Still, the books can enable them to appreciate how more mathematically oriented minds can see unification between grainy quantum mechanics and smooth theories of the gravitational force. Most readers will never succeed in envisioning extra curled-up dimensions of space-time or understand the implications of symmetries in those additional dimensions. (The latter also has a much more detailed description of the science and history of particle accelerators.) It is useful to read the two books in parallel, grappling with a chapter or two of “Trouble” to get the physical perspective, then turning to “Wrong” for more mathematical depth. How can a science that has been so successful in describing the universe suddenly find itself in such a quandary? To answer that question, both books go deeper into physical theory and mathematical detail than most readers will be able to follow, but skimming will suffice for most to catch the authors’ central train of thought. String theory is not even wrong, Woit asserts, because each refinement seems to lead physicists further astray. Smolin’s assessment is downright rosy compared with the critique offered by Columbia University mathematician Peter Woit in “Not Even Wrong: The Failure of String Theory and the Search for Unity in Physical Law.” He draws his title from a famous remark by Wolfgang Pauli, who once described a particularly poorly written paper as “not even wrong.” A wrong idea can be valuable if it ultimately leads one in a productive direction. His central argument is that it is time to start asking whether too many people are putting too much effort following ideas in string theory that seem promising at first but inevitably lead down blind alleys. Smolin hasn’t completely given up on string theory but is clearly pessimistic. That is “The Trouble With Physics,” according to the title of a new book by Lee Smolin, a onetime physics wunderkind who in mid-career founded the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ontario. To many physicists, it appeared to be the path to their science’s holy grail, the “grand unification” of all known forces and fundamental particles into a single theory.īut, instead of continuing the advance of theoretical physics, the rise of string theory began a period filled with tantalizing near-miss formulations that continues until today.
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Then a multidimensional mathematical approach called string theory caught fire. For the first three-quarters of the century, progress in both theoretical and experimental physics steadily transformed our fundamental understanding of the physical universe. The biggest surprise turned out to be historical.
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It was a great opportunity to catch up on developments in the field. I recently completed writing a high school/college-level history of physics in the 20th century.