Far out cosmology: String theory dead end (Introduction)

by David Turell , Wednesday, March 23, 2016, 01:00 (2954 days ago) @ David Turell

An excellent essay by Neil Turok: - http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=8361 - "Turok discusses his point of view on whether we're at “the end of physics”, and I'm very much in agreement with what he has to say: - "I think what people are sort of expressing is that we haven't had a big revolution in physics. String theory was hoped for to be that revolution in the 1980s but it hasn't really panned out in the sense that it hasn't given a single prediction. Instead it's given us a huge collection of theories where, if you like, there's no overarching theory to tell which particular version of string theory is the one that describes the world. It's almost self-destructed, I would say because it turned out to be not just one theory but this vast collection of theories which could all give different descriptions of the world. - *** - "So I think that sort of theoretical catastrophe, as I view it — meaning the logical pursuit of quantum mechanics and relativity over a hundred years was tremendously successful at some level but finding its own successor theory, it hasn't been successful. - *** - "It looks like the founding principles of modern physics — quantum theory and relativity — have played out and they have not given us the answers we need. And so we have to go back and question those founding principles and find whatever it is, whatever new principle will replace them. - *** - "..and so some people talk about the multiverse where the universe would be wild and chaotic on large scales and almost anything you could imagine would actually exist somewhere in the universe. I mean, this is literally a scenario which became very popular among a category of physicists, that there is a multiverse out there. Yet the evidence is exactly the opposite. That, as we look around us, things could not be simpler. There's no evidence for chaos on large scales in the universe. It's totally the opposite. It's pristine, elegance, minimalism is all we see. So, I think this is a very, very exciting time to be doing theory. The challenge is enormous. The clues are enormous. We're waiting and we're preparing and we're encouraging people to take radical leaps." - Comment: Note he talks about simplicity, not complexity.