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Why String Theory Still Offers Hope We Can Unify Physics

Illustration by John Hersey

By Brian Greene

In October 1984 I arrived at Oxford University, trailing a large steamer trunk containing a couple of changes of clothing and about five dozen textbooks. I had a freshly minted bachelor’s degree in physics from Harvard, and I was raring to launch into graduate study. But within a couple of weeks, the more advanced students had sucked the wind from my sails. Change fields now while you still can, many said. There’s nothing happening in fundamental physics.

Then, just a couple of months later, the prestigious (if tamely titled) journal Physics Letters B published an article that ignited the first superstring revolution, a sweeping movement that inspired thousands of physicists worldwide to drop their research in progress and chase Einstein’s long-sought dream of a unified theory. The field was young, the terrain fertile and the atmosphere electric. The only thing I needed to drop was a neophyte’s inhibition to run with the world’s leading physicists. I did. What followed proved to be the most exciting intellectual odyssey of my life.

That was 30 years ago this month, making the moment ripe for taking stock: Is string theory revealing reality’s deep laws? Or, as some detractors have claimed, is it a mathematical mirage that has sidetracked a generation of physicists?

***

Unification has become synonymous with Einstein, but the enterprise has been at the heart of modern physics for centuries. Isaac Newton united the heavens and Earth, revealing that the same laws governing the motion of the planets and the Moon described the trajectory of a spinning wheel and a rolling rock. About 200 years later, James Clerk Maxwell took the unification baton for the next leg, showing that electricity and magnetism are two aspects of a single force described by a single mathematical formalism.

The next two steps, big ones at that, were indeed vintage Einstein. In 1905, Einstein linked space and time, showing that motion through one affects passage through the other, the hallmark of his special theory of relativity. Ten years later, Einstein extended these insights with his general theory of relativity, providing the most refined description of gravity, the force governing the likes of stars and galaxies. With these achievements, Einstein envisioned that a grand synthesis of all of nature’s forces was within reach.

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Trapping Light In A ‘Tornado’ Could Have Major Implications

Physics





Photo credit:

Image courtesy of the researchers

In order to continue development of smaller, more useful particle accelerators and build upon optical computing and data transmission, scientists will need to be able to better manipulate the transmission of light. Building on prior research, a team led by Bo Zhen from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology now has a better understanding of how light can be stopped and manipulated. Zhen is the lead author of the paper, which was published in the journal Physical Review Letters.

98 Never-Before-Seen Beetle Species Discovered in Indonesia

Plants and Animals





Photo credit:

These are the 98 new species of Trigonopterus plus T. amphoralis (column 1, 3rd from top), a species lost since 1922 / Alexander Riedel CC-BY 4.0

Researchers sifting through leaf litter on the Indonesian islands have discovered 98 new species of beetles from the genus Trigonopterus. The new beetles -- none of which have ever been seen by a human eye before -- were described in ZooKeys this week. 

An Unexpected Journey Into Science and Opinion

Climate changeEvolutionGeneralScience

Last Tuesday afternoon, NCSE’s intrepid (but at the time, flu-ridden) communications director forwarded me an urgent request for assistance. Slate science editor Laura Helmuth was moderating a panel at the annual American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco, and one of her panelists had bailed. Could I step in tomorrow, to talk about opinion journalism for scientists and science journalists?

Luckily, AGU is progressive enough to offer on-site childcare at its meeting, so I was able to accept the offer. And despite relatively short notice, I was able to assemble an argument that I’m sufficiently pleased with that I’d like to share it now, with you.

Dan Janzen, 2009, by Sam Beebe (using a CC-BY license)

I opened with a quotation from Dan Janzen’s 1986 essay on “The Future of Tropical Ecology,” a seminal document in the creation of the discipline of conservation biology, a scientific discipline dedicated to shifting policy. Janzen, in the usually staid pages of Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics, wrote:

Whether there is a future for tropical ecology, and of what it will consist, does not lie in the unveiling of yet another intricate animal-plant interaction, in the application of technological marvels, or in the discovery of a crop plant that can be grown with high yield on rainforest soils.…

Engineers build bridges, writers weave words, and biologists are the representatives of the natural world. If biologists want a tropics in which to biologize, they are going to have to buy it with care, energy, effort, strategy, tactics, time, and cash. And I cannot overemphasize the urgency as well as the responsibility. …If the tropics of the world go under, biologists of the world will have no one but themselves to blame. We can see very clearly what is happening, what will be the irreversible consequences for biology and humanity, and how the solutions must be constructed.

I think the same argument could be made about the state of climate science today. Scientists have a depth of understanding of the crisis at hand that few others do, and have a responsibility to share that understanding. Too often, scientists will lay out all that we know about the shape of the crisis before us, and then demur when asked what we should do. Sometimes they do so out of fear, either fear of political attacks (as if staying silent about policy protected NCSE board member Ben Santer or NCSE Friend of the Earth award-winner Michael Mann when their science proved politically inconvenient). Other times, the fear is that speaking about policy, or expressing a personal opinion, will make the scientist seem less credible.

I think that’s misguided for two reasons. First, refusing to answer when asked what we should do sounds like a cop out. If a scientist lays out evidence that there’s a crisis, but then shrugs when asked about solutions, it doesn’t make the audience feel like there’s much of a crisis. And it’s not credible: of course scientists have opinions, and there’s no reason to pretend otherwise.

Second, the public respects scientists and wants to know what scientists think. The biennial Science and Engineering Indicators report from the National Science Board consistently finds that scientists are highly-respected, with only the military enjoying more public confidence. A survey by the Pew Center found the same, with scientists basically tied with teachers, and only slightly lagging the military in terms of which groups contribute a lot to society’s well-being.

Scientists have the public’s trust by other measures. In 2006 and 2010, when the General Social survey asked (on the National Science Board’s behalf) whether scientists’ recommendations about global warming policy are generally motivated by their own narrow interests or by the greater needs of the nation, people overwhelmingly viewed scientists as impartial, in strong contrast to the perception business leaders and even the politicians elected to represent the nation’s interests. The public trusts scientists, respects scientists, and wants to hear what scientists have to say.

The problem for scientists is that, while they are regarded as highly competent in their field, they are not seen as particularly warm or pleasant. Research by Susan Fiske and Cyndey DuPree shows that the public’s attitude toward scientists is at best technocratic (similar to accountants, for instance) and at worst, in a cluster with lawyers and CEOs, groups known for high rates of psychopathy.

Part of the problem is simply that . A 2013 survey by Research!America found that 70% of Americans, asked to name a living scientist, couldn’t. Of those who said they could, most (43%) named Stephen Hawking, with racist, misogynist James Watson and pseudoscientific crank Dr. Mehmet Oz also making the list of common responses. The slide I showed was from 2009, when 5 of the 8 top “living scientists” named were not actually living (Sagan, Salk, Curie, Einstein, Pasteur). Other such surveys often yield names like Al Gore, Bill Gates, or others who, while at least living, are not scientists. If people only know scientists in the abstract, how can they feel a warmth or personal connection to them?

Creating such personal connections matters. As researchers recently demonstrated, even a 20 minute conversation with a stranger from a stigmatized group produced lasting changes in the attitude not only of the person who answered the door, but in the entire family’s outlook on, in that experiment, marriage equality and gay rights. Making a personal connection—letting the audience see the canvasser not just as a stereotype but as a living, breathing human being, and creating a relationship of mutual respect—made a dramatic and lasting difference. As one of the researchers told the New York Times, “Instead of robotically delivering the message, we coached canvassers to be respectful, to listen, to ask questions and dig deeper, and not to judge voters.” For scientists interested in overcoming a perception of being distant and cold, that’s good advice.

Making science personal has other potential benefits. Perhaps counterintuitively, highlighting how science is tentative and deeply human can help cut through people’s resistance and make the science more relatable. Emphasizing that scientists can and do screw up in the lab gives a chance to explore how we correct those errors. Talking about how scientific conclusions are tentative gives a great opportunity to show how some results are actively debated (how high will oceans rise in the next century? which dinosaurs had feathers?), and why scientists are so confident in others (climate change is happening, all life can be traced to a common ancestor). Tracing how scientists move from their acknowledged expertise on the science to form opinions on policy works the same way, by exploring the values and influences that shape those opinions, and how the science informs those opinions. Janzen’s essay is a great example of that dynamic at play.

That human connection is you go from talking about baseball statistics and create a best-selling book about a David and Goliath battle and then an Oscar™-nominated movie starring Brad Pitt, and how Rebecca Skloot turned the story of cells in a laboratory into a best-seller (optioned by Oprah Winfrey for movie production) about a family’s intergenerational struggles and her own detective work to trace the history of Henrietta Lacks and the ubiquitous HeLa cell line derived from her cancerous tumor.

Sadly, being personal in that way is something that we train scientists away from. Scientists are trained not to use the first person singular: they either say “we titrated the solution to…” or worse, phrase it passively, as in, “the solution was titrated to…,” and scientific writing is famously unemotional. That lack of personality is important in reporting science to other scientists, but it’s deadly in presenting to the public. Too often, science is simply presented as a collection of statements about the world, making it easy for science deniers to trot out their own statements in opposition. Scientists can cut through that by explaining where their statements come from, the process of science. The power of science doesn’t come so much from its collection of facts, but from the process scientists use to vet and examine those facts, and that process is all about people being people. It’s a story we should be proud to tell, and to use to share and justify our opinions.

How Smartphone Use Is Changing The Way Thumbs and Brains Communicate

The Brain





Photo credit:

fatesun/iStockphoto

Opposable thumbs gave ancient humans a huge evolutionary advantage by allowing for use of tools. More recently, these thumbs also allow for people to quickly type on screens of smartphones and other touchscreen devices. A new study has found that this recent widespread mode of communication is actually changing the way thumbs and the brain talk to one another, demonstrating the plasticity of the human brain.

God’s TOP 10 Biggest Screw-Ups

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New record for deepest fish

Image credit: SOI / HADES

By Rebecca Morelle

A new record has been set for the world’s deepest fish.

The bizarre-looking creature, which is new to science, was filmed 8,145m beneath the waves, beating the previous depth record by nearly 500m.

Several other new species of fish were also caught on camera, as well as huge crustaceans called supergiants.

The animals were discovered during an international expedition to the Mariana Trench, which lies almost 11km down in the Pacific Ocean.

The 30-day voyage took place from the Schmidt Ocean Institute’s research vessel, Falkor, and is the most comprehensive survey of world’s deepest place ever undertaken.

The Hadal Ecosystem Studies (Hades) team deployed unmanned landers more than 90 times to depths that ranged between 5,000m and 10,600m. They studied both steep walls of the undersea canyon.

Dr Jeff Drazen, co-chief scientist from the University of Hawaii, US, said: “Many studies have rushed to the bottom of the trench, but from an ecological view that is very limiting.

“It’s like trying to understand a mountain ecosystem by only looking at its summit.”

The University of Aberdeen’s Hadal Lander – the UK’s deepest diving vehicle – recorded more than 100 hours of deep-sea footage.

Until this expedition, the deepest fish had been found in the Japan Trench, also in the Pacific Ocean. A 17-strong shoal of pink, gelatinous snailfish (Pseudoliparis amblystomopsis) were recorded 7,700m down.

Dr Alan Jamieson, from Oceanlab at the University of Aberdeen, said: “After we found these, we started seeing them in other deep trenches. Each trench has its own snailfish species.

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Lawsuit filed against my hometown due to county judge’s discrimination.

My hometown has been pulling some shenanigans for the last year.  I’ll try to catch you up quickly.

Last year in my home town the local freethinkers asked to put up their own holiday display next to the nativity (which is on the courthouse lawn, as it is every year) – a banner reading “Happy Winter Solstice.”  They were denied.  Specifically, County Judge Mickey Pendergrass told them that even though it was nowhere in the city’s laws or regulations, no banners were allowed on the courthouse lawn.

Then, a couple weeks later, look what wound up on the courthouse lawn:

Oh that? That’s not a banner…it’s a message blanket.

It reads “do you have an hour of your time? MENTORING PROGRAM”.  Several other banners have been placed on the courthouse lawn over the last year.  So when County Judge Pendergrass said “no banners”, what he meant was no banners for those wishing people a happy something that isn’t Christmas.

What are you reading?

by Grania

And now, dear reader, let us move from the critical analysis of one type of fiction to another.

I picked up two books last week when I was in the bookshop up the road, as one does. One I would recommend to anyone, the other is more for those of a particular taste.

Solar by Ian McEwan, is like everything else of his, beautifully written and a pleasure to read. This novel follows an aging physicist whose career’s respectable peak has been reached and whose 5th marriage is in trouble as he tries to recover his former glory. It’s dark and comic and bitingly satirical.

Girl Genius by Phil & Kaja Foglio is a series chronicling the life of an orphaned girl with Mad Scientist proclivities. It’s sort of Pratchett-esque in tone, although the world is a Steampunk version of earth rather than a fantasy. If Steampunk isn’t already something you like, then this probably isn’t the book to get you into it. You can actually read it in comic book form online which I think I prefer to the novels, although obviously in a much shorter form.

What have you read lately?

 

A Pseudo-Darwin Quotation, Part 1

History

Charles Darwin

Over at the Talk.Origins Archive Quote Mine Project, there’s a brief discussion of a quotation supposedly from Darwin: “Not one change of species into another is on record … we cannot prove that a single species has been changed,” credited to My Life and Letters. Mike Hopkins and Mark Van de Wettering correctly observe that Darwin never wrote such a book—although there is a book, assembled by his son Francis Darwin, with the similar title The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin (1887). They also correctly observe that the quotation appears on a plethora of creationist websites, to which I’ll add that it appears in a plethora of creationist books as well, the most recent of which (excluding self-published books) seems to be Robert Jeffress’s Outrageous Truths: 7 Absolutes You Can Still Believe (2008). (The sixth of the title’s purported truths is that evolution is a myth.) And they correctly observe that the second half of the quotation actually appears in The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, although the words aren’t Darwin’s.

Here’s the explanation. On May 21, 1863, the botanist George Bentham (1800–1884), who had been discussing the origin of species with Darwin in preparation for a talk he would give later in the year to the Linnean Society, of which he was then president, wrote to Darwin to ask him why, on his theory, certain species appeared to remain unchanged for a long time. In his May 22, 1863, reply, Darwin agreed that Bentham had identified a problem, but urged him, in a postscript, to remember that the argument for natural selection “must at present be grounded entirely on general considerations” because “[w]hen we descend to details, we can prove that no one species has changed; nor can we prove that the supposed changes are beneficial, which is the groundwork of the theory.” Before the semicolon, Francis Darwin editorially inserted a gloss in square brackets: “[i.e. we cannot prove that a single species has changed.]” So the actual words of the second half of the quotation aren’t Darwin’s, although the sentiment is.

I might mention that although the general considerations that Darwin adduced for accepting natural selection—“… its being a vera causa, from the struggle for existence; & the certain geological fact that species do somehow change … analogy of change under domestication by man’s selection. … & … connecting under an intelligible point of view a host of facts”—remain valid, there is now abundant particular evidence, of the sort that that he must have hoped for when he wrote “at present.” That extends even to observed cases of speciation in the laboratory and in the field, something that I suspect Darwin would not have even dared hope for. (Partly for that reason but mainly to accommodate the need for rapid diversification after Noah’s Flood, a significant number of young-earth creationists now accept speciation by natural selection—while still drawing the line at evolution between Biblical kinds.) So citing Darwin on the absence of observed cases of speciation is just a way of ignoring 150 years of further scientific research.

So far so good. Unanswered, however, is the question of the origin of the first part of the quotation, “not one change of species into another is on record.” When I started to investigate, I discovered what is apparently the source in Theodore Graebner’s Evolution: An Investigation and a Criticism (1921)—which, as Ronald Numbers comments in The Creationists (1992), the author “erroneously regarded as ‘the first scientific work printed in America against the evolution theory.’” There Graebner writes:

Now, as a matter of fact, we cannot prove that a single species has changed. These are the words of Darwin himself, quoted from “Life and Letters,” Vol. III, p. 25: “There are two or three millions of species on earth, sufficient field, one might think, for observation. But it must be said to-day, that in spite of all the efforts of trained observers, not one change of species into another is on record.” (emphasis added)

The emphasized phrases, of course, are the second and first elements, respectively, of the quotation discussed by the Quote Mine Project. The passage became immediately popular in antievolution circles, appearing in Arthur I. Brown’s Evolution and the Bible (1922) and Philip Mauro’s Evolution at the Bar (1922). But, given that only the second element (the first emphasized phrase) occurs in the Life and Letters, what’s the source of the rest of the material in the pseudo-Darwin quotation? I’ll try to answer in part 2.