String theory remains an intellectual feat and helped derive development in physics, inspires new tools and refinement of concepts but never really made it as a complete theory, as is known. For the reasons mentioned at the start, no official dead anouncement is made, although physics world is unapologetic and this is mostly as an honorable tribute rather than other reasons.
With regard to string theory the issues from early 2010s, when theory development stalled were:
**The issue of the lack of predictability due to the landscape of solutions.
**The need for-and lack of-a manifestly background independent formulation.
**The frustrating situation that despite much very good work we
still don’t have a proof of key conjectures (perturbative finiteness, S duality, Maldacena conjecture) .
A distinguisyed physicists I talked to last time called it dead. Still some papers appear about it but mostly references to it in papers focused on other topics.
Officially its not dead but many would endorse pulling plug from assisted breathing. What do you think?
I don't know anything about string theory, but judging by the above, I am the cat that has got the cream.
Gary Stephens,
As is known, cats have been spoilers in physics theories with quantum-involvement. But its the first time i here about a human reincarnated as cat in physics
To abandon string theory, you must first offer something better in return. On the other hand, there is nothing better than the forgotten old, so it's worth taking a fresh look at the theory of ether. For example, I like the theory of ether on the seven-dimensional sphere the most.
Here exist some arguments that counter the ones Inmentioned that hint its not clinically dead..
Some physicists, for example, have hypothesized that in the earliest moments of the Big Bang, the forces of nature were so extreme and so exotic that they could have supported the growth of complex structure - these structures could have been cosmic strings, which are folds in space-time, anchored by magnetic monopoles.
Philippos Afxentiou,
Actually, the idea of using strings in physics is not so bad, but it's time for physicists to determine the space in which these strings are tied into knots, forming elementary particles. This is where our seven-dimensional sphere appears.
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Physical Sciences
- Energy