From Not Even Wrong,
About every three years KEK issues a hype-filled press release announcing that Jun Nishimura and collaborators have used a supercomputer to get evidence for string theory. Back in 2008, the announcement was of a numerical simulation on a supercomputer of a supersymmetric QM system that supposedly showed that superstring theory explained the properties of black holes (press release here, preprint here, blogging here). In 2011, the claim was of a numerical simulation on a supercomputer that used superstring theory to understand the birth of our universe (press release here, preprint here, blogging here). Both of these papers were published in PRL.
The 2014 press release is now out (see here), based on this preprint from last December. The latest claim is that the authors have solved the black hole information paradox, have shown that we live in a hologram, as well as showing that string theory provides a self-consistent quantization of gravity, all by doing a numerical simulation of a QM system. Even better, … More.
Nature is taking it all seriously.
Note: KEK = High Energy Accelerator Research Organization (Japan-based)
Science is undergoing a strange phase when top publications take the same approach to cosmology “signs and wonders” like we-live-in-a-hologram that a pop sci mag would. They so badly need it all to be true that evidence is superfluous. For a brief discussion of how and why that happened, and what it means, see The Science Fictions series at your fingertips (cosmology).
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