Okay, I want the name of a good book on M Theory

[hyphenate]

That a lay person can understand. I know some things about it, but I need to have some scientific data that makes it plausible for a story I'm writing to account for parallel universes.

I did see some Science Channel documentaries on the theory, but I am more into SF than S. And if I have to describe the theory within the writing to someone else, I want to have a little more of a skill set to keep it within our current sphere of knowledge.

Any takers?

[Odin2005]

1. Here's a good one:

http://www.amazon.com/Warped-Passages-Unraveling-Mysteries-Dimensions/dp/0060531088

[hyphenate]

4. Thanks for the rec

I went and added it to my wish list at Amazon. I also found a couple PDFs online that I am going to attempt to go through as well.

[laconicsax]

2. It's a religion.

String ("M") theory is an unfalsifiable hypothesis that makes no testable predictions. This xkcd cartoon covers about all of what's been accomplished in string "theory" in the last 30 years:

http://xkcd.com/171/


That's pretty clear in layman's terms I think.

[hyphenate]

3. That reminds me of a sorta joke

Shrodinger's cat walks into a bar, and doesn't.

But for anyone who knows Schrodinger's cat, it's brilliant. I actually had to explain to a friend the entire idea behind Schrodinger's cat. He just wasn't getting it. :evilgrin:

[realisticphish]

5. The only bad part about Shrodinger's Cat

is when people think it works on a macro level. "If you put a cat in a box..."

:facepalm:

No, it's a thought experiment about quantum mechanics.

[onager]

9. Gotta post this again, for the world's 2.5 people who haven't seen it...

Even Einstein had doubts, and so Schrodinger tried
To tell him what quantum mechanics implied.
Said Win to Al, "Brother, suppose we've a cat,
And inside a tube we have put that cat at...

Statistically speaking, the cat (goes the joke)
Is half a cat breathing and half a cat croaked.
To some this may seem a ridiculous split,
But quantum mechanics must answer "Tough shit."

Read the whole thing here - http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/113/the-story-of-schroedingers-cat-an-epic-poem

[realisticphish]

10. haha awesome

[Odin2005]

6. Wrong, read up on the work by Lisa Randall in the book I mentioned.

If her ideas about M Theory are right the folks at CERN are going to be having a blast.

[laconicsax]

7. I think they're having a blast either way.

String theory isn't falsifiable. If it isn't falsifiable, it isn't science. When I read Brian Green's books, it struck me as odd that he was making empirical claims in the absence of evidence--saying that the experimental data doesn't exist or that string theorists hadn't even worked out the equations.

It isn't a theory. It's a guess, and it sure smells like theology.

[Odin2005]

8. Randall DOES make empirical claims.

One of them being we should see gravity being anomalously strong over very small (sub-millimeter) distances, something they are currently trying to test with extremely delicate gravity experiments.

[skepticscott]

11. Or at least it won't until we have

particle accelerators about a bazillion times more powerful than we do now. But currently, the popularity of such theories seems to be related more to how well they (in theory) explain unresolved issues in particle physics, rather than how well they conform to what we can see in the real world. Not necessarily the best way to do science, but tons of ink has been spilled.

[Odin2005]

12. See post #8

[laconicsax]

13. Magic and philosophy are like that.

Don't get me wrong--it's incredibly exciting to know that an existing hypothetical model could end up as a grand unifying theory.

It'd just be nice if it had more to contribute to physics after 30+ years of research than untestable conjectures.

And despite what others may say, it certainly isn't elegant.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

15. Religion and an unproven hypothesis are two different things.

First and foremost, and unproven hypothesis might be correct.

[laconicsax]

16. But an unfalsifiable one likely isn't. n/t

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

17. Wrong again.

[laconicsax]

18. Unfalsifiable=untestable. Untestable=not science.

Call it a mathematical philosophy if you don't like religion. Either way, until string guessers come up with a way to falsify their pet project, I won't dignify it by calling it a scientific hypothesis.

[Silent3]

19. String theory at least has the potential...

...for those working on it to come up with testable consequences. I think most working on string theory would love to find ways to test their work, especially if they can tease out some low-energy or cosmological consequences not so difficult to test.

At the very least, they're trying to create a mathematical framework that agrees with known experimental data, offering a unifying theory which hopes to make more sense of all the hairy, disparate details of the standard model than, "well, that's just the way it is".

If you don't call that kind of work science, because testable consequences aren't there yet, what would you call it? Are all efforts that can't produce, very quickly, testable consequences not worth pursuing? Beneath the dignity of "real" scientists? Are they worth pursuing, but have to be called something else other than "science" until the testable consequences are both spelled out and within the reach of our technology to test?

[laconicsax]

20. I call it mathematical guess work if I'm serious, philosophy if I'm being facetious.

I would love for String Guess and M-Theology to be not just testable, but tested, confirmed, and accepted as an actual theory. How cool would that be? That we actually have a working theory of everything? I've been hoping to see that accomplished within my lifetime for over a decade and as soon as it happens, I'll be ecstatic (assuming it does happen).

In the mean time, I'd be content with criteria by which it's falsifiable. I read somewhere (probably Wikipedia) that that criteria would be falsifying quantum theory, but that's a bit of a cheat--kind of like if Gould had said that Punctuated Equilibrium could best be falsified by falsifying the theory of evolution. If it is the case that String Guess is only falsifiable by falsifying quantum theory, then is it really grounds for a separate theory, or is it just a branch/detail/mechanism of quantum mechanics?

Give me a testable prediction or criteria for falsifying the whole thing, and I'll gladly call it String Hypothesis and M-hypothesis.

[Name removed]

21. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

14. If a lay person can understand it, then it's not really about M-theory.

It's like quantum mechanic in popular books. When you take out the math, it just becomes a series of dumb analogies, that really don't convey an understanding of quantum mechanics (although, often giving the reader the incorrect perception that they do).