How long is a piece of string?

Question

How long should we give string 'theory' to produce falsifiable predictions before we consign it to the 'interesting but not especially helpful' category of hypotheses?

Answer 1

Your question is neither interesting, nor especially helpful.

Answer 2

Until string/M theory is testable, it will remain interesting mathematics, but no more. However, even as we speak, the Large Hadron Collider is being built in Switzerland to, in part, test string theory. So we won't need to wait much longer.

I agree with some answers claiming string theory is too complex to be a proper theory...after all, eleven dimensions, come on now, nature works much more simple than that. String theory was created to resolve some inconsistencies between quantum physics and Einsteinian physics. String theory is contrary to Occam's Razor and lex persimoniae.

One of those inconsistencies was that Einstein's equations tend to blow up with singularities and resulting infinity at the sub-atomic level. But string theory, to resolve that issue invented "infinitely" thin strings of Plank length. That is, they concocted an infinity to get rid of an infinity. Argh.

Answer 3

Strings in String Theory are infinitly long. Each string is its own dimension cutting across our three spatial dimensions so that we see a point that we either label as a elementary particle or a quanta of energy. Different particles and energy quanta are made of different dimensional strings. Combinations of strings and their directions in a multi-dimensional universe give particles charge, spin, polarity and so forth. Our particular existence is made up of exactly 373,248 string dimensions which takes the form of a manifold floating on the surface of a billion zillion dimensional hyper-mega multiverse. Where everyone gets messed up is by trying to include time as a dimension. Time is not a dimension, it is the illusion we create to distinguish before and after an event, a subjective way to measure the relative speed of a particle or the canges in energy levels of an event. The only real time that exists is the infinit now. This very moment is all that there is, and everything that happens happens in the now.

Answer 4

String theory has already been dismissed by most people as it's insanely complicated and a desperate way of trying to come up with a unified theory. Even the people who created can't understand it - that sound like a great idea!

Answer 5

As long as it takes to show that it is based on false assumptions, that it cannot predict outcomes or until an alternative and better model is proposed. It is only a model and can still be appropriate to explain certain phenomena.

Answer 6

We should give it as long as the model for pure stringology holds or categorise the theory with people who measure distance in minutes.

Answer 7

Interesting question.

I would say about five and a half minutes, less a quarter of an inch, divided by pi.

That answer your question?

Answer 8

Hi. Very short in 'string theory' and perhaps circular. When can we have observations? Don't know but I hope it's in my lifetime.

Answer 9

Is everyone here on the same page before they try to answer?

Thank You
Jon

Answer 10

it isn't going anywhere for a while, since it and multi-dimensions are presently the ONLY theories that explain certain deficiencies in quantum theory.

Answer 11

everyone knows this is another way of describing the unanswerable - that's the whole point - no-one knows how long is a piece of string, isn't it?