No. of Recommendations: 4
Have we done it? It will be interesting to see the peer reviews.
https://phys.org/news/2025-04-einstein-field-theor...In our approach, electric charge and electric currents, as well as electromagnetic forces, are seen as purely geometrical and immanent properties of spacetime itself, and not as some external objects. This approach was supported by the late physicist John Wheeler, in his vision of geometrodynamics. It turns out that the four-dimensional electromagnetic potential is really a building block of the metric tensor of spacetime.That's more or less how gravity is viewed (relativity). If that really is how it is for EM, it would make sense to unify it with gravity. I'm sure more papers are coming, and it will be interesting to see if anyone can poke holes in them. Or falsify this one.
No. of Recommendations: 4
String Theory wasn't a real theory because it didn't make predictions, and wasn't falsifiable. It was perhaps elegant, but those two things are very important in science.
No. of Recommendations: 2
String Theory wasn't a real theory because it didn't make predictions, and wasn't falsifiable.
Indeed, String Theory is a great deal more pseudoscientific than many believe. String theory is rather like a religion that poses as science. Pseudoscientific theories, by definition, frame themself as technical, mathematical or scientific, to give more creditability, whilst still having the two properties that make them completely non-credible - (1) they don't make any predictions (that can be tested), and (2) they are not possible to falsify.
It possible to create any number of theories with 1 and 2 above for a theory of everything. The obvious one is "God did it, but he is, along with his actions, impossible to mere mortals detect, so you can't disprove this".
The trick with pseudoscientific theories is to make sure they are sufficiently technical or mathematical, despite 1 and 2 above, so that those studying the theory get so much involved that they start to miss the forest for the trees, and whilst focussing on the trees become charmed by the ideas within the theory.
- Manlobbi
No. of Recommendations: 1
I was only loosely familiar with string theory. There was no class in grad school for it, but it was discussed on occasion (usually outside of the classroom). I didn't know any professors working on it.
From what I gathered at the time, they constructed an idea, and the did the math. The math seemed to give them the answer they were looking for. On the surface, I'm OK with that. It was decades before GR could be verified after the math had been worked out (there were some earlier tests, but the "clincher" wasn't until 1954
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tests_of_general_rel...). But that is the trick...it could -in principle- be verified when Einstein first proposed it (he even proposed the tests). String theory has never suggested a mode to test it.
If it can't be falsified, it isn't useful. Whether "string theory" or a deity, doesn't matter.
