String theory has never made a prediction that has come true and gets disproven each time we build a bigger particle accelerator and discover new particles. Like the theory can't even explain basic observations about particle physics and the universe. The String theorists just keep telling everyone that it will work out bro, trust us, give us more funding.

Like the only reason it hasen't been abandoned yet and is still weirdly popular is becuase of the perverse incentives in academics where it pays more to pursue this kind of groundbreaking nonsense than trying to advance the frontier of the established and boring Standard Model. And it's easy to be groundbreaking when you are just making shit up. Just think of the millions in research funding these charlatans have scammed from us. They have played us for absolute fools.

We need to round up all the String theorists and parade them through the streets with dunce caps, Cultural Revolution style. We need to do 70 hour struggle sessions against them until they pass out from exhaustion.

"Particles are actually tiny strings that wiggle" "There are 11 dimensions but you don't notice the extra ones cause their are too small" - Statements dreamed up by the utterly deranged.

    • UnicodeHamSic [he/him]
      ·
      2 years ago

      I mean, for the most part particle accelerators really simplify things. They take tiny little bits and smash them together. They look at the noise it makes and figure out what could have happened to cause it. Like if it splits it two it'd make a twang instead fo a pop. Just they have to build giant super sensitive tools to figure it out.

      The problem is that when stuff is that small it everything is kinda the same. Light, sound, electricity. It doesn't make intuitive sense, but you know how you can get static on your hands and pick up fuzz? Picture that but on the scale of atoms to other atoms. So you just have to measure really carefully which direction things go and you can kinda figure out what they are made of.

      Also, we just handed out a Nobel prize nomination for Quantum non locality. Which is absolutely brian shattering. The idea there being we don't actually know how anything works, or simulation theory is real but the simulation is being run on atoms in the universe so in effect it doesn't matter that it is real. Neither of those actually answer any question, and only make things only more confusing but the math we did seems to indicate that is the case.

    • hexaflexagonbear [he/him]
      ·
      2 years ago

      The overwhelming majority of theoretical physics has nothing to do with string theory, or even high energy physics. There's a lot more physicists working on "fucking magnets, how do they work?" than on string theory tbh.

    • KurtVonnegut [comrade/them]
      ·
      2 years ago

      I see other shit like people saying the universe is donut shaped or… idk time moves backwards

      No serious scientist says that.

      In order to start understanding physics, the first thing is to find reliable sources. Textbooks are the best way to go, but if you're just trying to understand it on a casual level, PBS Space Time is BY FAR the best thing to watch. The people running it are serious professional physicists and awesome communicators covering fascinating topics:

      https://www.youtube.com/@pbsspacetime/playlists?view=1&sort=dd&shelf_id=0

      • stinky [any]
        ·
        2 years ago

        Where do you go after watching their hundreds of videos?

        • impartial_fanboy [he/him]
          ·
          2 years ago

          To get an understanding of it that doesn't rely on analogy and metaphor you have to delve into the math, there's no way around it.

          If you want the typical undergrad courses, Leonard Susskind has videos of his classes up on youtube. Don't worry that they're 10-15 years old, the basic math hasn't changed. The video quality does improve as they go though.

          If you want a more self-directed approach, Roger Penrose's book The Road to Reality is a good resource and provides more of a roadmap. Also if you want to see Jordan Peterson utterly embarrass himself, watch his interview of Penrose.

          • Mardoniush [she/her]
            ·
            2 years ago

            road to reality is great but not for the faint of heart. Took me 9 months to get through it and I did maybe 25% or the excercises and was familiar with most of the introductory math.

            I'd recommend brushing up your calculus to 1st year university before diving in.

        • KurtVonnegut [comrade/them]
          ·
          2 years ago

          If you have a few months to spare:

          Classical Mechanics - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtOGurrUPmQ&list=PLyQSN7X0ro203puVhQsmCj9qhlFQ-As8e&index=2

          Electricity and Magnetism - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1-SibwIPM4&list=PLyQSN7X0ro2314mKyUiOILaOC2hk6Pc3j&index=2

          Wave Mechanics - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VuX_UExHa0M&list=PLyQSN7X0ro22WeXM2QCKJm2NP_xHpGV89&index=2

          Quantum Physics - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZ3bPUKo5zc&list=PLyQSN7X0ro21XsVfRHhiWGEEJigdjpF3s + https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QI13S04w8dM&list=PLyQSN7X0ro21y1VjcdTi5jbpH26O-Tk68

          That is absolutely as far as you can go without getting into hardcore maths.

    • CapnCat [any]
      ·
      2 years ago

      To a degree, it is all made up. Essentially, there are observations that we don't have an explanation for and it's up to theoretical physicists to try to come up with an explanation that fits that data. Experimental physicist than try to come up with ways that they can test this theory and try to disprove it or provide more evidence for it.

    • plinky [he/him]
      ·
      2 years ago

      That exposed to pop sciency side, cause you can speculate with abandon. massive amount of it is doing like solid state electromagnetic properties, weird quasiparticles, plasma states, low temperature shenanigans, super conductivity, negative light speed meta materials and so on