{"id":6561,"date":"2014-01-06T18:59:33","date_gmt":"2014-01-06T23:59:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=6561"},"modified":"2014-01-14T18:53:38","modified_gmt":"2014-01-14T23:53:38","slug":"scientists-find-a-practical-test-for-string-theory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=6561","title":{"rendered":"Scientists Find a Practical Test for String Theory"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This sort of thing seemed to be dying down (2013 required a record low number of &#8220;This Week&#8217;s Hype&#8221; postings), but 2014 is starting off with the usual promotion by physicists of nonsense about how they have &#8220;found a test for string theory&#8221;.  This time the news that <a href=\"http:\/\/phys.org\/news\/2014-01-scientists-theory.html\">Scientists find a practical test for string theory<\/a> comes from a group at Towson University, who are basing their claims on <a href=\"http:\/\/arxiv.org\/abs\/1307.1202\">this paper<\/a>, published <a href=\"http:\/\/m.iopscience.iop.org\/0264-9381\/31\/1\/015001\">here<\/a>. I&#8217;m not sure where phys.org got this, but it reads like a university press release, and they credit &#8220;Provided by Towson University&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>What&#8217;s actually in the paper is a proposal for a test (and not a very good one, as far as I can tell&#8230;) of the equivalence principle.  The claim is then that a violation of the equivalence principle would be evidence for string theory.  I&#8217;ve written about this kind of claim before (see <a href=\"http:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=559\">here<\/a>), pointing out that string theorists sometimes argue that the equivalence principle is a prediction of string theory.   So, string theory can be tested, and the test is even &#8220;practical&#8221;, but since the prediction is that either the equivalence principle will be violated or not, it&#8217;s pretty likely to pass the test.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Update:<\/strong> Another source for the press release is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.spaceref.com\/news\/viewpr.html?pid=42205\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Update<\/strong>:  Matt Strassler <a href=\"http:\/\/profmattstrassler.com\/2014\/01\/13\/a-solar-system-test-of-string-theory\/\">weighs in<\/a>, a week later:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Baloney.  Hogwash.  Garbage.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This sort of thing seemed to be dying down (2013 required a record low number of &#8220;This Week&#8217;s Hype&#8221; postings), but 2014 is starting off with the usual promotion by physicists of nonsense about how they have &#8220;found a test &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=6561\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/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-6561","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\/6561","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=6561"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6561\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6581,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6561\/revisions\/6581"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}