5 ms·
Briane Greene is very knowledgeable about physics, and brilliant at math, but his main life's work isn't as physicist. His work is embedding physics in mathemat
by gowld 5y ago
Briane Greene is very knowledgeable about physics, and brilliant at math, but his main life's work isn't as physicist. His work is embedding physics in mathematical models in a way that is does not generate empirically testable predictions. His string theory work has the same amount of support as real-Universe physics as does a Baptist preacher's sermons.
- ncmncm 5y agoI used to think the string theorists were a bunch of charlatans. But matching first-principles entropy at the event horizon gives me pause. Even if they are all wrong about anything beyond the Standard Model, they have a sort of encoding of it in its entirety that ought to suggest places to look for interesting phenomena. Maybe the math is too hard to predict what happens in such places, but they will have done something useful in pointing at them. It's not exactly science, as such, but not everything useful has to be. (I gather that in the stringy black hole model, there is no actual space inside the horizon, so no need for a singularity. I may have misunderstood.)
- selimthegrim 5y agoBethe Ansatz solutions too if you like condensed matter stuff.
- BlueTemplar 5y agoTo be fair, it's not their fault that the energies required for testing are way outside our reach.