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I find it weird how much of this is about science popularization. I have an undergrad degree in physics and don't consider myself qualified to have an opinion.
by jfengel 2y ago
I find it weird how much of this is about science popularization. I have an undergrad degree in physics and don't consider myself qualified to have an opinion.
Nor do I see the point in having one. If they came tomorrow and said "yep, we just proved string theory", all I could do is shrug and say "good to know".
It feels more like people cheering on their favorite sports team than actual science.
- catlifeonmars 2y agoI think this is a weakness of theories that have easily accessible analogies. It’s easy to (as a layperson) mistake the analogy for the real thing and to overindex on the parsimony of said analogy. String theory suffers from this IMO.
- tim333 2y agoThere are some aspects of string theory that have never seemed to work to me from a very basic point of view. I mean from wikipedia >the characteristic length scale of strings is assumed to be on the order of the Planck length, or 10^−35 meters And in normal quantum electrodynamics, if you have two electrons a meter apart they repel by exchanging virtual photos which are presumably these 10^(-15)m long things. How on earth would they hit? There isn't an aiming mechanism I guess an if you sent them off all directions you would need like 10^100+ of them to hit etc. Which may sound silly like I don't understand it but I think beyond that it is silly because the theory is nonsense. The way I see it it started as a real model of the binding between the components of the nucleus and then people thought the maths is cool, we can get grants to study that and then the grant getting community multiplied irrespective of it having any connection to reality.