I never seriously studied physics. A few years back I decided that it was time to push myself a little and start reading up. I started with some articles on string theory and suddenly remembered why I didn't want to study physics.
Looks like I saved twice as much time as I thought I had.
It's not untestable. It gives predictions and there has been tests for those predictions. The unfortunate part is that the predictions are often not very concrete, and the range of a lot of these predictions lies far beyond our capabilities. But people are looking to measure them indirectly in various ways. So it's not like it is untestable by design or anything like that.
AFAIK, every single idea from string theory that could be tested was rejected. And the theory was made more complex, less predictive so that it could still work without the testable idea.
These are very broad statements that are not very easy to comment on. "Every single idea", makes it sound like they are a lot, I would not say they are. "Was rejected", depends what you mean... " did not show positiv results", "no longer possible to motivate economically", sure, " refuted as bullshit", not so much. "Was made more complex", sounds like there is intent, and/or, depending on what you mean by complex, that it would be necessarily a bad thing to using more advanced maths to formulate things you could not before, and hence solve new problems.
I can mention two possible avenues of inquiry that are less than 5 years old that has sprung from string theory as possible support for it: signals of black hole structure in gravitational wave 'ring downs' of black hole mergers, and the exclusion of a positive cosmological constant. But if you know that these are untestable or rejected, I'd love to hear about it.
I thought the problem with string theory is that its predictions match up with what the standard model already explains. Maybe that’s only for the things we have the capability to mature any time soon.
No, the problem is very different. In string theory you have a lot of freedom to build various models, and they can provide the standard model, slight deviations from it, or something completely different. Before LHC we knew we had some version of the standard model, the hope was that the LHC would find that we have some particular deviation, like supersymmetry (susy) with such-and-such masses and particles. It did not. The prediction is susy, the problem is that the prediction (at least yet) is not exactly this type of susy. String theory says there is supposed to be a lot of extra stuff beyond the standard model, question is just how do you find it, which is made harder by string theory allowing for so many models.
I did a semester of physics in high school and loved it. One of the few classes I actually enjoyed. I joined the nuclear program in the Navy and still loved it. I got to college and brought along all my ACE credits so I got to skip some math, physics, early chemistry, and thermodynamics.
We got to experimental physics and it broke my brain. I barely walked away with my BS and even though I could have made good money I never ended up using the degree because I ended up hating the whole field. It hangs on the wall next to my certificate from a two week bartending school.
I ended up with a long and fruitful IT career where I've never had to apply even a little knowledge I gained from that degree.
The 2026 one doesn't pass over much land or near many major population centres, and a lot of Europeans are going to try and see it, so it's going to be very difficult to go see it, especially if you're an American.
At my work, we meet astronauts fairly often (I met Jonny Kim last year), and it's amazing how many of them are like this. They'll usually pass out their headshots that have their bio on the back, and the number of advanced degrees and impressive accomplishments is jaw dropping. Like I feel like I'd think my life was worthwhile if I did one of those things by the end of it, and a lot of the astronauts are hardly more than half my age. And to really rub it in, they all seem incredibly genuine, personable, and well adjusted.
There are a giant number of people who want to be astronauts, and NASA only needs a small number in a given year, so they can pick the very cream of the crop.
When you rule, you get to pick what qualities have merit, which is how we end up of administrations of The Master Race or lispy Spaniards, or ruthlesd billionaires.
We're still trying to figure out how to get to government tha implements public-serving ideas.
As a pedestrian I had to turn my back to make a guy stop trying to "help" me get in a fatal accident. He was bound and determined to get me killed... By being a "nice guy"
I was quite impressed by the 20...17 eclipse over California, imo get lucky with a clear day, and stand near a tree without leaves, look at the kaleidoscope of shadows cast by the tree onto the ground, it's indescribable when shadows don't look like shadows any more.
2017 one went spot on over my hometown when I was lucky enough to have moved back there for a couple years. No traffic to get to a good spot just wandered outside during work to watch it all happen. The shadows were more fascinating to me than the sky it was incredibly surreal, it felt like an immersion breaking shader glitch in a game
Shadow snakes? At least that's the name I recall from Smarter every day talking to an eclipse pro/fan.
Sounded very cool, if I recall right it's a phenomenon you can observe shortly before, and especially right after, a total eclipse.
2017 was the first one where I could notice it but coverage was at only like 40% in my area. The shadows were by far the most hallucinogenic thing I have seen sober. Especially on the tree leaves in the breeze? Magic.
I haaaaaaate that I’m at literally 91% for 2024 with intermittent clouds.
It absolutely will not. It's become abundantly clear that any sort of actually meaningful climate action will simply not happen in the current system, which is focused on profit at all costs and run by literal psychopaths. We'll continue seeing cosmetic consumer-facing restrictions like the ban on plastic straws that ultimately are nearly pointless in the grand scheme of things – the real polluters are corporations and people that are much too rich (ie. powerful) for their contribution to this climate clusterfuck to be meaningfully regulated.
For actual change that's not just tiny incremental and ineffectual bullshit that mainly places the blame on consumers, we'd have to redo our entire economic system and that's not going to happen without a lot of bloodshed.
Oh, wtf! I just looked up US cursive, and that thing is apparently a G? The horror! That's certainly not what a cursive G looks like where I'm from. And your capital S just looks like a bigger lowercase s. Same with capital A. Why does it look like a lowercase a?!
Edit: The cursive we learned 30 years ago, for comparison: https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Svssfb.jpg
Although, to be fair, a lot of these aren't really consistent, even within the same country. I've seen both types of S and A around, though it's the first time i see that weird G.
Honestly, most of the more complicated ones aren't really used where i'm from at all. Like, if you're really trying to be fancy, sure, i could see it, but the writing i see day to day is a lot more simplified. Whole point is to write fast anyway.
I love the explainxkcd meme of putting [citation needed] after obviously true things and this one has a doozy:
Not only is the minor decrease of Minnesota size not really a 'problem' that has any practical significance, there is also no way to prevent this [citation needed].
imgs.xkcd.com
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