At least, that’s the inescapable conclusion to be drawn from the fact that not one string theory result has been nominated for either the Physics Result of 2006 or the Astronomy Result of 2006…
Well, OK, there are other conclusions to draw, such as “Nobody has nominated any string theory results because nobody has nominated much of anything,” or “Nobody has nominated any string theory results because nobody reads your stupid blog anyway, you nihilistic Bush-hating anti-America liberal commie type.” These might even be in better agreement with the experimental data…
I really was hoping for a little more out of those threads, though. I can attempt to compile my own list of big results, but I’m sure there’s stuff I’m missing. So, come on, point me to some good recent science, so I have something to read instead of the grant proposals I’m supposed to be reviewing…
I recommend Carl B’s new book. Cheers.
Very funny, you really want me to stick my neck out and start shamelessly overhyping a failed research program?
(between the two of us, the AdS/CFT angle on RHIC is not a bad candidate)
Kea! Look, you (and my other friends) really need to stop putting links to my website on other people’s blog comments. Nobody wants to read an amateur’s book that is supposed to derive the standard model from geometric principles (which is not even complete, and what’s there is filled with errors). It reeks of crackpotdom.
When I get done with it, I will send copies to the very few people who understand the mathematics. They will pass judgement. The reason I’ve put it on the net early is so that you, personally, can get a head start in applying mathematics that I do not understand, not because I want to have it advertised in places where it is unwanted.
If the ideas are right, then whether you promote them or not will not matter in the long term, but you will have longer use of them the less they are promoted. If the ideas are wrong, whether you promote them or not will not matter in the long term, but you will look less like a crackpot if you refrain from promoting them.
So go do some physics. Theorize something. Leave the promotion alone.
Nobody has nominated string theory stuff because nobody commenting understands it well enough to know if there is a major breakthrough….
Nobody has nominated any string theory stuff because even though it is good science, it hasn’t had any major breakthroughs in the last year…. (I’m sure you could find a bunch of other subfields of Physics that weren’t nominated.)
There are lots of potential reasons.
-Rob
No argument about the string enterprise here. Somewhere there is good science being done, probably outside the glare of publicity and funding.
between the two of us, the AdS/CFT angle on RHIC is not a bad candidate
Do you have a recommended reference for that, that would be comprehensible to an idiot experimentalist?
The only halfway readable thing I’ve seen on the topic was a post at Backreaction some time ago.
Hi Chad, I’m not going to seriously stand behind that nomination. For one thing, most of the papers were before this year (though there were some interesting ones, for example on jet quenching, this year). I was mostly giving an alternative explanation to your observation…
I’ll try to dig up something introductory, but I kind of doubt I’ll find one. The subject is not that “conceptual”- there is a calculational technique that works better than expected, involving black holes in five dimensional AdS space. Beyond those words lie piles of calculations, which are interesting to experts, but perhaps not to others.
Instead, the RHIC phenomenology itself is fascinating, lots of unexplained phenomena, and lots of surprises. Not sure if it falls on this calendar year, but that’s a more reasonable nomination.
On the particle physics side, I think people are collectively holding their breaths for the LHC to come on. The best result this year is probably the CDF measurement of B_s mixing, which I think was already nominated. It’s a beautiful and challenging measurement that had the misfortune of agreeing perfectly with the Standard Model, and was hence greeted with a sense of great dissapointment by the community.
That “result of the year” thread looks sharply skewed toward the experimental side. (Plenty of obvious reasons why this would be so.) From the same data, I conclude that loop quantum gravity is an equally fetid pile of compost. . . .
Well, then can I nominate the emergence in 2006 of the “Not Even Wrong” crowd and associated books, and the appearance of people questioning the utility of string theory? ^_^ I guess that’s not really a “finding” though.
I give you string theory criticism from 1986. Enjoy!
I give you Kurt Vonnegut’s criticism of string theory: “No cat, no cradle.”
(OK, so there was some context I left out, but it did involve string.)