Recently, an experiment in condensed matter physics has revealed some of the aspects presented by string theory. How reliable are these results, and are we witnessing the experimental proof of String Theory?
I am not directly in the field, but I know that there are increasing theoretical indications of the applicability of string theory concepts in condensed matter physics. If you can, try to find papers by Professor Jan Zaanen from Leiden University, who is a leading expert on this topic.
Yes, recently there is a "marriage of convenience" between the string theory and condensed matter physics. The reason behind this very simple. The string theorists, many of them are exceptionally brilliant mathematicians if not also brilliant physicists have produced an wealth of techniques for solving their difficult problems. The condensed matter physicists, not being so mathematically gifted are just borrowing their techniques and trying to sell their work with bombastic catchwords.
The fact is that condensed matter theory, except for a few, is not a very predictive theory. It tries to explain or rationalize the already known facts. Only exceptionally the condensed matter theoreticians had predictions that were verified subsequently by experiments.
The string theoretical predictions on the other hand cannot be put to experimental tests, because you then need accelerators of the size of our universe. So they are always teased by many scornful Poppers!
So these two communities decided for an arranged marriage!
Now if you are interested to read about this then consult:
1. Z. Merali, String theory finds a bench mate, Nature 478, 302 (2011)
2. S. Sachdev, arXiv:1108.1197v1 (20011)
3. J.M. Madacena, Adv. Theor. Math. Phys. 2, 231 (1998).
4. G. Policastro et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 87, 081601 (2001).
The results of the marriage of convinience you can now read in the fashionable literarture of condensed matter physics. They talk about discovering magnetic monopoles in condensed matter. They talk about everything of Dirac: Dirac's string, cone etc. They talk about of even Higgs' phase. But you know what exactly is the matter! Condensed matter has run out of its steam and therefore borrowing these catch words from different branches of physics. The string theorists do not protest because they cannot give iota of experimental evidence of what they say and they know very well in such situations the funding has to dry out some day. So if condensed matter physicists glorify them why the hell they should be against that!!!
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