Is string theory a mathematical deception?
No – it is not. Read anything by Edward Witten – the #1 man in the field. For the last 20 years of his life, Albert Einstein was something of an oddity in the physics community, like a beloved eccentric uncle whose favorite subject of conversation draws embarrassed looks around the table. While quantum theory, the theory of the infinitesimally small, was being tested with accuracy never attained before, he refused to accept that it was the ultimate theory. For the last years of his life, he worked on a way to reconcile his own theory of gravitation and the quantum description of the world. He didn’t succeed and died without seeing his dearest dream realized. More than 40 years later, Einstein is almost vindicated: The long lasting problem of incompatibility between general relativity and quantum mechanics seems to be on its way to a resolution. The solution may be difficult to grasp. If the handful of physicists involved in what are called “superstring theories” (or string, for short)
