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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by MiszaBot I (talk | contribs) at 16:20, 2 September 2011 (Archiving 2 thread(s) from Talk:String theory.). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.
Archive 1Archive 2Archive 3Archive 4Archive 5Archive 6

I don't really get how strings work.

Anything that is infinitely thin like a string and has mass seems strange, because the smaller the volume of it that you look at, the more dense it appears. The smallest point of it would be so dense its escape speed would exceed the speed of light and it would become a black hole, losing its material properties since black holes only have gravity and rotation. 154.20.194.233 (talk) 06:19, 15 June 2010 (UTC) ...

It is possible on subatomal levels to go faster than speed of light. Mass is the string property which depends of the wave level.
Basecaly, string is a fast moving source (which can even be in more than one place at the same time) which is a source of the wave-particle field. All the properties of the coresponding particle depend on the oscilations on that source string.Čeha (razgovor) 09:01, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

I don´t like the first picture

It puts me off reading. I would remove the picture or change it with another one. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 190.188.3.11 (talk) 01:24, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

What's new ?

Anything new in string theory in the last 10 years? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Alphachapmtl (talkcontribs) 20:31, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

Critical dimension and consistency

The article currently states that the critical dimension of string theory is not fixed by any consistency condition. This is pretty much orthogonal to what I know about string theory. My understanding is that the critical dimension follows from the requirement that the conformal anomaly present in string theory is absent, and that this only happens if there are 26 (or 10 for superstrings) spacetime dimensions. Of course, my info on this may be dated, but my gut feeling is that the work on super-/subcritical string theories is getting WP:UNDUE weight.TimothyRias (talk) 15:35, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

What?

This needs to be simplified greatly. I'm an university student who is used to tackling complex academic texts (granted, mostly humanities related), but this makes no sense to me. Layman's terms simplified explanation would be useful. The way I see it encyclopedia is aimed at general public, it is not reference tool for theoretical physicists. 203.206.49.48 (talk) 15:50, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

only amenable to a mathematical explanation. --Dc987 (talk) 05:46, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
I agree with the OP, its not like its impossible to explain string theory in "layman's terms"; there's plenty of sources where such explanations can be found. We shouldn't force users to research the theory off-site to understand it. What's the point of putting an article in language that only a person who already knows about the subject can understand? Deliberately phrasing the description of a theory to make it seem complicated and advanced should violate some Wikipedia standards about giving undue weight. You don't see the evolution or gravity theory pages expressed in such complicated terms, at least not within their respective headers. --IronMaidenRocks (talk) 03:39, 15 May 2010 (UTC)
I agree as well. I can read msot of it fine, but it sometimes requires me to re-read sentences. I think that has to do with the terrible word placements rather than "difficult words." 64.234.0.101 (talk) 17:49, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

Definition of 'science' - theoretical physicists have to realise that experiment is not the criterion for science. In geohysicsa, astronomy and in many fields of human sciences (history, political sciences) events occur only once and cannot be repeated: you cannot experiment of various possible leads of Sarajevo shots that started the WW I. You cannot experiment with Tungusta impact. You cannot experiment with WTC attack. You can only observe them. That's why I modified the end of the first chapter. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Martti Muukkonen (talkcontribs) 19:58, 30 October 2010 (UTC) ÷

Testable does not mean just laboratory experiments, it includes observations of events such as astronomical ones and historical ones. So if someone came up with a new theory of comets, which could be confirmed by examining past impact records including the Tungusta impact. The text you added seemed to confuse this somewhat: yes, repeatable laboratory experiments are better from the point of view of proving something, but that's not always possible. Often science has to be done after the event, for a whole number of reasons. Nor is this a particular property of physics, it's a property of all science.
The weakness of string theory is it makes no predictions at all, or at least none that are different from existing theories such as QM and relativity at energies we can measure. But this well understood b←y all scientists, and as this article is intended for quite an advanced readership I don't think it needs elaborating further. It is explained further down at some length, as it's an important aspect of the theory, but much of that is too advanced for the introduction.--JohnBlackburnewordsdeeds 20:31, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

there is no reference to other sources that can help the reader clarify the concepts, linear algebra works with multiple dimensions, but it is not even mentioned as a starting point for clarification. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.76.64.117 (talk) 02:01, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Cutting the lead

While the lead was clear and very nice in wording, it was way too long, so I cut it so it has max. 4 paragraphs and should fit in 1 screen. It can be still shrinked a bit, however I don't think simply removing more content from the lead would be any good. In my opinion the better approach would be to put more work into enlarging "Overview" section, so some informations just won't be needed in the lead anymore. So if someone is inclined to make a longer general introduction, please do it in this section. I will happily make further compactification of the lead. -- kocio (talk) 14:54, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

One thing to be aware of is that WP:LEAD also requires that the lead reflects the content of the article.TimothyRias (talk) 15:37, 6 September 2010 (UTC)
For me "how long is the lead?" and "is it a good summary?" are two somehow orthogonal questions. The {{Lead too short}} template currently includes the summary problem, however in my opinion "may not adequately summarize its contents" doesn't always mean "expanding the lead to provide an accessible overview of the article's key points". It's rather a problem of consistency with the rest of the article, not the length of the lead, even if it's related most of the time. In case of such a big and non-obvious article someone really should overlook the whole article and make a new lead out of it to satisfy both rules, which is unfortunately far beyond my skills. kocio (talk) 10:48, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

Consciousness as vibrating strings

Is it true that in string theory consciousness is like electromagnetic waves and electromagnetic brain waves are the same thing as vibrating very long strings in space? So Consciousness in string theory is vibrating strings and sinusoid with many over waves of those vibrating strings is the same as electromagnetic brain waves sinusoid with many over waves? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.240.9.58 (talk) 17:57, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

No. 66.66.5.195 (talk) 02:29, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

That sounds more BS than string theory. But perhaps only slightly. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.209.152.190 (talk) 19:10, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

History

What has happend since late 1990s? I don't see any more in the history section. Is it still thought of as a viable theory? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.180.160.27 (talk) 14:18, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

Exaggeration regarding testability and science

"The theory has yet to make testable experimental predictions, which a theory must do in order to be considered a part of science."

That sounds suspiciously like some kind of advocacy of a particular position. If mathematics is not "a part of science", then someone had better tell that to the College of Natural Sciences at my local university. Also, I've heard string theorists make all kinds of predictions, just mostly not ones that can be tested at any currently-reasonable cost. Can someone with less bias please find a more neutral way to phrase this? 146.6.204.155 (talk) 18:58, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Possible strings as fibers instead of circles.

I have a proposal for those with open minds: If you look at the way a transmitting antenna works, different lengths produce different frequencies. I think it may be possible these strings are in fact different lengths of fibers, not circles, vibrating at different frequencies and different strengths that harmonically interact with one another and either attract or repel on a sonic level. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dgm76513 (talkcontribs) 08:57, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

Testable?

Brian Greene was on NPR recently talking about how this maybe tested. That nasty little sentence is out of date.

As mentioned under falsifiability, Particle physicists from the Vienna University of Technology and Institut Laue-Langevin (ILL) have developed a new technique named Gravity Resonance Spectroscopy Netdragon (talk) 19:53, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

I'm removing that sentence. It's fallicious. Netdragon (talk) 19:53, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

Falsifiability

First, there's a question about whether Popper required that falsifiability be specific to the theory in question. The answer is no (at least to my knowledge), he didn't, because such a criterion would make no sense. How would you decide which theory is the "original", and therefore legitimately falsifiable, and which is the derivative one?

Second, someone asserted that falsifiability is necessary but not sufficient for a theory to be scientific. I don't think that's the case (and by the way, wiki contradicts itself on that - in one place at least it agrees with that, but in others it contradicts it and says theories are scientific by Popper's criteria if and only they are falsifiable). Popper himself says the following:

"In this way, the recognition of unilaterally decidable statements allows us to solve not only the problem of induction (note that there is only one type of argument which proceeds in an inductive direction: the deductive modus tollens), but also the more fundamental problem of demarcation, a problem which has given rise to almost all the other problems of epistemology. For our criterion of falsifiability dis- tinguishes with sufficient precision the theoretical systems of the empirical sciences from those of metaphysics..." (The Logic of Scientific Discovery, op. 316)

This seems quite clear to me - falsifiability is (according to Popper) sufficient (and of course necessary) to distinguish between science and metaphysics. Therefore as far as I can tell that section is correct as written, and I will remove those tags after some time unless someone else comments here and disagrees.Waleswatcher (talk) 18:28, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

  • Correct. Popper didn't intend for it to be a strict requirement. IN FACT, Popper was a stark critic of logical positivism even though logical positivism was founded off Popper falsifiability. Netdragon (talk) 19:52, 23 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Correct. Falsifiability is sufficient but can be overkill
    • I think the way it was described is fine and left it alone. The original writer isn't saying falsifiability isn't enough, but that it just isn't compelling if there are no unique predictions. See if the way I re-organized things makes this more clear (and didn't make a direct statement that string theory has no unique predictions (yet it still is implied so maybe a slight rewording is in order) Netdragon (talk) 20:39, 23 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Furthermore, the argument that there is no way to test quantum gravity is bogus and outdated. Particle physicists from the Vienna University of Technology and Institut Laue-Langevin (ILL) have developed a new technique named Gravity Resonance Spectroscopy which will serve that purpose Netdragon (talk) 19:52, 23 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Hence, the whole section on testability needs to be overhauled Netdragon (talk) 19:52, 23 April 2011 (UTC)
    • I cleaned it up, but only removed quotes (note references). The rest was just moving things around other than adding a note about Gravity Resonance Spectroscopy. Netdragon (talk) 20:39, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

"11-dimensional space" was corrected to "11-dimensional spacetime"

In the opening introduction, it mistakenly referred to "11-dimensional space". I corrected it to "11-dimensional spacetime". - Brad Watson, Miami 72.153.60.84 (talk) 12:47, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

I would agree with 11 dimensions. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.83.248.32 (talk) 05:55, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

Good Article

How do you nominate an article to be good? --Gilderien (talk) 06:43, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

See WP:GAN.TR 12:03, 9 May 2011 (UTC)