{"id":9894,"date":"2017-12-22T18:06:25","date_gmt":"2017-12-22T23:06:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=9894"},"modified":"2017-12-22T18:06:25","modified_gmt":"2017-12-22T23:06:25","slug":"this-weeks-hype-the-best-explanation-for-everything-in-the-universe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=9894","title":{"rendered":"This Week&#8217;s Hype: The Best Explanation for Everything in the Universe"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Today The Atlantic has, via <a href=\"https:\/\/www.quantamagazine.org\/why-is-m-theory-the-leading-candidate-for-theory-of-everything-20171218\">Quanta Magazine<\/a>, some unadulterated, pure, grade A hype for the holidays: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/science\/archive\/2017\/12\/string-theory-everything\/548774\">String Theory: The Best Explanation for Everything in the Universe<\/a>.  In a time when the credibility of science is under attack, does anyone else see a problem with telling the public that the &#8220;Best Explanation for Everything in the Universe&#8221; that science has is a &#8220;theory&#8221; for which we have no definition or equations, no experimental evidence, and no likelihood of ever getting any?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today The Atlantic has, via Quanta Magazine, some unadulterated, pure, grade A hype for the holidays: String Theory: The Best Explanation for Everything in the Universe. In a time when the credibility of science is under attack, does anyone else &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=9894\">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_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-9894","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\/9894","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=9894"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9894\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9896,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9894\/revisions\/9896"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9894"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9894"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9894"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}