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from the unterminated-strings-cause-inflation dept.
Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1984
Our universe: An expanding bubble in an extra dimension
According to string theory, all matter consists of tiny, vibrating "stringlike" entities. The theory also requires there to be more spatial dimensions than the three that are already part of everyday knowledge. For 15 years, there have been models in string theory that have been thought to give rise to dark energy. However, these have come in for increasingly harsh criticism, and several researchers are now asserting that none of the models proposed to date are workable.
In their article, the scientists propose a new model with dark energy and our Universe riding on an expanding bubble in an extra dimension. The whole Universe is accommodated on the edge of this expanding bubble. All existing matter in the Universe corresponds to the ends of strings that extend out into the extra dimension. The researchers also show that expanding bubbles of this kind can come into existence within the framework of string theory. It is conceivable that there are more bubbles than ours, corresponding to other universes.
Journal Reference:
Souvik Banerjee, Ulf Danielsson, Giuseppe Dibitetto, Suvendu Giri, Marjorie Schillo. Emergent de Sitter Cosmology from Decaying Anti–de Sitter Space. Physical Review Letters, 2018; 121 (26) DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.121.261301
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 30 2018, @06:51PM (1 child)
here's a specialists' view on it: http://backreaction.blogspot.com/ [blogspot.com]
this is a blog where a physicist tries to explain why current theories of high energy physics are mostly junk, but the community refuses to do anything else. most of the entries deal with this problem.
string theory is a beautiful mathematical abstraction that has so far not given one verifiable result.
well, they did predict the cosmological constant. and they failed miserably. after which they made their theory even more abstract, so now it can predict any value of the cosmological constant you want it to, in many different ways --- so many that you can't actually use it for anything.
unfortunately, these "physicists" have tenured positions, and they're sticking to their idiotic nonsense, keeping out the people with alternative ideas.
the entire community of theoretical high energy physics is basically trapped in a cycle where if you don't work on the popular stuff you don't get a permanent position, even though the popular stuff doesn't predict anything that can be verified by experiment. and if you do get a permanent position by working on the popular stuff, you want to continue working on it (either because you believe it's the right thing to do because you're an idiot, or because it's easy).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 30 2018, @11:05PM
Thank you for that link, it is most enlightening.