514
E. Rabinovici
tentatively. As in any human endeavor alternative paths are suggested and critique is
offered. I have incorporated in this note some of the serious challenges string theory
faces. There are additional complaints, complaints that the new style leaves too
many gaps in what is actually rigorously proven, complaints that a clean field theory
description is needed and lacking. Research has been democratized and globalized
to a quite unprecedented extent. This has mainly been achieved by making research
results available simultaneously to most of the researchers by posting them on the
web daily. There are some drawbacks inherent to that evolution, research attitudes
have been largely standardized and the ranges of different points of view have been
significantly focused/narrowed. The outside pressures to better quantify scientific
production have found an easily accessible statistical database. In particular, that
is leading to assigning a somewhat excessive weight for the citation counting in
a variety of science policy decisions. The impact of that is yet to stabilize. All
that said, one should notice that phenomenologists and experimentalists do turn to
string theory and its spin offs in search of a stimulus for ideas on how to detect
possible deviations from the standard model. The problems string theory faces
are difficult, one approach is to accept this and plunge time and again into the
dark regions of ignorance using string theory as an available guide, hoping that
it will be more resourceful than its practitioners are. Another approach is to break
away from the comfort of physics as we formulate it today and replace some of
its working axioms by new ones, such as holography, the entropic principle or
eventually perhaps something else. It seems that the question of the exact nature of
the basic constituents of matter will remain with us for still quite awhile. My favorite
picture is that it will turn out that asking if the basic constituents are point like, are
one, two or three-dimensional branes is like asking whether matter is made of earth
or air. A theory including the symmetries of gravity will have different phases, some
best described by stringy excitations, some by point particles, some by the various
branes, and perhaps the most symmetrical phase will be much simpler. Several of
these will offer the conventional space time picture, other will offer a something
new. String theory either as a source of inspiration, or as a very dynamic research
effort attracting criticism leaves few people indifferent.
8.5 Hindsight from 2018
The years from 2007 to 2018 were yet another example of the well-known difficulty
of predicting the future. Luckily what I wrote in 2007 contained, on this front,
enough disclaimers to satisfy the most strict of lawyers.
During those years one could celebrate a gigantic engineering triumph. After
succumbing to a very significant early setback the LHC outperformed its expectations. The experimental triumph was as impressive. The detectors performed well
beyond what one could dream. They obtained results from picking out the Higgs
particle out of haystack through rediscovering particles which were first detected at
electron-positron machines to finding more hadrons in the heavier flavour sectors.
E. Rabinovici
tentatively. As in any human endeavor alternative paths are suggested and critique is
offered. I have incorporated in this note some of the serious challenges string theory
faces. There are additional complaints, complaints that the new style leaves too
many gaps in what is actually rigorously proven, complaints that a clean field theory
description is needed and lacking. Research has been democratized and globalized
to a quite unprecedented extent. This has mainly been achieved by making research
results available simultaneously to most of the researchers by posting them on the
web daily. There are some drawbacks inherent to that evolution, research attitudes
have been largely standardized and the ranges of different points of view have been
significantly focused/narrowed. The outside pressures to better quantify scientific
production have found an easily accessible statistical database. In particular, that
is leading to assigning a somewhat excessive weight for the citation counting in
a variety of science policy decisions. The impact of that is yet to stabilize. All
that said, one should notice that phenomenologists and experimentalists do turn to
string theory and its spin offs in search of a stimulus for ideas on how to detect
possible deviations from the standard model. The problems string theory faces
are difficult, one approach is to accept this and plunge time and again into the
dark regions of ignorance using string theory as an available guide, hoping that
it will be more resourceful than its practitioners are. Another approach is to break
away from the comfort of physics as we formulate it today and replace some of
its working axioms by new ones, such as holography, the entropic principle or
eventually perhaps something else. It seems that the question of the exact nature of
the basic constituents of matter will remain with us for still quite awhile. My favorite
picture is that it will turn out that asking if the basic constituents are point like, are
one, two or three-dimensional branes is like asking whether matter is made of earth
or air. A theory including the symmetries of gravity will have different phases, some
best described by stringy excitations, some by point particles, some by the various
branes, and perhaps the most symmetrical phase will be much simpler. Several of
these will offer the conventional space time picture, other will offer a something
new. String theory either as a source of inspiration, or as a very dynamic research
effort attracting criticism leaves few people indifferent.
8.5 Hindsight from 2018
The years from 2007 to 2018 were yet another example of the well-known difficulty
of predicting the future. Luckily what I wrote in 2007 contained, on this front,
enough disclaimers to satisfy the most strict of lawyers.
During those years one could celebrate a gigantic engineering triumph. After
succumbing to a very significant early setback the LHC outperformed its expectations. The experimental triumph was as impressive. The detectors performed well
beyond what one could dream. They obtained results from picking out the Higgs
particle out of haystack through rediscovering particles which were first detected at
electron-positron machines to finding more hadrons in the heavier flavour sectors.