Optimism About String Theory
Gordon L Kane · Science · 2005
The News Focus article “String theory gets real—sort of” (A. Cho, 26 Nov. 2004, p. 1460) nicely describes the historical issues and separation of string theory and phenomenology, but it does not convey the recent excitement and increased activity of the emerging area of “string phenomenology.” The best documentation for that is people voting with their “feet”—last summer witnessed the third international string phenomenology meeting (in Ann Arbor), with the fourth already scheduled for Munich next summer, plus the first ever string phenomenology workshop, on which the article reported. String theory is exciting not only as a quantum theory of gravity, but because it allows us to address as research topics basic questions previously out of reach. Increasingly, many people are working in these areas and unifying different areas (such as collider physics, inflation, dark matter, quark masses, neutrino masses, and more) that could only be connected by a deep underlying theory. Whether such efforts are successful remains to be seen, but a number of people are more optimistic than they have been for a long time.