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Claim that we can test string theory

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Two theorists recently proposed a way to find evidence for an idea famous for being untestable: string theory. It involves looking for particles that were around 14 billion years ago, when a very tiny universe hit a growth spurt that used 15 billion times more energy than a collision in the Large Hadron Collider.

Scientists can’t crank the LHC up that high, not even close. But they could possibly observe evidence of these particles through cosmological studies, with the right technological advances. More.

All such claim fly in the face of the main point: If everything is true somewhere, tests are meaningless. Tests belong in universes where only some things are true, not a multiverse where everything is.

But why would evidence matter in the face of so compelling a popular thesis: Somehow, somewhere, everything is true (David Berlinski)?

And as the estimable mathematician Peter Woit puts it, re other views,

This week’s hype comes to us from Discover Magazine, which has Is Our Universe One of Many? Here’s How We Can Find Out. Needless to say, the author doesn’t actually tell us how we can find out, just repeats the usual “maybe we’ll see bubble collisions” argument often discussed here. We’re also told that

It is important to keep in mind that the multiverse view is not actually a theory, it is rather a consequence of our current understanding of theoretical physics.

It seems that our “current understanding of theoretical physics” is the string theory landscape. If you ask what the evidence is for string theory, you’ll be given the usual circular reasoning that we don’t have evidence because of the multiverse.

See also:But who needs reality-based thinking anyway? Not the new cosmologists

and

In search of a road to reality

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Comments
All such claim fly in the face of the main point: If everything is true somewhere, tests are meaningless. Tests belong in universes where only some things are true, not a multiverse where everything is.
You might want to actually become familiar with the theory you're criticizing. Specially, you can't run tests "in the multiverse" itself. This is the case regardless if it's the multiverse in the cosmic sense or the multiverse in the many worlds theory of QM. In the cosmic sense, you exist in a universe - possible more if they could overlap, but not an infinite number. And versions of you exist in distinct universes in the many worlds theory of QM. But you cannot perform tests outside of a universe, which would be the multiverse. It's unclear how one could run tests there or that anyone claimed it was possible in the first place. As for the many worlds of QM multiverse, I want to solve problems in this universe. If some vast number of universes are similar enough to mine that it can run the same tests to solve those same problems, then I would like to run them there as well. And that's what the many worlds interpretation of QM suggests will happen when we build quantum computers with a significant number of qubits.Popperian
September 6, 2015
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All such claim fly in the face of the main point: If everything is true somewhere, tests are meaningless. Tests belong in universes where only some things are true, not a multiverse where everything is.
Why would you stop caring about what's true in this universe just because there are other universes where other things may be true? That makes no sense. Maybe I hit the lottery in another universe. It still has no affect on me here.goodusername
September 6, 2015
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