nontechnical string theory/anthropic discussion

F

Fred

Newcomer
Lenny Susskind has given a laymens talk over at Edge. I saw him lecture about about this a few months ago, and needless to say its .... disturbing for a physicist (it was met with a great deal of hostility at my school).

http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/susskind03/susskind_index.html

http://www.edge.org/discourse/landscape.html

The second link sends you to where some notable physicists comment about the article. In particular, read Lee Smolins remarks.

All in all, it gives you a few snippits of nice little insiders view of whats happening at the forefront of research these days.
 
If the String Theory eventually is proven to be true (but what is TRUE anyway?), would that mean that there could be other forces other than the 4 fundamental forces we now know of?

What would that really mean for physics?

(Guess those are rather open ended questions to which no one really knows the answer...)
 
London, the answer is yes, possibly.

For instance, in certain brane world theories, the 'friction' between two d-branes outputs a fifth force. They are toy models though, and that particular example was unphysical for other reasons.

But yes, in principle all sorts of unusual stuff can be outputed by String Theories hefty mathematical machinery. Its way too early to tell though, since we can't yet figure out how to constrain the theory (or even if its possible), and more importantly, the theory itself is nowhere near complete.

I imagine the implications for physics would be 'small', in so far as practical applications are concerned. However it could have important contributions to say cosmology, or particle physics.
 
If the String Theory eventually is proven to be true (but what is TRUE anyway?),
Click to expand...

it's really rather fortunate that Science in general doesn't have any pre-requisuite that anything is true in the first place. that I imagine to be the domain for the philosophers (whom have waaayyyyy too much time on their hands).
 
notAFanB said:
that I imagine to be the domain for the philosophers (whom have waaayyyyy too much time on their hands).
Click to expand...


TRUE (errrr...) but if i was rich and without a worry, i would be a "philosopher" too if u know what i mean... just doing f**k all all day, thinking about the universe, eating, travelling around the globe, thinking some more, having loads of sex, sleeping, thinking some more... ;)
 
Thanks for the links. It never fails to amaze me just how damn interesting the subject matter in question is! I guess it's just part of human nature to get totally absorbed by such things. Open your miiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiind... 8)

MuFu.
 
Curiosity is the best part of human nature in my opinion. It it because of curiosity that we are what we are and we know what we know nowadays.
 
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