Don’t Let String Theory Ruin The Perfectly Good Science Of Physical Cosmology
When you mix science with speculation, you get speculation. But the underlying science is still real.
Whenever you hear the phrase, “it’s just a theory,” it should trigger alarm bells in the scientific portion of your brain. While most of us, colloquially, use the term theory synonymously with a word like idea, hypothesis, or guess, you have a much higher bar to clear when it comes to science. At the very least, your theory needs to be formulated within a self-consistent framework that doesn’t violate its own rules. Next, your theory needs to not (obviously) conflict with what’s already been observed and established: it must be a non-falsified theory.
And then, even at that, your theory can only be considered speculative until the critical and decisive tests arrive, allowing you to discern whether your theory matches the data in a way that alternatives — including the prior consensus theory — do not. Only if your theory passes a series of tests will it be accepted by the mainstream. Quite famously, string theory does not meet the necessary criteria for this, and can be considered, at best, a speculative theory. But many astrophysical theories, including inflation, dark matter, and dark energy, are far more sound than…
