String/M-Theories about our World are Testable in the Traditional Physics Way - a podcast by MCMP Team

Gordon Kane (Univ. of Michigan/Ann Arbour) gives a talk at the Workshop on "Why trust a Theory?" (7-9 December, 2015) titled "String/M-Theories about our World are Testable in the Traditional Physics Way". Abstract: Some physicists hope to use string/M-theory to try to construct a comprehensive underlying theory of our physical world – a final theory. A quantum theory of gravity must be formulated in 10 dimensions, so obviously testing it requires projecting it onto our 4D world (called “compactification”). Most string theorists study theories, not phenomena, and are not much interested in testing theories about our world. Compactified theories generically have many realistic features that provide tests, such as gravity, Yang-Mills forces like the Standard Model ones, chiral fermions, softly broken supersymmetry, Higgs physics, families, and hierarchical fermion masses. String phenomenologists have also formulated a number of explicit tests for compactified theories. I give examples of tests from compactified M-theory (involving Higgs physics, superpartners at LHC, electric dipole moments, and more). Theoretical technologies, and experimental technologies and facilities, have both improved steadily in recent years so tests have already occurred for some of the examples and are underway for more. All tests of theories in physics have always depended on assumptions and approximate calculations, and tests of string/M-theories do too. It is clear that compactified theories exist that can describe worlds like ours, and it is clear that even if a multiverse were real it does not prevent us from finding comprehensive compactified theories very much like one that might describe our world.

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