Is string theory weakening physics?

Hey, don’t be harshing on Dr. Pauli! Word is that he was a softie when it came to affairs of the heart.

This reminds me of a story related to me by Janet Conrad of Fermilab.

“One of the things to notice about neutrinos is that it’s like a lot of other discoveries. It was a tiny inconsistency in measurements that led to the postulation of the neutrino.

Energy and momentum weren’t being conserved in a decay, and that’s a terrible violation as far as physics is concerned, and so we had to do something to save it. And so what happened was that this particle which at first they thought that they wouldn’t even be able to detect, was invented.

That’s actually why it was first put forth in 1930. It was actually kind of cute. Pauli put it forward in a letter to the German scientific community. He didn’t go to the conference and present his idea. And it turned out the reason why he decided not go to that meeting was because he had a date that night. He decided he’d rather go on the date.

For a long time he was just putting this out as ‘well look, this is another solution,’ instead of throwing out the idea of energy and momentum conversation. And a lot of people were saying something must be wrong with the measurement. And so he just threw this out as an idea.

It wasn’t until later that it became clear that you actually really needed these particles. It wasn’t until the 1950’s that they actually were able to show that these particles were out there by showing that you could produce them and see them interact. That’s how you know that neutrinos are actually there. You produce them in decays and then you see them interact in your detector. And then you know even though this is a neutral particle, so neutral particles don’t leave tracks in detectors, you actually know they’ve been there.”

Bear in mind that Dr. Conrad said this to me in the context of trying to explain what a neutrino is to a non-scientist. I apologize if I misquoted her.