String Theory: Will it Always be a TOENAIL?

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George Jones
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Right now string theory is just not a TOE, it's just a TOENAIL! :smile:

Will this always be so? Will string theory ever expand to include a whole TOE?

Personally, and from a position of ignorance, I take (the unoriginal) view that a new revolution is needed, and that string is something like Bohr-Sommerfield quantization. If this is true, then: 1) we're missing something big; this notwithstanding, string theory is worth studying.

Regards,
George

PS According to Warren Siegel, a TOENAIL is a Theory of Everything Not Appearing in Laboratories. Saw in this in a comment on Jo Anne JoAnne Hewett's interesesting blog posting, http://cosmicvariance.com/2005/11/18/a-particle-physicists-perspective/#comments", on Cosmic Variance. Dimitri Terryn makes a nice comment.
 
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I think even dedicated string physicists suspect that their theory need some new insight to break out of the landscape blind alley. But their history is replete with new insights coming right out of left field, so I don't give up on them. In my optinion, what they have to do to claim TOE status is:


1) Get a real theory of gravity (background independent as well as graviton) with GR as a true low energy limit.

2) Get a real representation of known accelerator physics in some not too ugly low energy limit.

3) Hopefully show some unification of gravity and the other three forces.
 

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