What good is string theory?

Discussion in 'Physics & Math' started by rustyw, Nov 13, 2009.

  1. rustyw Writer Registered Senior Member

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    Hi!

    When quantum mechanics was established it allowed us to do things that we could not do before.

    What would string theory allow us to do? Lets say that string theory was confirmed -- tests showed the projections string theory made were correct and now string theory was accepted. What would it allow us to do that we can't do now? What good would it do us?

    Thanks,
    Rusty
     
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  3. it would alloow us to show what we are physically made of different materials but that are strings. I made a theard here once about subdivision which to me sorta proves the theory. subdivision is when you continousselly break down an atom. throughout the conversation in that theard I realized subdivsion is endles but it breaks things down into strings. So to the answer to your question is it us understanding of what everything is made of. I feel I'm not clear enough though.
    Guys help please.
     
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  5. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

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    It's difficult to predict these things in advance.

    String theory, if it turns out to be correct, is a quantum theory that unifies the four fundamental forces of nature. The price it pays for doing that is introducing a whole lot of previously-unknown dimensions to space.

    When quantum mechanics was invented, nobody could have predicted that lasers would be used to play music ninety years later (or, indeed, that lasers would exist at all). For similar reasons, it's hard to see what technologies string theory may lead to.
     
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  7. AlphaNumeric Fully ionized Registered Senior Member

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    String theory is currently the only approach to quantum gravity we have which doesn't bugger up in some way and which correctly reduces to GR at large distances.
     
  8. CptBork Valued Senior Member

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    It's possible that String Theory won't lead to a single technological advance, not even 10 000 years down the road. Or maybe it will- no one can say at this point what it will ultimately lead to. It seems to me like curiosity is the driving factor here- Einstein did what he did purely out of the desire to understand how nature works, he certainly wasn't thinking about A-bombs back in 1905.
     
  9. kmguru Staff Member

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    We do not know, but common sense says:

    We can create various matter from that smallest building block - Think about StarTrek Replicators.

    We may be able to create artificial gravity unless Gravity is the only effect of Mass meaning boat loads of Strings?

    Also there may be a possibility to communicate vast distances instaneously using those extra dimensions.
     
  10. BenTheMan Dr. of Physics, Prof. of Love Valued Senior Member

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    Thread closed pending review.

    Probably most of the posts here will be deleted, as they are almost all tangential to the OP.
     
  11. BenTheMan Dr. of Physics, Prof. of Love Valued Senior Member

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    Thread cleaned and reopened.

    Try to stick to addressing the content of the original post, instead of pimping your own pet theories. In particular, MacM, if you wish to discuss your theory of quantum gravity, you can do so in Pseudoscience or at another place on this technological marvel we call the internet.
     
  12. BenTheMan Dr. of Physics, Prof. of Love Valued Senior Member

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    Rusty, I see you're a writer. I'll give you an analogy that a friend of mine once gave me, in regards to the point of string theory.

    There's a short story, whose name and author I don't know, about a writer who set out to reproduce a single page of Don Quixote without ever reading the manuscript. He spent his entire life studying everything that had ever been written about Cervantes and his book, and then, at the end of his life, he sat down and reproduced the first page, word for word, in the original Spanish.

    At the end of the day, the man added nothing to Cervantes' work. But the one page that he reproduced was so much more beautiful and meaningful than any other literary criticism of Don Quixote, because it represented a true understanding without ever having met the author or even read the book.

    String theory may not give us any real technological advances the way quantum mechanics did. However, string theory (if it's correct) represents a true and deep understanding of Nature at its most fundamental level.
     
  13. Beer w/Straw Transcendental Ignorance! Valued Senior Member

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    String theory?

    Well nobody has a spaceship to tour the universe and see it first hand. Nor can they shrink smaller than the smallest particle and see the whats going on.

    But who is to say not to try and imagine it?



    Who knows what good it would do, Einstein wasn't thinking about the atom bomb or global positioning satellites when he proposed relativity.
     
    Last edited: Nov 19, 2009
  14. prometheus viva voce! Registered Senior Member

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    I don't know exactly what you're thinking here, but I'd like to point out something: String theory started in the same way as all theories of physics start - with equations and mathematics. It was quite a while before the originators of string theory realized that the equations described a string at all.

    What I'm saying is that people have this view of physics where people are sitting in their offices going "I know, I'll assume particles are strings," or "spacetime bends in the presence of matter and energy," when the reality is very far from that. People with the insight read these physical interpretations from the equations of the theory. The difference between the crackpot and regular people is this is exactly what they are trying to do, and you can see their success rate.
     
  15. Beer w/Straw Transcendental Ignorance! Valued Senior Member

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    So it was a bad analogy.
     
  16. MacM Registered Senior Member

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    Oh of course just like the fact that current gravity theories require 4-5 times as much mass as we can account for so we just assume some new exotic Dark Matter to make the math work. Or the universe appears to have an accelerating expansion therefore there must exist some exoic Dark Energy that has anti-gravity attributes. Now with these two unique materials and opposite properties they must also have a unique distribution to cause the affects we observe.

    All this from interpretation of hard data or formulas just to retain flawed basic concepts rather than start over. Right - :bugeye:
     
    Last edited: Nov 21, 2009
  17. CptBork Valued Senior Member

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    General relativity already explains a great number of known gravitational phenomena to extreme precision. Thus there's nothing wrong with introducing concepts like dark matter and dark energy to explain phenomena conventional GR doesn't handle, as long as it allows physicists to make quantitative predictions. If every model of dark matter and dark energy ultimately fails miserably to describe the evidence, then you'd have a good reason to voice skepticism, and the door would be open for a new theory which makes the same predictions as GR wherever GR has been shown to be correct, while making superior predictions in areas where conventional GR falls short.

    When the neutrino was first discovered, it was just a mathematical fudge introduced to preserve conservation of energy in certain subatomic decays. Then scientists found that not only would it account for the energy missing from the products of these reactions, but it also explains the statistical distribution of the energies and momenta in these products. Finally, by the 1950's neutrinos were being directly detected, by watching for reactions occurring in target materials when placed near nuclear reactors. I imagine someone like you would probably have complained in the 1930's that neutrinos are just a fictional mythology introduced to save the careers of a bunch of failed pipe-smoking quantum physicists.
     
  18. MacM Registered Senior Member

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    Correct to a limited degree. The neutrino was a simple filler to account missing energy. Dark Matter and Dark Energy involve extensive formula failure and the massaging of two opposing forces in some unique manner to allow us to appear to be at the center of the expanding universe. - Hmmmm. Not so simple or likely.
     
  19. BenTheMan Dr. of Physics, Prof. of Love Valued Senior Member

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    I could be wrong, but I thought the neutrino was needed to explain the (supposedly) non-conservation of spin in nuclear beta decays?
     
  20. Dywyddyr Penguinaciously duckalicious. Valued Senior Member

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    Just a nasty thought about your Cervantes post Ben.
    Are you implying that when (if) string theory is validated it will give us new windmills to tilt at?

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

     
  21. MacM Registered Senior Member

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    Last edited: Nov 21, 2009
  22. Walter L. Wagner Cosmic Truth Seeker Valued Senior Member

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    I'm throwing in along with MacM. I've posted on this several times before in other threads.

    The perplexing information we had in the early 20th century was that, unlike alpha particles that always came off with a single discrete energy (within the error range of the detectors), beta particles came off with a spread in energies up to a maximum energy.

    Pauli recognized that this could only be if there was a third party involved, requiring a three-party analysis, so as to conserve both momentum and energy. He named that particle a "neutron" (this was before the discovery by Chadwick of the particle we now call the neutron). Pauli also recognized the particle had to be neutral to conserve charge, hence his chosen term. Later, Fermi did a more detailed analysis, renaming the particle a "neutrino", Italian for 'little neutral one'. It was still theoretical, but physicists universally recognized the need for the particle to satisfy conservation of momentum and energy principles. However, as noted by Ben (and MacM), it also satisfies the spin requirements.
     
  23. BenTheMan Dr. of Physics, Prof. of Love Valued Senior Member

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    Well, my encounters with string theory typically leave me feeling like I tried a bit of the Balsam de Fierabras.
     

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