String Theory

Discussion in 'Physics & Math' started by Beer w/Straw, Dec 15, 2017.

  1. Beer w/Straw Transcendental Ignorance! Valued Senior Member

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    Warning: I'm stoned and drunk. Went to Wiki first but is waaay too much right now...

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    String theory is like a begging dog around a Christmas dinner table, waiting for quantum mechanics to at least throw it a bone. But what are the mathematical strides it has made?
     
    Last edited: Dec 15, 2017
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  3. Goldtop Registered Senior Member

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    My understanding is that experiments being conducted that involve smashing gold particles at high speed to try and find out what's going on inside a black hole are leaning towards validating string theory.
     
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  5. Beer w/Straw Transcendental Ignorance! Valued Senior Member

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    I guess what I'm asking is: Is string theory a science or mathematics?


    :EDIT:

    I think this should maybe be in the philosophy section.

    Ehhhhh this is another but f*ck it, can't make myself any more stupid. When, why and how was it decided that Zero become a real number.
     
    Last edited: Dec 15, 2017
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  7. Seattle Valued Senior Member

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    It's a hypothesis. It probably won't ever be any more than that.

    I thought that being stoned and drunk usually didn't go together very well?
     
  8. Beer w/Straw Transcendental Ignorance! Valued Senior Member

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    Maybe I'm thinking of like Newton and Calculus, the coolness stuff of math?

    And I'm actually not drunk, it's just one beer tastes so sweeter when you're stoned.
     
  9. Seattle Valued Senior Member

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    ...and actually, you're not thinking either are you?

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  10. Beer w/Straw Transcendental Ignorance! Valued Senior Member

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    I'm not not thinking - that kinda' hurt my feelings.
     
  11. Seattle Valued Senior Member

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    It was a joke. I don't know what else to say about string theory. It's a theory whose time has never come.
     
  12. geordief Valued Senior Member

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    How long is a piece of string?
     
  13. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    It's a great hypothesis. It has the potential to explain a lot of things very, very nicely.

    But to turn it from a hypothesis into a theory requires it to make predictions that are potentially falsifiable.

    If they are not falsified, then we are on our way to a theory.
    Unfortunately, any observable evidence of it is a long, long way off.

    (Which is kind of true of God, too.)
     
  14. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    From what I understand (and it is very little) strings are not physical in the sense of a close-cut grassy lawn, but more like a field of near infinitely small open or closed loops of non-physical (maybe units of pure potential) energy, each which somehow vibrates in accordance to its configuration. A fundamental field of chaotic wavelike functions. Hence the name "foamlike" . But strings are not bubbles but 1 D potentials.

    When vibrations of different loops are compatible (such as harmonics in sound) they may form a compound harmonic vibration, which then is translated into a wavelike or possibly spiral function.

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    perhaps somewhat similar to this illustration.

    https://images.search.yahoo.com/yhs/search;_ylt=AwrTccYyiTRaSwQAx3IPxQt.;_ylu=X3oDMTByNWU4cGh1BGNvbG8DZ3ExBHBvcwMxBHZ0aWQDBHNlYwNzYw--?p=string theory&fr=yhs-adk-adk_sbnt&hspart=adk&hsimp=yhs-adk_sbnt#id=206&iurl=http://www.phys.ens.fr/~troost/beyondstringtheory/mtheory.jpg&action=click

    There are many more representation of strings, but they all seem to have a dynamic function, some which know to occur in reality. Is it possible that the Higgs field might be part of a string field?
    The Higgs boson is unobservable but can become manifest at high energy impact. I suspect that the hypotisized "string field" itself consists of even smaller objects, and that the Higgs field is a hierarchical result of string interactions emerging from the fundamental string field, if it exists at all.
     
    Last edited: Dec 16, 2017
  15. arfa brane call me arf Valued Senior Member

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    It depends. Can you stretch a piece of string, and is it still a piece of string if you can stretch it infinitely?
     
  16. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    One would have to assume an infinite wavelength.
    As I understand it, the longest wavelengths are missing from the BB echo, which would indicate a finite size of the source, as a wavelength cannot be longer than the object (string) which generates it.
    However it can be near infinitely small (Plank scale), which is were the string field is suspected to exist.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/String_theory
     
    Last edited: Dec 16, 2017
  17. pluto2 Banned Valued Senior Member

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  18. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    Yes, the universe consists of unrelated "bits and pieces"? You would not even exist if it were not for super-novae billions of years ago. According to David Bohm this parsing is exactly the problem and will never lead us to a TOE.

    Read, "Wholeness and the Implicate order"
     
  19. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    I don't understand that question. Why would a string have to be stretched at all? All it need to do is vibrate in accordance to its configuration. Were not talking about guitar strings. We're talking only about harmonics.
     
  20. hansda Valued Senior Member

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  21. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    Perhaps sometimes we cannot "see the forest for the trees". Often we discover something, which either also confirms another theory or disproves it, or amends it into a larger more comprehensive theory.
     
    Last edited: Dec 24, 2017
  22. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    Wave functions? Reinforcing harmonics, or wave interfrences?
     
  23. NotEinstein Valued Senior Member

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    Those are all part of quantum theories, so not, they are not strides made by string theory.
     

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