[SUBMAN1]

Originally Posted by Khayman

Nope. I think the pleasure is in the theory, and the complicated maths that few understand (because it makes no sense). It's all theory, but that could apply to any science. Some might have more in the way of measurable constants or natural effects that fit equation, but they could equally be supreme flights of fancy.

Tentative acceptance of the best fit, with the understanding it may be wrong. That's what real science is. There's no harm in the leaps of imagination shown by that article, in fact lack of imagination would be much more worrying.

Its based on string theory. And since it is a theory (something with evidence to back it up), it probably has some real truths to it. A hypothesis is an observation with a potential explanation, but a theory is a hypothesis that has evidence to its truth.

Now the bad part - The laws of physics are wrong, but they are mostly right. An example that doesn't fit with E=MC2 is our very own Pioneer 10 spacecraft. It is currently accelerating at about 1 nanometer a second per second. It is currently 400,000 km from where it should be. Same thing was happened to Pioneer 12 before communication was lost. According to E=MC2, that is impossible. Only way to explain is two methods - combination of dark matter and String Theory.

-S

PS. If you've got a few hours to kill and want to swamp your mind with information overload, here is a program to watch that will explain string theory to you - http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/elegant/program.html