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Sure, but regular quantum mechanics does the same thing. It's under-constrained and allows for too many possibilities. So you assume that the observations wroug
by Retra 8y ago
Sure, but regular quantum mechanics does the same thing. It's under-constrained and allows for too many possibilities. So you assume that the observations wrought by Newtonian physics must be valid and use that to constrain the theory down to something that can be useful.
The difference is that the string model doesn't (yet) have any observations which we could use to constrain it in an analogous manner. But in studying it, one would hope to find areas of the theory that indicate where those observations could be made.
The point being, it is not so simple to just look at string theory and say you can a priory determine it is flawed or wrongly motivated. That same kind of reasoning would likely have prevented Planck & Einstein from starting quantum theory.
- nonbel 8y ago>"observations wrought by Newtonian physics" I'm not sure what this means. Is it different from just making an observation? Eg, "this light in the sky is of this color at that location", or "this object drops at that speed".
- auntienomen 8y agoIt just means that we need the correspondence principle to find useful quantum mechanical models. Without that, you're just talking about algebras acting on Hilbert spaces.
- hansen 8y ago> Sure, but regular quantum mechanics does the same thing. It's > under-constrained and allows for too many possibilities. No it doesn’t. There are a few good guiding principles that make it possible to build models that turn out to be an accurate description of nature. These guiding principles don’t manifest themselves in a set of axioms of a mathematical theory nevertheless they are there. And they are part of the theory, just not set in stone like the underlying mathematical structure. But that doesn’t matter at all as long as you are doing science and not math. Take classical EM, measure the masses of the electron and atomic nuclei, and write down a suitable Hamiltonians. Viola, you have an explanation of almost every phenomena that’s relevant in our daily life and way beyond. Similar principles exist in elementary particle physics and lead to standard model.