I happened upon one of the more comprehensive documentaries for String theory at PBS presents 'The Elegant Universe'. Scientists are baffled about how two of the most important laws of physics are in conflict with one another. The two laws are The General Theory of Relativity and Quantum Mechanics. Einstein spent his twilight years trying to unify the laws of very large things and the laws of very small things. Stephen Hawkin's famous book, A BRIEF HISTORY OF TIME asks this very question. To date no unified theory of physics has solved this problem but String Theory is becoming a very popular possibility. So without further ado...

Question for debate:

Is String Theory a a grand unifying "theory of everything," or is it leading researchers down an intellectual dead end?

Edited to add: To whom it may concern, the underlined words are links to websites. At one time I didn't realize this and it was a little confusing.

Is String Theory a a grand unifying "theory of everything," or is it leading researchers down an intellectual dead end?

The latter. The trouble is that there is more then one string theory, and in fact I think theres 7. All of them fit together the known fields of science equally well, so its impossible for us to determine which theory is actually the true one. The practical application of the "Theory of Everything" is that its supposed to be able determine things about black holes (and I think by correlation dimensions) that we cannot determine with our current divided forms of scientific theory. But I digress...obviously we cant figure out which (if any) of the 7 theorys are correct, because its not testable.

Didn't they put together these theories into the "M" theory in the early 90's?


Is String Theory a a grand unifying "theory of everything," or is it leading researchers down an intellectual dead end?

I'll be more optimistic than A Left handed person; I believe that the String theory will lead us to the "theory of everything"... what we lack at the moment is a field where experiences can occur and prove that the theory is right. A big deal of this problem lies in the fact that we don't have the instruments or the energies necessary to confirm/infirm the string theory at the moment.

http://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/user/gr/public/qg_ss.html

I guess I must turned off TV in the middle of the program and missed the end...

Anyways, I concede that point the Horyok...

So if it isn't testable, then pretty much the sum of our evidence is that its possible. Thats generally not very good proof for anything, but considering all the the math that string theory has to harmonize, I think in this case that evidence may mean something.