Vibrations make the world

October 25, 2007 3:11 PM

String Theory in two minutes or less,or if the Reader's Digest Condensed version of string theory is too terse, spend an hour with Dr. Michio Kaku and Brian Greene. (previously) (via /. and WBAI)
posted by caddis (40 comments total)

I love string theory as much as I hate streaming audio.

The guy who teaches Physics for Future Presidents was getting into some hard-core physics weirdness and said to the class, "Confused yet? If you're not confused, you haven't been paying attention."
posted by Camofrog at 3:22 PM on October 25, 2007 [1 favorite has favorites]

Pretty cool. The Elegant Universe does a pretty good job of explaining String Theory in layman's terms, but I couldn't read it in two minutes.
posted by justkevin at 3:28 PM on October 25, 2007

Also, String Theory in two seconds or less.
posted by Aloysius Bear at 3:29 PM on October 25, 2007

Now, all I need is someone to tell me, in less than 2 minutes, why I should care about a theory that makes no testable predictions.
posted by knave at 3:55 PM on October 25, 2007 [2 favorites has favorites]

This String Theory, it goes to 11?
posted by agatha_magatha at 4:03 PM on October 25, 2007 [1 favorite has favorites]

It's rubber duckies, all the way down.
posted by konolia at 4:10 PM on October 25, 2007 [4 favorites has favorites]

Now, all I need is someone to tell me, in less than 2 minutes, why I should care about a theory that makes no testable predictions.

Because we don't have anything better?
posted by delmoi at 4:12 PM on October 25, 2007

This String Theory, it vibrates?

...actually, yes it does.
posted by ZachsMind at 4:16 PM on October 25, 2007 [2 favorites has favorites]

I watched the winner and was a little disappointed, but after watching the others I don't know that he had much choice.

NOVA did a really interesting 3-hour mini series on String Theory recently, The Elegant Universe, featuring Brian Greene.
posted by JaredSeth at 4:26 PM on October 25, 2007 [1 favorite has favorites]

delmoi, that's kind of like saying that bloodletting is good medicine since we don't have anything else. "well, there's no evidence this works, but i dont know what else to do!"

you can construct any number of theoretical mathematical models of the universe but if you cant test them, its all just fun and games.
posted by joeblough at 4:27 PM on October 25, 2007

It doesn't bother me that String Theory is unprovable. Quantum Physics potentially makes for good science fiction. I mean essentially it IS science fiction, so anyone who writes scifi with Quantum Physics in mind is theoretically going to make good scifi. Granted, that is a theory that I have which is relative to your opinion of what makes good scifi.
posted by ZachsMind at 6:12 PM on October 25, 2007

It's rubber duckies, all the way down.
posted by konolia at 7:10 PM on October 25 [2 favorites -] Favorite added! [!]

:) :) :)
posted by caddis at 6:19 PM on October 25, 2007

knave writes "Now, all I need is someone to tell me, in less than 2 minutes, why I should care about a theory that makes no testable predictions."

It's really not that simple, though, is it? It's not that "it makes no testable predictions"; it's that "at this time, any predictions that it makes cannot be tested by our existing observational apparatus." To claim that it will never make a testable prediction is a bold statement, to say the least, especially given the complexity of the theory.

That said, there is a risk that all our theoretical physics apparatus and education will end up devoted to string theory, only to have string theory turn out to be a dead end 20 years down the line. That would represent an awful lot of wasted effort and a great opportunity cost. This is an argument for diversity in theory, however, not for the perfunctory abandonment of string theory.
posted by mr_roboto at 6:24 PM on October 25, 2007

mr_roboto, I think we agree. I'm certainly happy that there are researchers doing this work, and I find it fascinating.

My concern is about the media that espouse string theory, to the exclusion of anything else. So far, string theory's a wonderful story, but presenting it as a real scientific theory, at this point, is premature. Why, for example, is loop quantum gravity not getting 3-hour Nova specials? It's just as likely to be the theory that unifies quantum mechanics and general relativity, and I'm sure there are a dozen other such theories.

Concern might even be too strong of a word. Mainly I'm just curious, but it seems disingenuous to promote this speculation so heavily.

/not a theoretical physicist
posted by knave at 6:36 PM on October 25, 2007

knave has a good point. The problem with string theory is that it's not even wrong.
posted by neuron at 6:54 PM on October 25, 2007

I think the amount of attention string theory gets in the media is not out of proportion to the amount of attention it gets in the community of active high-energy theory researchers. There are no other theories with anywhere near the same kind of following.

(That's independent of the question whether string theory deserves to have such a big following, although I think it does.)
posted by em at 6:57 PM on October 25, 2007

It's rubber duckies, all the way down.
posted by konolia at 7:10 PM on October 25 [2 favorites -] [!]

One of the best comments ever in any of my threads. It's just so much fun on many levels.
posted by caddis at 7:09 PM on October 25, 2007

While big media coverage of science is often suspect, I still love that the New York Times once referred to string theory as "sacred geometry." If that doesn't help you understand it in less than two minutes, I don't know what will.
posted by thecaddy at 7:23 PM on October 25, 2007

I'm not certain about this, but I am getting the feeling that caddis enjoyed konolia's comment.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 7:55 PM on October 25, 2007

That would represent an awful lot of wasted effort and a great opportunity cost.

Even if string theory is a dead end, wouldn't the body of mathematical discoveries from it be a worthwhile endeavor?
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 8:42 PM on October 25, 2007

Kind of like Intelligent design, string theory is great if you believe it, but doesn't really tell us anything new.

This presentation is nothing more than an unfounded assertion that String Theory == GUT.
posted by b1tr0t at 9:06 PM on October 25, 2007

NOVA's The Elegant Universe really sucked.
posted by nervestaple at 9:27 PM on October 25, 2007

Kind of like Intelligent design, string theory is great if you believe it, but doesn't really tell us anything new.

I think that is much too strong: string theory has told us a lot of new things, both about physics and about mathematics.
posted by em at 9:28 PM on October 25, 2007

I wish Greene had been challenged to explain string theory in 2 minutes. He couldn't of course, but the idea of trying might have cause the "Elegant Universe" miniseries to have been chopped in half, down to a tolerable length. Oh...and without all the cheesy graphics...
posted by achmorrison at 9:47 PM on October 25, 2007

I like the idea there's a second dimension to time. It implies there may be simple order to quantum-level chaos. Perhaps string theory is that mathematical model.

Developing means of modeling a newly-discovered universal dimension might mean developing means of interacting with it. Measuring it, manipulating it, etcetera.

Inevitably some quantum physicist cum Air force test-pilot will lead an elite group of scientists into the desert to develop a top-secret project. Facing funding cuts, he wil feel pressured to produce results and will probably prematurely step into the project accelerator.

And so Dr. Beckett will find himself leaping from life to life, striving to put right what once went wrong and hoping each time that his next leap will be the leap home. His final… Quantum Leap.
posted by five fresh fish at 9:49 PM on October 25, 2007 [1 favorite has favorites]

Also, I am disappointed that string theory is the glamour girl of theoretical physics. It's a very picturesque theory and rather cute, but surely there are competing theories with an equal likelyhood of being correct. I'd like to get a layman's understanding of them, too, dammit.
posted by five fresh fish at 9:51 PM on October 25, 2007

Now, all I need is someone to tell me, in less than 2 minutes, why I should care about a theory that makes no testable predictions.

It keeps all those theoretical physicists off the street and keeps them from becoming a public nuisance?

(Me: an experimentalist, not a theoretician.)
posted by Kadin2048 at 10:50 PM on October 25, 2007

Science is fun. String theory could end up being as solid as the world being flat.
posted by Soup at 11:56 PM on October 25, 2007

NOVA's The Elegant Universe really sucked.

The video version? Holy hell, yes. Which is odd, since it's such a good book. It's like they decided that people who see the movie are the Coles'/Cliff Notes students of the class, and must be taught accordingly.
posted by dreamsign at 12:07 AM on October 26, 2007

After actually watching some of the videos in the original link, I've determined I don't like the first place winner. The 'ducky' one didn't tell me squat, but watching some of the others at least offered me the illusion that I understand what String Theory is in layman's terms.

There was a video I saw awhile back called something like, "The Boy With The Incredible Mind." It was about this functional savant who could see in his mind's eye a landscape of forms that made up for him numerical figures. If you told him to think about pi for example, he wouldn't see 3.1459 etcetera. He'd see this landscape of shapes and he'd interpret the shapes as numbers that he could recite to other people cuz they couldn't see what was going on in his head.

He explained that each single digit had a different shape in his mind. For example, he described 'six' as like a hole, like the inside of a balloon, and 'nine' was a very imposing majestic thing kinda like a mountain. He molded some of what he saw in his head using playdough, but it was hard for him to convey in the real world what he can see in his head. When single digits mold together in his mind's eye, the void between them would also make up a shape, and that void's shape would be the sum of those numbers.

What if this 'string' theory is like that? That the strings are not really strings as we imagine strings to be, but they're like forms and voids and when they coalesce, or when their vibrations interact, they make other bigger forms and voids and that's what makes some forms of energy coalesce into matter. I mean, scientists and mathematicians say strings because a string is not a particle or a wave. It can be both, but what if it's the space between the strings? Or what if it's something we can't imagine yet?

When the day comes that Man makes a microscope that's able to look at what subatomic particles are made of, we won't see strings. We'll see pictures of God waving his middle finger at us.
posted by ZachsMind at 2:40 AM on October 26, 2007 [1 favorite has favorites]

I would have loved the Kaku interview, but the fund drive interrupted the interview just as it was getting very interesting. I hate how American public radio disrespects its own content. (And yea, if I find an archive full of similar material, I will send them some dough. Science Friday hasn't been too hot lately).

The ducky video is only cute. But why would they not use a narrator with better English? It sounded like a castrated Dexter (the cartoon) voice at times.

As for those posters trying to sound all cool by dissing string theory: Your process has failed. As yet, we don't know where string theory will go, or what it may show. The devil is in the details, and the details are still being discovered.
posted by Goofyy at 4:56 AM on October 26, 2007

the duckie was not the best one I agree. Loved the site though, thanks caddis.

The important question to ask, I think, is: do we think there is such a thing as a unified field theory? Does indeed Nature have to obey one single fundamental law? Why? Because it is elegant? It seems that physicists tend to believe that though and the disagreement lies on whether unified theory can be proven within our lifetimes or with the knowledge skills we now have (Unravelling String Theory).

I suppose that there are three basic reasons why string theory has attracted so much interest in the past 20 years. One is that it is there. String theory is the only known generalization of relativistic quantum field theory that makes sense. (...) The tightness of the modern framework is one of the main reasons why physicists were able to discover what has become the standard model of elementary particles. A big idea like a consistent generalization of quantum field theory comes along only every now and then. So we are duty-bound to take it seriously.

A second reason has to do with what physicists have learned in developing string theory. String theory forces general relativity upon us, whereas standard quantum field theory apparently makes it impossible to incorporate general relativity. And string theory leads in a remarkably simple way to a reasonable rough draft of particle physics unified with gravity.

And finally, string theory has proved to be remarkably rich, more so than even the enthusiasts tend to realize. It has led to penetrating insights on topics from quark confinement to quantum mechanics of black holes, to numerous problems in pure geometry. All this suggests that string theory is on the right track; otherwise, why would it generate so many unexpected ideas? And where critics have had good ideas, they have tended to be absorbed as part of string theory, whether it was black-hole entropy, the holographic principle of quantum gravity, noncommutative geometry, or twistor theory.

But if unified field theory holds then string theory seems to be the only (?) theory out there that can describe it. And that is goddamn fucking awesome.
posted by carmina at 6:36 AM on October 26, 2007 [1 favorite has favorites]

String theory isn't one theory... it's a landscape of theories
posted by growli at 8:01 AM on October 26, 2007

I like the idea there's a second dimension to time.

So does Rudy Rucker. Alas, Max Tegmark finds it unlikely.
posted by rodii at 9:01 AM on October 26, 2007

"String theorists don't make predictions, they make excuses." —Richard Feynman
posted by RavinDave at 10:13 AM on October 26, 2007

...string theory has told us a lot of new things, both about physics and about mathematics.

So far, it has told us a lot more about certain physicists than it has about the universe.


NOVA's The Elegant Universe really sucked.

Nova sucks in general, at least for me, and for anyone else who's ever been to school or read a book.
posted by neuron at 12:09 PM on October 26, 2007

Nova sucks in general, at least for me, and for anyone else who's ever been to school or read a book.

Nope.
posted by Soup at 1:25 PM on October 26, 2007

Amazing! Loved that. Thanks caddis. String Duckie, beautifully animated, nice music, intriguing accent.

Sting duckie.
posted by nickyskye at 3:59 PM on October 26, 2007

Rucker, yah, that's the guy. I read a blurb about him the other week and the idea of 2D time struck me as pretty damn cool.
posted by five fresh fish at 5:54 PM on October 26, 2007

Bah. Tegmark is a downer.
posted by five fresh fish at 5:59 PM on October 26, 2007