Such diverse people as Lee Smolin and Lubos Motl think it’s an interesting idea (and having those two agree the sky is blue would be remarkable), but that just puts it as “fringe” rather than “crank”. And you could say about the same about string theory.
Absolutely. Unfortunately, this is just not enough in order to become a viable model.
that just puts it as “fringe” rather than “crank”.
I don’t think that anyone asserted that timeless physics is a crank idea, since there is no contradiction to the established science. Fringe is indeed a good description, due to the reasons I mentioned.
And you could say about the same about string theory.
I wish I could. String theory, while being an out-of-proportion popular piece of math which took over high-energy physics, has a few things going for it, despite getting its every testable prediction wrong.
It offers tantalizing hints of new perspectives on high-energy physics research, such as the duality between strong- and week-coupling models, the holographic principle, new unexpected yet elegant symmetries, and even useful calculational techniques for quark-gluon plasma analysis. Of course, it would probably not have gotten nearly as popular if Ed Witten didn’t take up the cause.
I’m only half a layman, but I know that Brian Green (maybe others?), have put forward the idea that 11 dimensions do exist, it’s only that they are “curled up” and so small that we can’t (yet) observe them, analogues to how a wire might appear form afar, flat, but as you move close you see it’s actually a cylinder, Greens own example.
And why did they propose it, other than to explain why these extra dimensions are not observed in nature, thus patching up a model with a falsified prediction?
Such diverse people as Lee Smolin and Lubos Motl think it’s an interesting idea (and having those two agree the sky is blue would be remarkable), but that just puts it as “fringe” rather than “crank”. And you could say about the same about string theory.
Absolutely. Unfortunately, this is just not enough in order to become a viable model.
I don’t think that anyone asserted that timeless physics is a crank idea, since there is no contradiction to the established science. Fringe is indeed a good description, due to the reasons I mentioned.
I wish I could. String theory, while being an out-of-proportion popular piece of math which took over high-energy physics, has a few things going for it, despite getting its every testable prediction wrong.
It offers tantalizing hints of new perspectives on high-energy physics research, such as the duality between strong- and week-coupling models, the holographic principle, new unexpected yet elegant symmetries, and even useful calculational techniques for quark-gluon plasma analysis. Of course, it would probably not have gotten nearly as popular if Ed Witten didn’t take up the cause.
It has testable predictions it got wrong? As I understood it, its predictions were untestable without radically more powerful accelerators.
It predicted 10 or 11 dimensions, super-partners and other things.
I’m only half a layman, but I know that Brian Green (maybe others?), have put forward the idea that 11 dimensions do exist, it’s only that they are “curled up” and so small that we can’t (yet) observe them, analogues to how a wire might appear form afar, flat, but as you move close you see it’s actually a cylinder, Greens own example.
And why did they propose it, other than to explain why these extra dimensions are not observed in nature, thus patching up a model with a falsified prediction?
We haven’t ruled out supersymmetry yet.