{"id":8384,"date":"2016-04-01T07:50:50","date_gmt":"2016-04-01T11:50:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=8384"},"modified":"2016-04-02T13:35:24","modified_gmt":"2016-04-02T17:35:24","slug":"is-string-theory-scientific","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=8384","title":{"rendered":"Is String Theory Scientific?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Among the various April Fool’s things on the web, the most subtle one I’ve found is by the people at James Madison University, who are advertising an April 1 event discussing the question of Is String Theory Scientific?<\/a><\/p>\n

Part of the joke surely is Betteridge’s Law<\/a> or Hinchcliffe’s Rule<\/a>, which assure us that that answer to the question is “No”.<\/p>\n

Update<\/strong>: Among today’s other April Fool’s efforts, Kyle Cranmer updates<\/a> an oldie but goodie, supersplit supersymmetry<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Update<\/strong>: Another April 1 effort, this one an essay on the multiverse<\/a> by Robert Lawrence Kuhn. Kuhn claims that the majority of cosmologists disagree with George Ellis about the problems with the multiverse, and that Andrei Linde (with Steve Weinberg agreeing with him) represents the consensus viewpoint. Very funny.
\n
\nUpdate<\/strong>: INTO THE MULTIVERSE: God’s Voice in String Theory<\/a> is labeled March 31, but surely it too is an April 1 effort.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Among the various April Fool’s things on the web, the most subtle one I’ve found is by the people at James Madison University, who are advertising an April 1 event discussing the question of Is String Theory Scientific? Part of … 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_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":[10,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8384","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-multiverse-mania","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\/8384","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=8384"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8384\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8391,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8384\/revisions\/8391"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}