gordondaviesmoustache
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Until the next theory comes along!
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Le Havre Oswald
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malg
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Le Havre Oswald
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so very
Same as Pluto recently, if all goes well.
We'll take a couple of starter shots on the way in that aren't very clear then the proper shots will cone a day or two later.
The modem inside the satellite only runs at about 1kb a second so it takes a bit to get stuff back. It's why 4K HD full colour pictures are hard to get. Would take months just to send them
Aye but null results are extremely important. The Michelson Morley experiment, the double slit experiment, etc. Ruling things out conclusively narrows the broadness of the possibilities which is very helpful in determining the correct ideas.
The gravitational wave results don't absolutely kill string theory but it's a pretty big hurdle for it to overcome towards a model that experiment keeps putting hurdles in front of. It kills M theory though.
1.618034
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Got a link?
aguero93:20
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1.618034
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Ta.
I did have a quick look but I did end up drinking too much last night, after all. So I couldn't be arsed.
Interesting stuff though and big news for physics, going forward.
I like it too, as it simplifies things. 11 dimensions didn't sit well as a theory...
The problem here is that the maths behind string theory works so well in some cases.
It's an interesting situation. Physics has always preferred elegant maths as solutions to problems - that is, maths that doesn't require a ton of edge cases or huge theories in order to explain it. String theory math is very elegant and simple.
The only problem is that it often doesn't link into what we'd expect to see in reality. Which as far as physics goes is a pretty big fucking drawback.
As I said, this doesn't totally discount string theory but it's yet another knock against an increasingly wobbly model.
The issue was to do with the strength of gravitational waves. One of the big mysteries of the Universe is why gravity is so weak compared to the other forces - you defeat the entire gravity of planet Earth when you jump for example. The idea was that gravity wasn't travelling in 3 spatial dimensions but instead travelled in every dimension simultaneous which pretty well explained why it was so weak in the 4 we know.
That result showed that the strength of the gravitational waves produced by the meeting of the neutron stars didn't drop off as expected but instead was exactly how we thought it would operate if in three spatial dimensions.
Now for M theory, which considers the Universe as interacting membranes for each dimension, that's a complete contradiction.
However the dimensions in string theory are so small that they've got a built in get out clause to excuse why the drop off in strength didn't happen. But they would have claimed the resulting drop off as evidence to support if it had happened so the string theorists are having to go back to the drawing board a bit.
String theory is frustrating. We know that much of it is along the right lines but we can't put it altogether into a coherent idea. In fact string theory itself is built on top of supersymmetry which is something designed to take a few different observations and argue that it's the same observation from different perspectives in an 11 dimensional Universe.
This is a place where we really need an original thinker to come along and tie up a lots of loose ends akin to an Einstein type figure.