Why String Theory is wrong

[Cetaceaphile]

My high school maths teacher, Dr Lovel, said "I wouldn't bother with string theory, it's much easier to not have your head explode and scatter your brains around my classroom."

[No J.]

That might be because he doesn't want to clean up the mess.

[meh]

Loop quantum gravity vs string theory

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMSmJCKaaC0

and further :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTxoM5QvruY

[No J.]

(09-01-2011 08:18 AM)meh Wrote:  Loop quantum gravity vs string theory

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMSmJCKaaC0

Does this mean that E=MC if you are square?

[athnostic]

Sorry none of us are more educated in this field. I majored in music in college just to avoid doing math.

[Dbutz]

Gosh, I remember some of this, but I haven't used it since I had to take the classes. Of course, this is math, how often do we use imaginary numbers in the real world?

I always found this stuff to be interesting, how the math works on the smallest scales to a point where it becomes so foreign and counter-intuitive. It's a whole different dimension and I don't think our brains are capable processing all of it at once, lol. Perhaps if we didn't have so many anti-intellectual religious movements in the past 6,000 years or so we would have now evolved to a level where we could use enough of our brains to makes sense of all of this.

[TheSelfishGene]

(09-01-2011 07:05 PM)No J. Wrote:  

(09-01-2011 08:18 AM)meh Wrote:  Loop quantum gravity vs string theory

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMSmJCKaaC0

Does this mean that E=MC if you are square?

No it means that you are watching the most hilarious series ever

"I tried watching a series of videos about string theory from youtube (the elegant universe) "

I didn't know it was a youtube series, but there is a book with the same title from Brian Greene. Worths reading if you really want to understand string theory as a non-physicist.

[Kikko]

Quote:I didn't know it was a youtube series, but there is a book with the same title from Brian Greene. Worths reading if you really want to understand string theory as a non-physicist.

I hope the book doesn't repeat itself and doesn't have cheesy pictures in it. I'll check it out some time, thanks.

[Sacrieur]

The math is valid... Euler did not make a mistake. It just turns out that using analytic continuum yields a different answer (if you want to know why, take high level math).

Additionally, the zeta sum of -1 has been corroborated by the Ramanujan sum.

Edit:

I guess I could explain it like this. Infinity isn't a number, and can't be evaluated like numbers or variables. 1/n^-1 = (1/n)^-1 right? (It's right). But since n is a variable, you can flip it up over and all is dandy. But try the lim n -> inf of (1/n)^-1. You'll get 0^-1, which would simplify to 1/0. And we all know that this is undefined.

That's the gist of why the sum of n diverges, while the zeta function of -1 converges. You cannot evaluate the zeta function at -1 with elementary math. The guy that wrote the blog made a common algebraic mistake. Certain algebraic maneuvers require you to check that you did not divide by zero (like if you divide by x-3, you cannot use x = 3 as an answer). In this case, he flipped up the n then plugged in infinity^1 and said, "Look, it equals infinity!" But this is not the case.

TL;DR: Don't divide by zero.