Probing the String Landscape
Keith R. Dienes · OSTI OAI (U.S. Department of Energy Office of Scientific and Technical Information) · 2009
We are currently in the throes of a potentially huge paradigm shift in physics. Motivated by recent developments in string theory and the discovery of the so-called "string landscape", physicists are beginning to question the uniqueness of fundamental theories of physics and the methods by which such theories might be understood and investigated. In this colloquium, I will give a non-technical introduction to the nature of this paradigm shift and how it developed. I will also discuss some of the questions to which it has led, and the nature of the controversies it has spawned.