tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7315236707728759521.post6605559330615436744..comments2024-03-28T21:52:52.100-06:00Comments on Dispatches From Turtle Island: A Notable Paper Potentially Falsifying String TheoryAndrew Oh-Willekehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02537151821869153861noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7315236707728759521.post-91914196626369633122018-04-12T10:55:16.634-06:002018-04-12T10:55:16.634-06:00Mitchel have you thought about bringing this to Wo...Mitchel have you thought about bringing this to Woit's attention?neohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17318664916557810347noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7315236707728759521.post-87113220751035229762018-04-10T23:57:11.254-06:002018-04-10T23:57:11.254-06:00I am EXTREMELY skeptical. Plenty of people have ar...I am EXTREMELY skeptical. Plenty of people have argued that there are no eternally stable de Sitter vacua in string theory, but these authors even want to argue against <i>metastable</i> de Sitter vacua. That would mean that you cannot even <i>temporarily</i> have a positive cosmological constant in string theory. <br /><br />So I would regard the technical difficulties that they point to, not as a sign that the whole landscape is a phantasm, but as a sign that there is more to learn about how these things really work in string theory. <br /><br />I could compare it to calculating the particle masses for a specific string vacuum. The calculation has not been completed for any remotely realistic vacuum, but that doesn't mean that the calculation has no answer, that there is no such calculation. It just means that we can't figure out the equilibrium values of the geometric parameters. <br /><br />I see these "problems of stringy de Sitter space" as a similar phenomenon on a deeper level: de Sitter space almost certainly DOES exist within string theory, we just haven't figured out all the nuances of it yet. <br /><br />By the way, towards the end they also make some comments about difficulties of plain old QFT in de Sitter space. Mitchellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10768655514143252049noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7315236707728759521.post-17593548280348645582018-04-10T17:46:37.205-06:002018-04-10T17:46:37.205-06:00"Physicists have been working on String Theor..."Physicists have been working on String Theory for basically my entire life. It has turned out to be a dead end and a distraction for the most part, although it has revealed some important mathematical insights including some relevant to quantum gravity. It is time to look for alternatives."<br /><br /><br />I actually agree and i think it's time for top universities physics departments to start hiring QG researchers in other fields, along with post docs grad students, and offer physics majors undergraduate courses in these alternatives, such as the usual list LQG, AS, CDT, emergent gravity etc<br /><br />one specific example is a child prodigy named Jacob Barnett, he's with Lee Smolin at Perimeter researching LQG, when i last heard from him. <br /><br />what's your fav alternative?neohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17318664916557810347noreply@blogger.com