Commonality Between String Theory and Dark Matter Research

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BeAChooser
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Joined: Thu Oct 15, 2015 2:24 am

Commonality Between String Theory and Dark Matter Research

Unread post by BeAChooser » Mon Feb 27, 2023 1:42 am

Remember all the hype about how String Theory was going to revolutionize astrophysics? It was the hottest thing in physics in the 80s and 90s. Thousands and thousands of scientific papers were published on it. Huge amounts of money was devoted to studying it. Scores of books were written about it.

It was truly one of the mainstream’s 5 great gnomes … the others being the Big Bang, Dark Matter, Dark Energy and Black Holes. If fact, it promised to explain some of the other gnomes … like the Big Bang and Black Holes. It promised a Theory of Everything. And failed.

So an article is interesting ...

https://iai.tv/articles/string-theory-i ... _auid=2020
String Theory Is Dead

Following Eric Weinstein’s interview on how String Theory culture has stifled innovation in theoretical physics, longstanding critic of String Theory, Peter Woit, takes aim at the theory itself. He argues that String Theory has become a degenerative research project, becoming increasingly complicated and, at the same time, removed from empirical reality.
Note that is pretty much my complaint about astrophysics (particularly cosmology).

And Peter Woit sums the state of things saying “the idea of string theory unification is simply a failure.”

I’d say that’s true of Dark Matter as well ... and possibly dark energy ... and if they go, the Big Bang is in real trouble.

Now the interviewer asks Peter Wait … “Eric Weinstein’s critique of String Theory is that it has dominated theoretical physics for far too long, thus not allowing any alternative attempts at a theory of everything to develop. Do you agree with this assessment?” ... and he answers “very much so.” Again, I maintain the same can be said for Dark Matter, Dark Energy, Big Bang, etc. Just think of all the missed opportunities because they ate up all the research money for decades and decades.

Woit says “What’s most discouraging is that even convincing theorists of the obvious fact that they’re in a blind alley seems to be impossible.  The institutional pressures to keep doing what one has been doing for decades and not admit to failure are huge.” And exactly the same situation exists in Cosmology with regards to their gnomes. The mainstream has too much at stake to admit failure. So it’s impossible to convince them they have.

And good for Peter Woit … he’s also been a skeptic about much that’s claimed regarding Dark Matter and it’s detection, debunking article after article that has claimed it’s been found. He also noted in his blog (https://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=2908), nearly 13 years ago(!), that “if you’re a young theorist who wants to remain in the field, you better get to work on dark matter phenomenology” complaining that it’s NOT “a good idea for US physics departments to only hire people working on the latest, hottest topic”. He warned that there’s “a good case to be made that this end-result is not a healthy one, that people should be acknowledging this and thinking about what can be done about it.” Obviously, few of the decision makers in the mainstream heeded his advice and he’s gotten attacked for his views, both with regards to string theory and DM.

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