It's a joke, Padrino. Point is the SS theory is terribly complex and poorly understood even by the smartest people on earth.

As long as that doesn't become an argument on itself to waive away critics I do not see why it would be a big deal whether or not a theory is terribly complex. There are plenty of other theories that require a really good understanding of the mathematics, physics and theory behind it to really be able to comprehend them. I think the only thing really making this 'more' complex if you like is the fact that it tries to merge theories of different scientific disciplines. It's not a surprise that this isn't exactly easy to do. Somehow the almost mythical character this theory gets slapped on is misplaced in my opinion,

(btw. this is just a general rant)

Cheers

It's more than that Phemox.

Yes it's complex and you are right, there are plenty of complex theories out there. The problem is that it's complex and (so far) UNTESTABLE. Hence, it becomes an exercise in mathematcal wordplay which may be beautiful and may seem true to the theorists but science does not hinge on mathematics (it doesn't!)... it hinges on experiments.

So without experiments that can test 11 dimensions vs. 22 vs. 54843, the theory is complex and, well, useless. The day we can test this theory is the day that it will become more valid in the eyes of scientists... but heck, we are BARELY now starting to test for the Higgs Particle, a lynchpin of the Standard Model of Particle Physics that has been around for nearly 50 years, so I have no illusions that we will be able to test SS theory any time soon.

Aah, right, I totally forgot about the fact that it's an untestable theory (so far). Okey, yeah, then it's a whole different story,

Cheers

'Til now it is just philosophy, and I doubt it will ever become more than that. As far as I see it, Brian Greene is wasting his time on something that - like fastlane mentioned - we won't be able to test in our lifetime.
Thing about Superstring Theory is also that so far it isn't able to make any predictions that could give the slidest proof of string theory being correct. Don't forget, we didn't test general relativity through experiments. It just made some predictions about the world surrounding us that happen to be considerable accurate. Therefore we assume that Einstein was right - he doesn't have to be, since we know that either general relativity or quantum mechanics have to be at least a little bit wrong - though we can't actually see the warps and ripples suspected by general relativity.

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Don't forget, we didn't test general relativity through experiments.

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WHOA! Oh yes we did! Einstein was considered a crackpot and his theory completely ignored until Sir Arther Eddignton did a test of the bending of light after an eclipse and the bending was in complete accordance to the theory.

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Therefore we assume that Einstein was right

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But he is right... in the realms that his theoy is valid. That we may need to add to the theory to make it compatable with QM doesn't make it wrong, merely incomplete.

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As far as I see it, Brian Greene is wasting his time on something that

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I disagree. Like Einstein, several theories started off as purely mathematical artifacts until tested. It will be through Greene's and others works that we can finally get to a stage where we might be able to test it. At that stage, SS may be proven right OR wrong. And even if wrong, it will have at least excluded that line of thought from Grand Unified Theories. Not a waste of time, but not worthy of complete belief right now either!!!

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But he is right... in the realms that his theoy is valid. That we may need to add to the theory to make it compatable with QM doesn't make it wrong, merely incomplete.

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Enter Hawkings and the *theory of everything* which attempts to unify the two.

As for superstring theory, there actually are classes at MIT which use this freely available book as text if anyone wants to give it a try...;)

web page It even has a solutions manual.
I myself only have a vague idea of what it is.

When I was at Oxford, England for a few months, I took a String theory class (not even Super STrings). From day one, it was about soliving imaginary integrals and hardcore math. There really wasn't any "physics" that I could ascertain. Now mind you, I never was a stellar physicist and this is a hardcore class, but I was still impressed by the fact that the class started with math and that it was up to us to "deceipher" the physics behind it.

We did not use Greene's book but another textbook and this was 8 years ago. Perhaps things have gotten better, perhaps the textbooks have gotten better, I don't know. But I do know that Strings are our best hope for GUT and yet ironically the worst hope for experimentation.