Читать книгу String Theory For Dummies - Andrew Zimmerman Jones - Страница 60

Astronomers found evidence in 1998 that the expansion of the universe was actually accelerating. This accelerated expansion is caused by the dark energy that you hear about so often in the news. Not only did string theory not predict the existence of dark energy, but its attempts to use science’s best theories to calculate the amount of dark energy come up with a number that’s vastly larger than the one observed by astronomers. The theory just absolutely failed to initially make sense of dark energy.

Claiming this as a flaw of string theory is a bit more controversial than the other two problems, but there’s some (albeit questionable) logic behind it. The goal of string theory is nothing less than the complete rewriting of gravitational law, so it’s not unreasonable to think that string theory should’ve anticipated dark energy in some way.

When Einstein constructed his theory of general relativity, the mathematics indicated that space could be expanding (later proved to be true). When Paul Dirac formulated a quantum theory of the electron, the mathematics indicated an antiparticle existed (later proved to actually exist). A profound theory like string theory can be expected to illuminate new facts about our universe, not be blindsided by unanticipated discoveries.

Of course, no other theory anticipated an accelerating expansion of the universe either. Prior to the observational evidence, cosmologists (and string theorists) had no reason to assume that the expansion rate of space was increasing. Years after dark energy was discovered, it was shown that string theory could be modified to include it, which string theorists count as a success (although the critics continue to be unsatisfied).