The Landscape at Princeton and Harvard

String theory in general seems to have gone very quiet recently, but attempts to intensively promote the string theory landscape view of fundamental physics show no signs of slowing down at all. The Princeton Center for Theoretical Science is running a year-long program Big Bang and Beyond, partially funded by the D.E. Shaw hedge fund. Next month there will be a program on “String Landscape: Examining how the string landscape alters approaches to fundamental physics and cosmology”, featuring a public lecture by Leonard Susskind.

A couple weeks ago at Harvard, Frederik Denef gave a colloquium promoting Landscape research. The talk concentrated on making an analogy between the string theory landscape and condensed matter phenomena, relating this to recent attempts to use duality to study 3d CFTs of interest in condensed matter physics. Frederik also described a web-site (2ndcheek.com) which explains how string theory proves the Bible is right. Unfortunately this web-site no longer seems to be in operation.

Also at Harvard, or at least across the street, landscapeologists and other string phenomenologists have taken over the Clay Mathematics Institute this week for a workshop on Stringy Reflections on LHC, yet another attempt to make the case that string theory has something to say about the LHC, despite strong evidence against this (see for instance David Gross’s talk at Strings 2008). Some of the slides from the talks have begun to appear on-line, and Michael Dine’s landscape talk is here.

Update: David Berenstein has a report from the conference in Cambridge here.

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7 Responses to The Landscape at Princeton and Harvard

  1. Jason says:

    “Frederik also described a web-site (2ndcheek.com) which explains how string theory proves the Bible is right.”

    As I read it (thanks for finding that, Robert) it’s more about how the Bible proves string theory is right than vice versa. With such sites — and there are many of them — it’s always the religious tract proving the science. The Koran purports to prove not only string theory, but dark matter; supersymmetry; big bang; black holes; worm holes; GUT/ToE…

  2. changcho says:

    “Examining how the string landscape alters approaches to fundamental physics and cosmology”, featuring a public lecture by Leonard Susskind.”

    I went to a popular talk Susskind gave at Foothill College here in the Bay Area a couple of weeks ago and he talked about the Landscape as if it were already a non-controversial, accepted fact.

  3. Peter Woit says:

    Thanks changcho,

    I’m curious what sort of reaction Susskind will get in Princeton to his efforts to promote the Landscape. Until recently, this wasn’t at all popular there, but this year Witten is gone (at CERN), and an influential Landscape proponent (Arkani-Hamed) may now be the dominant personality.

    My impression is that views on the landscape among string theorists remain definitely mixed, with physicists who are not string theorists very much unconvinced. Susskind’s promotional efforts seem to me to have had the effect of convincing many people that string theory has gone off the rails into pseudo-science.

  4. anonymous says:

    Dear Peter,

    It may be worth emphasizing that the Princeton
    workshop is not particularly focused on the
    landscape research you are criticizing.
    It started with observational
    cosmology, then covered inflationary theory, and later
    is moving toward more and more speculative subjects
    including measures on the
    landscape, spacelike singularity resolution
    and ekpyrosis, etc..

  5. Peter Woit says:

    anonymous,

    Thanks for pointing this out. Next month’s symposium on the Landscape is only one part of a larger program. I’m curious if you or anyone else knowledgeable about that program would be willing to try and characterize to what degree its participants are sympathetic to the point of view Susskind is promoting. For instance, if changcho is right that he’s claiming the Landscape is now accepted fact, to what extent does that correspond to reality?

  6. Princeton Undergrad says:

    I don’t know much about the larger ideological currents, but Susskind didn’t even mention the landscape in his public lecture. He talked about the cosmic censorship conjecture, and touched on the holographic principle. I would note that the Center For Theoretical Science is headed partly by Paul Steinhardt, who has been very critical of the landscape idea as “unscientific.”

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