Ed -

A good book is from several school mates - Katrin Becker, Melanie Becker and
John H. Schwarz : "String Theory and M-Theory" A Modern indtroduction ::
Cambridge University Press. 0521860695

M-theory (no relation to the letter :-) ) was derived from the mid 90's when
the second superstring revolution took place.

Discovery is an on-going business in Physics. It covers from the smallest
descriptive feature to that of the great cosmos. It is the foundation of many
of the sciences and is a pure science. Some sciences are not science and some
are meta-science.

Martin

Ed Huntress wrote:
"Martin H. Eastburn" wrote in message
...
Wrong. Much closer on lots of things.
There are various projects and think tanks working on many things
that pose questions to man.

In fact simple old string theory is old big time and didn't work.
Super strings came closer but failed. But A merger with the string
theories
and the M-theory will make ends meet. Looks very good.

Martin

OK, Martin. I just finished reading a fairly weighty book that put M-theory
into context, and I'm aware of the current developments in the algebra of
branes, but I'm certainly not going to argue it with you. For me, it would
be even nuttier than arguing about global warming. I know nothing about the
depths of climatology and I know even less about theoretical physics. And
the more I read (a fair amount for a layman) the more I realize that I don't
know. The interesting thing is that I've reached the point where it appears
that no one else knows, either. g

I'll just say this: There is no agreement among theoretical physicists that
they are any closer to solving the problem of quantum gravity than they were
30 years ago; nor are they any closer to solving various other unifications
and other problems with gravity. This I don't "know" in the sense that I
understand the math or the physics. I "know" it in the sense that most of
the leading researchers in the field, including Witten himself, who came up
with the M-theory conjecture, stop short of saying they can see where their
theories are going -- if they're going anywhere at all. Furthermore, most of
them, except for the (almost politically driven) string-theory acolytes,
seem to feel that we don't yet have a mathematics that can carry us any
closer to resolution of these issues. And string theorists have had to live
for decades with the fact that there have not been any experiments conceived
that could test any of their fundamental ideas. Nor do they have any idea
where to look for them.

If I were a scientist, this would drive me into another line of work. g
However, I'm glad that it doesn't seem to have stopped the physicists. As a
science enthusiast all my life, I've been astonished to learn over the past
few years how little is known at the bleeding edge, and how difficult it all
is. The subject is one that I do not have the brainpower to tackle. I don't
mean I don't have the commitment or the background; I mean that the sheer
mental horsepower required is in the stratosphere above my head.

Edward Witten laid out the conjecture for M-theory 14 years ago, and it
hasn't changed since. What the new work suggests is that there *may* be a
possibility of understanding the fundamentals of M-theory. That's what the
physicists seem to be saying.

I'm sure there are some who, in their layman's writings, make it sound like
much more than that. Smolin has noted that there's been a tendency to make
extreme claims for M-theory in the popular literature which aren't borne out
by the facts. Again, I have no way of knowing. As with climatology, all I
can do is use my sniffer to see who sounds like he knows what he's talking
about, and, even more important, who has his head screwed on straight.

"Martin H. Eastburn" wrote in message
...
Ed -

A good book is from several school mates - Katrin Becker, Melanie Becker
and John H. Schwarz : "String Theory and M-Theory" A Modern indtroduction
:: Cambridge University Press. 0521860695

M-theory (no relation to the letter :-) ) was derived from the mid 90's
when
the second superstring revolution took place.

Discovery is an on-going business in Physics. It covers from the smallest
descriptive feature to that of the great cosmos. It is the foundation of
many
of the sciences and is a pure science. Some sciences are not science and
some
are meta-science.

Martin

I appreciate the reference, Martin. Before I take on something as weighty
and time-consuming as a book like this, I try to get a sense of it, to know
what I would get for the time I would invest. Having read the publisher's
description and a dozen or so reviews, I'm going to pass on it.

Apparently it is an introductory textbook for advanced undergraduates and
graduate students in physics, and it's the conjectures themselves, rather
than the contextual discussion that Smolin provides in _The Trouble With
Physics_. I'm not interested now in a textbook of the conjectures. As a
layman, I'm interested in what the field's top experts have to tell us
*about* the conjectures, in the broad context of the state of the art and
science of theoretical physics. I'm not planning to do the physics itself.

So, like the physicists, I'll be waiting to hear what we learn from the LHC.
It will be a long while, apparently, before the experiments touch on things
that give us answers to what is real or not about string theory and its
children. Meantime, it may be something like a particle version of the
Hubble Telescope, simultaneously providing unsuspected answers and producing
more questions. String theory, and M-theory, still have no real material
with which to work. And now that I've been given some insight into the
nature of these theories -- which, in science terms, are still
conjectures -- it looks to me like one would have to be a committed
physicist to be interested in working on them at this time. It looks to me
like most of what those physicists have to look forward to is the proof or
refutation of their conjectures. I have no conjectures to put to the test,
so their game, and their interest, is not what I'm interested in. I'm
curious about the realities themselves, and the chance we'll discover some
new angles on them through experiment.

Real experiments will mean something but it's still not clear just what the
LHC will produce in relation to those conjectures, because the practitioners
can't even propose an experiment to prove or disprove their ideas. Perhaps
the LHC will provide answers to the question of what questions might be
asked. The Hubble did some of that for cosmology. We can hope that we'll see
some parallels in particle physics, given this new instrument to probe
things we can't see at all now.

But I do appreciate your thoughts and the reference.

--
Ed Huntress

In article ,
"Martin H. Eastburn" wrote:

Ed -

A good book is from several school mates - Katrin Becker, Melanie Becker and
John H. Schwarz : "String Theory and M-Theory" A Modern indtroduction ::
Cambridge University Press. 0521860695

M-theory (no relation to the letter :-) ) was derived from the mid 90's when
the second superstring revolution took place.

MMMM, branes!

/homersimpsonzombie

Dad took some N-dimensional and other unique classes at Cambridge
many years ago. He was there 'under cover' cold war and all that -
he was the system engineer and designer of what was to be the worlds
most powerful radar - the top two after the new model years later.
Some of the stuff he told me 30 years later was about what I expected -
real time ion sorting of shorts. :-) I would have loved to attend Cambridge
as a seminar student - and have plenty of time in the Ashmolean Museum
to see what the old masters kept for the ages.

Martin



John Husvar wrote:
In article ,
"Martin H. Eastburn" wrote:

Ed -

A good book is from several school mates - Katrin Becker, Melanie Becker and
John H. Schwarz : "String Theory and M-Theory" A Modern indtroduction ::
Cambridge University Press. 0521860695

M-theory (no relation to the letter :-) ) was derived from the mid 90's when
the second superstring revolution took place.

MMMM, branes!

/homersimpsonzombie