standard Model, which describes some of the non-gravitational interactions and properties of matter in our Universe, under the assumption that matter can be described in terms of relativistic particles, is one of the infinitely many possible, mathematically consistent, quantum field theories; which among the mathematically consistent string theories provides the description of quantum gravity in our Universe (i.e. describes its pre-inflationary era) and how it can be related to the Standard Model remains to be, fully, understood.
A theoretical description of natural phenomena must satisfy two conditions: (a) It must be mathematically consistent and (b) it must describe-some-natural phenomena. String theory provides the theoretical framework for models that do satisfy both conditions.
If someone demonstrate that there is equivalence between geometry and energy than string thoery can be right.
Conservation of energy is the expression of time translation invariance; but this holds for relativistic particles as well as for relativistic extended objects. However this property doesn't imply anything further about these objects. It's one condition for the mathematical consistency of the description, but there are many others and it's independent of further properties that are relevant for using the description to understand natural phenomena.
String theory is ``right'', in the sense that it is a mathematically consistent description of relativistic, extended, objects.
Such objects are relevant for our Universe: They describe some of the properties of hadronic resonances at low energies-when the quarks can't be resolved-and they describe some of the properties of quantum matter in black hole backgrounds, when the microstates of the black hole can be resolved.
String theory cannot be adequate because it does not answer simple questions. For example, there is no answer to the question of the origin of our Euclidean space and Minkowski space, about the geometric-dynamic essence of classical and quantum mechanics, and finally gravity, there is no answer to the question of the geometric difference between fermions and bosons. If you want to see what an adequate theory should look like, then take a couple of minutes to read the text
Preprint Mathematical Notes on the Nature of Things (fragment)
- Badges
- Science topic