when joseph conlon As an undergraduate in the early 2000s, I avoided typical scientific explanations of string theory because I wanted to approach it on a technical level without any preconceptions. A few years after the “second string theory revolution,” theoretical physicists felt that they might be able to unravel the deepest mechanisms of reality and perhaps publish a theory of everything. While studying mathematics, Conlon became fascinated.
String theory famously suggests that everything is made up of one-dimensional strings (‘ “String Theory: An Introduction”, below.), which also predicts a huge number of possible universes (about 10).500, for note-takers. No matter how you think about it, it’s safe to say that string theory hasn’t produced the testable predictions that many people expected. Today, it has a reputation of being unverifiable and possibly unscientific. One archstring theory critic called this “not even wrong.”
But for Conlon, now a physicist at Oxford University, the thrill never faded. String theory, he argues, is a potential route to unifying our conflicting ideas about gravity and the quantum world to create a unified theory of quantum gravity. He also claims that his field has been unfairly maligned and that his detractors apply double standards. He even claims that string theory actually makes predictions that future astronomical observations can investigate.
Here Conlon says new scientist About the enduring joys of string theory, why it’s too early to abandon it, and why we need to revise our concepts of what makes a useful scientific idea.
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