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As a lay person on this topic, a question. I've always heard that string theory was an untestable theory that academia was obsessed with for decades, and resear

As a lay person on this topic, a question. I've always heard that string theory was an untestable theory that academia was obsessed with for decades, and research on it soaked up a large amount of academic budgets and grant money. And was ultimately fruitless. (Again, I'm on the outside looking in, I don't work in the field so I'm not 100% sure if this is accurate) Is dark matter in the same boat as string theory was, from a grant money and research standpoint?

toast0 4y ago
There's been concrete expirements looking for dark matter (not yet found). That advances science, even if unfruitful. I don't think there have been any expirements re: strings? So it advances philosophy, but not really science yet.
- blinding-streak 4y ago
  That's interesting. Good to know.
hither_shores 4y ago
> Again, I'm on the outside looking in, I don't work in the field so I'm not 100% sure if this is accurate It's not. Point by point: > I've always heard that string theory was an untestable theory True in a certain light, but misleading. Any theory of quantum gravity is going to be untestable with current methods: the relevant energy scales are just too high. That doesn't mean they won't ever be testable. We might figure out a qualitatively better collider design, or find a way to get useful data from astronomical observations, or find some other clever way around the problem. Or we might not. Theorists would love to have more experimental evidence to work with - but wanting doesn't make it so. A somewhat more legitimate concern is the size of the "string landscape": (perturbative) string theory permits many, many, many different possible values for different physical constants. It's likely, but not certain, that this is also true nonperturbatively. If so, then we can't use the measured values of those constants as evidence for or against string theory. This is unfortunate, but hardly unique: the standard model, after all, permits infinitely many such possibilities. > and research on it soaked up a large amount of academic budgets and grant money Not really. Most physics funding goes to applied research, most pure research funding is for experimental work, and the majority of theory funding is not for high energy theory. I don't know whether most high energy theory grants go to string theorists: it's possible. > And was ultimately fruitless Only insofar as all work on quantum gravity has been "fruitless".

toast0 4y ago

There's been concrete expirements looking for dark matter (not yet found). That advances science, even if unfruitful. I don't think there have been any expirements re: strings? So it advances philosophy, but not really science yet.

blinding-streak 4y ago
That's interesting. Good to know.

hither_shores 4y ago

> Again, I'm on the outside looking in, I don't work in the field so I'm not 100% sure if this is accurate It's not. Point by point: > I've always heard that string theory was an untestable theory True in a certain light, but misleading. Any theory of quantum gravity is going to be untestable with current methods: the relevant energy scales are just too high. That doesn't mean they won't ever be testable. We might figure out a qualitatively better collider design, or find a way to get useful data from astronomical observations, or find some other clever way around the problem. Or we might not. Theorists would love to have more experimental evidence to work with - but wanting doesn't make it so. A somewhat more legitimate concern is the size of the "string landscape": (perturbative) string theory permits many, many, many different possible values for different physical constants. It's likely, but not certain, that this is also true nonperturbatively. If so, then we can't use the measured values of those constants as evidence for or against string theory. This is unfortunate, but hardly unique: the standard model, after all, permits infinitely many such possibilities. > and research on it soaked up a large amount of academic budgets and grant money Not really. Most physics funding goes to applied research, most pure research funding is for experimental work, and the majority of theory funding is not for high energy theory. I don't know whether most high energy theory grants go to string theorists: it's possible. > And was ultimately fruitless Only insofar as all work on quantum gravity has been "fruitless".