But how different is that from being closer than ever to squaring the circle?
So says Peter Woit at Not Even Wrong, here:
This week’s string theory hype comes to us from USC physicists Clifford Johnson and Nick Warner, courtesy of the USC press office (see here and here). It’s garden variety hype of this kind, exactly the same claims about strings and extra dimensions that were being made thirty years ago. There’s no acknowledgement these haven’t gone anywhere, instead we’re “closer than ever to an answer”.
When the question of testability comes up, the multiverse is not invoked as an excuse. Instead, it seems that dark matter is going to provide the test: …
Well, dark matter could provide a lot of answers perhaps, if we can find any.
But getting the multiverse out of the picture is a step forward, perhaps? The multiverse isn’t testable, let alone falsifiable.
There is reason to believe we might detect dark matter. And if we do but it doesn’t support string theory, well so much the worse for string theory.
Note to staff: Give those Boltzmann brains to the Thrift, next time the fellow is by.
See also: Assuming that evidence still matters, what does it say?
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String theory has been dragging along for more than 40 years and had produced no physics. Quantum mechanics, on the other hand, went from some strange ideas to a mature theory in less than 20 years. It’s about time string theory is shut down.
Lee,
Show some mercy! How long did it take group theory to migrate into the standard model of particle physics–30 years? 40 years? Why be in such haste to cash in your math?
Or closer to home, how long has it been since the statistics of population genetics was proposed to when it produced quantifiable results? We have only now been able to read the genome and compare it to Haldane’s models some 80 years later.
But I agree that perhaps it is time to stop funding it to the detriment of other particle physics theories. That has been Peter Woit’s complaint all along–and why he is in the math department at Columbia rather than the physics dept.
The theory of everything is, obviously, mathematics itself. And work done in that direction helped to produce higher resolution fMRI already, with the mathematical analysis of the MRI device by Walter Schempp.
It’s sort of satisfying to accept the theory of everything is mathematics. The basic handle on it is easy, while it can get sophisticated in extreme as well. It’s sort of a relief to know scientists will never find any shocking truth in the sense of scientific truth that they have been hyping. It shows clearly that the relevant truth is readily apparent in religion, and what people make of their lives.
The belief that there should be a unification between General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics, (i.e. a mathematical theory of everything), does not follow from the math, but is a belief that is born out of Theistic presuppositions.
In fact, Godel has shown that mathematics is ‘incomplete’
Even Stephen Hawking himself at one time admitted, and apparently subsequently forgot, that, due to Godel’s incompleteness theorem, there cannot ever be a ‘complete’ mathematical theory of everything,
In fact, Gregory Chaitin holds that there are an infinite number of mathematical theorems that cannot be proved by any finite system of axioms.
Moreover, both General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics are based on two very different mathematical constructs.
General Relativity is based upon 4 dimensional space, and Quantum Mechanics is based upon a infinite dimensional space and the ‘higher dimensional’ square root of negative 1
Besides being based on two very different ‘mathematical concepts’, there is also an ‘irreducible subjective element’ in quantum mechanics. Whereas General Relativity ‘is based on a totally objective view’.
The following quote from an atheist further clarifies the fact that a ‘theory of everything’ does not necessarily follow from the mathematics since ‘we can already think of mathematically consistent laws that don’t describe the world as we know it’.
Bruce Gordon puts the mathematical ‘fix we are in’ like this:
Thus it does not follow from the mathematics itself that there should necessarily be a mathematical unification between General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics.
In fact, given the two very different higher dimensional mathematical constructs between the two theories, and the dichotomy presented by the ‘subjective element’ of Quantum Mechanics vs the ‘objective basis’ of General Relativity, and also given Godel’s incompleteness theorem itself, then there is no mathematical reason that I can see for why we should ever realistically presuppose them to ever be unified mathematically.
But since a mathematical unification between the two theories does not follow from the math itself, why in blue blazes do people have such a deep seated intuition that there should be an overarching ‘theory of everything’?
It turns out that the only reason why people even believe that there should be a mathematical unification between General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics is because of Theistic presuppositions. Theistic presumptions that, besides obviously intuitive, underlay all of modern science and not because of any compelling mathematical concerns.
C. S. Lewis and John Barrow put the foundational theistic presupposition that underlay modern science like this:
Godel puts the ‘incomplete’ situation of materialism like this:
Steven Fuller articulates the hidden Theistic presumption, that undergirds the belief that there should be a mathematical ‘theory of everything’, very well in the following quote;
Father Robert Barron weighs in here:
Thus since it is only on Theistic presuppositions that we should even expect there to be a ‘theory of everything’ in the first place, let’s see if a Theistic solution for the ‘theory of everything’ is forthcoming.
The main conflict of reconciling General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics appears to arise from the inability of either theory to successfully deal with the Zero/Infinity conflict that crops up in different places of each theory:
Moreover, the unification, into a ‘theory of everything’, between what is in essence the ‘infinite Theistic world of Quantum Mechanics’ and the ‘finite materialistic world of the spacetime of General Relativity’ seems to be directly related to what Jesus apparently joined together with His resurrection, i.e. related to the unification of infinite God with finite man.
In this following comment, Dr. William Dembski, though not directly addressing the Zero/Infinity conflict in General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics, offers insight into what the ‘unification’ of the infinite and the finite would entail:
Moreover, unlike string theory for which we have no physical evidence, there is actual physical evidence that lends strong support to the position that the ‘Zero/Infinity conflict’, that we find between General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics, was successfully dealt with by Christ, i.e. to the position that Christ, in his resurrection from the dead, successfully ‘traversed the infinite’:
Special Relativity, General Relativity, Heaven and Hell
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_4cQ7MXq8bLkoFLYW0kq3Xq-Hkc3c7r-gTk0DYJQFSg/edit
Excerpted from preceding article:
In light of this dilemma that these two very different eternities present to us spiritually minded people, and the fact that Gravity is, in so far as we can tell, completely incompatible with Quantum Mechanics and Special Relativity (i.e. Quantum Electro-Dynamics),,, (i.e. the failure of string theory, M-theory, etc..) ,,in light of that dilemma, it is interesting to point out a subtle nuance on the Shroud of Turin. Namely that Gravity was overcome in the resurrection event of Christ:
Moreover, as would be expected if General Relativity (Gravity), and Quantum Mechanics/Special Relativity (QED), were truly unified in the resurrection of Christ from death, the image on the shroud is found to be formed by a quantum process. The image was not formed by a ‘classical’ process:
Personally, considering the extreme difficulty that many brilliant minds have had in trying to reconcile Quantum Mechanics/Special relativity (QED), with Gravity, I consider the preceding ‘quantum’ nuance on the Shroud of Turin to be a subtle, but powerful, evidence substantiating Christ’s primary claim as to being our Savior from sin, death, and hell:
Verses, Propitiation, & Music
of supplemental note:
In arguing for a theistic view of the universe, it is also very interesting to note that agent causality is illegitimately ‘borrowed’ from theists when people try to describe the laws of the universe:
@bornagain
Godels incompleteness theorem has already been solved. As of course it would be. I mean, to give up on mathematics would be like to give up on facts in it’s own material domain.
http://arxiv.org/ftp/cs/papers/0209/0209026.pdf
“we believe that we are able to produce a mathematical structure which has the potential of avoiding the incompleteness indicated by Gödel’s theorem”
at 8, excuse me, that is a preprint and is not even close to being a refutation of Godel.
,,,Come back when you have something other than pie in the sky quantum computation dreams of overturning Godel
I believe the amplitudhedron would interest you (and its failure to be unified with gravity)
Nice to hear from you Mr Spetner, I have both your books.
Here’s a relevant link to a Nature article on the unification of general relativity and quantum physics. Apparently, some in the physics community are warming up to the idea that gravity is a non-local phenomenon, that is, it is caused by entanglements aka “spooky actions at a distance”. The problem with this hypothesis (or with GR) is that GR opposes action at a distance. According to GR, changes in gravity move at C but, with entanglement, the effect of gravity would be instantaneous as Newton claimed. I hope they can reconcile these annoying contradictions.
The Quantum Source of Spacetime
Abstract: