Utrecht Superstring Experiment
Monday, May 23rd, 2005Last 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.