The Drop in String Citations (and raw output too)

[Martin]

I take it that you're of the opinion that string theorists are leading themselves up a dead end then?

 

there is a sense in which I can give a strictly personal opinion

if I were in grad school right now I sure as hell would stay

clear of string theory!

 

too many people in it

no testable predictions

no experimental guidance

 

and from the standpoint of GR the whole approach looks wrong because it isnt background independent

 

so I'd probably get together with someone who is good with computers and try to repeat Jan Ambjorn and Renate Loll's work

massive monte carlo simulation of geometry of universe

using a beautifully simple model

it's a wide open field, with a lot of new research to be done there

(like, introducing matter into the model, now that we know that it generates 4D spacetime)

 

the problem would be finding someone on the faculty to be

the research advisor

[jana]

Hi martin, are you familiar with the fairly basic and widely held belief that in any quantum theory of gravity, scattering at transplanckian energies will most probably be dominated by black hole production?

[Martin]

Hi martin, are you familiar with the fairly basic and widely held belief that in any quantum theory of gravity, scattering at transplanckian energies will most probably be dominated by black hole production?

 

I do realize that lots of people suppose that in the early universe under conditions of (very high) planckian temperature and density collisions between particles may have tended to form black holes. But frankly it is not intuitive to me how extended objects like strings could do this.

 

Since I think you know more than I do about what people working in string theory believe, i would like to ask you about that in particular. Strings are extended objects which limits (by the string scale) how close they can come.

 

Please explain how two strings form a black hole by colliding with each other at high energy. The black hole would presumably be a great deal smaller than string scale! Sorry if this seems naive.

 

I dont doubt that in a string theory context this is provided for, but

I could use an intuitive explanation of this (having substantial areas of ignorance about string theory!) and perhaps others can as well.

 

If you are up for it, let's start a separate thread that can serve as a tutorial (by you for me and whoever else is interested) on this separate topic. "Black hole formation in high energy collisions." you might also want to talk about how all these microscopic black holes created at planck temperature in the first zillionth of a second subsequently evaporated or dispersed

[jana]

I moved this post to the microscopic black holes thread