Talk:History of string theory

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Leaving out the Indians?[edit]

Why is there nothing here about Ashoke Sen, who discovered string theory independently of Westerners? R. Robinson 14:47, 05 March 2009 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.198.53.19 (talk)

Where is the rest of the history?[edit]

2003 is (at the time of writing) 20 years ago, and there's hardly any narrative there at all. Is this field something mostly relegated to the 20th century now, in terms of historical landmarks? Significant 21st century developments should also be a legitimate topic for this page. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.29.226.169 (talk) 06:02, 19 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

String theory: built from[edit]

The origin tells only why string theory was created. What where the methods drawn from to do so? Hyacinth 05:29, 28 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

has an exponentially large number[edit]

what should that be????? --Philtime (talk) 20:57, 19 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Finite at all orders[edit]

When was it realised that string theory was finite? Did this predate the first string theory revolution? --Michael C. Price ^talk 19:11, 6 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Needs strengthening early on[edit]

This article needs a fuller introduction of the context, such as early 20th-century work by Einstein and Theodor Kaluza, as presented in the History section of the main string theory article. See also this TED talk by Brian Greene.[1] I'm not up to the task. Earthlyreason (talk) 08:37, 3 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Michio Kaku[edit]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michio_Kaku#Academic_career Considering that, should he maybe be mentioned in the block spanning 1974? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.99.150.34 (talk) 23:59, 5 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Funny, I always wondered what Kaku's credentials were. While he's clearly published a lot, nothing there jumps out at me as the same level of notability as what is being presented in the article. Was there something in particular you felt was notable and missing? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.139.254.117 (talk) 06:39, 23 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Controversy[edit]

Shouldn't this page include at least some mention of the controversy surrounding certain aspects of string theory?

If it's notable, and relevant to the history. If it has no historical component, then it would be more appropriate for the string theory article itself.

Physics is always controversial, always has been, hundreds of years. The "string controversy" is, from what I can tell, a modern creation that is the result of newspaper journalists looking for something juicy to report on, plus social media/ algorithmic amplification, kind of like arguing about sports teams. That, plus funding for any kind of theoretical academic study has gotten difficult over the last 3 decades, plus the web now gives voice to anyone unhappy about anything. Young men in the Victorian era turned down for university teaching appointments knew better than to spread their bile into letters to the editor. Dying of consumption seemed easier. See, for example, the life of Georg Cantor. If someone has written a book on "string controversy", then OK, sure. But I doubt there is such a book. 67.198.37.16 (talk) 23:44, 22 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Extra dimensions[edit]

Article isn't really clear on when extra dimensions were added and why. Was it part of the original string formulation? Was it added with SUSY or before? Yeah. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.139.254.117 (talk) 06:30, 23 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Naive strings are not relativisticly covariant in 4D, i.e. don't transform correctly under the Poincare group. Need d=26 for this to work out, and d=10 for the fermionic strings.it's not so much that it was "added because we need it", but rather, "the desirable property of relativistic invariance under the Poincare group is absent in 4D" Supersymmetry came from a different direction and was already a fully developed theory that had nothing at all to do with strings (at first). 67.198.37.16 (talk) 23:27, 22 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

F-theory[edit]

Should that not be mentioned ? cheers, Michael C. Price ^talk 01:38, 31 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

References[edit]

"However, this string-based description of the strong force made many predictions that directly contradicted experimental findings."

This statement needs a reference to the predictions and experimental findings as well as to whatever features of the theory that had required a one-dimensional interpretation accompanied by 26 dimensions. Such details are essential to understanding the origins of string theory. 174.21.10.185 (talk) 03:12, 9 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, that sentence could use a reference. But this was already "obvious" in 1970, because high-energy physics was already well-developed by then, and it was already clear that Regge poles could not describe everything. It was more along the lines of "hey lookit what we can do if we pretend there is a tiny vibrating string, it looks just like Regge, isn't that cool, or what?" and it was obvious that it couldn't have been a "complete theory" of some kind, but rather an interesting little bloboid of math.

The 26 dimensions thing arises as a critique of this silly string idea: "hey your strings aren't even relativisticly covariant, so you loose." The retort is "well what does it take, then?" and "hmm, lets see, scratch scratch scratch: they're relativisticly invariant in 26 dimensions, the math checks out. Cool, huh?" and of course, "you moron we live in 4 dimensions not 26" and then "well, lets pretend that maybe there are 22 more dimensions that are too small to see." and it goes back and forth like this. Today, the 26-D thing is recognized as an affine Lie algebra but for some strange reason, that article does not contain the magic number 26 in it, nor does it link to the d=10 fermionic version. Nor does Virasoro algebra or quantum group, which are the present-day versions of 1d bosonic strings all grown up. History is hard, even when it's living history. Most books on quantum groups will go into gory details of d=26 and d=10. 67.198.37.16 (talk) 23:08, 22 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

2003[edit]

So did string theory just get more or less dropped after 2003? Is that it? - David Gerard (talk) 08:11, 28 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Its says "2003-present". It is alive and well. The current focus is on something called the (string) swampland. Too new to have an article, I guess. 67.198.37.16 (talk) 22:41, 22 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]