AaS! 120: Is String Theory Worth It? (Part 6: We Should Probably Test This)

Ask a Spaceman!

Paul M. Sutter

Astrophysics, Science, Cosmos, Holes, Black, Astronomy, Natural Sciences, Universe, Cosmology, Space, Physics

4.8 • 853 Ratings

🗓️ 21 January 2020

⏱️ 32 minutes

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Summary

How did String Theory get started? What has made the idea so popular over the decades? Can we ever truly have a theory of quantum gravity? What is supersymmetry, the landscape, and the AdS/CFT Correspondence? What do holograms have to do with this? How many dimensions do we live in? Why does String Theory have such a hard time making predictions? How are we supposed to judge a theory that isn’t done yet? It’s a non-stop String Theory bonanza as I discuss these questions and more in today’s Ask a Spaceman!

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Hosted by Paul M. Sutter, astrophysicist and the one and only Agent to the Stars (http://www.pmsutter.com).

Transcript

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0:00.0	I think it's fair to say.
0:12.1	And I hope you can agree with me that our journey in this series, which we are now six episodes deep.
0:21.6	And our journey to explore the origins and nature and complexities of string theory,
0:29.1	with the hopes of eventually judging if it is going to be worth it to continue,
0:34.7	has been a pretty wild ride so far.
0:36.5	And we've covered so many cool angles of how
0:39.6	scientific theories are built and imagined and expanded and worked on. We've seen symmetries
0:47.6	and the role of symmetries and unification and dualities like the work of Einstein with
0:53.8	gener relativity and quantum electrodynamics
0:57.3	and its role in supersymmetry and the connection between fermions and bosons in our universe
1:05.5	and how that underlies string theory. We've seen just random ideas come in like, hey, everyone, how about M theory?
1:12.8	Maybe all these different string theories that we have are just like little corners of a
1:18.5	much bigger idea.
1:20.3	We've seen desires and hopes and dreams.
1:23.3	Like, they're just driving passion, this concept, this allure that we think there ought to be a
1:31.4	quantum theory of gravity because there doesn't necessarily have to be a quantum theory
1:36.0	of gravity. We could just be way off. It could be just gravity doesn't allow a quantum description of it and we're going to be forever stuck.
1:47.5	But we just hope there is.
1:49.1	And so we're going to work on.
1:50.2	So the fact that string theory allows for a quantum description of gravity makes us really interested in it.
1:57.4	We've seen a lot of mistakes and blind alleys, like Kaluza's original concept of adding
2:04.1	dimensions to unified gravity and electromagnetics. That by itself was a dead end, but it had a
	...

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