Have the “troubles” caused by string theory begun to run so deep so as to affect our high schools? Heavens yes! Well, at least one high school in Oregon anyway. Hurrah!
This from the Siemens Foundation press release about the winners of their annual high school science and technology competition:
Dmitry Vaintrob, a senior at South Eugene High School in Eugene, Oregon, won the $100,000 Grand Prize scholarship in the individual category for exciting research in an abstract new area of math called string topology.
I don’t really know what “string topology” is (as opposed to just topology applied to string theory), so I went to their site to read the synopsis of this prize winner, and I found:
“The string topology BV algebra, Hochschild cohomology and the Goldman bracket on surfaces”
Dmitry Vaintrob’s project seeks to establish a connection between two different areas of mathematics. This connection may lead to new applications in theoretical physics pertaining to research on string theory and mirror symmetry. With a focus on topological objects in mathematics, Mr. Vaintrob’s work taps into insights which are universal and applicable in any field. His mentor was Pavel Etingof, MIT Professor of Mathematics.
Mr. Vaintrob, a senior, is hoping to translate a lifelong fascination with mathematics into a career teaching on a college level. His project is the latest example of mathematic problem solving that has been encouraged by his parents since childhood. Mr. Vaintrob volunteers in two libraries, in his high school and the mathematics library at the University of Oregon. He is also the organizer of the math club in his school. Mr. Vaintrob is a pianist who enjoys reading classical literature and carrying the Russian tradition of memorizing poetry. He is fluent in Russian, French and English.
Well, there’s no paper on SPIRES by him yet, so I can’t find out more (although I did spot some by Arkady Vaintrob who seems to be a professor at the nearby University and also working on very topological things, so I’d hazard a guess that this might be one of the aforementioned parents.
“Mr. Vaintrob found a very beautiful formula for describing the way shapes combine in string theory,” said competition judge Dr. Michael Hopkins, Professor of Mathematics, Harvard University. “His work is at the PhD level, publishable and already attracting the attention of researchers.”
Mr. Vaintrob was initially introduced to his research by Dr. Etingof, who proposed a problem that came out of his own recent work. “It was an insanely difficult problem, which he solved within weeks and then came up with an important additional development,” continued Dr. Hopkins. “This brilliant young mathematician showed amazing maturity and perspective, which would be surprising in a graduate student, let along a high school senior.”
Well, congratulations Dmitry! Do get more of your high school friends interested in physics and other science while you’re at it.
Congratuations go to a team of three who won $100,000 for their work:
Scott Molony, Steven Arcangeli and Scott Horton, seniors at Oak Ridge High School in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, won the $100,000 prize in the team category, which they will share equally, for developing a promising technique that could one day help scientists engineer biofuel from plants.
Excellent stuff.
“This team used supercomputers to analyze biological networks, looking at tens of thousands of genes and their biological pathways to discover clues for engineering direct biofuel production by microorganisms,” said competition judge Dr. Gary Benson, Associate Professor, Department of Computer Science, Department of Biology, Director of Graduate Studies Program in Bioinformatics, Boston University. “Through a real team effort and a sophisticated, interdisciplinary approach, they developed a promising method that takes us a step closer to engineering biofuel.”
We should not just focus on the headliners, and so here’s a list of the other national winners:
Individuals
* $50,000 scholarship — Madhavi Gavini, Columbus, Mississippi
* $40,000 scholarship — Arjun Ramamurti, Lexington, Massachusetts
* $30,000 scholarship — Dominic Ludovici, Morgantown, West Virginia
* $20,000 scholarship — Guannan (Roger) Wang, Horseheads, New York
* $10,000 scholarship — Elizabeth Monier, San Antonio, TexasTeams
* $50,000 scholarship — Lucia Mocz and Philip Mocz, Mililani, Hawaii
* $40,000 scholarship — Sagar Indurkhya and Nicholas Tang, Durham, North
Carolina
* $30,000 scholarship — Jinju Yi, Plainview, New York and Vijay Jain, New
Hyde Park, New York
* $20,000 scholarship — Jenny Yeh, Houston, Texas and Mary Catherine Wen,
Queens, New York
* $10,000 scholarship — Catherine McCarthy, Lily Roberts and Rochelle
Rucker, Shaker Heights, Ohio
More details on the Siemens website.
On a sad note, I imagine that this will lead to even more idiotic and ill-informed commentary on how the string theory hegemony has press-ganged yet another bright young person into working on it against their will…. and how this sort of press attention to the competition -a high school competition! (the horror!)- will draw even more young people into our evil clutches… But hopefully most will see this for what it is: Young people enjoying doing science (of any kind), and being encouraged to do so….
-cvj
(Thanks Michelle!)
Does using Planck length with topology require a Planck angle?
Perhaps Planck length is simply the minimum distance needed to keep two strings from joining [string fusion?].
One Planck length may allow for perturbation while two Planck lenghts may allow for background independence.
Loops may simply have a zero helical angle while orthogonals have a 90 degree helical angle.
not to be blatant, but —
while many young people were sobbing when they found dostoyevsky, dmitry seems to have been fed. a friend of mine & i were discussing the originations of impressive work. there’s a definite correlation between precocity and, well, precocious parents. in that sense, i don’t believe his work is as fabulous. the pragmatic implications certainly don’t change, but the struggle, the discovery, the epiphany — yes, they all change.
furthermore, to downplay dmitry with weasel words like “well-rounded,” “oh he’s such a wonderful kid AND he’s brilliant! omg!” is /patronizing/ to the boy. i’m sure he has a deeper personality than the one our media purports. not every brilliant kid has to be nice, fluffy, or cute.
this is only /part/ of the reason a lot of us give up becoming mathematicians. the b word isn’t ‘beauty’ anymore, it’s ‘billboard’. in fact, it always has been. just — every year, we grow up a bit more, and we lose that naïveté a bit more, too.
i’m not trying to say dmitry’s work was unimportant. no matter how many paths someone takes to a conclusion, the results are static. i’m expressing fear that, because he grew up in an environment like this, his style might be stifled, and so might his intentions. who knows? maybe he /was/ pressured into competing by his family. maybe the “conspiracy” lies not within the string theory community, but within his own home? i know, i just spoiled the mood. i can’t help being so cynical.
cheers, hope i didn’t derail any important discussions. have a safe night♥
Stevem and Clifford,
This might be the best thing ever to come out of the String Wars. Seriously. I mean, now we know that the M in M-theory stands for Mordor!
No…. Frodo actually had a real effect on things….. so Peter cannot be Frodo.
He is Otho or Lobelia Sackville-Baggins, or equivalent. The rest of the Fellowship, I propose, would be actually working physicists who know more about what they are talking about, don’t you think? Or the analogy has some problems.
The Return of the Cosmological Constant Thing… excellent.
Hey! Maybe I am Gollum!!! Excellent!
-cvj
Stevem/Clifford,
This has made me laugh aloud (and I couldn’t stop laughing about the poor deluded children earlier)
But! I am afraid that Peter must be Frodo (the suffering!) and Lee is obviously Aragorn.
However, who is Gandalf? And Galadriel? And the rest of the Fellowship?
You see this proves everything – Peter/Lee are right! – there are too many in the forces of darkness and not enough in the forces of the light.
Gollum, anyone?
“I’m beginning to conceive a whole Tolkein style pastiche here…that somehow makes Witten into Sauron, the IAS and Princeton into the dark tower and Mordor…”
I suggest “The Lord of the Strings”.
Part 1: The Research Fellowship of the String.
Part 2: The Two Ivory Towers.
Part 3: The Return of the Cosmological Constant Thing.
You know, I’m beginning to conceive of a whole Tolkien-style pastiche here…… This somehow makes Witten into Sauron, the IAS and Princeton into the dark tower and Mordor, etc etc. The object is to spread the enslavement into doing eeevill string theory far and wide, to all the lands of the good folk. I’m a particularly nasty creature from the deep on the battlefield (orc? half-orc? troll? maybe even… no! iiiieeee!! a Balrog! -unlikely though… too powerful) trying to press small hobbit children into service. I guess that makes Peter one of the ineffectual people on the side of the good… maybe one of the Sackville-Bagginses. Otho perhaps.
I’m so eeeevill.
-cvj
Sorry – but I’m hearing that in my head as Dr Evil, in Austin Powers. Which works as well, actually.
Anon… I’m so Eeeevill (pronounced in Peter-Jackson-does-Tolkien style).
-cvj
The children! The children!
(sorry, but this thread is better than television)
Clifford!
Stop exploiting a child’s mathematical results in the name of String Theory! Is there no end to your shame? The people must know!
Clifford wrote:
A wonderful sentiment!
I love Tony Zee’s Nutshell book, and I’ve been working through it systematically in my “copious free time”. Most days I feel like I forgot more QFT than I ever learned, and any chance to build (or re-build) a solid understanding is a welcome opportunity.
I do not work in that field of mathematics, and am happy to admit that, as I did in the article. You do not work in string theory, but wrote a book and endless blog posts claiming to know a great deal about it to the extent that you know results showing that it is wrong… results that everyone who works in the field do not know. Which of us is the greater fool?
Without working in that field I know enough to see the connections to structures that exist in string theory, and why results there could have impact on research in string theory. On the other hand, your claim that it has nothing to do with string theory is idiotic, given that -amusingly- the very article you triumphantly presented to us us as evidence that it is nothing to do with string theory is written by authors who are themselves so much under the impression that it is related to string theory that they lectured at a conference that explicitly discusses the connection to string theory. See my comment here where I point these things out and which you seem to have ignored. See also the comments from others on this thread pointing out the connections -you’ve ignored those too. These are more examples of why it is becoming harder and harder to take you seriously. Your motives seem to have nothing to do with the science. It’s very confusing at times – why would you go to such lengths to deny a connection that is so obviously there?
Are you not embarrased by continuing along this spectaculary failed line you’ve taken in this thread? This is too funny.
-cvj
Clifford,
I’ll leave it to readers of this blog and of mine to decide for themselves whose arguments are “ill-informed” and whose are based on purely “gut feelings”.
It’s pretty hilarious to be having this whole discussion about who is ill-informed in the comment section of a posting devoted to exploiting a student’s mathematical result that you don’t understand a thing about in order to attack string theory critics in a sleazy way.
By the way, because I’m interested in 3+3 dimensional systems on the basis of experimental evidence for that, don’t misunderstand me and think I don’t take an interest in other work. I do – so long as it has some evidence. I confess being prejudiced in favour of evidence. (Apologies to all who are deeply offended.)
I. G. Noramus,
Yes I have heard of that stuff, and as I said I’m interested in 3+3 dimensional system which deals with gravity in a way I like (making checkable predictions). I didn’t say the Standard Model QFT is limited to 3+1 dimensions, but as physics that’s where it comes from!
It’s a bit shocking that people misunderstand this. Maybe they do understand it and are just pretending to be fools.
>those guys deserve to have their papers hosted on arXiv
nc, Jesus Christ! Have you ever heard of Landau-Ginzburg? Of the Ising model? Of the Schwinger model? QFT, just like quantum mechanics, can be defined in any number of dimensions.
Hi Clifford,
Yes, those guys deserve to have their papers hosted on arXiv and published in peer-reviewed journals when checked.
Look at the first sentence you wrote in your “explanation” above.
Also, what about all those people studying quantum field theories in two and three dimensions in order to undertand condensed matter systems? Don’t they count? Don’t the experiments done there verifying these QFTs in other dimensions interest you?
-cvj
Hi Clifford,
QFT comes from empirically evidence in 4-d experimentation measurements, and only in that way is 4-d.
I didn’t define it 4-d, I’m veryinterested in extra dimensions and have repeatedly mentioned one particular extra-dimensional unification: ‘Gravitation and Electrodynamics over SO(3,3)’ on CERN document server, EXT-2003-090 by D. R. Lunsford. It was peer-reviewed and published but was deleted from arXiv. It makes predictions, eliminates cosmological constant. It’s 3 orthagonal time dimensions and its elimination of the CC mean it fits a gravity mechanism which is also predictive.
Prof. Johnson,
I’ll definitely see if my library has that book.
I don’t know the book about which you speak.
-cvj
andy, I really welcome comments and questions such as yours. There is no shame in ignorance. THe shame is in either not making the effort to learn more by asking questions, or by pretending to know a lot about that which you don’t. Please… questions are good. But beware of answers from those who have not studied well the subject about which they speak. This is why you should go and read more. Try Tony Zee’s “Quantum Field Theory in a Nutshell”, as an excellent conceptual starter book about modern quantum field theory. It is a breath of fresh air. nc…. please go and study that book too.
Best,
-cvj
Prof. Johnson,
I’m reading Franz Gross’ Relativistic QM and Field Theory. Is that a standard one on QFT? Do you recommend it?
nc:- that fact that you define field theory to be four dimensional at the outset is just shocking and it does not really encourage anyone to take you seriously. Please stick to what you know… or if you do know it… please write stuff that is not so troublingly misleading to people.
-cvj
Prof Johnson I’d ask that you delete my comments because I am not hoping to advertise my stupidity.
I would also like to add that my opinion is not from an informed viewpoint and I if Prof. Johnson is trying to keep the discourse here accurate and from informed viewpoints I would kindly ask that he delete this and my previous comment.
andy… Might I suggest that you consider that there is no connection between field theory and four dimensions, despite what nc said? To restrict the sutdy of field theory to four dimensions is to limit ones understanding of what field theory is, and what it can and can’t do.
Reading your comment above pains me a bit, sicne it is like hearing someone say: “I don’t read or study any numbers but the positive integers or the rational numbers because surely only they are “physical”. Things like irrational numbers, negative numbers, zero, complex numbers, etc…. they’re not worth studying because they’re unphysical….
Please reconsider. And please *don’t* get your wisdom from anonymous jabber on blogs. That includes me….listen a bit to what you hear in places like this, but go and do your own digging… go to the library and get some good books.
Best,
-cvj
Hi Clifford,
Try this for size and accuracy: QFT is empirically defensible, string isn’t.
Ummm, nc thank you for your reply. I’m grossly understudied on string theory. I see any theory using more than 4 space-time dimensions as nonphysical so I just don’t read or study them. So in that regard I suppose I’m vexed by the idea that someone would confuse QFT with a model that uses more than 4 dimensions.
Uh…. Whoever reads the above looking for answers…please take the above “description” of field theory and string theory with several heapings (truckloads full) of salt and be aware that there are several misleading things in it. I don’t mean to be rude, nc, but you do tend to write these long long long things which mix up facts, throw around some buzzwords incorrectly, and generally confuse things a lot. It can be misleading to the uninitiated.
-cvj
Okay I haven’t read this whole blog over yet, but I am very confused by the claim that someone wouldn’t be able to distinguish between QFT and string theory. – andy
Ummm, QFT is the 3+1 dimensional quantum field theory of the Standard Model (strong and electroweak fields,) while string theory is an attempt represent the Standard Model particles by strings, on the assumption that you have a 1-dimensional string which when moves gains a time dimension (forming a 2-d worldsheet).
Adding another 8 dimensions to satisfy fermionic conformal symmetry (or adding another 24-d in bosonic string theory) gives 10-d strings or 26-d strings. The former will exhibit 3+1 macroscopic dimensions if 6 dimensions are rolled up in a tiny Calabi-Yau manifold.
The relationship between QFT and string theory is therefore obtaining the Standard Model particles and spin-2 graviton from a solution to a 10 dimensional string with 6-d C-Y. Supergravity is 11 dimensional. Presumably Witten’s M-theory 10/11-d unification is analogous to the Kaluza-Klein theory, where adding just one extra rolled-up distance dimension to the metric of general relativity (making it 5-d not 4-d) gives you the electromagnetic photon as well as gravity (an uncheckable unification of electromagnetic radiation and gravity). Hence, by adding a single extra dimension you may from string theory gain some sort of additional bosonic propagator, like gravitons. In GR the extra dimension is evidenced in 3-d as curvature (gravitation effects). An extra dimension can always be seen in lower dimensions as some kind of force field phenomena.
If you look at the history, the beautiful Einstein-Hilbert field equation of GR (1915) was widely promoted only in 1919 after being tested! Similarly, the Dirac equation was dismissed viciously in 1929 by Heisenberg because it had one unphysical solution (antimatter) as well as predicting the electron! Heisenberg wrote:
“The saddest chapter of modern physics is and remains the Dirac theory. … I regard the Dirac theory … as learned trash which no one can take seriously.”
(M. Kaku, Einstein’s Cosmos, Phoenix, 2005, p 123.)
After experimental confirmation Heisenberg said:
“I think that this discovery of anti-matter was perhaps the biggest jump of all the big jumps in our century.”
(Ibid, p124.)
Folks… Let’s not make this discussion about Lubos. We should stick to the issues in hand since (a) Peter very often likes to use Lubos as a means of distracting us away from substantive discussion, just as he likes to resort to appearing wounded due to us “sneering” at him (see above and earlier discussion threads showing remarkable evasiveness on his part) just about when he’s pressed for content. Furthermore, (b) since I do not wish to host even a fraction of Lubos’ well-known bile on this blog, he will not be able to answer for himself, so let’s stay away from attacks on him.
Best,
-cvj
Peter,
It’s funny that you mention Lubos, as not long ago I stumbled on his website (thru google) and
[… stuff deleted by cvj, but author’s key point below retained]
I wouldn’t put too much value on what he’s saying considering all the nonsense he’s writing on his site.
Dear Peter,
You are actually proud of having had discussions and arguments over such a long time with the result that your views have not changed at all? I find that rather telling.
That’s about the highest level of rigour your arguments have risen to. True to form.
Thanks for showing everyone the sort of careful and reasoned discourse your views are based upon. I think they can make up their own minds.
Good Day.
-cvj
Clifford,
You should restrain your happiness, my views haven’t changed at all.
Your last comment is an offensive load of idiotic horse manure. You and Jacques (which is about the extent of “we”, as far as I can tell) and your co-thinking colleague Lubos can stick to your delusion that your field is in a healthy state, its only problem the mysterious attention that the ill-informed views of Peter Woit and Lee Smolin are getting. Take a look around you and I think you’ll notice that you’re becoming increasingly isolated in the scientific community and more and more of a joke. One major reason for this is your inability to respond intelligently to serious criticism and acknowledge that the problems your critics are pointing to are very real.
TheGraduate,
There are many examples of string theory overhype described on my blog over the past couple years, explicitly pointing to a specific piece of hype by a specific person on a specific topic and explaining why it is hype. If you want to actually understand what I’m writing about in such blog entries, you need to actually learn the details of the science in this field, and that is something you’re not going to get by just reading blog entries.
Okay I haven’t read this whole blog over yet, but I am very confused by the claim that someone wouldn’t be able to distinguish between QFT and string theory.
Dr. Woit,
If people tended to separate different string theorists and string theory into smaller parts then I would too. I basically know everything about string theory from reading you, Dr. Smolin, Dr. Johnson and the other blogs. When are people ever particularly specific about meaning some researchers and not others?
For instance when you complain about overblown hype, do you single out who you mean, what area of string theory they are in, whether this overblown hype is characteristic of that particular subfield and why it doesn’t apply to others? I’ve not noticed this.
I have read carefully what you have said, as have others. We’ve challenged what you have said – line by line- on this blog and others and found it coming up severely short in many places. We’ve challenged your technical arguments, and in fact found that you have no technical arguments of merit whatsover (sadly, you just don’t know what you’re talking about most of the time when it comes to detailed results of the field that you are criticising so strongly), and so have been left only with your gut feelings to go on. You confuse your gut feelings (which you are entitled to) with actual facts…. as I keep reminding you and you ignore me….. Those gut feelings in turn are based mostly on oversimplistic or simply wrong chariacatures of research and researchers in the field, and we keep offering you facts to help you complete the picture. You chose to ignore those facts…. This has been going on for over a year, and goodness knows how much longer before I got involved.
I am happy with this emergence from simplicity that you may be experiencing. Very happy.
Don’t drop the ball now Peter…
-cvj
Clifford,
I’m glad you read that particular couple of sentences correctly. If in general you read what I write more carefully, you might find that what I have to say is far less simplistic than you think…
Peter Woit said:
What have you done with the real Peter Woit!? 🙂
Seriously: That’s maybe the first sensible thing I’ve ever read from you on the subject. I am genuinely surprised and pleased at this development, because you’ve previously shown no evidence (after over a year of talking to you) of being able to learn anything or modify your opinions in the face of facts. Perhaps there is some light at the end of the tunnel after all. So will you now stop lumping all “string theorists” together into one monolithic block in your simplistic characterisations of the researchers in the area, and the research itself?
Thank you.
-cvj
TheGraduate,
You keep referring to “string theory” as a single thing and wanting me to characterize this single thing in some simplistic way. It’s not a single thing, there are many different kinds of research going on under the heading of “string theory. The worst of these is the “Landscape”, which is dreadful physics, not even a science, and hasn’t led to any particularly interesting mathematics. In principle studying a nearly infinite variety of very complicated ugly Rube Goldberg structures might turn up some interesting mathematical questions, but this is a very inefficient way of doing so.
Dr. Woit,
I understand what you are saying but now I am lost again about what your objection to string theory is. For instance, the ‘Landscape’ might be pseudo-science but I’ve heard of some rather ambitious mathematical and computational attempts at solving them. (This would be a case of the physics being at ‘worst’ mathematics.)
@Anon and Joan H:
Anybody who complains about string theory should sound a barbaric yawp over the rooftops of the world when they hear about Deepak Chopra’s quantum woo. Just an example. Nobody is spending “billions and billions” of dollars on the quantum-mind nonsense, to my knowledge, but Chopra does have a much larger annual income than most string theorists of my acquaintance. . . .
String theory might (or might not) be a disaster for theoretical physics, but it appears one can make a very decent living predicting the disaster, whether it ever happens or not. As anon suggested, for goodness sake turn your energy to scientific fields where *billions and billions* of dollars may, or may not, be being mis-spent and leave these string theorists alone. Or else it does appear that the interest is precisely to make a living, nothing about the actual science.
So the winning group was from Oak Ridge, which is where I attended high school. It was a funny place to grow up, because so many of the parents were scientists. As a result you had a lot of wicked smart kids running around, all of whom had skipped two grades and were doing research at ORNL in their spare time. By the time they got to high school those kids were capable of some really amazing work, like the group Cliff describes above. But some of the parents couldn’t (or didn’t want to) wait that long, and in anticipation of their kid becoming the next big thing in whatever field, would “help” them along. My favorite example was our junior high science fairs. You had the usual distribution of “Does Music Affect Plant Growth?” and “What Kind of Bacteria is on Everyday Objects?” projects. Then, you’d have the kid whose mom or dad worked in Optics, who just happened to have an incredible, elaborate project on precision interferometry measurements using tin foil, two salad bowls, and the one-of-a-kind, $250,000 laser in their parent’s lab. Or the kid whose parent studied strontium uptake in the water table would present a complicated analysis on the impact of local geography and strata in the planning of waste disposal, based on 35 years of data. There were always *a lot* of these projects, with conference-worthy posters and write ups that read like they had gone through several rounds of peer review.
Peter said:
He also said:
But you are doing precisely that now! Nowhere in my post or my comments did I claim that string topology is string theory. You made that up out of whole cloth, as you have done with several other things. I was talking about research on topics that are related to, inspired by, possibily relevant to.. etc… the research program of string theory. I did not equate the two.
And by pointing out that there exists narrow-minded people who – just for the sake of it, apparenly – don’t like any press coverage that involves work on string theory or related topics I am not exploiting the work of bright young kids. I am just pointing out the existence of people with that state of mind.
Best,
-cvj
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Clifford :As usual I have not the slightest idea what you are talking about. Sorry.
Visual abstractions, like, computer graphics of Thomas Banchoff.
http://www.wmueller.com/home/papers/gifs%5Cwund%5CImage25.gif
These kinds of thing in “glass cabinets.” That’s what Bacon was talking about, and what Mueller was trying to show.
Attributes of a string topology? Or just plain topology?
I understand the “youngsters excitement” in your article. I thought one might missed this because of what is exchanging back and forth here, loosing some importance on visualizing mathematics?
TheGraduate,
As I wrote earlier, I don’t think it’s a meaningful statement to say that string theory is or is not a form of mathematics. String theory by now is a very complicated subject, and it has interacted with the subject of mathematics in a very complicated and interesting way. Lots of string theory just applies known mathematical techniques, and is just like any other application of mathematics to the sciences, not really telling mathematicians anything new. But some parts of string theory have a much more interesting relation to mathematics. They’ve raised new mathematical questions that mathematicians haven’t thought about before or don’t know the answers to, and, even better, sometimes have provided new insights and techniques for dealing with these questions. It’s also true that quantum field theory has had a huge impact of this kind on mathematics of the last 30 years or so. Personally I think it’s worthwhile for mathematicians to really try and understand this in a deep way, and part of this involves understanding exactly where the ideas are coming from, whether it’s QFT or string theory. Most mathematicians tend to feel this is too hard, and just try and see if what physicists are saying helps them at all with the mathematical problems that they care about, not worrying much about the physics ideas involved.
I think string theory has been a disaster for theoretical physics, but parts of it have had quite healthy effects on mathematics. One reason for this is precisely because of its failure to achieve what it set out to do in physics. If things had worked out back in 1985 and a Calabi-Yau with the right properties to give the standard model had been found, there wouldn’t have been much impact on math. But string theorists have now spent more than 20 years wandering around in a mathematically very rich area, trying one thing after another, and generating lots of mathematically interesting questions.
Just saw your last comment, and my objection to it is that it’s just absurdly crude to characterize “string theory” all together like that. Some parts of it potentially are advanced physics (AdS/CFT), others are pseudo-science masquerading as “advanced physics” (the Landscape). And the relation to math is as described above. Mathematicians would not describe this situation as string theory being “at worst” mathematics.
Dr. Woit,
To sum up my question: What would be your objection to the statement that string theory is at best, some incredibly advanced physics and at worse, some incredibly advanced mathematics?
Dr. Woit,
Ah, I guess I misunderstood your argument in that regard. I thought you were arguing that string theory wasn’t mathematics because it had too many conjectured ideas. Could you elaborate then on why you do not see string theory as a form of mathematics even if it fails to be physics?
TheGraduate,
I’ve never argued that string theory isn’t math because it’s built on conjectured results. First of all, saying either “string theory is math” or “string theory isn’t math” is a meaningless statement. Secondly, much very interesting mathematics consists of conjectures or ideas built on conjectures. Mathematicians are very much concerned about what they know how to prove and what they don’t know how to prove, but they don’t dismiss as “not mathematics” things they don’t know how to prove.
In default of something that can satisfy Karl Popper’s ghost, wouldn’t the whole shebang be considered “string inspired mathematics�
Mathematics is a form of knowledge based on the proof-theorem model. Therefore, in order to consider string theory math, one has to remove all the parts that are conjecture or built on conjectured results. I am not sure how much of String Theory is left after that … from what I get from Dr. Woit, he argues not much. I would actually be interested in hearing a string theorist respond to that objection so I can clarify in my mind what string theory actually is.
Jacques and Clifford,
It’s so much fun to watch you two try and out-do each other in your sneering about how well-informed I may or may not be.
“giving us the opportunity once again to show us how well-informed you are?”
Oh, how lovely. Jacques always wants to play this game with me, now Clifford wants to play too. The way the game goes is that, whatever I write, Jacques then misquotes it and sneers at the misquote, proving to his satisfaction that I don’t know what I’m talking about.
Let’s play the game:
“Gromov-Witten theory” involves a range of many different techniques, from mathematical ones that have nothing to do with string theory (Gromov’s paper appeared in 1985, and string theory had nothing at all to do with it, it was not even “string-inspired”), to much more recent string-theory techniques that provide impressive computations of Gromov-Witten invariants in special cases. It would be silly to say that “Gromov-Witten theory is string theory”, but, sure, the two different subjects have recently had a very fruitful interaction.
As for Clifford’s ranting about my “incredibly short-sighted and narrow-minded” ways, I’ll stand by my original claim that string topology is not string theory, unless you adopt a definition of “string theory” so broad as to be meaningless, a tactic you might want to adopt if you thought it was a good idea to exploit the work of a bright young mathematician who has just been honored, and use it as a sleazy attack on string theory critics, accusing them of:
“idiotic and ill-informed commentary on how the string theory hegemony has press-ganged yet another bright young person into working on it against their will”
Wait a minute. Everybody likes to point out that string theory has yet to make any falsifiable predictions. In default of something that can satisfy Karl Popper’s ghost, wouldn’t the whole shebang be considered “string inspired mathematics”? Sure, some pieces might be more physically motivated than others, and people might have different hopes about which piece is likely to yield a worthwhile prediction, but if we take the philosophical criticism of string theory at face value, then it all comes to the same level with string topology. At first glance, string topology would occupy a similar position to, say, bosonic string theory: it’s conceptually useful, but it’s not the place we look if we really want to bang out a falsifiable prediction. In the next edition of Polchinski, it’ll be the chapter which the mathematicians read and the physicists skim.
Plato,
As usual I have not the slightest idea what you are talking about. Sorry.
-cvj
Peter said:
How do you get from me pointing out that research in areas of field theory, and areas of mathematics have impact on string theory(and benefit from the techniques of string theory) and the other way around (that string research benefits from research in those areas) to the above statement?
Why be so incredibly short-sighted and narrow-minded about how programs of research are carried out and intersect, about how they are motivated, and what they are called? What is the point? What are you trying to protect?
And how about answering Jacques’ question directly, giving us the opportunity once again to show us how well-informed you are?
Cheers,
-cvj
>And since Clifford has informed us that QFT, TQFT and all of mathematics are string theory, sure Gromov-Witten theory is definitely string theory.
I wasn’t asking for Clifford’s opinion; I was asking for yours.
If I may Clifford I would like to save the “abstract world and it’s uniquenss” for some of us lay people so “the flavour” is not lost? 🙂 It’s a wonderful thing “to discover” when we could imagine such things according to the mathematics.
Mathematical Wunderkammern
While I show it’s history, I also like what has transpired since then. 🙂
So. If you add up all the tax payer’s money that have been either spent or promised to stem cell research (I am using this here as an example of a technology that has tremendous potential but has not yet been proven to have any medical relevance) how does it compare to the amount of state/federal money that has been used to fund String Theory?
Stem cells: That would be $3 billion in CA, $? billion from the NIH, $? million from other states and $? from the NSF (plus countless millions from the pharmaceutical industry and private foundations)
String theory: $? million NSF, $? million DOE, ??
I understand that it is fun to point fingers at String Theory; it generates meager sort of celebrity and gets the attention of smart people who would otherwise ignore you. But, frankly, the target seems ridiculous compared to the fallout if (say) stem cell research proves to be ineffective.
Jacques,
String topology is not Gromov-Witten theory, even if it may have applications to Gromov-Witten theory. And since Clifford has informed us that QFT, TQFT and all of mathematics are string theory, sure Gromov-Witten theory is definitely string theory.
Clifford,
I see, it’s not only TQFT and QFT that are string theory, but also basically all of mathematics (since it’s hard to think of an area of mathematics that some string theorist or other hasn’t tried to use at one time or another). Thanks for letting me know about this, I’ll start campaigning now for the university to chisel “Mathematics” off the front of our building and replace it with “String Theory”.
I asked about Gromov-Witten Theory, not about TQFT, in general (the latter is a separate discussion).
OK Clifford and Jacques,
Since it turns out that TQFT and QFT are both string theory, I guess I’m a string theorist and fervent believer that much more in the way of resources and attention should be given to the deeper investigation of string theory. I just didn’t realize this until now. My bad.
Aaron:- Sure, but the same can be said about mirror symmetry and a host of other things….. string inspired mathematics….. but some of those mathematics can also be useful for doing string theory. Working on developing such mathematics is in this sense often contributing to our understanding of string theory… Why does this not count as research related to string theory?
And why is Peter so afraid of people saying that, I wonder?
-cvj
Peter-the-well-informed said:
One of the things we’ve been trying to tell you in all of these discussions is that this is true for some physicists too. It is a very positive outcome of the realization that research into string theory has so many useful applications in other areas of theoretial physics. This is why this artificial separation of research effort into “string theory” and “not string theory” is all so puzzling to me (and largely pointless if your agenda is about doing good science).
-cvj
Gromov-Witten theory is more that TQFT, no?
There’s an entire section of the review article you cited, devoted to the relation between string topology and the Gromov-Witten theory of the cotangent bundle of M.
But, I suppose that, if one is willing to draw the boundaries so that Gromov-Witten theory is “just” TQFT, and not stringy at all, one can just as easily eliminate any other possible connection with string theory.
Clifford,
Mathematicians in many fields have benefited a lot from the questions physicists have asked them and trying to communicate with physicists about what they are doing, giving them a new perspective and new ideas. On the whole, mathematicians don’t typically these days distinguish between QFT and string theory; to them it’s all one subject. The whole idea of a TQFT has had a big impact on topology, and “string topology” is one area where this has had an influence.
But, sorry, the idea of a TQFT and the way it is used in string topology is not “string theory”, unless you want to define “string theory” in such a broad way as to make the term meaningless, e.g. including any 2d qft.
I think it’s probably best to consider string topology as string inspired mathematics. It’s a very toy model for some of the structures that show up in string theory (a much more powerful version would be Costello’s work).
Dear Peter,
I find myself confused. Probably something to do with me being “ill-informed”. The authors of the article you cited are Ralph L. Cohen and Alexander A. Voronov. I noticed that there was a summer school on String Topology in Spain in September 2003. Title: “Summer School on String Topology and Hochschild Homology; Applications to Mathematical Physics”. Among the things mentioned on the website about the program was, and I quote:
I noticed also that two of the three lecturers at that school have the names Ralph L. Cohen and Alexander A. Voronov.
So help me here…. how is this not relevant to research in string theory? Or are the organisers of the conference, the participants and the lecturers (and authors of the article you cited) also ill-informed?
Or maybe it is all a coincidence, and the fact that the names and topics match so closely is just one of those internet accidents. (Or one of those convoluted conspiracies that you are so fond of.)
Please clarify.
-cvj
How bizarre… Where did I claim that Peter?
And further, are you saying that this type of work has nothing to do with string theory? Please explain.
How you pick and choose what you want to offer as part of (update: or at least related to) string theory research and what you want to leave out always amazes me. (Is research into mirror symmetry related to string theory research, by your assessment, for example?)
-cvj
I saw this story yesterday and thought it was very impressive to see that a high-school student was able to do work at this level in topology. On a sadder note, I did suspect that it would generate ill-informed commentary from string theorists who don’t know what “string topology” is, and would want to claim it and this student’s work as somehow part of string theory and further evidence of its power and glory. For anyone interested in finding out about what string topology actually is, an excellent review article is http://arxiv.org/abs/math/0503625