It's hard to write it off as a bad investment. As Woit says, suppose you're a grad student who's spent several years of his life learning this stuff. Unfortunately, the math required is very difficult, if you don't happen to be as smart as Witten. When Witten started doing superstring theory, and discovered amazing new directions to explore, others followed.
Physicists are not just in awe of him, they like him too. By all accounts, he's also a very nice guy. Witten is incredibly gifted, and almost certainly the best mathematical physicist alive. So, why on earth is this still the mainstream approach? Woit's argument is, more than anything, that it's down to one person, Edward Witten. It's always possible to come up with a new variant that fits, or that at least can't easily be proved not to fit. By which he meant that the framework is so loose, and has so many adjustable parameters, that any inconvenient observation can explained away. As Feynman is supposed to have said, superstring theorists don't make predictions, they make excuses. But the worst part is that superstrings aren't in fact a proper, falsifiable theory. You'd think that this would be enough to sink it. As the author gleefully points out, probably the worst prediction ever made by a mainstream theory that people take seriously. It's notorious that natural versions of superstring theory predict a value for the density of dark energy that's at least 50 orders of magnitude too high - maybe as much as 100 orders of magnitude, or even more.
Incredibly bad predictions on vacuum energy/dark energy.
#Peter woit not even wrong how to
The theory doesn't even predict what masses these partners should have, so it's not clear how to look for them. No one has ever observed a supersymmetric partner to any known particle. Every particle is supposed to have a supersymmetric partner. Here are what I saw as the main pieces of evidence:ġ. Superstring theory has been around for over 20 years, and it hasn't delivered on its early promises. Both of them argue convincingly that fundamental physics has lost its way. Woit is covering a lot of the same ground as Smolin, in The Trouble with Physics. Just looking at the title gives you a large clue as to what this book is about. Every particle is supposed to have a supersymme Here are what I saw as the main pieces of evidence: 1. In the face of many books from enthusiasts for string theory, this book presents the other side of the story.more Not Even Wrong explains why the mathematical conditions for progress in physics are entirely absent from superstring theory today and shows that judgments about scientific statements, which should be based on the logical consistency of argument and experimental evidence, are instead based on the eminence of those claiming to know the truth. It makes no predictions, even wrong ones, and this very lack of falsifiability is what has allowed the subject to survive and flourish.
In Not Even Wrong, he shows that what many physicists call superstring "theory" is not a theory at all.
In Peter Woit's view, superstring theory is just such an idea. At what point does theory depart the realm of testable hypothesis and come to resemble something like aesthetic speculation, or even theology? The legendary physicist Wolfgang Pauli had a phrase for such ideas: He would describe them as "not even wrong," meaning that they were so incomplete that they could not even be used to make predictions to compare with observations t At what point does theory depart the realm of testable hypothesis and come to resemble something like aesthetic speculation, or even theology? The legendary physicist Wolfgang Pauli had a phrase for such ideas: He would describe them as "not even wrong," meaning that they were so incomplete that they could not even be used to make predictions to compare with observations to see whether they were wrong or not.
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