The Official String Blog

V. Gates, M. Roachcock, E. Kangaroo, and W.C. Gall

Institute for Really Advanced Study


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This blog in no way represents the views of anybody who would bother to spend some time thinking about what they're saying. If it did, we'd publish it instead of just putting it in a log.

Recent Developments in Atchoo! Theory

9:00 AM

Introduction

This entry is a report from the conference on The Future of String Theory, January 2006, Some Island. Certainly the most exciting development to appear at this conference1 was the introduction of Atchoo! theory by Written [1]. Since that comment already 17 papers have appeared at arGive.arg [2-18] giving further developments2, and this new result in string theory has been heralded as the greatest breakthrough in science since the discovery of calculus by Newton or Leibniz3.



Just in time?

This development has already become the center of debate on the Web (see below), since it may be the only thing that can save string theory from doom once the LHC (Last Hope Collider) starts up in 20074, probing distances orders of magnitude smaller than a fm5.

Of course, unless some new particle is found there within a few years, it will also be the doom of high-energy physics in general (at least until the Axis of Evil builds its GNAPBW6 accelerator). However, there is also the possibility of continued low-funding accelerator projects: RHIC is planning to downsize by replacing gold nuclei with chickens7, to see what eggs look like far off shell.



Notation

So far, most of the discussion has been about just what "Atchoo!" means. Part of the subtlety is that the notation is related to Chinese, in that the pitch of each letter is important, as indicated by the altitude of the letters. (The altitude notation was introduced in [4]. It also helps avoid some trademark restrictions.) The font may also be important. (Several mathematicians suggested using "blackboard bold", until it was explained to them that physicists don't use blackboards anymore.)

Results

Now that we have defined our notation, we can summarize the results. Unlike the usual formulation of string theory, which has 10 dimensions8, Atchoo! has only 6 letters (or maybe 7, if you count the "!"), and thus has much more predictive power. The missing dimensions are contained in the pitch of each letter, which is already fixed by the theory. (Otherwise, it might be something like "Atchoo!", and how ridiculous would that be?13) This already includes the Anthropic Principle, which precludes the existence of Chooat! theory, e.g.14 The Standard Model then follows simply from the 2+3+1 (=SU(2)⊗SU(3)⊗U(1)) monotonically increasing decomposition At ⊕ cho ⊕ o! (where the "!" represents the Abelian nature of the last factor).



Conclusions

Clearly this is a hot topic. In fact, if you have not already written a paper on it, you will be lost in the shuffle. (Maybe you should have come to this conference.) Fortunately, you're reading this blog, so at least you'll be informed as we update the news. Also, if you read anything about this at other web sites, make sure to come here to find out why they're wrong.

References




Comments

Wrought says:
9:10 AM
More ridiculous string nonsense. When are you guys going to start working on something more realistic, like loopy cumquat gravity?


Bottle says:
9:20 AM
String theory is just as well proven as evolution. In fact, DNA is an open twistor superstring.


Fordprefect says:
9:30 AM
That reminds me of the time I went bicycling in the Himalayas...


Pshaw says:
9:31 AM
What kind of wine do they have there?


Bottle says:
9:32 AM
Hey, can we stay on topic? Which is, "Global warming is caused by the cosmological constant."


Gall says:
9:33 AM
So, what about Atchoo! theory?


Bottle says:
9:34 AM
It is Written's greatest new result -- very beautiful, very concise. It is very deep, so far I have understood only up to the "h".


Gall says:
9:35 AM
Shouldn't that be an "ħ"?


Bottle says:
9:36 AM
A what?


Gall says:
9:37 AM
I said, an "ħ"? And why are there 2 "o"'s?


Fordprefect says:
9:38 AM
Duality! The "o" is for S5 (a little sphere) and the "o!" is for AdS5.


Bottle says:
9:39 AM
I thought the "A" was for AdS5.

Actually, the font size on this blog is much too large. You should use a much smaller one, so I can read the screen and use it to scratch my nose at the same time.

Then you can make footnotes that are even smaller, so nobody will read them.

Also, you are using the wrong font family. If you use a Microsophist font like Verdigris, then all the Mac and Linux machines will substitute something even smaller.


Distiller says:
9:40 AM
No, no. Use the MathML fonts! They're much prettier, and you need to install a plug-in to even see them!


Gall says:
9:41 AM
This is a string blog. If I wanted to hear about politics and HTML, I would go to the column on the right, which is written by an idiot.