Voodoo Physics

Recently, I came across two books that cast significant aspersions on the entire notion of string theory: Not Even Wrong: The Failure of String Theory and the Search for Unity in Physical Law by Peter Woit and The Trouble With Physics: The Rise of String Theory, The Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next by Lee Smolin.

First of all, have you ever noticed how scientific works have such long titles? It’s like they’re trying to summarize the book in the title. What’s wrong with a tight, pithy title like Absurdities of String Theory or Cutting the Strings? Why these obsessive run-on sentences trying to squeeze onto book covers? Have you ever seen a really obese individual dressed in spandex or some other stretchy material? Scientific titles must be a real headache for cover artists.

Now, I may have left you with the impression that I have actually read the two books I mentioned. In fact, I wouldn't mind if you had that impression. It might cause you to think I was very intelligent and widely read on matters of physics. If you’ll notice, however, I wrote that I “came across” these books. More specifically, I read about them on Amazon.com. So, while the following might give you the notion I understand it, I’m simply parroting comments from reviewers.

In his book, Woit makes the case that superstring theory is not just far-fetched, it doesn’t even really have the substance to be described as a theory. Since it makes no testable predictions, it cannot be proven, or, more importantly, proven wrong. Essentially, this makes superstring theory unchallengeable, so it survives and flourishes without being subject to the scientific method.

Smolin, for his part, posits that much research in physics—the search for the laws of nature—has entered the realm of the imaginary with its dimensionless sub-atomic particles and multiple parallel universes. A lapsed string theorist himself, Smolin laments that many of the best and brightest new talent among physicists today are being drawn toward this mystical realm.

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And, just when I’m beginning to think it may be safe to go back into the waters of general and special relativity, I see this teaser on my home page from the BBC news service: “Test ‘breaks light speed again.’” The article describes experiments conducted at CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics in Geneva, Switzerland and an associated Italian lab, INFN, at Gran Sasso in the mountains of central Italy, some 450 miles away.  The Geneva lab shot bunches of neutrinos through the earth’s crust at a giant super-sensitive detector at Gran Sasso. The results confirmed an earlier experiment in which the neutrinos arrived some billionths of a second faster than light would have traveled the same distance. This seems to turn on its ear the insistence, in relativity theory, that the speed of light, 186,282 miles per hour, is an absolute limit and that nothing can move faster. (NOTE: These results were later retracted due to experiment errors attributed to faults in equipment handling.)

What's more, I was reading a brief history of the neutrino on a website by the University of California, Irvine, and the synopsis reflects a very similar inception to that of string theory. It gave me pause.

I was starting to like that the idea of string theory, and possibly other conjectures of quantum mechanics, were just so much magical thinking. My mind began to erase branes, multiple universes and extra dimensions from its working chalkboard. The world began to make sense again.

Then those dang Europeans challenge one of the basic tenets of relativity theory.

I’ll bet it was the French. They’re always trying to upset the apple cart.

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