{"id":2234,"date":"2009-08-12T07:21:16","date_gmt":"2009-08-12T12:21:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=2234"},"modified":"2009-08-12T08:13:00","modified_gmt":"2009-08-12T13:13:00","slug":"this-weeks-hype-13","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=2234","title":{"rendered":"This Week’s Hype"},"content":{"rendered":"

From Softpedia this week, the news is of a Universal Theory of the Universe in the Works<\/a>. According to the article, <\/p>\n

The theory of quantum mechanics was devised around 1920, and explains all this, but without accounting for gravity. Therefore, uniting the two ideas has since been an effort taken on by a large number of physicists. Now, an international group believes it is closer than ever to finally managing a breakthrough.<\/p>\n

Professors A.A. Coley, from the Dalhousie University, in Halifax, G.W. Gibbons at the University of Cambridge, in the UK, and C.N. Pope at the Texas A&M University, in the United States, led by young mathematician Sigbj\u00f8rn Hervik, at the University of Stavanger, in Norway, believe that string theory is the best option physics has at bringing the two together.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s hard to tell what this is based on, but the only paper I see with those authors is this one<\/a>, which doesn’t really have much of anything to do with string theory.<\/p>\n

The source of the Softpedia article is one from Science Daily entitled A Grand Idea About the Universal Universe<\/a> that tells us that:<\/p>\n

A mathematician in Norway and international fellow scientists have now conceived a grand idea about the universal universe. They have developed a method that may provide answers to universal problems and characterize and describe the universe….<\/p>\n

“The problem is that quantum mechanics does not include gravity and the theory of relativity does not include quantum mechanics”, Hervik says.<\/p>\n

Many attempts have been made to find a unifying theory of both. String theory is the best candidate so far, according to Hervik.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Ultimately this all goes back to yet another university press release, this one about Hervik’s Universe<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From Softpedia this week, the news is of a Universal Theory of the Universe in the Works. According to the article, The theory of quantum mechanics was devised around 1920, and explains all this, but without accounting for gravity. Therefore, … 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_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":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2234","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\/2234","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=2234"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2234\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2238,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2234\/revisions\/2238"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2234"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2234"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}