> “What they have found is a 5D de Sitter solution, and we don’t live in 5D,” said > Antonio Padilla(opens a new tab) of the University of Nottingham.

> Still, the work is expected to launch a new era in matching the mathematical > elegance of string theory to the actual world we live in."

yeah, sounds real promising. string theory all over. nice maths but who cares if it doesnt map to reality, its nice maths!

Which would be fine if they were calling themselves mathematicians, we can debate if their ideas are more/less worthy of funding vs all the other mathematicians working on interesting math that might or might not be useful. However when they call themselves physicists we demand they prove they are creating useful physics. There are other areas of study in Physics that are producing results and thus seem more worthy of funding.

Remember resources are limited. We cannot fund everyone who wants it. Society needs to make choices, we are generally okay with a bit of "interesting but unlikely to produce anything important", but most of what we fund needs a return on investment.