String theory inspires a brilliant, baffling new math proof
69 comments
·December 12, 2025EA-3167
That's arguably what String Theory is good for, producing interesting, entertaining, and possibly even useful math. What it seems to fail at is making realistically testable predictions about nature that can't be matched or exceeded by simpler competing theories.
jfengel
No Theory of Everything is going to make realistically testable predictions. That's a problem of the domain, not the theory. The unification energy between the graviton and quantum field theory is on the order of 10^19 GeV, over a dozen orders of magnitude beyond anything we can generate.
We might get lucky that some ToE would generate low-energy predictions different from GR and QFT, but there's no reason to think that it must.
It's not like there's some great low-energy predictions that we're just ignoring. The difficulty of a beyond-Standard-Model theory is inherent to the domain of the question, and that's going to plague any alternative to String Theory just as much.
jcranmer
I'm far from an expert in this field--indeed, I can but barely grasp the gentle introductions to these topics--but my understanding is that calling string theory a "theory of everything" really flatters it. String theory isn't a theory; it's a framework for building theories. And no one (to my understanding) has been able to put forward a theory using string theory that can actually incorporate the Standard Model and General Relativity running in our universe to make any prediction in the first place, much less one that is testable.
rhdunn
The testable predictions would be at the places where QM and GR meet. Some examples:
1. interactions at the event horizon of a black hole -- could the theory describe Hawking radiation?
2. large elements -- these are where special relativity influences the electrons [1]
It's also possible (and worth checking) that a unified theory would provide explanations for phenomena and observed data we are ascribing to Dark Matter and Dark Energy.
I wonder if there are other phenomena such as effects on electronics (i.e. QM electrons) in GR environments (such as geostationary satellites). Or possibly things like testing the double slit experiment in those conditions.
[1] https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/646114/why-do-re...
cevn
Can't black holes explain Dark Energy? Supposedly there was an experiment showing Black Holes are growing faster than expected. If this is because they are tied to the expansion of the universe (univ. expands -> mass grows), and that tie goes both ways (mass grows -> universe expands), boom, dark energy. I also think that inside the black holes they have their own universes which are expanding (and that we're probably inside one too). If this expansion exerts a pressure on the event horizon which transfers out, it still lines up.
Jabbles
re 2: special relativity is not general relativity - large elements will not provide testable predictions for a theory of everything that combines general relativity and quantum mechanics.
re: "GR environments (such as geostationary satellites)" - a geostationary orbit (or any orbit) is not an environment to test the interaction of GR and QM - it is a place to test GR on its own, as geostationary satellites have done. In order to test a theory of everything, the gravity needs to be strong enough to not be negligible in comparison to quantum effects, i.e. black holes, neutron stars etc. your example (1) is therefore a much better answer than (2)
munchler
I think that’s highly debatable. For example, dark matter particles with testable properties could be a prediction of a ToE. Or the ToE could resolve the quantum measurement problem (collapse of the wave function) in a testable way.
yablak
What's the "quantum measurement problem"? And why is it a problem? I get the wave function collapses when you measure bit. But which part of this do you want to resolve in a testable way?
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ekjhgkejhgk
[flagged]
noone_important
I am not sure what you are refering to. You absolutely can break Lorentz Invariance in string theory[1]. There is a reason why even some string theory researchers call it the theory of anything.
ekjhgkejhgk
Wellllll. Despite the title, the paper does not make a claim about string theory. The starting point is the "Witten string field theory" which is a field theory engineered to have properties like string theory. Nothing guarantees that theory is exactly like string theory. In addition, the idea is perturbative in nature, there's no guarantee that perturbative effects are in fact realized in the full quantum theory - exoteric cancellations happen often in field theories with many symmetries. This is two degrees of questionable.
So A) the paper isn't actually about string theory and B) it's not clear that the claim it makes is actually correct for the field theory it supposedly applies to.
munchler
That’s just piggybacking on a prediction of special relativity itself. If string theory predicted something novel that’s testable, that would be a lot more noteworthy.
ekjhgkejhgk
> That’s just piggybacking on a prediction of special relativity itself.
Let me stop you right now to inform you you don't understand how scientific theories are structured. Special relativity is not a prediction of special relativity. Likewise, 1+1=2 isn't a predict of arithmetic, it's the starting point.
jameshart
Forgive my non specialist questions here, but doesn’t special relativity predict that special relativity is preserved at all scales?
ekjhgkejhgk
No. Special relativity postulates that special relativity is preserved at all scales. It's an axiom. Comes from nowhere. It's assumed.
This is what a theory is: assume XYZ is true, and see how much of the world you can explain. Why is XYZ? That theory doesn't explain it.
Theoretical physics is: what is the smallest set of XYZ assumptions that can explain other theories. So if you can come up with a theory that's internally self-consistent that _predicts_ something which is postulated by another successful theory, that's a very convincing result.
drdeca
It does, but a number of alternative theories of quantum gravity do not. So, if Lorentz invariance is shown to be violated, this would favor those over string theory.
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bsaul
as i know really nothing about the subject, could someone explain why parent was downvoted ? is it for the tone, or the content ? Because, i , having viewed the youtubers in question, had the same opinion about string theory.
shin_lao
Because String Theory hasn't delivered falsifiable predictions, yet keeps expanding to accommodate failure.
ekjhgkejhgk
Because a lot of people felt this applied to them (this was the intention) and were hurt. Good on you for being able to articulate it. Respect.
Y_Y
Hey do you want to hear about this cool new result in maths? Let's just speedrun a graduate course in all the prerequisites!
(I more or less do have the background to read these things, but it's super off-putting to start the article about a crazy new proof from a Fields medallist with an introduction to manifolds.)
moralestapia
You can always just not read an article, particularly if it triggers you.
I think it's nice someone wrote about this, even if it's super technical and I cannot understand it completely.
I got it for free!
kridsdale1
I can tell which of the two of you likely has a more enjoyable life.
echelon
Taste, or whatever you want to call this, is orthogonal to enjoyment.
I think Steve Jobs very much enjoyed life, and you know what kind of an attitude he had about things.
We're all wired up differently.
tug2024
[dead]
xqcgrek2
A few hundred people working on String Theory for about four decades is about $500 million. Hope this proof was worth it.
cyber_kinetist
Over a couple of decades VCs have invested in vanity startups that cost billions of dollars like it's nothing, countless times.
I think half a billion isn't that expensive for a program that searches for a potential "theory of everything" that can profoundly change our understanding of the universe (even if it brings no results!)
jjk166
Or roughly the cost of producing Star Wars IX: The Rise of Skywalker. Kinda wish that money had gone to string theory.
analog31
I suspect more people worked on solving quadratic equations in what I estimate to be the 1000 years since the problem was formulated, to when it was solved. The ancient Greeks knew that they could solve some quadratic equations but not others, and Al-Khwarizmi came up with the general solution. And then it was even further generalized with complex numbers.
yunwal
If all research bore fruit it wouldn't be research.
orochimaaru
What would you have them work on? Predatory social media platforms that sell your data to advertisers and commoditize you.
dimator
so like 12.5 million a year? what an incredible self-own.
aside from that, this number is meaningless without context: how much do other fields of research get?
gmueckl
Don't tell him how much money was invested into CERN over the same timespan to conduct experiments with highly uncertain outcomes. Or into gravitational wave detection. It wasn't certain that those waves even exist until the first measurement decades into the program.
runarberg
I am not a fan of String Theory, but as far as fringe science theories go, String Theory is probably one of the more innocent ones. If you are going to pour money into a fringe science theory, I would much rather it goes to scientists trying to discover some properties of the universe which may or may not exist (and probably doesn’t exist; lets be honest here), than many of the awful stuff which exists on the fringes of social sciences (things like longtermism or futurism) or on the fringes of engineering (a future Mars colony, AI singularity, etc.).
setopt
Genuinely curious: Why do you consider a future Mars colony to be «awful stuff»?
Supermancho
Saying "working toward a martian colony" is akin to saying "working toward a way to colonize the solar system". Mars is not very interesting once you have a methodology. The Moon is a much more practical place to start the process. Then aim at the asteroid belt.
koakuma-chan
Why colonize Mars? Why not Moon?
runarberg
Yes, I do. It is engineeringly possible, but societally a horror prescription. I maintain that even the moon landing was an engineering dead end, it resulted in no major breakthrough which we wouldn’t have reached otherwise (for much cheaper) and the humanity benefited nothing but bragging rights. It was then used to further nationalism and exceptionalism by one particular society which went on to conduct many horrible acts of atrocities in the decades that followed.
The prospect of a Mars colony would be that except a million times worse. Humanity will never migrate to Mars, we will never live on Mars, we have nothing to gain by living there, and it may even be impossible for us to live a normal human life over there (e.g. we don‘t know if we can even give birth over there). The only thing it will give us are bragging rights to the powerful individuals which achives it first, who will likely use that as political capital to enact horrible policies on Earth, for their own personal benefits, at the cost of everybody else.
It's 2025, if you want to publish grand claims, and you're initially the only one who understands your own proof, publish a machine readable proof in say MetaMath's .mm format.