“I do feel strongly that this is nonsense! … So perhaps I could entertain future historians by saying I think all this superstring stuff is crazy and is in the wrong direction. I think all this superstring stuff is crazy and is in the wrong direction. … I don’t like it that they’re not calculating anything. … why are the masses of the various particles such as quarks what they are? All these numbers … have no explanations in these string theories – absolutely none! … I don’t like that they don’t check their ideas. I don’t like that for anything that disagrees with an experiment, they cook up an explanation—a fix-up to say, “Well, it might be true.” For example, the theory requires ten dimensions. Well, maybe there’s a way of wrapping up six of the dimensions. Yes, that’s all possible mathematically, but why not seven? When they write their equation, the equation should decide how many of these things get wrapped up, not the desire to agree with experiment. In other words, there’s no reason whatsoever in superstring theory that it isn’t eight out of the ten dimensions that get wrapped up and that the result is only two dimensions, which would be completely in disagreement with experience. So the fact that it might disagree with experience is very tenuous, it doesn’t produce anything.”

interview published in Superstrings: A Theory of Everything? (1988) edited by Paul C. W. Davies and Julian R. Brown, p. 193-194

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "I do feel strongly that this is nonsense! … So perhaps I could entertain future historians by saying I think all this s…" by Richard Feynman?
Richard Feynman photo
Richard Feynman 181
American theoretical physicist 1918–1988

Related quotes

“Okay, so she is crazy. I don’t care. I think I love her.”

L.J. Smith (1965) American author

Source: Night World, No. 1

Brad Dourif photo
Craig Ferguson photo

“I don’t think there’s anything wrong with telling the truth. I know it isn’t fashionable.”

Craig Ferguson (1962) Scottish-born American television host, stand-up comedian, writer, actor, director, author, producer and voice a…
Mel Gibson photo
Dennis M. Ritchie photo
Tom Higgenson photo
Ellen Kushner photo
Charles Bukowski photo
Anthony Hopkins photo

“I don’t know what it is, truthfully, I think part of it is being still and all that. I don’t know. I like to kind of come in at the side door. I like to act like a submarine; just don’t do much and just let it evolve. It’s resisting the urge to push the envelope. It’s very difficult for an actor to avoid, you want to show a bit. But I think the less one shows the better”

Anthony Hopkins (1937) Welsh stage and television actor

Anthony Hopkins on the secret of his spooky success: ‘I like to act like a submarine’ https://herocomplex.latimes.com/uncategorized/anthony-hopkins-on-the-secret-of-his-spooky-success-i-like-to-act-like-a-submarine/ (February 11, 2010)

Related topics