![]() ![]() Smolin adds a moral dimension to his plaint, linking string theory to the physics profession’s “blatant prejudice” against women and blacks. Woit argues that string theory’s lack of rigor has left its practitioners unable to distinguish between a scientific hoax and a genuine contribution. Physics, in their view, has been overtaken by a cutthroat culture that rewards technicians who work on officially sanctioned problems and discourages visionaries in the mold of Albert Einstein. Each author delivers a bill of indictment that is a mixture of science, philosophy, aesthetics, and, surprisingly, sociology. Both are now outsiders: Smolin, a reformed string theorist (he wrote eighteen papers on the subject), has helped found a sort of Menshevik cell of physicists in Canada called the Perimeter Institute Woit abandoned professional physics for mathematics (he is a lecturer in the mathematics department at Columbia), which gives him a cross-disciplinary perspective. Peter Woit, in “Not Even Wrong: The Failure of String Theory and the Search for Unity in Physical Law” (Basic $26.95), prefers the term “disaster.” Both Smolin and Woit were journeyman physicists when string theory became fashionable, in the early nineteen-eighties. “The story I will tell could be read by some as a tragedy,” Lee Smolin writes in “The Trouble with Physics: The Rise of String Theory, the Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next” (Houghton Mifflin $26). Now two members of the string-theory generation have come forward with exposés of what they deem to be the current mess. Sheldon Glashow, who won a Nobel Prize for making one of the last great advances in physics before the beginning of the string-theory era, has likened string theory to a “new version of medieval theology,” and campaigned to keep string theorists out of his own department at Harvard. Almost two decades ago, Richard Feynman dismissed it as “crazy,” “nonsense,” and “the wrong direction” for physics. ![]() But string theory has always had a few vocal skeptics. If you are a casual reader of science articles in the newspaper, you are probably more familiar with the optimistic view. So which is it: the best of times or the worst of times? This is, after all, theoretical physics, not a Victorian novel. Meanwhile, physics is stuck in a paradigm doomed to barrenness. Yet the physics establishment promotes string theory with irrational fervor, ruthlessly weeding dissenting physicists from the profession. And, even if it does, this theory will come in such a bewildering number of versions that it will be of no practical use: a Theory of Nothing. In fact, there is no theory so far-just a set of hunches and calculations suggesting that a theory might exist. Yet, for all this activity, not a single new testable prediction has been made, not a single theoretical puzzle has been solved. ![]() Dozens of string-theory conferences have been held, hundreds of new Ph.D.s have been minted, and thousands of papers have been written. The beginning of this chase marked the end of what had been three-quarters of a century of progress. For more than a generation, physicists have been chasing a will-o’-the-wisp called string theory. But, with almost the entire theoretical-physics community working on the problem-presided over by a sage in Princeton, New Jersey-the millennia-old dream of a final theory is sure to be realized before long. This is taking a little longer than expected. All that remains to be done is to write down the actual equations. String theory isn’t just powerful it’s also mathematically beautiful. By vibrating in different ways, these strings produce the essential phenomena of nature, the way violin strings produce musical notes. The key insight is that the smallest constituents of the world are not particles, as had been supposed since ancient times, but “strings”-tiny strands of energy. In a few elegant equations, perhaps concise enough to be emblazoned on a T-shirt, this theory will reveal how the universe began and how it will end. Physicists are on the verge of obtaining the long-sought Theory of Everything. ![]()
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