I know I should be coming up with material on different topics here, but the multiverse stuff sometimes is just too hard to ignore.
Next week’s Comicpalooza in Houston will feature string theorist Gerald Cleaver. His blurb tells us that:
His EUCOS team conducts long-term systematic computer-based studies of global phenomenology of parameter spaces of the string landscape of around 10,500 possible string-derived universes and its theorized multiverse realization.
A local paper has a news story: Physicist to discuss multiverse theory at comic convention. According to the article:
Cleaver is a physicist and early universe cosmologist at Baylor University whose area of expertise is string theories, or the concept that there are not one but multiple universes in existence…
Cleaver said when the multiverse theory was first investigated scientifically in the 1980s, the formulas made it look like a string, hence the name, but was later revised to be more spherical or bubble-like. Some call the universes “bubbleverses” as a result….
Cleaver said there are four levels of universes with ours being in the first and most simple level. The second level has its forces and can contain that of the first. The third has its own and can contain the first two and likewise with the fourth level.
String theory remains just that – a theory. Cleaver, however, feels scientists are close to proving the theory. It could be a matter of a few days or a few years but he and others like him press on with the belief that reality is bigger and much stranger than fiction.
According to his website, besides the string landscape,
Cleaver is also interested in the general concept of multiverse, not just the string/M-derived class. In his spare time he is writing a book on philosophical and theological implications of a multiverse and has contributed related chapters in associated books…
Cleaver is also a member of the XP4 division of Icarus Interstellar, a non-profit organization created by his Ph.D. graduate Dr. Richard Obousy. Members of XP4 are exploring advanced propulsion systems and energy generation concepts for interstellar spacecraft, including possible string/M-theory realization of the Alcubierre effect.
For Cleaver’s views on theology and the multiverse, see his articles here. Last fall he gave a talk to students at Baylor explaining that
a multiverse is the likely natural mechanism through which the God of infinitudes grants inherent freedom to a spatially and/or temporally infinite creation. In other words, the multiverse is God’s means of indeterminacy in action.
Update: Keeping up with the hype is getting to be beyond my powers. Just this morning there’s:
- The idea that “string theory allows time travel at the LHC” has been revived, reported on here, and Morgan Freeman has it on Through the Wormhole. This first appeared back in 2011, discussed here then.
By the way, the same site has convincing evidence for time travel, reporting earlier this year that Large Hadron Collider Predecessor May Be Four Times Larger, Much More Powerful. - Nova has something about yet another paper describing how we’re going to observe the multiverse through bubble collisions. The paper at least admits the obvious, that if such things were observable, almost surely we would have already seen them:
a certain amount of tuning must be applied in order to construct models that produce signatures that are possibly observable but not yet ruled out by data.
Can you think of a better venue for this sort of flight-of-fancy?
10,500? Not 10^500?
What a relief!
Ok , we know there are nutters in the world, but can someone please come up with a counterexample???
They wrote: “String theory remains just that – a theory”. They should have written: “String theory remains just that – a hypothesis”.q
This seems like a piece that might interest you, Peter, especially toward the end (although the whole article is interesting). It’s unclear what the attitude of the reviewer or writer toward what they’re saying is:
http://www.firstthings.com/article/2015/06/a-new-era
“Increasingly, one finds science lapping over its seawalls. Indeed, in some areas, the boundary between science and speculation has been entirely washed away. Science began with philosophical speculation twenty-five centuries ago, and it seems likely that it will end in the same place.”
You have to sign a statement of faith to work at Baylor, so presumably the religious spin is less of a surprise in this case.
String theory is no more than a consistent quantum model. I don’t understand why we should believe any of this, knowing that string theory does not reproduce the standard model of elementary particles. This hyping is just a cover up for its complete failure to connect to the things that do exist. I don’t mind string theologists. But they should choose words like: “As a string theologist I am convinced that …”
G-strings?
Where “G” is for Genesis, of course.
Theo,
I think you’re being very unfair to theologians (or theologists), by trying to associate them with Cleaver’s string landscape stuff.
Richard E.
Seems to me that the theology is the part of Cleaver’s work that actually makes some sort of sense. If God is going to be in the business of making universes, why shouldn’t he make lots of them? On the other hand, I do think Baylor should be concerned about the landscape pseudo-science and public promotion of it…
By the way, this reminded me of Amanda Peet’s Perimeter lecture, which probably could have been improved by adding some God into it. There was a live blog during that lecture which included some Perimeter physicists going on about how wonderful it was, one of whom (Tibra Ali) was a Cleaver postdoc. Perhaps Cleaver can be Perimeter’s next public event.
According to Aquinas, God knows all possible universes, so maybe Tegmark et al _should_ be considered theologians.
Dear Peter, if string theologists declare themselves as such, this will not much improve my respect for them. For others it would clarify why they make the claims they make.
String Theory, Multiverse, God… the Neapolitan ice cream of Fantasy Island.
Comicpalooza looks like quite the ticket. Jackie Earle Haley alone is worth the price of admission. But you get Henry Winkler, too.
String theory is a theory of everything except for the truth.
I don’t know what we gain by drawing attention to seeming crackpots like Cleaver with his theological justifications for multiverse. There are plenty of proper scientists working on string theory landscape who deserve to be criticized on scientific grounds.
I suspect that that phrasing instantiates the heresy of G-d as demiurge, but somebody would have to check with Guy Consolmagno.
Cleaver said there are four levels of universes with ours being in the first and most simple level. The second level has its forces and can contain that of the first. The third has its own and can contain the first two and likewise with the fourth level.
More evidence that the War on Drugs is an utter failure.
dear all,
i believe it is a bit unfair to associate the work of Dr. Cleaver with the work of the rest of the strings theorists. These things just catch the media attention, but this is NOT what string theorist do. As you all know, we have this website called arXiv.org, where one can see what string and other theorist work on.
Also, we have this website called inspire.net, where you can check that the work of Dr. Clever in the last few years and on the string landscape, have not had a big impact in the community. Again, it is my impression that what the media says or reflects is not the reality of the string theorists.
Also, it is, clearly a bit unfair to write opinions about the talk and its contents–before–the talk happened.
Just wanted to get the thing straight. This is not the reality, nor the main interest of most of the string theorist, who, by the way, are working on different aspects of quantum field theory.
thanks
Adrian,
The research program Cleaver is pursuing is the sort of thing lots of prominent string theorists were promoting as the “String Vacuum Project”, see
http://www.physics.rutgers.edu/~mrd/SVP-v2.ps
The only difference is that most of them seem to have realized (but never admitted publicly) that this was nonsense and given up on it. It’s still as far as I know a respected part of the “string phenomenology” business.
It is true that most good string theorists have long ago given up on “string phenomenology” as hopeless, but they still publicly often promote the claim that “string theory is our best hope for unification”. And Cleaver’s pseudo-science about the multiverse and string theory is now firmly mainstream.
As far as outreach efforts go, I don’t see a lot of difference between what Cleaver is doing, the Amanda Peet/Perimeter “Lego” performance, and any number of books by prominent string theorists about how wonderful the multiverse is.
dear Peter,
thanks for your reply. As you may have guessed, I work on string theory. Allow me to disagree with some of the things you wrote and agree with others.
–I heard about the project you mentioned lead by Douglas and Kane. When I heard about it via some european physicists, my reaction was positive. I see the whole idea as a ‘taxonomic’ effort. A classificatory effort—in this case of Calabi-Yau 3-folds. In my experience, these efforts are worthwhile.
We learnt a lot of geometry [even useful to mathematicians sometimes] thanks to projects based on pure taxonomy. Good examples are papers lead by Gauntlett, Waldram, Martelli, Sparks, classifying AdS-vacua of type II and eleven dimensional supergravities. More recent works by Tomassiello and collaborators, Papadopoulos and collaborators, etc.
These are just examples, but you and your readers are probably aware that this is precise and correct science. Some people like me have used these papers to learn about QFTs. Now, will the same go for the project you linked? Obviously, i do not know.
But is not a bad idea to classify geometries. Do you agree?
I may be a bit allergic to the wording about the ‘landscape and particle Physics” but any educated physicists knows that there is not much of Physics—for the moment– in there.
I see it as a project in geometry, with the hope that it might illuminate some Physics beyond the Standard Model….but that is a hope, close to the opinion.
–I do not see ”string phenomenology” as a waste of time. I see it as a way people learn about geometry. See papers, for example, by Schaffer-Nameki and collaborators. This is serious and correct science. Will it have impact or find a place in Physics beyond the Standard Model? I do not know. I am a bit pessimistic, but that is an ‘opinion’.
I agree with you that some statements have been over claimed in the past [and probably in the present]. But that is not Physics or science. It is the press together with some not-so-careful attitude of scientist. One should not forget, they are humans, so a bit of ego is expected to appear. I think that for example, all the physicists i mentioned above, are doing correct, not-overclaimed, precise studies. I think you will agree.
–About the talk of Amanda Peet in Perimeter and your comparison with Cleaver’s forthcoming one. I cannot give you my opinion, I did not hear Cleaver’s talk. I do not think I will be able to hear it [will it be recorded and linked?].
In any case. Let me tell you what I saw in Peet’s talk: She talked–in a popular style– about topics that are well established. Mostly, black holes and the calculation of their entropies. These are very precise computations in CFT and in gravity. She said nothing that was technically wrong. Same goes for her description of AdS/CFT. One may or may not like her style, her choice of topics and the wording she used. But I do not think she said anything technically wrong. You feel it was a bit over claimed? me too. But is hard in a talk of those characteristics to be completely clear about what we observe and what we do not observe. It is hard—and this I know for experience– not to talk as if we are describing ”the truth”. I honestly do not think she gave a bad talk, I do not think she was dishonest. One can of course pick three or four phrases where the ‘stringer in her’ does not clarify ”this is not observed in Nature”. In summary, I believe that Peet’s talk was correct.
–Finally and to close the disagreements; you wrote
”And Cleaver’s pseudo-science about the multiverse and string theory is now firmly mainstream.”
But, it is mainstream in the press, not in the ArxiV. Do you agree?
Physics is decided in the ArXiv [i mean, the papers posted there], these seminars, the labs and on what physicists work on. I understand and share your worry about all this press attention. I do agree it is not beneficial for young people, I see it in my early courses, talented kids that want to learn about M-theory before learning the oscillator. One just needs to call their attention to some obvious facts, they understand.
All right, too long comment, your readers are already gone, your attention cannot be bothered any more. Apologies
@adrian, @Peter,
since about 8 years, every morning, the first thing I look at is http://arxiv.org/list/hep-th/recent . You are right to distinguish what happens in the press from what happens on arxiv. The press mainstream is about “multiverse”, “unfied theory” etc. The term multiverse appears in 151 abstracts in hep-th; many well-known physicists appear as authors, but this is indeed a small number.
The arxiv/hep-th mainstream differs from the press mainstream in many other topics: it is rarely about “unfied theory”, rarely about “theory of everything”, rarely about “comparison with experiment”, rarely about the “standard model”. And when hep-th is about these topics, it is usually about approaches that are NOT from string theorists. Try by yourself.
Not only is the reality of string theory in the arxiv different from in the press; in a sense, hep-th is even more disappointing: string theorists in the arxiv do not seem to work on the topics they tell about in the press or in popular talks.
Hept-th shows clearly that people working on string theory have given up both on unification and on comparison with experiments. Also impressive is the lack of string theorists working on the foundations or on the principles of string theory. As a group, string theorists have effectively given up determining the spectrum of elementary particles, given up deducing the forces of nature, and given up calculating fundamental constants.
I might be wrong, and I am open to be corrected; but since many years, hep-th does NOT provide good advertizing or encouragement for string theory as a theory of everything.
dear Klaus, dear readers,
I must have lots of free time, that I am responding to comments. I will try to stop, as the thing is addictive. First of all, I wish to thank Klaus and Peter for the non-agressive character of their comments. I would immediately retreat to the usual silence if people started being aggressive pointlessly. In this way of discussing, one can may be learn something from other people. Let me take some minutes of your attention to give my opinion or views on Klaus’ comments.
I will copy Klaus’ comment above and try to elaborate on my view on it.
Klaus
”The term multiverse appears in 151 abstracts in hep-th; many well-known physicists appear as authors, but this is indeed a small number.”
Yes, the number is small. I think the topic is immature—needs many developments in the mathematics to occur. It is unclear if it will ever give something useful for Physics.
These reasons, I think, scare away most stringers. Some people, of course, decide to explore the landscape of string theory. Please, appreciate that this is an interesting geometrical problem.
Klaus
” string theorists in the arxiv do not seem to work on the topics they tell about in the press or in popular talks.”
This, I believe is due to the fact that the topic one is presently woking on is not yet ‘mature’ in our minds. It is unclear what its implications are. It would be incorrect that I give a popular talk discussing my latest paper dealing with geometries dual to 2-d CFTs. The significance of the paper and the topic is still unclear in my broad picture of Physics. I cannot tell these things in a talk for people without mathematical instruction. This is for my technical seminars. Do we agree? I believe this is the main reason behind for this correct observation by Klaus.
Klaus
”Hept-th shows clearly that people working on string theory have given up both on unification and on comparison with experiments. Also impressive is the lack of string theorists working on the foundations or on the principles of string theory. As a group, string theorists have effectively given up determining the spectrum of elementary particles, given up deducing the forces of nature, and given up calculating fundamental constants.
”
Many comments to make. I believe that what is described above is nearly correct.
Some people will disagree and with reason, since they attempt to make contact with experiments [for example, those working on the quark gluon plasma, cosmology, some beyond the standard model]. But, may I suggest that this disconnection with the experiment is due to the fact that, may be, the string theory is not yet ready to calculate some of these things Klaus wants to calculate. You may suggest that it will never be. I do not know for sure, but you do not know that either. I just think—and this is clear to me–that the theory has the potential to calculate those things. But certainly is not at the level of technical development to do so. For example, it is unclear how to compute the precise values of certain constants in Nature. But you will surely agree that it is not an in-principle impossibility.
To be fair, some other things have been calculated, like spectra and correlators in different QFTs [not in the standard model] that can be checked as soon as the Lattice field theory progresses a bit on the technical side. I think, given the interest that practising physicists show on this, the topic should not be disregarded.
What Klaus is asking, would be like asking a stringer of the early 1990’s to deal with the strong coupling regime in Yang-Mills field theory. It is 2015 and we can with good confidence say sure things about field theories that are related to YM after many [MANY] deformations of the theory. Still, we believe that the path covered is on the correct track. Since we saw similar deformations in Lattice field theory [there, it goes under the name of ‘strong coupling expansion’]. All these developments thanks to the remarkable proposal by Maldacena in 1997.
Sorry that I digressed. My point is that sometimes the theory is not ready to produce what the physicist want it to produce. Sometimes a theory cannot produce it. People who have studied the theory of strings, surely feel the remarkable beauty and power of the theory. This gives some confidence on the above projects. Of course, this is a feeling. Might be wrong. Another feeling, due to the amazing consistency of the theory is that, may be, it is actually a deep branch of mathematics that we are working on.
Finally, Klaus wrote:
”I might be wrong, and I am open to be corrected; but since many years, hep-th does NOT provide good advertizing or encouragement for string theory as a theory of everything.
”
You are correct, in my view. There are people who would disagree. People who seriously work on string phenomenology, either in Spain, Germany and many other places.
Once again, let us make a distinction between what physicists say or want or wish and what the theory of strings actually gives. The arXiv is a good thermometer, what people work on is what the theory is actually giving. As you know this should be averaged over time. Apologies that I insist, but I am pretty sure that the theory of strings have taught physicists a LOT about the general structure of quantum field theory, illuminating aspects that were completely obscure in theories like QCD, the Electroweak theory, etc. So, in my opinion, it is worth to have an open mind. One may learn lot thanks to the theory of strings.
To close this comment. Some reader may want to investigate some of the claims in this post–those related to the useful role of string theory to learn about QFT. I suggest to read the different sets of lectures that Matthew Strassler gave in Trieste 2000, TASI 2001, TASI 2005. Of course, there are many more, I can write upon request, but these are good places where to start.
Thanks again for your patience, apologies for the unreadable post.
Adrian and Klaus,
Thanks to both of you for the thoughtful comments.
My perception I think is consistent with both of yours. Theorists have mostly abandoned work on connecting string theory unification to experiment, as well as on the problem of really understanding “what string theory is” at a fundamental level. They’ve done this for the excellent reason that there are no good ideas around about these topics, so no way to make progress. Better then to do other things, which is what they are doing.
The problem I see though is that instead of acknowledging what doesn’t work, many if not most string theorists just repeat the same failed ideology, and allow that to govern what research topics are pursued. The first part of the ideology is that there is some sort of single 11-dimensonal M-theory that will solve the problem of fundamentals and explain known facts about dualities. The second part of the ideology is that string theory explains unification but actually checking this is hopeless, because of the string landscape. Most string theorists don’t give public promotional talks, but they do invoke this ideology if asked, and those that do give public talks heavily promote the two ideologies. The Amanda Peet lecture was a good example: it was a sales pitch, not a scientific talk, and when someone asked the obvious question about the product not working, she answered by making completely untrue claims for the product: “tested at the LHC!!”.
The hep-th literature is depressing to look at these days, I think for the reason that theorists still insist on following the “hot topic”, and the choice by leaders of the field of “hot topic” remains constrained by the requirement that it be consistent with the governing ideologies. Maybe some day this will lead to something new and some real progress, but I fear this will take a very long time.
Physics will always be philosophy’s subservient niece-turned-mistress, messily slurring her strange words like Edison’s talking dolls.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMiAOTnAZ5I
” … at comic convention. ”
At least at an appropriate place.
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Dear Peter,
I would like to comment on something you wrote a couple of days ago, in the comments o your post. You wrote:
”The hep-th literature is depressing to look at these days, I think for the reason that theorists still insist on following the “hot topic”, and the choice by leaders of the field of “hot topic” remains constrained by the requirement that it be consistent with the governing ideologies. Maybe some day this will lead to something new and some real progress, but I fear this will take a very long time
”
My comment is the following; it is easy from the outside to criticize. Just like the person who watches football criticizes the ones in the field, sometimes with acidity, many times in very unfair ways.
I think that your comment goes on a similar line. I would add, if you believe it is so depressive, may be you should start publishing papers, not following the hot topics, with good ideas that young people will follow and things will improve over all.
Both of us know that it is not easy. We both know that people do the very best they can. In the case of the string theorist—that I know close enough, they belong to the most ‘pure’ scientist you can find. They do not cheat, they act honestly, they calculate and write doing their very best effort. We all know that this is not necessarily the case in all other areas of knowledge.
So, to finish, I believe that comments like the one above are quite unhappy and unfair.
Do not take this as a personal attack. It is not. I do know that what you wrote is not a personal attack to any stringer in particular. But I believe that comments in this tone create on lay-people the impression of a dishonest community. The stringers might be misguided [I do not think it is the case, but that an opinion], but certainly, they are not lazy or dishonest or anything like that. Quite the opposite I would say.
thanks
Adrian,
I wasn’t accusing string theorists of being lazy and dishonest, in any case I would never generalize about qualities of groups of people, that’s not something I do. About dishonesty, I’m afraid I have to say that over the years I have definitely run into some dishonest string theorists, although they’re a small minority of the field.
The criticism of the faddishness of particle theory was meant seriously, but it’s a sociological rather than personal criticism. I’ve written about it extensively, on the blog and in my book, and I think it’s a problem that many people are aware of and would agree with me about. Faddishness is an aspect of any human endeavor, but I’ve had enough experience in two different but related academic fields (math and physics) to see that the problem is a lot more serious in particle theory, as well as to see from the situation in mathematics that it doesn’t have to be that way.
I completely understand the appeal of working on topics where there is a lot of activity going on, and that there are a wide range of reasons to do this, some good, some less so. I just think it really is a fact that the range of topics discussed on hep-th at any time is relatively narrow, something quite understandable when major progress is in the works, something discouraging to watch when it isn’t.
Personally, most of my recent effort has gone into the book I’ve been writing, which is almost done. One aspect of writing the book is that it has made even more clear to me where there are some basic questions that are not well understood. I have a list of ideas about such things to work on once I finish the book, hopefully some day one or more of those will bear fruit and I’ll write about it. But even if they don’t, that doesn’t change the actual nature of the current state of hep-th, which I think can only be honestly described as discouraging.