{"id":210,"date":"2005-06-26T10:36:45","date_gmt":"2005-06-26T14:36:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=210"},"modified":"2005-06-26T10:36:45","modified_gmt":"2005-06-26T14:36:45","slug":"10500-vacua","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=210","title":{"rendered":"10,500 vacua!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>According to <A href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2005\/06\/26\/weekinreview\/26read.html\">today&#8217;s New York Times<\/A>,  &#8220;string theory allows for a vast number &#8211; 10,500 &#8211; of possible &#8216;worlds&#8217; wth different self-consistent sets of laws and constants.&#8221;   If 10,500 is &#8220;vast&#8221;, I wonder what 10<sup>500<\/sup> is?  I also wonder how long it will take for the news to get through that actually this number is <A href=\"http:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/blog\/archives\/000195.html\">infinite<\/A>, which is somewhat bigger than &#8220;vast&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>The Times piece is an extract from a recent <A href=\"http:\/\/www.sciam.com\/article.cfm?articleID=0005BFE6-2965-128A-A96583414B7F0000&#038;ref=sciam&#038;chanID=sa006\">Scientific American article<\/A> on variable constants of nature.  It also includes the standard claim that M-theory is &#8220;the best candidate for a theory of everything&#8221;, but perhaps an editor is editorializing by pairing this with the news from an astrologer that Saturn is going from Cancer to Leo and Mars is in Taurus.  At least the astrologer is able to make predictions:  &#8220;Many born during this summer of &#8217;05 &#8230; will impact the world greatly in years to come.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>According to today&#8217;s New York Times, &#8220;string theory allows for a vast number &#8211; 10,500 &#8211; of possible &#8216;worlds&#8217; wth different self-consistent sets of laws and constants.&#8221; If 10,500 is &#8220;vast&#8221;, I wonder what 10500 is? I also wonder how &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=210\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-210","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"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\/210","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=210"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}