TANGLED UP IN STRINGS
Two books say that today's theoretical physicists are way off course.
In the mood for some no-holds-barred gossip or a nasty screed? Then start browsing the physics blogosphere, where some exceedingly smart people are spending an inordinate amount of time belittling one another. Alas, even this magazine has come under attack. The cause of all the commotion? Some nervy upstarts are questioning the validity of string theory, which is to physics what Wal-Mart is to retail: the biggest thing around, dominant for more than 20 years now. And woe unto anyone who doubts the orthodoxy. The dispute is bound to heat up with the publication of Peter Woit's Not Even Wrong (Basic Books, $26) and Lee Smolin's The Trouble With Physics (Houghton Mifflin, $26), both of which argue that string theory's hegemony has undermined further progress in physics.
When we science writers describe string theory, we usually trot out something like this: The theory defines the fundamental constituents of physical reality not as minuscule particles but as shimmying strands of energy less than a trillionth of a trillionth the size of an atom. (For scale: If a string were blown up to the size of an atom, an atom would fill the space between Earth and the nearest star.) Yet that's like defining music as a sequence of notes; it doesn't do justice to string theory's complexity and depth. This is, in fact, a daunting mathematical edifice backed by most of the world's leading theoretical physicists. They believe it will someday enable them to unify quantum mechanics, the physics of all things atomic, with Einstein's general relativity, which describes how gravity shapes the universe on the very largest scales.
But physicists have been chasing that dream for decades now, and some like Smolin, a highly regarded physicist at the Perimeter Institute in Waterloo, Ontario, and Woit, a mathematician at Columbia University, argue that string theory has had ample time to prove itself. The main problem with string theory—acknowledged by critics and supporters alike—is that no one knows if it will ever generate testable predictions that can be addressed by experiment (a process that essentially defines the practice of science). The basic equations of string theory have more solutions than there are atoms in the universe. Since the theory can't be disproved, there may never be a way to tell if it is right or wrong.
Woit judges this situation harshly. He calls string theory "a failed and overhyped project" and claims that its supporters have parted ways with science. Woit's book is really two books in one. The first half is highly technical, with little to offer the general reader; the second half is completely different—a lively and entertaining presentation of his case. String theorists will hate it.
Smolin's engaging account is more nuanced. Having devoted several years of his career to string theory, he is much more sympathetic than Woit to both its prospects and its technical difficulties (which, who knows, some bright young student may someday solve). Instead, what most concerns Smolin is the theory's complete dominance of physics departments. What might the great minds of physics past, having revolutionized the field, make of the juggernaut that is string theory? "We must recognize and fight the symptoms of groupthink," Smolin writes, subtly channeling Richard Feynman, the rebellious physics genius, "and we must open the doors to a wide range of independent thinkers, being sure to make room for the peculiar characters needed to
make a revolution." —Tim Folger
BOOK
Where Technology Goes to Die
If you sleep comfortably having lugged your old computer to a hazardous waste collection site, certain it is being safely picked apart and recycled into next season's iPod, wake up. Chances are, your trash was shipped to a rural province in China, where poor, sandal-clad women melt circuit boards in skillets to harvest the precious metals. These workers wear no protection and breathe fire retardants, dioxins, and furans.
As Elizabeth Grossman reveals in High Tech Trash: Digital Devices, Hidden Toxics, and Human Health (Island Press, $29.95), her dense and damning book about the afterlife of techno-trash, much of what we cast away is improperly disposed of—regardless of our efforts—and ends up leaching toxins into the air, water, and soil. Between 2003 and 2010, as many as 3 billion units of consumer electronics generated by the States will head to the global junk pile. If current trends persist, only about 10 percent of this will ever be recycled.
Part of the problem is that electronics require costly dismantling and sorting of their ingredients. In Europe and Japan, recycling is mandatory, forcing manufacturers to shoulder the financial burden of recycling waste and compelling them to design less-toxic products. Not so in the United States. Lacking tough tech-recycling laws on the federal level, local governments fashion regulations that are hard to follow. As a result, e-waste is discarded along with junk mail and food scraps and ends up in landfills where shattered screens spew lead and mercury and circuit boards leak cadmium, a probable carcinogen.
"Microchip circuitry may be as invisible as the network of nerves on a dragonfly's wing," Grossman writes. "And whole libraries may appear on our desktop screens apparently out of thin air, but unless some radical changes are made in the way we design and produce our information age gadgetry, its ecological footprint will never really be reduced." —Joseph D'Agnese
