{"id":3684,"date":"2011-05-08T22:50:40","date_gmt":"2011-05-09T02:50:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=3684"},"modified":"2011-05-09T14:34:41","modified_gmt":"2011-05-09T18:34:41","slug":"this-weeks-hype-21","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=3684","title":{"rendered":"This Week’s Hype"},"content":{"rendered":"

Philip Gibbs<\/a> points to an impressive piece of string theory hype<\/a> from British Channel 4 news.<\/p>\n

If you watch the clip, you get the latest news about string theory and the LHC: people were getting discouraged about string theory, but now some of its predictions are being confirmed by the LHC. For the extra dimensions to appear, we may have to wait a couple years for when the machine runs at design energy.<\/p>\n

Not clear at all where they got this nonsense from.<\/p>\n

Update<\/strong>: The source for this seems to be a story by Jonathan Leake in The Sunday Times, entitled Stand by, we may soon enter a new universe<\/a> (subscription required, but a syndicated version is freely available here<\/a>). The story has David Evans of Alice trying to promote his experiment with:<\/p>\n

The Alice experiment may soon be able to make experimental measurements which, for the first time, can be modelled using the techniques of string theory.<\/p>\n

Although the experimental results will not prove string theory to be correct, an accurate prediction would certainly show that the techniques work, could distinguish between different versions of the theory, and perhaps even show whether the theory is going in the right direction.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Given this kind of quote, one can see why the writer completely mixes up string theory unification and string theory as approximate calculational method in heavy-ion physics:<\/p>\n

The researchers, at Cern, the European centre for particle physics near Geneva, say results from the Large Hadron Collider suggest it could offer the first experimental test for some aspects of string theory.<\/p>\n

Formulated in the 1960s, this theory attempts to describe how all the fundamental forces of nature, such as gravity and electromagnetism, interact with matter.<\/p>\n

On paper, the theory has been highly successful, resolving many mathematical problems.<\/p>\n

In practice, however, there is no experimental evidence to support its predictions, including the idea that there could be as many as 11 dimensions – the three physical dimensions, time and seven others as yet undiscovered.<\/p>\n

At Cern, there are now hopes the LHC may be able to break this impasse.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Then, as usual, the headline writer takes things a step further:<\/p>\n

SCIENTISTS have devised the first experiment capable of giving insight into one of the universe’s greatest mysteries: could there be more dimensions than we know about?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So, out-of-control promotional efforts for ALICE are at the bottom of this one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Philip Gibbs points to an impressive piece of string theory hype from British Channel 4 news. If you watch the clip, you get the latest news about string theory and the LHC: people were getting discouraged about string theory, but … 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-3684","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\/3684","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=3684"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3684\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3687,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3684\/revisions\/3687"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}