{"id":13808,"date":"2024-02-01T15:56:45","date_gmt":"2024-02-01T20:56:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=13808"},"modified":"2024-02-07T12:28:35","modified_gmt":"2024-02-07T17:28:35","slug":"this-weeks-hype-71","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=13808","title":{"rendered":"This Week’s Hype"},"content":{"rendered":"

For the last thirty years or so, one tactic of those who refuse to admit the failure of string theory has been to go to the press with bogus claims of “we finally have found a way to get testable predictions from string theory!”. I’ve written about dozens and dozens of these over the years (see here<\/a>). In recent years the number of these has tapered off considerably, as it likely has become harder and harder to find anyone who will take this seriously, given the track record of such claims.<\/p>\n

Today though, Quanta magazine has a new example, with an article<\/a> that informs us <\/p>\n

An idea derived from string theory suggests that dark matter is hiding in a (relatively) large extra dimension. The theory makes testable predictions that physicists are investigating now.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is about a proposal for a micron-scale large extra dimension, with no significant connection to string theory. I took a look at the “predictions” (see here<\/a>) long enough to assure myself it’s more of the same, better to not spend more of one’s time on it. One positive thing to say about the article is that the writer did go ask string theorist experts about this, and while these experts tried to be polite, they clearly weren’t enthusiastic:<\/p>\n

\nWhile physicists find the dark dimension proposal intriguing, some are skeptical that it will work out. \u201cSearching for extra dimensions through more precise experiments is a very interesting thing to do,\u201d said Juan Maldacena, a physicist at the Institute for Advanced Study, \u201cthough I think that the probability of finding them is low.\u201d<\/p>\n

Joseph Conlon, a physicist at Oxford, shares that skepticism: \u201cThere are many ideas that would be important if true, but are probably not. This is one of them. The conjectures it is based on are somewhat ambitious, and I think the current evidence for them is rather weak.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Better though would have been to ask Sabine Hossenfelder what she thinks about this kind of thing (or not write about them at all)…<\/p>\n

Update<\/strong>: Vafa has a new paper<\/a> explaining the “prediction” of the extra dimension from Swampland conjectures. According to him<\/p>\n

The most direct way to test the dark dimension scenario is to check Newton\u2019s gravitational inverse square law (ISL) at micron scale. Due to O(1) number ambiguities one can only predict this to appear at length scales 1 \u2212 10 microns. Experiments checking this length scale would need to improve the current range bounds by a factor of 10.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What if such experiments can be done but don’t see anything, even down to 1\/10,000th of a micron? No problem at all, that would be a new discovery that you need to change one of the many Swampland conjectures:<\/p>\n

We can only wait for the experimental verdict. Either way, we will learn exciting new physics!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Update<\/strong>: Sabine Hossenfelder explainer here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For the last thirty years or so, one tactic of those who refuse to admit the failure of string theory has been to go to the press with bogus claims of “we finally have found a way to get testable … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13808","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-this-weeks-hype"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13808","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13808"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13808\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13822,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13808\/revisions\/13822"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13808"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13808"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13808"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}