DU Physicists : What do you think of Smolin's critique of String Theory?

Just bought his book "The trouble with Physics" , His arguments appears solid , but since I am not a Physicist I don't have enough background to judge him accurately.


What are your thoughts.

And also Shroedinger's moose.

I'm on my iPhone on the road. Try searching for Peter Woit's blog "not even wrong". I'm in that camp. ST is not good science at this pp
point...

Otherwise I think his general philosophical disagreement with String Theory is very sound. As the other poster said, check out his blog.

Think about it this way, even if the LHC doesn't discover micro black holes (String Theory idea), or supersymmetry (my bets are against both), String Theorists can just claim they need higher energies, and go on their merry way.

String Theory works great as a fun little toy (allowing the invention of hypothetical things like strangelets, tachyons, micro-black holes or any other terrifying or rule breaking thing you want to invent, exotic matter for instance), and it has improved mathematics in many beneficial ways, but as a Theory that defines the Universe? I think it is complete hogwash.

I think the media sensationalism about String Theory has made it more mainstream than it deserves.

or M theory or whatever they call it today. I do believe the ideas are well worth investigating, but Brian Greene et al have proven far more adept at generating positive publicity than at coming up with a model of the universe we live in that works. To me, it's more of a template for theories than a theory itself, and a very promising one at that. But there's a tendency to overstate it's achievements and understate its shortcomings - even leaving aside the huge problem with finding good experimental tests.

Check out this blog posting: http://resonaances.blogspot.com/2008/09/what-will-lhc-discover.html

Lubos is a very outspoken String Theorist (he's also pro-Palin/McCain and anti-Global Warming). He trash talks anyone who believes String Theory is hogwash. When Garret Lisi came up with his Exceptionally Simply Theory of Everything, Lubos completely throttled him (in an internet flamewar sort of way).

Jester here seems to believe that Lubos is a complete idiot by risking $10,000 on a $100 bet.

not that I'm a huge fan; but although supersymmetry does come out of string theories, aren't there other reasons one might expect supersymmetry?

...the energies just aren't there yet. There's a really famous convergencance, this is the best pic I could find:



(Brian Cox shows an image that they made in the LHC video someone posted here, it's down a few posts.)

It's not that the LHC or even the Standard Model necessarily rule out supersymmetry.

It's that the LHC can't find it at the energies that it's capable of.

Others like myself believe that symmetry breaking is done by some much more exotic mechanism, but to say "LHC won't find it" is a very strong statement that isn't supported by my beliefs, it's supported by the evidence.

...and of course if it did *those* String Theories would be redeemed (and Lubos would win $10k!). :)

But the hard scientists are having a natural wait and see attitude, and extropolating based upon what we *know*.

Erm, and sorry for being redundant, I get on a chat-stream-of-thought. :P

...must be falsifiable.

String theory is not yet in that category, which makes "string theory" something of an oxymoron. However, it is not in the same category as "intelligent design", which does not even pretend to follow the rules of science, which the string folks do.

So let's see what LHC turns up, since the least we can say is that there problems with the standard model (like neutrino mass), as well as very interesting things floating out there like the Pioneer anomaly and the recent report of the dependence of decay rates with distance to Sun.