Light Speed

OK, so now it's possible to get things moving at nearly the speed of light.

What to do next...

OOH! I have an idea! Let's make it crash!

A few researchers decided to do just that. It hasn't happened yet, but essentially their plan is to either prove or disprove string theory as a result.

Apparently, they don't operate under the pretext that an experiment can disprove a theory, but it cannot prove it. Live and learn, gentlemen, live and learn.

The standard unified field model has an arbitrary set if particles with few principles guiding how they should be chosen, and an arbitrary set of interactions that can take place between particles. It doesn't even single out 4 dimensions as special in any way - the choice of 4D is completely arbitrary. The choice of 30 or so constants defining the interaction strengths is also arbitrary.

String theory has one particle - the string. It has one force which emerges from the very simple dynamics put into it at the outset. A wide spectrum of particles and interactions emerges from it in a natural way. There is little choice for the dimension of spacetime - the theory locks it down from the beginning. Gravity emerges from it naturally. There are close to zero arbitrary constants. And at bottom, the initial assumptions of String Theory are all very simple - which according to Occam's Razor is the most desirable set of assumptions you could want.

The problem with String Theory is that taken at surface value it doesn't match the universe we see. We don't see a 10-dimensional universe, we don't see the predicted spectrum of particles and so on. At core, String theory is simple and as far from arbitrary as you can imagine. There are all kinds of things wrong with String theory. The essential problem in trying to falsify it is that it's so bad it's not even wrong. It reminds me of something that on of my high school teachers used to preach about "it's OK to make mistakes, as long as you make an even number of mistakes." Math and Physics are logical sciences, but they doesn't follow a philosophy. The path which brings you to a given result has surprisingly little bearing on whether or not the result is correct. Remember you can divide by zero under certain circumstances. Just because your calculator won't do it doesn't mean that it can't be done.