Scientists often don’t know what they’re talking about
| December 9, 2005 | Posted by William Dembski under Education, Science |
When reading the following, remember that string theory is taught and discussed in physics courses. Also ask yourself whether Gross’s criticisms apply to evolutionary theory — is it “missing something absolutely fundamental”?
Nobel laureate admits string theory is in trouble
10 December 2005
http://www.newscientist.com/channel/fundamentals/mg18825293.700.html“WE DON’T know what we are talking about.” That was Nobel laureate David Gross at the 23rd Solvay Conference in Physics in Brussels, Belgium, during his concluding remarks on Saturday. He was referring to string theory – the attempt to unify the otherwise incompatible theories of relativity and quantum mechanics to provide a theory of everything.
“The state of physics today is like it was when we were mystified by radioactivityâ€Â
Gross – who received a Nobel for his work on the strong nuclear force, bringing physics closer to a theory of everything – has been a strong advocate of string theory, which also aims to explain dark energy. “Many of us believed that string theory was a very dramatic break with our previous notions of quantum theory,” he said. “But now we learn that string theory, well, is not that much of a break.”He compared the state of physics today to that during the first Solvay conference in 1911. Then, physicists were mystified by the discovery of radioactivity. The puzzling phenomenon threatened even the laws of conservation of mass and energy, and physicists had to wait for the theory of quantum mechanics to explain it. “They were missing something absolutely fundamental,” he said. “We are missing perhaps something as profound as they were back then.”
From issue 2529 of New Scientist magazine, 10 December 2005, page 6
65 Responses to Scientists often don’t know what they’re talking about
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
PaV,
I assume you understood that my citation of Borges was in jest; your response is a bit ambiguous on that point.
As for the multiverse hypothesis, it’s not obvious to me how it stretches logic “to the breaking point.” Could you elaborate?
Occam’s Razor would suggest that we avoid invoking multiple universes without justification, but if a multiverse model ends up fitting the data better than any single-universe model, and furthermore makes predictions which are testable within our own universe, I see nothing that logically requires us to reject it out of hand.
If there’s something inherently illogical about positing a multiverse, was it illogical for Curtis to propose that there were many galaxies beyond our own before telescopes were powerful enough to show this?
[...] Update: Ken Silber writes in to point out that William Dembski, one of the most prominent Intelligent Design ideologues, has now latched on to the string theory controversy as evidence that mainstream science is no better than ID. Dembski has both comments on Susskind and comments on David Gross’s admission that string theory is in trouble. [...]
keiths: “If there’s something inherently illogical about positing a multiverse, was it illogical for Curtis to propose that there were many galaxies beyond our own before telescopes were powerful enough to show this?”
Yes, there is. An infinite number of infinite universes is infinity-squared more complex than saying God created the universe. And, please tell, how does this infinity-squared complexity compare to simply projecting out from the boundaries of our galaxies? This is a simple projection of the “known” into farther realms, whereas the infinity-squared silliness says that there are an infinite number of universes that are different from the one we live in. The former is like extending the x,y, and z-axes, while the latter is that there is an infinite number of x,y, and z-axes. So, in terms of predicting other galaxies, the multiverse is only ‘infinitely’ more, and not infinity-squared more, complex.
A quote relevant to the discussion:
“Inflation itself takes a very small universe and produces from it a very big universe. But inflation by itself does not explain where that very small universe came from. Eternal inflation is eternal into the future, not the past. Those bubble universes may keep inflating eternally into the future, but we’re still left without an explanation for what caused the first bubble. ” –Alan Guth
Dave, as pointed out in previous threads, information can be destroyed in a deterministic universe.
Say what? Not according to Stephen Hawking. Who should I believe, him or you? http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn6151 -ds