LHC and the demise of String Theory

Albert,
I think we'll see some indication of the Higgs if not some hard evidence. At least it might confirm the energy range of the LHC may not be high enough to give positive confirmation which in itself tells us more about the mass of the boson. If the LHC does nothing else other than give data on the Higgs then it will have been worthwhile, but there is so much more to come from this behemoth. I am so looking forward to the data that will result after October Imagine finally being able to understand why matter has mass - and as a result understanding why mass/energy curves spacetime. Gravity can then finally go in the bin and future generations may be taught the correct laws of nature.

BTW: before you get immersed in studying string theory, read Peter Woits book "Not Even Wrong - the failure of string theory and the continuing challenge to unify the laws of physics". Its useful, though not necessary, to have a grounding in all flavours of things String. Without Witten - undoubtably a mathematical genius, but not necessarily a physicist - I don't think String Theory would be around today.

BTW: before you get immersed in studying string theory, read Peter Woits book "Not Even Wrong - the failure of string theory and the continuing challenge to unify the laws of physics". Its useful, though not necessary, to have a grounding in all flavours of things String. Without Witten - undoubtably a mathematical genius, but not necessarily a physicist - I don't think String Theory would be around today.

Sounds like an interesting companion to a re-read of the Elegant Universe!

Albert,

Yes a very interesting read - no doubt about it.

You could add a few more to that:
1. The Elegant Universe (as you point out) - Brian Greene - good book for a grounding in all things string.
2. Our Superstring Universe - L.E.Lewis.
3. The Search for Superstrings, Symmetry and the Theory of everything - John Gribbin.
4. Lucifers Legacy - the meaning of Asymmetry (not really all that relevant here but a good read all the same) - Frank Close.

I haven't read the Elegant Universe, but I have Brian Greene's "The Fabric of the Cosmos" which I quite enjoyed. I also found "Not Even Wrong" to be a good read.

One short (if somewhat oblique) defense: string theorists certainly didn't invent making excuses. One of the founding principals of quantum mechanics was that two particles in the same system couldn't have the same quantum state (the Pauli exclusion principle). When particle physicists found that quarks often did had the same charge and spin, they said "ahh... they must be different colors". And when not even that sufficed, they invented new flavors -- first "charm" and "strange", and later "top" and "bottom".

Cheers,
-- Jeff.

One short (if somewhat oblique) defense: string theorists certainly didn't invent making excuses. One of the founding principals of quantum mechanics was that two particles in the same system couldn't have the same quantum state (the Pauli exclusion principle). When particle physicists found that quarks often did had the same charge and spin, they said "ahh... they must be different colors". And when not even that sufficed, they invented new flavors -- first "charm" and "strange", and later "top" and "bottom".

I agree with you in principle - the difference though is that quantum theory has been re-defined based on what has been seen in experiments - so flavours, colours etc were deemed necessary to refine the theory of what was actually happening. Whereas in String Theory no experiments are performed - at all.
An analogy might be a refernce text book vs "alice in wonderland".

And for those who would rather watch the program than read the book here it is!

The Elegant Universe (3 hours)
www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/elegant/program.html