Since string theory came in all hell has broken loose. When it became apparent that the sea of reality was comprised of energy and really nothing else, we all woke up to a world that wasn't what it seemed after all, and wondered what to do with it. Science hadn't opened its doors at the time to collaborations with art, philosophy and public interaction - things were still very closed-shop when strings came into fashion.
And how are things going with string theory? The promises and hopes from the 1980s have not worked out. They thought they'd find the right Calabi-Yau manifold and the fermion multiplets and masses would pop out and they'd have the whole thing wrapped up before lunch. But that didn't happen. String models grew increasingly complicated. And with every fanciful step they made away from the Standard Model, the more likely they were to be wrong; they were mesmerized by their own mathematical constructions, which kept them busy but were much more complex than the Standard Model they were trying to explain. String theory became a postmodernist monstrosity, lumbering forward on self-provided momentum without ever receiving the pruning from experimental verification that physics demands. The closest thing to a physical prediction that string theory has ever produced is that there should be superparticles, but these have not shown up. String theory models lost connection to the physical world. Other physicists and mathematicians were left wondering if string theorists had joined some sort of cult. I escaped to Maui to get away from the train wreck.
So goes the article in Scientific American posted October 2014. In the thick of it myself, blindly running towards a wall that wasn't there to meet a train wreck of my own, I can read that now and see how the more unravelling gets done, the more there is to unravel. It's as if the dimensions and couplets have counterbalanced themselves on just the right alignment for the way we're looking now to be Not Quite Right, because after all we're not allowed to know the future, and knowing the future is something the quantum world is very good at. NQR and QR are stacking themselves up for our understanding only when the time is absolutely right, and not a moment before, so that whatever is happening out here in a part of the Universe we've never travelled through before gets to happen perfectly, as every pattern does, and in the meantime we wait contemplatively.
So goes the article in Scientific American posted October 2014. In the thick of it myself, blindly running towards a wall that wasn't there to meet a train wreck of my own, I can read that now and see how the more unravelling gets done, the more there is to unravel. It's as if the dimensions and couplets have counterbalanced themselves on just the right alignment for the way we're looking now to be Not Quite Right, because after all we're not allowed to know the future, and knowing the future is something the quantum world is very good at. NQR and QR are stacking themselves up for our understanding only when the time is absolutely right, and not a moment before, so that whatever is happening out here in a part of the Universe we've never travelled through before gets to happen perfectly, as every pattern does, and in the meantime we wait contemplatively.
The Stop-Press new particle to break through the LHC is also spinning dimensional yarns over breakfast, waiting to line up with the other candidates waiting for a call to the party - the WIMPs and the WINOs and the tachyons and such - who've been before, a bit like Groundhog Day, as each dimension plays out before the next in a ripple effect we can feel. We can feel it coming. Something big. Something we've got to surf. Oh great, we've got the Net. And the new particle - one Up Quark and two Charm Quarks, they say, having given this exotic the name Ξcc++ with the same sense of cruel irony to strike when Beauty and Truth were abolished. Shame on the establishment. Here in the Goldilocks Zone, that just wasn't fair. A low blow without call. Cheating nature, some would say, denying her right to be beautiful and true at the same time. Please take them back, the Top and Bottom, to satisfy the demands of QR>. The Top Quark has as much mass as an atom of gold, so give it some respect. And give this new particle a proper name, so it can take its place in the orchestra presently tuning up.
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