Last week Slashdot linked to an article on Physicsweb that reports on an experiment at the Institute of Theoretical Physics to create superstrings in the lab.

I finally found a chance to look at the original article on ArXiv, and Physicsweb’s article turns out to be misleading. The proposed experiment would simulate a superstring, not actually create one. This is a perfectly legitimate idea, but condensed matter physics is the Tinkertoys of quantum mechanics: you can build almost anything. A simulation of a superstring is a long way away from showing that superstrings really exist.