"WE DON'T know what we are talking about" - David Gross, the Nobel laureate
In summary,
science is at a severe standstill. Scientific fields such as biology, physics, astronomy, and genetics are approaching their boundaries of knowledge,
which often signal the need for a thorough reexamination of long-held beliefs.
The incapacity to see the physics equivalent of the obvious—that we don't know what we are talking about—is a defining feature of this new height of contemporary hubris.
Physicists convened the 23rd Solvay Conference in Brussels, Belgium, in December of 2005.
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String theory was one of the numerous subjects discussed at the conference.
The seemingly incompatible fields of relativity and quantum physics are combined in this hypothesis.
Nobel laureate David Gross has made some shocking remarks on the state of physics, such as "The state of physics today is like it was when we were mystified by radioactivity" and "We don't know what we are talking about" in reference to string theory.
The Nobel Laureate, who won an award for his research on the strong nuclear force, is a major player in this sector.
He said that the events of 1911 at the Solvay summit are quite comparable to what is occurring now.
At the time, radioactivity had just been discovered, and this had led to opposition to mass energy conservation.
To answer these issues, one would need to understand quantum theory. "They were missing something absolutely fundamental," Gross said, and "we are missing perhaps something as profound as they were back then." This was in 1911.
This is a very critical comment on the present state of theoretical models, especially string theory, coming from a scientist with establishment credentials.
Using this theoretical model, scientists may substitute one-dimensional objects called strings for the more well-known particles of particle physics.
Gabriele Veneziano's research and understanding into the strong nuclear force allowed for the first detection of these strange particles in 1968.
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As Veneziano reflected on the strong nuclear force, he saw a connection between the strong force and the Euler Beta Function, which bears the name of the renowned mathematician Leonhard Euler.
He verified a direct association between the two by using the previously established Beta Function on the strong force. Surprisingly,
no one understood why Euler's Beta was able to map the strong nuclear force data so well. A few years later, a solution to this conundrum would be put forward.
The physicists Nambu, Nielsen, and Susskind presented a mathematical explanation almost two years later (1970) that explained the physical phenomenon behind Euler's Beta serving as a graphical sketch for the strong nuclear force.
They were able to explain why everything seemed to function so well by simulating the strong nuclear forces as one-dimensional strings.
Still, a number of alarming contradictions were evident right once. Numerous implications of the new theory were directly at odds with actual studies. Stated differently, regular experimentation failed to support the new idea.
The romantic attraction that physicists had with string theory, it must be said, waned nearly as quickly as it had started, only to be revived a few years later by another "discovery." The graviton was the agent of contemporary scientists' remarkable redemption of their romantic fantasies.
It is believed that gravitational forces are communicated across the cosmos by this fundamental particle.
Naturally, the graviton is a "hypothetical" particle that only occurs in systems of "quantum gravity."
Regretfully, the graviton has never been seen; as said before, it is a "mythical" particle that gives theorists visions of golden Nobel Prizes and maybe their own names on the periodic table.
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But let's go back to the past. In 1974, a reexamination of strings was conducted by the scientists Schwarz, Scherk, and Yoneya,
who linked the vibrational qualities and textures of strings to the previously described 'graviton.' These discoveries gave rise to the current "in vogue" form of this theory,
known as "bosonic string theory." including both closed and open strings, in addition to other new and significant issues that resulted in unanticipated instabilities.
These troublesome instabilities give rise to several additional challenges that leave the prior way of thinking just as perplexed as it was when we first began this conversation.
Naturally, all of this began with undetectable gravitons, which originate from other equally implausible and puzzling ideas, and so on.
Thus, string theory was developed with the intention of offering a comprehensive understanding of the fundamental ideas underlying the cosmos.
The belief held by scientists was that a grand unified theory of everything would be readily ascertained after the exotic string theory has replaced particle physics and its inadequacies.
But they had no idea that the theory that they thought would lead to a theory of everything would really make them much more perplexed and angry than they had been before they left particle physics.
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String theory ultimately leads to an increasing amount of confusion and a decreasing amount of knowledge.
Of course, one might argue that further research will provide more pertinent information, allowing us to refine the model and ultimately improve our comprehension of it.
Alternatively, "We have no idea what we are talking about."
Keywords:
relativity, einstein, special relativity, albert einstein, science, physics, math, mathematics, Ptolemy, copernicus, galileo, newton, general relativity, space, time, cosmos, astronomy, cosmology
