струна, струны, струне, струною, о струне

[avva]

String Theory: An Evaluation (PDF)

Небольшая, всего на пять страниц, полемическая статья о струнной теории. Автор — Peter Woit, математик (в прошлом физик) из Columbia University.

Войт утверждает, что на струнную теорию современные физики тратят во много раз больше внимания и усилий, чем она заслуживает, и что из-за этого весьма нездорового положения вещей ничего интересного в теоретической физике элементарных частиц не происходит.

Мне показалось интересно и убедительно написанным, но я, конечно, не специалист в этом. Интересно было бы узнать мнения людей, которые лучше в этом разбираются.

Comments

[leblon.livejournal.com]

As a theoretical physicist interested in string theory, I must say that
many of Woit's criticisms are justified. In particular, the pressure
on young theorists to pursue the latest fads is real and has a serious
negative impact on research. But I think this is not special to string
theory; the real reason is that in the absence of experimental data,
the main criterion of what is interesting is the opinion of the leaders
in the field. As for Woit's criticism that too much attention has
focused on string theory at the expense of quantum field theory, this
is completely wrong. One cannot understand modern string theory without
a deep knowldege of quantum field theory, and string theorists know
QFT as well as anybody else. Moreover, in the last 10 years there
was a lot of progress in understanding QFT in four dimensions, and
it was achieved by the same people (string theorists) whom Woit criticizes
for not paying enough attention to QFT (Witten, Seiberg, etc)!
For this reason it is ridiculous to juxtapose string theorists and the
rest of the theory community. As for the influence of string theory on
math, this was already commented on by other people in this thread.
I just want to say that from the mathematical viewpoint, it is irrelevant
whether some string theory concept has experimental support. What
matters is that string theory provides a new viewpoint on old mathematical
objects, as well as new structures (e.g. "quantum cohomology").