Superstrings at Princeton

Yesterday, Princeton University, as part of an effort to bring physics to a wide audience during the centennial of Einstein’s great work of 1905, sponsored a performance of Superstrings. This event featured a lecture by Oxford physicist Brian Foster as well as a performance by violinist Jack Liebeck, and it was one in a series of such events that have taken place around the world.

I’ve always wondered what non-physicists come away thinking after being exposed to things like this. There’s not much real scientific content, lots of wonderful music that has no real connection to the physics at issue, and many impressive analogies that could easily confuse listeners as to what the point of the analogy is. This time, one can see some of the effect the event had by reading an article about it in the Daily Princetonian.

The report recounts how the performers explained superstring theory:

“The concept of superstrings can be illustrated with a demonstration of quantum cookery,” Foster said, as Liebeck helped him into an apron. A mesh colander modeled the universe with very fine holes corresponding to fluctuations in the space-time continuum. Foster poured flour through the holes, exemplifying how point-like particles cannot be contained in the universe, making a “delicious mess” on the floor of the stage.

Foster proposed circumventing this problem by making the particles long, rather than point-like, a concept known as particle supersymmetry.

To complete the analogy, Foster introduced uncooked pasta in three different varieties, one for each generation of matter, which he nicknamed “quantum pasta” or “superpasta.” Although composed of the same ground-up grain as the flour, these “particles” avoided the problem of the point-like particles, staying contained within the colander.

Besides convincing at least some of the audience that supersymmetry is the idea of using uncooked spaghetti instead of flour, Foster did admit there was no evidence for any of this: “Superstrings may be purely philosophical and may have no measurable contributions to our universe”. It might have been more helpful if he’d mentioned that “purely philosophical” here really means “wrong”.

Some other facts about physics that the reporter learned yesterday are that:

gravity distorts the smoothness of Einstein’s continuum, a problem he attempted to resolve through quantum mechanics.

There are three “generations” of matter — the quark, lepton and boson.

Superstring theory will resolve the large discrepancies in the masses of these elementary particles.

All in all, it seems to me that these performances are not helping the public understanding of science, but rather signficantly setting it back. I’m sure that those bloggers who are highly concerned about the public understanding of science in general, and string theory in particular, will want to address this issue and demand the immediate cessation of events like this.

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13 Responses to Superstrings at Princeton

  1. MathPhys says:

    This remind me of Brian Greene’s last Nova on strings. Educated laymen told me that (unlike his book) they found it shallow and boring. Simplifying things beyond a certain point, coupled with absence of real punchline, gives the impression that string theorists have money and time on their hands, but it doesn’t help the cause. I think the public wants to see solid results, like “There was this very big puzzle, now it’s solved”.

  2. blank says:

    Mission Accomplished!

    The less the public actually understands, the better.

    I wonder if Big Ed attended the performance?

  3. cvj says:

    Hi Peter,

    I note that the article that you pointed us to ends with the following:

    “Superstrings may be purely philosophical and may have no measurable contributions to our universe,� Foster said. However, their existence could be proved if they are large enough to create new, detectible particles when they collide.

    “If supersymmetry exists, the subatomic particles physicists found over the past 50 years are like various notes that can be played on superstrings,� the final slide read, as Foster and Liebeck performed a duet believed to have been played by Einstein.

    About his other analogies, I can’t comment. I don’t fully understand them!

    But he does seem to allow for (and clearly point out) the possibililty that the enterprise may come to naught. Is that not significant? The extracts in your post don’t mention these lines. I’m puzzled about that. Please help me.

    Cheers,

    -cvj

  4. woit says:

    Hi Clifford,

    I don’t think it’s difficult to understand what the analogies were trying to explain (perturbative superstrings better behaved than perturbative quantization of GR as a QFT in the ultraviolet), or that they were unlikely to actually transmit any information about this and would instead just confuse people.

    In my posting I did quote Foster’s line that “Superstrings may be purely philosophical and may have no measurable contributions to our universe”, and commented that this is highly misleading and gives people the wrong idea about what science is. If superstring theory ends up involving “no measurable contributions to our universe”, it’s not “purely philosophical”, it’s wrong.

    The last line that you quote is something the reporter says that she copied off the final slide, it would be interesting to hear in her words what she thought it meant. I actually think it is again quite misleading: as you’re well aware, the existence of supersymmetry does not imply the existence of superstrings (although I’ll readily agree it would be some evidence that superstring theory might be on the right track).

    So I take it you have no problem with this kind of performance and think it should be encouraged?

    Peter

    This discussion is now taking place in parallel here and at CV, which doesn’t seem like a great idea. I never know how to handle this. If you want to continue it, pick one of the two places, your choice, and one of us can put a pointer at the other place to the continuation of the discussion.

  5. cvj says:

    Whoops, I see a flaw in the last sentence…. susy does not imply strings, of course. that is certainly wrong.

    Cheers,

    -cvj

  6. Well, if SUSY gets to imply QCD, then as QCD implies strings…

  7. cvj says:

    Sorry Peter. I replied to your last question over on cosmic variance, since when I posted the comment above (correcting my earlier remark), your comment had not yet appeared here. It seems that we posted here at precisely the same time.

    Anyway, my mistake…just was not sure where you were looking!

    Cheers,

    -cvj

  8. woit says:

    Hi Clifford,

    That’s fine, comments crossing each other in cyberspace seems to be part of the joys of blogging. If there’s more of this particular discussion, I think it will be over at Cosmic Variance.

  9. Tony Smith says:

    As I read the Daily Princetonian article about “… “Superstrings,” a lecture and concert event with Oxford physics professor Brian Foster, violinist Jack Liebeck and pianist Charles Own, … was sponsored by the physics department as part of the World Year of Physics, I am, as a graduate of Princeton (AB 63 mathematics), ashamed and embarrassed.
    A silver lining in the black cloud is that it validates my decision to change majors from physics to math.

    Tony Smith
    http://www.valdostamuseum.org/hamsmith/

  10. Hello!

    I attended Princeton and worked with Professor John Archibald Wheeler.

    It was there that moving dimensions theory was born.

    But because it has a Postualte, is based in logic and reason, and does not use cooking utensils, moving dimenisons theory is banned. But you can google it’s postulate which unifies relativity and quantum mechanics.

  11. Actually moving dimensions theory isn’t banned–I just haven’t submitted it to any journals.

    Not too long ago one of the faculty of the physics department here was retiring and throwing out all of his journals, saying it was all “useless rubbish” these days.

    Are there too many physicists just publishing bs to get tenure and government grants these days?

  12. Plato says:

    Now I understand your kitchen analogy over at Cosmic Variance. 🙂

  13. Plato says:

    While you had deleted such comments before, I would hope you will reconsider.

    If the analogies stand for anything then it had by nature as Jacque noted, taken us to a certain point. Now it becomes complicated. Yes for me very much so.

    But as you read on, you must consider how Susskind or others like Wolfgang, or yourself, might have inflicted the evilness of what is “inhernetly right” with observations of the physics involved.

    Do you understand that in context of Krauss’s article, while there is great divergence from it, we might have inflicted our own makeup in this bashing? I am trying to make this point clear.

    I’ll save this entry

    Thanks

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