Re: Is my friend full of BS?

Thank you to all who replied. I wasn't met with an ounce of
hostility--a rarity in Usenet groups :D

What you've said makes sense. It's not a stupid theory, it's just, as
far as physicists know for now, a superfluous one. Far from being
debunked, it just has yet to predict something new to then be confirmed
via observation. Do I have that right?

Now I see the superstrings and gravity analogy was not successful.
Anyone who's ever dropped anything knows gravity exists. Through years
of observation and refinement, we've learned very well how to
mathematically capture it. The same cannot be said for string theory.
However, it would be a bit presumptuous to say we will never find a way
to "observe" these strings. Hopefully I got the point.

Thanks for clearing up on the prediction vs. observation on Einstein's
behalf. I remembered gravity bending light, but I had forgotten
Einstein didn't observe anything, he only guessed it would happen. Feel
free to post more fodder if ever he wants to bring this up again. I
promise I won't pretend that a few posts in a newsgroup make me an
expert :)

Richard

tadchem wrote:
richard.blankman@xxxxxxxxx wrote:

Regardless, then he started saying how string theory was bogus, has
been around for 30 years,

"Bogus" is an ill-defined term, and unnecessarily loaded with
pre-judgements. String theory is a mathematically self-consistent
theory. The main problem is that the scientific method *requires* that
a theory be testable, at least in principle. So far string theory has
not made any assertions regarding possible observations that would
distinguish it from other theories (such as the Standard Model). Until
a theory can be tested against observations, it is not really
acceptable.

So far it does not disagree with anything we *already* know, but it
predicts nothing new. Because it posits superstrings, which are not
required in the equally accurate standard model, it violates the
principle of parsimony (aka Ockham's Razor), discouraging its
acceptance.

and has since been debunked by the scientific
community.

It has not been 'debunked.' It simply does not disagree with anything
we *already* know.

His reasoning was "the 'strings' can never be shown to exist
since they're sub-sub-atomic, so the theory can't be true."

There is a world of difference between "we don't know how to do that
yet" and "we will never be able to do that." His 'reasoning' requires
an extrapolation to infinity.

I argued
the current notion of gravity was shown to exist despite it being
completely unobservable.

In the strictest sense, the only things that are observable are
electromagnetic fields - light, the pressure of matter on our
olfactory, auditory, gustatory, and dermal neurons - the properties of
physical matter that directly stimulate our senses. Beyond that
*everything* requires inference from its interactions with those things
we *can* observe directly.

I thought Einstein noticed light bend in a
gravitational field,

No. He *predicted* that, and others made the actual confirming
observations - distortion of the apparent positions of stars whos light
paths passed *very* close to the sun (measurable only during a total
solar eclipse).

but he said I was way off and said how Einstein
actually showed how gravity worked through some convoluted story
involving binary stars that made zero sense to me.

Actually, he used a hypothetical elevator.

Tom Davidson
Richmond, VA

.

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