An op-ed article in the New York Times notwithstanding, string theory is still a failure.
The claim is that if it hasn't been experimentally disproven, and it is mathematically beautiful, we should study it. But, of course, you can't experimentally disprove it, because there isn't even a version of it that is suggested at the one that actually explains our reality.
The near definitive ruling out of supersymmetry which most scholars see as a precondition for it and low energy approximation of it doesn't help. The dubiousness of a Majorana neutrino theory doesn't help either. Its reliance of theories that only work in an anti-de Sitter universe which we don't live in also fails to recommend it. And, its claimed need for ten or eleven dimensions, in a four dimensional world, has not found satisfactory solutions.
Woit further develops this theme.
3 comments:
mitchell porter is a believer
I'll let him speak for himself. His views are quite a bit more nuanced than yours.
what is your favorite uv-complete qg and bsm?
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