>In holographic theories, physicists may have traced the pliability of space-time to its quantum roots

...ah yes holography again. Not to say that all these insights from it are completely worthless, but unless we actually find a holographic dual of our universe instead of AdS spaces (which are the opposite of our universe if anything), this whole field is starting to feel more like a jobs program for mathematicians out of new ideas.

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vbezhenar 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

That's how science always worked. The stupid people throw money at smart people and sometimes they pay back with good things. Any attempts to optimize that is futile, so the best we can do is to continue throwing money.

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dwroberts 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> this whole field is starting to feel more like a jobs program for mathematicians out of new ideas.

So sick of seeing phrases like this.

Science is not business. It is not about producing results that you personally think are important. It is understanding the nature of the universe for the sake of it.

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zchrykng 12 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

Please enlighten us how purely theoretical mathematical constructs, that are impossible to test, help us understand anything about our universe.

	▲	Erem 3 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Imaginary numbers are purely theoretical, but they turn out very helpful in almost every engineering discipline

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tsimionescu an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Science and math are not the same thing, though. The concern is that physics, a science, has been sliding too much into math research - specifically talking about the foundations of particle physics.

That is, the concern is that instead of studying the real world, theoretical physicists are spending more and more time studying mathematical constructs and their properties.

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echelon 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

There's a lot of ire for string theory. It's non-testable and wound up attracting lots of minds, funding, and resources. It hasn't seemingly led to any tangible results. Many scientists express anger about it and claim entire generations of progress were lost.

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zmgsabst 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Also, if all you have is a dual model, then it’s equally accurate to say entanglement arises from spacetime. Eg, this article describes entanglement giving rise to wormholes, but the model equally says wormholes give rise to entanglement.

They’re promoting their preferred frame to ontological status when you can’t use a dual model to assert more than equivalence between frames.