The Evolution of String Theory

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The switch really flipped in the 90s when we had what is called the second superstring revolution. Many of the best physics departments in the world didn't hire any string theorists at the time, because they weren't sure whether the idea was just going to go away or if it was just a fad. In the 1990s, Joe Polchinsky pointed out that string theory is not just a theory of strings. There are also these things called D brains, Dirichlet brains, which are not one dimensional strings but there's also two dimensional brains, three dimensional brains, four dimensional brains, etc. This is brain B, R, A, and E,.

Physics is in crisis, what else is new? That's what we hear in certain corners, anyway, usually pointed at "fundamental" physics of particles and fields. (Condensed matter and biophysics etc. are just fine.) In this solo podcast I ruminate on the unusual situation fundamental physics finds itself in, where we have a theoretical understanding that fits almost all the data, but which nobody believes to be the final answer. I talk about how we got here, and argue that it's not really a "crisis" in any real sense. But there are ways I think the academic community could handle the problem better, especially by making more space for respectable but minority approaches to deep puzzles.

Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2023/07/31/245-solo-the-crisis-in-physics/

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