archived as http://www.stealthskater.com/Documents/Strings_11.doc

more of this topic at http://www.stealthskater.com/Science.htm#superstrings

note: because important web-sites are frequently "here today but gone tomorrow", the following was archived from http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20227101.300-what-string-theory-is-really-good-for.html on June 1, 2009. This is NOT an attempt to divert readers from the aforementioned web-site. Indeed, the reader should only read this back-up copy if the updated original cannot be found at the original author's site.

What String Theory is really good forby Robin Nixon

NewScientist / June 1, 2009

STRING theory: you love it or loathe it. To some it represents our best hope for a route to a "Theory of Everything". Others portray it as anything from a mathematically obtuse minefield to a quasi-religion that has precious little to do with Science.

There might be a middle way. String theory's mathematical tools were designed to unlock the most profound secrets of the Cosmos. Bbut they could have a far less esoteric purpose: to tease out the properties of some of the most complex yet useful types of material here on Earth.

Both string theorists and condensed matter physicists (i.e., those studying the properties of complex matter phases such as solids and liquids)- are enthused by the development. "I am flabbergasted," says Jan Zaanen, a condensed matter theorist from the University of Leiden in the Netherlands. "The theory is calculating precisely what we are seeing in experiments."

If solid science does turn out to be the salvation of string theory, it would be the latest twist in a tangled history. String theory was formulated in the late 1960s to explain certain features of the strong nuclear force -- one of 4 fundamental forces of Nature. It holds that electrons, quarks, and the like are not point-like particles but minuscule, curled-up, vibrating strings.

No sooner had this idea emerged, though, than it lost ground to particle physicists' Standard Model which proved capable of describing not just the strong force but also the weak and electromagnetic forces. And did so far more intuitively through the interactions of point-like quantum particles.

Then string theory staged a dramatic comeback. Gravity had resisted incorporation into the Standard Model, still being described by Einstein's General Theory of Relativity (a resolutely non-quantum theory). In the 1980s, it became clear that certain features of strings correspond perfectly to properties predicted for the graviton -- a hypothetical quantum particle that would transmit the gravitational force. Suddenly it looked as though string theory could unite all of Mature's workings into one grand quantum-physical scheme.

Holographic Worlds

If that's true, progress has been abysmally slow. "The string theorists were saying 'Give us 2 more weeks and we will have explained all the big puzzles in the Universe'," Zaanen observes. "That was 20 years ago!"

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The critical voices have in the meantime been getting more strident. They complain about string theory's weird, unverifiable predictions. For instance, that space-time has any number of dimensions, usually 10 rather than the three of space and one of time we see. Folding 10 dimensions down to 4 can be done in a mind-boggling 10500 ways with no way of saying which of them corresponds to how our Universe does it.

As if that weren't enough, the energies needed to create the tiny strings that the theory is woven from make them impossible to detect. To its detractors, string theory is long on mathematical elegance but woefully short on real-world relevance.

A string-theory curiosity with the forbidding moniker of the anti-de-Sitter/conformal field theory correspondence (AdS/CFT for short) is at first glance a classic of the genre. Dreamed up in 1997 by Juan Maldacena (a young Argentinian physicist then working at Harvard University), it is a special case of what is known as the "Holographic Principle" floated by physicist Gerard 't Hooft of Utrecht University in the Netherlands and developed by Leonard Susskind at Stanford University in California in the early 1990s.

Their basic premise was this. Much as a hologram you might find on your credit card encodes all the information for a 3D image in just 2 dimensions, a quantum theory in a certain number of dimensions that includes gravity can be encoded as an entirely different theory without gravity in one dimension fewer. The 3 spatial dimensions of our Universe (along with gravity and us too) might, for instance, all be a holographic image generated from the interactions of particles on the Cosmos's 2D boundary.

Maldacena took that idea further. He was trying to do something that had consumed some of the best minds in Cosmology for decades. To reconcile the behavior of black holes (which are a core prediction of General Relativity) with Quantum Theory.

One way to model black hole behavior was to turn to multi-dimensional membranes known as D-branes that pop up in string theory. Like black holes in our Cosmos, these curiosities are extremely heavy and capable of curving higher-dimensional space around them.

Maldacena's insight was to see that the goings-on on a D-brane could be described in 2 entirely equivalent holographically-related ways.

The first comes from string theory. It includes gravity and involves 10 dimensions. Of these, five are rolled up tightly while the other five are configured as an "anti-de-Sitter space" (i.e., one that warps back on itself like a saddle, rather than being broadly flat as our Cosmos is assumed to be).

The second description sits on the edge of this 5D space. It is a 4D quantum field theory without gravity -- not unlike the sort that underpins the theories of the strong, weak, and electromagnetic forces in the Standard Model but with a few extra symmetries thrown in. Such a theory is known as "conformal" because the particles behave in the same way regardless of the energy or length scale at which you look at them. Thus the AdS/CFT correspondence was complete.

To theoretical physicists, Maldacena had stumbled on something profound. For the first time, he had connected a condensed-down string theory with a normal field theory of particle interactions. Instead of having to grapple with the notoriously intractable mathematics of Quantum Field Theory, physicists could now make use of the somewhat more manageable algebraic apparatus of General Relativity

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courtesy of the higher-dimensional member of the duo. Calculations of complex particle interactions could be made easier at the stroke of a pen.

Right Theory, Wrong Universe

A shame, then, that the correspondence applied to the wrong shape of universe. That didn't put off Maldacena's peers. When he presented his work at a conference in Santa Barbara, California in 1998, several hundred string theorists joined in with a specially-composed song ("The Maldacena") to the tune of the then-popular dance hit "The Macarena".

But why should anyone care? What possible relevance could this little-known theoretical conjuring trick have to the Real World?

Quite a lot, it seems. And in particular to the behavior of certain types of condensed matter. Understanding these materials at the deepest level involves calculating how huge numbers of particles interact -- something that we simply don't have the tools to cope with.

"It's very dissatisfying that in the centuries since Galileo kick-started modern Physics, we still can't deal with that," says Sean Hartnoll, a string theorist at Harvard University.

That's where the tricks of the AdS/CFT correspondence come in handy. Though formulated for a different type of space, its mathematics provides a convenient bypass for a variety of problems that involve strongly interacting particle systems.

Take the exotic form of matter known as the quark-gluon plasma. In normal matter, quarks and gluons are bundled together into more familiar entities like protons and neutrons. At temperatures comparable with those seen in the immensely hot first microseconds of the Universe, those bonds should break down, releasing a dense fireball of quarks and gluons acting in a similar way to the atoms of a gas with few or no interactions between them.

That, at least, is what the Field Theory of the strong nuclear force predicts. But in 2005 when researchers at Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, New York created a quark-gluon plasma by smashing together fast moving Gold ions, they saw something very different. The plasma acted not as a gas but as a superfluid (i.e., an almost perfectly flowing liquid with virtually no viscosity). Clearly, the interactions between the quarks and gluons of this exotic state were more complex than the standard theory could easily compute.

So how can we work out what's going on? A less than obvious answer is to approach the problem through the physics of a black hole. Black holes have thermodynamic properties such as entropy and temperature just as liquids do. Aand in higher dimensions they can also have viscosity.

In 2005, three theorists used these connections to calculate the viscosity of a quark-gluon plasma through the holographically-equivalent problem of how a black hole in an anti-de-Sitter space absorbs gravitational waves. The result was a close match to the experimental value. A triumph for a decidedly "left-field" approach.

This was no fluke. Last year, theorists made the same leap of faith with another, very different exotic phase of matter that had been made at Duke University in North Carolina. Here Lithium atoms are suspended in an intricate web of laser beams and cooled to a temperature 10 billion billion times lower than that of the sizzling quark-gluon plasma. Again, they behave as a superfluid. The correct

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behavior can be calculated with conventional theory at the expense of some complex mathematics. But AdS/CFT could provide the right answer much more easily.

Zaanen pinpoints the moment at which his area "got into bed" with string theory as a paper published in 2007 by Hartnoll, fellow Harvard physicist Subir Sachdev, and a couple of colleagues (Physical Review B, vol 76, p 144502). It applied the AdS/CFT correspondence to high-temperature superconductors -- the mysterious materials to which Zaanen had devoted so many years of theoretical effort. I n these materials, electrons can flow without resistance (i.e., losing no energy as heat) at temperatures as mild as 150 oKelvin.

High-temperature superconductors behave as they do because of the way electrons organize themselves in the material. But 20 years and hundreds of thousands of research papers on from their discovery, we are no closer to knowing exactly how that is. "If someone genuinely knew the microscopic description of a high-temperature superconductor, they would already have a Nobel prize," says Joe Bhaseen, a condensed matter physicist at the University of Cambridge.

The paper by Hartnoll and his colleagues concerned the Nernst effect which occurs when a magnetic field and a temperature gradient applied to a material produce a voltage at right angles to both. The effect is particularly pronounced in high-temperature superconductors.

Conventional theory can predict the magnitude of the Nernst effect but requires pages of laborious algebra. Hartnoll's team showed that AdS/CFT correspondence produces the same answer in just a few lines. It was the first time that AdS/CFT and normal approaches had been tested against a real experimental result in condensed matter physics. And the "language of black holes" came up with by far the more fluent answer.

Hartnoll and others have since developed the idea of the "holographic superconductor" further. They are still far away from a theory of how high-temperature superconductors work, Hartnoll stresses, and he doesn't expect string theory to deliver that on its own.

Yet by enabling us to compute with ease certain properties of the superconductors -- e.g., how their resistance changes with temperature, or how the temperature at which superconductivity kicks in is related to how electrons behave -- it provides an unexplored route towards it.

String theory might help us understand how mystery materials like high-temperature superconductors work

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High-temperature superconductors are not the only useful materials that might benefit from the AdS/CFT approach. Sachdev has used the correspondence to compute properties of the plasma of electrons found in graphene (sheets of graphite a single atom thick that have been touted as a successor to silicon as the base materials of microelectronics).

Where does all this leave string theory and the search for a theory of everything? Clifford Johnson (a string theorist at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles) thinks that the subject could mature simply by broadening its horizons. Honing its mathematical tools on condensed matter -- where results from the lab provide stringent tests of any predictions it might come up with -- will furnish string theory with a more powerful arsenal for attacking areas where verification comes less easily.

Others suggest the lesson is that string theory should lower its sights and concentrate less on lofty claims that it harbors a "Theory of Everything" and more on where it can actually produce results.

Whatever the answer, for Zaanen his new direction has been an eye-opener. "The correspondence is fascinating stuff because it allows you to relate very different chapters in the book of physics," he says. "It's been superb entertainment."

"String theory is not a one-way street"Sean Hartnoll - a string theorist looking for answers

I think it's crucial to see the lofty "Theory of Everything" and the "Real World" aspects of string theory as complementary. That's partly why I drifted into the application of string theory to condensed matter physics. It's not a one-way street. I'm completely sure that string theory will also learn a lot from condensed matter physics. It would be arrogant to assume otherwise.

Critics of string theory often just focus on one aspect: the attempt to reproduce the Standard Model by compactifying down string theory's 10 dimensions to 4. I've never been especially attracted to that question as it is hard to make robust predictions.

What is great about string theory in the last few years is that it has become a melting pot of concepts from different areas of Physics such as quantum gravity, particle physics, cosmology, and condensed matter. It is broad; ties together a lot of concepts; and hopefully something will come out of it. I don't really care whether that turns out to be the ultimate theory of Nature or not. Stuff like AdS/CFT could usher in a new period of unity in physics that would have been completely unanticipated 10 years ago.

"I thought string theory was hocus-pocus"Jan Zaanen - matter theorist and backdoor string enthusiast

String theory isn't easy to learn. I got interested in it because I was frustrated that I could understand everyone speaking at physics lectures except the string theorists. I thought I ought to know what these guys were talking about. It sounded like hocus-pocus. But they were pretty obsessed. I wanted to find out why.

So in 2005 I employed a couple of string theorists and one of them organized a course. It took 2 years and two 1,000-page books of dense mathematics. But I learned string theory and got kind of enchanted by it.

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Then the AdS/CFT thing began to encroach on my horizon when it started to make predictions about high-temperature superconductors, my traditional mainstay. I was one of the few condensed matter physicists with the preparation to take it up.

As far as the bigger picture goes, gravitational physics seems to be infinitely far away from how atoms and particles behave. But with string theory, it is all part of one package. It tells you that there are deep relationships between the nature of space and time and quantum physics.

Readers' Comments

1. String Theory From AWT Perspectiveby Zephir / Fri May 29, 2009 21:12:41 BST

From AWT perspective, strings are density fluctuations forming the vacuum -- analogous to density fluctuations inside of condensing supercritical fluid, hot air over above fire, or simply fresh mixture of maple syrup and water.

String theories are older and more primitive versions of Quantum Gravity theories because of string theory is Special Relativity-based whereas QG theories are General Relativity-based. AdS/CFT duality is duality of perspective of observer sitting inside of gravitational lens and outside of it. These perspectives cannot be described in a single formal model and because every real observer is both inside ( both outside of gravity lens), it leads into quantum uncertainty.

Main inconsistency of string theory follows from assumption of Lorentz invariance and hidden dimensions concept because the existence of hidden dimensions should manifest itself just by Lorentz invariance violation in analogy to wave spreading at 2D water surface (the reference frame of underwater is just a result of surface wave dispersion into third dimension). This leads into landscape of infinitely many solutions and loss of testability. We shouldn't expect deterministic solution from any theory which is indeterministic Quantum Mechanics-based.

2. String Theory From AWT Perspectiveby Polemos / Mon Jun 01, 2009 12:37:07 BST

"Any physical process is part of the transition of the universe's physical vacuum from a disjunct state with the highest potential energy (false vacuum) to an interconnected (nonlocal) state with the lowest potential energy (true vacuum).

"In 1938, F. London proposed a "two-fluid" model to explain the behavior of superfluid helium: normal liquid and the superfluid fraction consisting of those atoms which have "condensed" to the ground state and make no contribution to the entropy or heat capacity of the liquid. This condensed fraction is the standard example of Bose-Einstein condensation [9].

Physical vacuum is such a bicomponential fluid. It is a mixture of the normal fraction (false vacuum) and the superfluid fraction (true vacuum). The proportion of the superfluid fraction increases with time. As a result, vacuum's objective reduction threshold rises, making it supportive of increasingly complex wavefunctions (atoms, molecules, animals, people). By the end of the year 2012, the OR threshold becomes high enough for the emergence of the hitherto latent universal wavefunction -- the Eschaton."

Read full article: (long URL - click here)

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3. String Theory From Awt Perspectiveby Zephir / Mon Jun 01, 2009 15:04:24 BST

Is here some experimental evidence of two-component vacuum? In my opinion, false vacuum was previous phase of vacuum which has condensed into normal vacuum during inflation. The real portion of vacuum should manifest by friction and dissipation of energy, for example, which we cannot observe.

4. String Theory From Awt Perspectiveby Polemos / Mon Jun 01, 2009 15:47:16 BST 2009

(1) Any material system is just a persistent pattern of vacuum fluctuations: (long URL - click here)

(2) Any process develops toward lower potential energy.

(3) Therefore, vacuum is CURRENTLY undergoing a transition toward lower potential energy. The Universe's "inflation" (actually, implosion) is still in progress.

Superfluid helium is bicomponential and does not exhibit friction despite the presence of the nonsuperfluid fraction. It is mentioned in the above comment (F. London).

5. String Theory From AWT Perspectiveby Billy / Tue Jun 02, 2009 02:26:55 BST

I don't get it, Polemos. Why are you constantly, relentlessly spewing forth incoherent rubbish (such as this stuff from the musings of a psychotropic drug-inspired doomsday predictor) every time any story containing any of your various keywords with levels of obsessiveness unrivalled by most autistics?

What are you actually going on about? Are you capable of managing some kind of coherence? Or are you perhaps a modern-day Eliza piecing together bits of conversation from a large Wikipedia repertoire?

Please elucidate!

6. String Theory From AWT Perspectiveby Polemos / Tue Jun 02, 2009 08:05:31 BST

(1) The Schwarzchild radius -- when calculated for the Planck mass -- is twice the Planck length. As the Schwarzchild radius of this object is bigger than its size, thus the object is a black hole. Then at the Planck scale, we have virtual particle-like black holes/wormholes as it was suggested by Wheeler (the quantum foam) [J.A. Wheeler, Geometrodynamics, Academic Press, New york (1962)] and Hawking [S.W. Hawking, "Virtual black holes", hep-th/9510029, Phys. Rev. D53 (1996) 3099].

Notice, however, that the particle-like structure of such an object is defined at the very Planck length by the Compton length while its black hole structure is defined at twice the Planck length by the Schwarzchild radius. The surface area of the event horizon of such a virtual Schwarzchild black hole is about 4 Planckian pixels and encodes 4 qubits.

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Finally, we argue that the intrinsic non local aspect of quantum spacetime at the Planck scale discussed in this paper might be due to virtual wormholes connecting Planckian pixels as wormholes violate locality.

(Paola Zizzi. "Spacetime at the Planck Scale" http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0304032 )

(2) The fact that virtual black holes can induce decoherence was suggested by Hawking [S.W. Hawking, D.N. Page and C.N. Pope, "Quantum gravitational bubbles", Nucl. Phys. B 170 (1980) 283;]. (Paola Zizzi. "Ultimate Internets" http://arxiv.org/ftp/gr-qc/papers/0110/0110122.pdf )

(3) Being the nonlocal aspect of physical vacuum, virtual Planckian wormholes are TRUE VACUUM (zero-entropy vacuum) while the virtual Planckian black holes are the FALSE VACUUM (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_vacuum ). Therefore physical vacuum is bicomponential like superfluid helium:

"In 1938, F. London proposed a "two-fluid" model to explain the behavior of superfluid helium: normal liquid and the superfluid fraction consisting of those atoms which have "condensed" to the ground state and make no contribution to the entropy or heat capacity of the liquid. This condensed fraction is the standard example of Bose-Einstein condensation." (http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/Hbase/lhel.html )

(4) A bound system has a lower potential energy than its constituent parts; this is what keeps the system together (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binding_energy ). Therefore, in the course of time, vacuum becomes increasingly saturated with Planckian wormhole links.

(5) The transformation of the Universe's vacuum into a single nonlocal network is delayed by an energy barrier and occurs suddenly:

"The result is that for a long time the network grows but does not become fully connected. Instead it contains a large number of unconnected chunks, each containing a few nodes. Eventually, the addition of just one link triggers an instantaneous phase change and the network becomes fully connected." ((long URL - click here) )

(6) The overtly nonlocal Nature loses its objectivity and becomes a mere extension of the human imagination:

"What is happening to our world is ingression of novelty toward what Whitehead called "concrescence" a tightening gyre. Everything is flowing together. The "autopoetic lapis" --the alchemical stone at the end of time -- coalesces when everything flows together. When the laws of physics are obviated, the Universe disappears and what is left is the tightly bound plenum (the monad), able to express itself for itself,rather than only able to cast a shadow into physics as its reflection.

I come very close here to classical millenarian and apocalyptic thought in my view of the rate at which change is accelerating. From the way the gyre is tightening, I predict that the concrescence will occur soon (around 2012 A.D). It will be the entry of our species into hyperspace. But it will appear to be the end of physical laws accompanied by the release of the mind into the imagination." ((long URL - click here) )

7. Theory From AWT Perspective8

by Polemos / Mon Jun 01, 2009 12:43:26 BSTWhy the Universe's time is accelerating towards singularity:

The Universe progresses toward increasingly interconnected states because it is energetically favorable (i.e., a bound system has a lower potential energy than its constituent parts) [4]. Increase of interconnectedness is synonymous with decrease of entropy (i.e., with departure from thermodynamic equilibrium).

In Boltzmann's definition, entropy is a measure of the number of possible microscopic states (or microstates) of a system in thermodynamic equilibrium consistent with its Macroscopic thermodynamic properties (or Macrostate). Therefore every consecutive lower-entropy Macrostate requires cancelling the availability of fewer microstates (by decreasing the system's potential energy).

Each successive nuclear burning stage releases less energy than the previous stage, so the lifetime in each stage becomes progressively shorter. For a 20 m Sun star:

* Main sequence lifetime ~ 10 million years* Helium burning (3-α) ~ 1 million years* Carbon burning ~ 300 years* Oxygen burning ~ 2/3 year* Silicon burning ~ 2 days

Read full article: (long URL - click here)

8. Superfluidity And Superconductivityby Zephir / Mon Jun 01, 2009 05:37:26 BST

Both superfluidity of quark-gluon plasma, both HT superconductivity is trivial result of high density state of mutually repulsing particles where repulsive forces in various directions compensate mutually so that that particles are getting into chaotic superfluous state.

No AdS/CFT duality or string theory is necessary for conceptual understanding of these states which occurs at all scales. (Compare the high pressure shaping of metals or superfluous spreading of ideas inside of sectarian society, for example.)

9. Functional Theory Works For Me.by MCMalkemus / Mon Jun 01, 2009 12:27:58 BST

If the theory actually has a use, I'm all for it.

And if understanding it does help to create new materials, that brings it one major step away from pseudo-science.

10. Functional Theory Works For Me.by Zephir Mon Jun 01 15:11:59 BST 2009

AWT can lead to new form of superconductors as well.

If we form a continuous stripe of sufficiently positively-charged hole atoms in normal semiconductor, it could always lead into formation of superconductive channel. These channels

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can be formed even above surface of material which becomes covered by thin layer of highly-compressed electrons, after then. This is completely new approach to superconductivity which was revealed accidentally by Prof. Johan F. Prins in 2002.

11. Universeby Polemos / Mon Jun 01, 2009 12:29:56 BST

"When the total number of the virtual Planckian black holes interconnected by wormholes increases by one, the potential energy of the universe decreases by one Planck unit. This decrease constitutes a Planck moment of time. That is why the number of the virtual Planckian black holes constituting the Universe's space is equal to the number of the Planck moments of the universe's time. A virtual Planckian black hole is a memory register storing all information about a particular nonexistent (past or future) Planck moment of the Universe's timeline."

Read full article: (long URL - click here)

12. AWTby Alan / Mon Jun 01, 2009 13:39:55 BST

AWT is aether wave-theory, I believe. A theory which was popular in the 19th century until the famous Michelson-Morley experiment which essentially disproved the existence of an aether field.

Also for any new people, 'Polemos' regularly comes here posting stuff he found on Wikipedia about time heading towards a singularity (in 2012, I think). It's complete pseudo-science mumbo-jumbo, though. Hence why he is posting it in a comment section of a pop-science magazine and not a reputable pPhysics journal.

13. AWTby Zephir / Mon Jun 01, 2009 14:02:53 BST

In certain sense, AWT is dual version of Aether theories from 19th century. In 19th century people believed, "Aether" is pervading space like thin/sparse gas. Such concept could explain subtle relativistic phenomena like frame dragging. But it could never work well because the concept of luminiferous Aether requires mass density of Aether must remain always higher than the energy density of light.

In 19th century, only electromagnetic waves of subtle energy density were considered so that the model of sparse Aether wasn't so problematic. But when we consider the light can spread in highly energetic gamma radiation, the sparse Aether cannot work at all.

Instead of this, AWT considers model of particle environment of virtually unlimited mass/energy density. As a bonus, such a model can explain the foamy structure of space time (i.e., "quantum foam" as postulated by J.A.Wheeler, protosimplex network of B. Heim, strings and branes of M-theory, spin loops of loop quantum gravity theory, or string net liquid of Wen and coworkers.)

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This simmilarity isn't accidental here. It is because dense particle system forms foamy density fluctuations. Especially in its ternary point (compare the Horava-Lifshitz model of quantum gravity). From these reasons, AWT model has rather strong conceptual support of modern theories and because it doesn't rely on postulates of existing theories, it could be used for independent modeling of Reality from scratch.

14. Diophantine Copyby julian / Mon Jun 01, 2009 13:05:01 BST"Lithium atoms are suspended in an intricate web of laser beams and cooled to a temperature

10 billion billion times lower than that of the sizzling quark-gluon plasma."

A = B * 1019

Solve for A and B...

You could at least have given *one* of the specific temperatures :)

15. Diophantine Copyby Zephir / Mon Jun 01, 2009 14:58:07 BST

The common point here is the fact that repulsive forces are spherically symmetric and as such they compensate mutually whenever particles get close each other. After then the motion of all individual particle is affected by many forces from many directions. Which effectively means, that these forces compensate mutually and the particles are moving freely like superfluid. Nothing difficult is about it.

At the case of high-temperature superconductors, the same situation emerges. The electrons are attracted to the holes in semiconductor, thus forming a superconductive islands of chaotically moving electrons. At the moment when holes forms a continuous stripes, these electrons form a superconductive pipes and material changes into superconductor.

Therefore the principle of superfluidity of electrons in HT superconductor and formation of superfluous quark-gluon plasma remains the very same and no string theory is required for such understanding.

16. Merely...by Dirk BruMon Jun 01 13:06:45 BST 2009 ere

So while String Theory has failed in its objective, some of the mathematical tools have proved useful in other areas of Physics.

17. Merely…by Zephir / Mon Jun 01, 2009 14:15:47 BST

String theory isn't wrong at all. But it has not so exclusive position between Quantum Field Theories as string proponents are saying. Being Special Relativity- and Quantum Mechanics-based, it could never become so efficient like Quantum Gravity Theory which is combining Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity theory -- thus being more advanced from its very beginning.

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From AWT perspective, string theory is dual to quantum gravity in certain extents. Whereas string theory is basically a theory of particles and doesn't describe the behavior of vacuum too well, Loop Quantum Gravity is basically a theory of vacuum field and fails in description of particles. We can say that both these theories are "complementary" from this point-of-view.

The strong point of string theory is a concept of hidden dimensions whereas the strong point of quantum gravity is the dynamic foam structure of vacuum (causal triangulation concept in particular). From a more general point-of-view, both above theories are just special cases of AWT and its concept of fractal density fluctuations of particle environment which are similar to nested foam, thus covering both hidden dimensions concept and both string net liquid and quantum spin foam concepts.

18. Merely…by Zephir Mon Jun 01 14:27:01 BST 2009

Yes, but this is basically a question of investments and long time of development. If quantum gravity theorists would obtain the same money and the amount of time, they could bring a number of new tools as well because from conceptual perspective Quantum Gravity theory and Quantum Field theory doesn't differ so much.

From AWT even follows, whatever theory of our personal preference could become a TOE providing we made it recursively implicit (a self-referencing) theory. Therefore the development of TOE is rather question of money, not the particular formal model.

The exceptional position of AWT is given only fact, the concept of zero-dimensional particles is singular from its very beginning. AWT can be considered as a zero-dimensional string theory or zero-dimensional quantum loop theory from this perspective. i.e. it doesn't use ad-hoced geometrical constrains; it's solely based on emergence concept. This makes Aether concept strong exactly at the point, where formal theories falling into singular solution.

From distant perspective both strings, both quantum loops can be approximated by pinpoint particles. After then, both these theories should converge mutually into very general theory.

19. Esoteric Stuffby Dave / Mon Jun 01, 2009 15:40:18 BST

Speaking as an old retired chemist who spent his career working with real electron interactions between real atoms, I wonder if string theory is not just a means by which people in the physics department can publish papers so esoteric that they rival philosophy (or at least psychology) in being unprovable.

At least the chemical processes described in the papers I published could be replicated anywhere anytime by anyone with a working knowledge of physical-organic chemistry. When the string-theory physicists arrive at that point, then I will actually attempt to read some of those papers (that is if I am still alive).

20. Esoteric Stuffby Polemos / Mon Jun 01, 2009 16:10:05 BST

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I agree with you, Dave. Trying to geometrize forces by introducing additional spatial dimensions is not a genuinely European approach:

"But Spinoza -- a Jew and therefore, spiritually, a member of the Magian Culture -- could not absorb the Faustian force-concept at all, and it has no place in his system. And it is an astounding proof of the secret power of root-ideas that Heinrich Hertz (the only Jew amongst the great physicists of the recent past) was also the only one of them who tried to resolve the dilemma of mechanics by eliminating the idea of force.

The force-dogma is the one and only theme of Faustian physics." (Oswald Spengler. The Decline of the West)

By the way, the geometrization of the main force (time) is the key idea of Einstein's relativity theory.

21. Believe What You See Or Are Told?Uncle Al Mon Jun 01 16:20:58 BST 2009 by

The SI standard of mass is a physical artifact; Newton's G cannot be calculated; the Standard Model arrives massless. Supersymmetry's partners refuse to appear; protons do not decay; the Higgs mechanism does not reveal its vector boson. Supergravity, lattice and loop quantum gravity, and -- above all! --string and M-theory are disasters.

Physics similarly spasmed between Christmas 1956 and New Year's Day 1957. A deeply assumed Weak interaction mirror symmetry was observed not to exist. Gravitation can be similarly revised if metaphoric left and right shoes do not vacuum free fall identically, falsifying the Equivalence Principle.

A parity Eotvos experiment would contrast chemically identical, opposite geometric party atomic mass distributions. Single crystals of quartz in enantiomorphic space groups P3(1)21 and P3(2)21 would do nicely. More densely packed but lighter atoms in enantiomorphic space groups P3(1) and P3(2) glycine gamma-polymorph are also good.

Talk, talk, talk. Somebody should look!

22. Believe What You See Or Are Told?by Polemos / Mon Jun 01, 2009 16:34:34 BST

"Gravitation can be similarly revised if metaphoric left and right shoes do not vacuum free fall identically, falsifying the Equivalence Principle."

Exactly!

(1) Most of the visible matter's mass is concentrated in protons.

(2) Protons have a spin.

(3) Therefore the quasistatic component (the "Coulomb component") of the universe's gravity (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_of_gravity#Background ) has a spin, too.

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23. Believe What You See Or Are Told?by Zephir / Tue Jun 02, 2009 01:47:11 BST

The difference would be bellow experimental limit, definitely. Casimir force may differ but not Gravity.

24. What You See Or What You Are Told?by Uncle Al / Mon Jun 01, 2009 16:40:24 BST

The SI standard of mass is a physical artifact; Newton's G cannot be calculated; the Standard Model arrives massless. Supersymmetry's partners refuse to appear; protons do not decay; the Higgs mechanism does not reveal its vector boson. Supergravity; lattice and loop quantum gravity; and -- above all! -- string and M-theory are disasters.

Physics spasmed between Christmas 1956 and New Year's Day 1957 when a deeply assumed mirror symmetry in the Weak interaction was not observed. Gravitiaton can be so tested.

Quantum gravitation theories supplement Einstein-Hilbert action with an odd-parity Chern-Simons term, f(x) = -f(-x), arxiv:0811.0181. Run an Eötvös experiment opposing chemically identical, opposite parity atomic mass distributions: Do metaphoric left and right shoes vacuum free fall differently?

Quartz single crystals in enantiomorphic space groups P3(1)21 versus P3(2)21 qualify for symmetry with dense atom packing of 0.01256 nm^3/atom. Eur. J. Mineralogy 2, 63 (1990), J. Solid State Chem. 36, 371 (1981). Glycine gamma-polymorph has lighter atoms more densely packed, enantiomorphic space groups P3(1) versus P3(2), 0.007869 nm^3/atom. Acta Crystallogr. B36, 115 (1980).

Talk, talk, talk. Somebody should look!

25. Good For Knottinby Blogarithms / Wed Jun 03, 2009 02:33:55 BST

"What string theory is really good for"..

If your shoelaces are in a knot, *string theory* might help.

To proceed, first read two 1,000-page manuals on string theory. If your shoelaces are still in a knot after that, you have a real problem on your hands because a year-or-more has passed by.

Try and assess the gravity of the problem. String theory might help here too. Do lots of sums. Try not to be distracted by the shoelaces themselves. You`ll get round to them eventually when all is said and done.

Again do more sums and try and model the problem in 10 dimensions focusing on the five tiny curled up ones. Excercise de brane. Remain de sitter (you never wore conformal anyway) and pour over your shoelace entanglement problem.

If you follow this thread, you`ll be "multi-versed" in the theory of all 'things' (er. I mean 'strings').

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26. how About Predicting Something Tangible.by Brad / Wed Jun 03, 2009 04:58:22 BST

Having read about physics theories for decades, I am somewhat bemused by some of the outlandish claims of breakthroughs for various things.

If string theory is more than a mathematical tool it should be able to explain some of these observable effects:

1. Heisenberg's uncertainty principle.2. Why is the speed of light a constant.3. Why does there appear to me mostly matter in the universe and so little anti-matter.4. What is the nature of dark energy and dark matter.5. What is the mass of the Higg's boson.

If it can successfully predict any of these, then it should also predict other properties we have not seen or expected.

27. How About Predicting Something Tangible.by Zephir / Thu Jun 04, 2009 03:59:27 BST

The ambition of string theory isn't to explain things like Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle or constant speed of light simply because these things are forming a postulates in Quantum and Relativity theory on which string theory is based.

No rigorous theory can explain its assumptions without tautologies. For example, no Aether theory can explain existence of Aether. Some other things -- like the dark matter or antimatter symmetry -- could be explained in string theory in principle. But I do believe personally, here are a much more straightforward approaches, how to do that.

28. Well I'm Actually Pretty Happy About This!by Josh W. Thu Jun 04, 2009 00:03:24 BST

So starting with a conformal field theory with too many interacting elements, we can transfer it into an alternate perspective that allows us to deal with the broader patterns.

Brilliant! In theory, a strongly coupled system should be easy to know the state of because it has less degrees-of-freedom. It's just that actually collapsing those degrees-of-freedom is a bear (and its mother)!

So finding an alternate mathematical framework where they can get rid of those problems seems like good news. Perhaps they can pull their black hole theories through the translation themselves and so express them in terms of systemic effects in the superconductor. Although I suspect something like that would need that connection between theories to be expanded so that it can more fully cover the complexities of wider classes of phenomena (not these more specific test cases).

29. Well I'm Actually Pretty Happy About This!by Zephir / Thu Jun 04, 2009 04:25:58 BST

/..conformal field theory with too many interacting elements../15

The AWT point is that if we increase a number of interacting elements, we could approximate these elements by probability based model so we can derive the quantum mechanics and CFT from scratch without need to consider some ad hoced constructs like strings, branes, quantum loops, etc.

I do believe that all these thingies are just emergent structures based on density fluctuations in the field of many other elements which are supposedly constructed in the very same way. The motivation of such approach is to exclude all postulates and ad hoced assumptions from description of Reality, the postulates of Relativity and Quantum Mechanics in particular - this is a gnoseologic perspective based on Occam's razor principle.

In practical cases, we could use a combination of Relativity and Quantum Mechanics because it's impractical to simulate all these theories by particle collisions from scratch again and again. But these theories can be combined only in formal equations on paper. In real calculus they would always lead into singularities because they're based on mutually inconsistent perspectives. So I'm rather skeptical to formal approach in physics at the moment when formal models become poorly conditioned.

Particle model is singular from its very beginning. So it's much more robust in singular conditions (not saying about its simplicity). From this reason, we are using particle simulations even at the case of much more simpler formal models (for example, in modeling of fluid mechanics by Navier-Stokes equations).

Briefly speaking, formal math has its own apparent limits at the moment when many elements are involved.

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