Comments on: Landskepticism

By: D R Lunsford

D R Lunsford — Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:00:00 +0000

It should be sternly pointed out that astrophysicists are even worse – right this minute the HST should be collecting spectra from objects like NGC 7603, but you can’t even get a post in edgewise on sci.astro.research about it. Like Pope Paul V and his hatstand minions, they refuse to look through the telescope at something that will require some new thought. This is directly connected, at least culturally, to the ST crackup IMO.

-drl

By: Chris Oakley

Chris Oakley — Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:00:00 +0000

Peter -

Right on.

(I was going to make the same comment, but you said it so much better).

By: Peter

Peter — Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:00:00 +0000

There’s nothing wrong with some people working on some aspects of string theory that are interesting. The fundamental problem is the overhyped, aggressive and not very honest way string theory research has been pursued and promoted, driving out other ideas.

On the other hand, there really is something very wrong with the whole Landscape business and I don’t think any legitimate scientist should be working in this area. Writing rambling papers about multiple universes with no solid basis and no plausible hope of ever predicting anything puts one deep into crackpot territory. It’s a complete disgrace that leading figures in the field of particle theory are doing this. Whatever you want to call what they are doing, it is not any sort of legitimate scientific activity. If you really believe that the idea of string theory leads one inexorably to the Landscape picture, as a scientist one has to admit that this means that string theory really has failed. People are so desperate to avoid facing up to this failure that they are willing to throw out all the standard norms of what it means to do science. This is a complete disgrace.

By: Thomas Larsson

Thomas Larsson — Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:00:00 +0000

Arun, we know that 20,000 man-years of string theory work by some of the smartest people on this planet only resulted in anthropic nonsense (and some cool but physically irrelevant math). Unless you are a good deal smarter than Witten, why should you succeed where he failed?

By: Arun

Arun — Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:00:00 +0000

Steve M writes that something good “has much more chance of happening if people dont all go down the landscape route, and start writing waffling philosophical and “statistical” papers all the time with one or two equations, and accepting that nothing can ever be calculated.”

I think Peter W. is saying something similar – that something good has much more chance of happening if people dont all go down the string theory route….

Sometimes I get the impression he wants to shut down the whole string enterprise, but that I would not agree with. But there is some happy medium between being a crackpot and bowing to every current fashion.

By: Steve M

Steve M — Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:00:00 +0000

At least Banks believes the whole concept of the Landscape is not well established. Until there is a much firmer and deeper nonperturbative understanding and grasp of string theory one cannot really talk seriously about “string cosmology”. Some very powerful underlying selection mechanism may yet emerge in string theory that yields a monovacuum theory. Perhaps this is (very) wishful thinking but has much more chance of happening if people dont all go down the landscape route, and start writing waffling philosophical and “statistical” papers all the time with one or two equations, and accepting that nothing can ever be calculated. I think string theory (and string theorists) can still do better than that. Also I dont think that sort of stuff will attract to the field or inspire the talented young people going into graduate school either.

It is frustrating for everyone in physics and cosmology I think, not just string theorists, since these are very deep and very hard problems conceptually and technically. I also think too much importance and significance has been attached to the whole recent KKLT construction though. This is admittedly a very clever albeit Rube Goldbergdish piece of mathematical technology after all. So much very fine, artificial and careful tuning involving flux compactifications, turning on fluxes, anti D3 branes to break susy and lift ads to metastable ds and all that. (phew!:) There could still be some general underlying flaw in it that could kill off the landscape idea and that should be intensely considered and studied. There could even yet be other ways of evading the desitter no-go compactification theorems. If landscape doctrine takes over then the field will probably end up as little more than philosophical and metaphysical debate. Essential names like Witten, Gross, Maldacena etc will probably drift off into other things mathematically and you wont see them at “String Vacuum Workshops”…the sort of guys the field still really needs probably more than ever.

By: D

Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:00:00 +0000

Schmeltzer’s crank page was hilariously applied to Bank’s paper ipse, to wit,

No equations
No apparatus
Old theory (Democritus) wrong for wrong reasons
Captial letters (oh wait, that was a slideshow)

By: Peter

Peter — Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:00:00 +0000

I’ve corresponded with ‘t Hooft a bit about string theory and he seemed rather skeptical about many of the claims of string theorists, but interested in learning more about the theory. Here’s an analogy about string theory he gives in his popular book about the standard model:

“Imagine that I give you a chair, while explaining that the legs are still missing, and the the seat, back and armrest will perhaps be delivered soon: whatever I did give you, can I still call it a chair?”

He refers to string theory as not really a “model” or a “theory”, but a “hunch”.

By: Peter

Peter — Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:00:00 +0000

Dear Quantoken,

Please stop repeatedly posting about your theory on my weblog. That’s seven postings today alone, none specifically about the Banks paper that is at issue.

Peter

By: Quantoken

Quantoken — Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:00:00 +0000

What is gravity?

Both Super String Theory and the Loop Quantum Gravity claimed they have derived gravity in their theory.

Gravity is reflected in the constant big G.
The G can not be zero, for then there is no gravity. The G has to be its current know value to provide the currently known gravity.

“Having derived gravity” means in the final equations they derive, must contain a G. How did they get an equation containing G? If you start with a calcuolation process and secretly inject the G into your equation at some point, then certain you end up with a set of equations that contain G. That’s really not a derivation of gravity, because the G you end up with is the same G you initially inject arbitrarily. If your injected G happen to zero, you end up with nothing.

I can not accept the claim that Super String Theory or Loop Quantum Gravity derived the gravity, because they secretly injected the G in the first place, by using the Planck Scale, which already contains a G.

My GUITAR theory is the only known theory that truely derived gravity. Because using first principle, I obtained the numerical value of G, from alpha. I did NOT secretly inject G like the establishment camp do.

Shame on the establishment camp that they first secretly injected G and then claim they have derived gravity in their theory.

The correct theory is, in natural unit set:

G = 1/(2N),
N = PI*exp(2/(3*alpha))
alpha = fine structure constant = 1/137.03599911

Quantoken