The Strings 2025 Conference highlighted significant advancements in string theory, particularly Lara Anderson's talk on topology changes in heterotic vacua, which involve transitions between Calabi-Yau manifolds mediated by five-branes. The revival of the IKKT model, a matrix model for the emergence of time, was also discussed, alongside Witten's insights on von Neumann algebras in quantum gravity. Renata Kallosh indicated forthcoming data on the tensor-to-scalar ratio in the CMB, suggesting implications for Higgs and Starobinsky inflation models. The discussions reflect ongoing debates about the theoretical status of string theories and their empirical validation.
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Good catch.mitchell porter said:An anonymous string theorist ("Stringmaster") showed up at Peter Woit's blog to state an abbreviated version of what they think this century's progress in string theory has been about:
https://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=15348#comment-252759
To me, the prose looks like it's been funneled through an AI (perhaps English isn't the author's first language). Anyway, I think this list of talking points is genuinely representative of how mainstream string theorists think about the state of their subject, if anyone is interested. The potentially empirical part is in points 3 and 4.