{"id":662,"date":"2008-03-09T13:42:16","date_gmt":"2008-03-09T18:42:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=662"},"modified":"2008-06-17T11:04:20","modified_gmt":"2008-06-17T16:04:20","slug":"this-weeks-hype-11","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=662","title":{"rendered":"This Week’s Hype"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today’s Newsday has a long article<\/a> by Michael Guillen about the significance of the new Simons Center at Stony Brook. Guillen is a theoretical physicist who was the science editor at ABC-TV for fourteen years, and now is the host of “Where Did it Come From?” a science and technology show on the History Channel. According to Guillen:<\/p>\n

Once upon a time, physics likened the tiniest imaginable whit of matter to a geometrical point that, strange as it sounds, theoretically has no dimension: no width, length or depth. But experimental research into protons, neutrons and other elementary particles led physicists in the late 1960s to argue that a subatomic particle behaves not like a point, but a string – a geometrical line segment, with length but no width or depth.<\/p>\n

This stupendous hypothesis was followed by another in the 1990s, when physicists discerned in string theory resemblances to an 11-dimensional version of Einstein’s hallowed theory of gravity.<\/p>\n

All of this and more has left scientists deliriously optimistic that in string theory – the latest, greatest offspring of geometry and physics – lies the makings of the long sought-after “theory of everything.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Besides promoting the current delirious optimism about string theory among physicists, Guillen also makes a living as a motivational speaker and promoter of religious faith. His most recent book, Can a Smart Person Believe in God?<\/a> tell us that<\/p>\n

After the recent, unexpected appearance of something called string theory, science appears to be in the midst of changing its mind yet again. It’s not proposing we live in a universe that has ten or more dimensions!…<\/p>\n

As we’ve seen, all the evidence indicates that science is not converging smoothly and consensually upon one firm, reliable understanding of the way our world began or how it operates.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As a guest on the 700 Club, Guillen explained<\/a> that one of the three things that led him to his religious faith was <\/p>\n

2. That if a person can believe in black holes and multiple universes, then it would be no big deal to believe in God.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today’s Newsday has a long article by Michael Guillen about the significance of the new Simons Center at Stony Brook. Guillen is a theoretical physicist who was the science editor at ABC-TV for fourteen years, and now is the host … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","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_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-662","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\/662","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=662"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/662\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=662"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=662"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}