0
$\begingroup$

Many years ago, I vaguely remember reading or hearing a claim that, like Ptolemy's epicycles, string theory is actually a general computing paradigm which can be "tuned" as needed to describe a whole class of universes. At the time, I didn't have the mathematical skills or confidence to investigate this for myself.

In the time since I've become much more comfortable with physics and theory of computation and have thought about that claim more than once. Unfortunately though in my searches I haven't been able to find or remember much useful information about it.

Is this (similar to?) a known result in theoretical physics? Has anything about it been proven, or can anyone direct me to relevant work, e.g. addressing the space of models which string theories can describe and/or their computational power?

Improve this question
$\endgroup$
5
  • 6
    $\begingroup$I dont know what you mean by "computational power" in this question. What I think you are getting at is that string theory, as is quantum field theory, is a framework that can describe many different theories. There is some research into what is known as the landscape and the swampland, which concerns itself with whether the standard model (our world) is compatible with a string theory, but I don't know if this is what youre asking about.$\endgroup$
    – mika
    CommentedAug 27, 2024 at 9:53
  • $\begingroup$I'm using "computational power" as a loose term, but let me expand on what I mean and why I think it does apply. What I mean is: roughly speaking, in theory of computation, we can show that one system of computation A is equivalently powerful to another one B by showing that any problem in A can be reduced to a problem in B, meaning A and B both solve the same class of problems. So, have there been, for example, attempts to show that string-theoretic models are equivalent to other "competing" models? Or perhaps proving or disproving Turing completeness? Anything like that. Hope that clarifies!$\endgroup$
    – Noah
    CommentedAug 27, 2024 at 10:03
  • $\begingroup$That is not at all clearer; Nobody makes the claim that Ptolemy's epicycles are an equivalently powerful computational system as Newtonian orbits, and certainly nobody makes the claim that you can build an understanding of any physical system by focusing upon epicycles. I am not even sure if you are trying to point out this link when you connect it with string theory.$\endgroup$
    – naturallyInconsistent
    CommentedAug 27, 2024 at 10:11
  • $\begingroup$@naturallyInconsistent I agree nobody made those claims so I'm not sure why they're relevant. Regardless – any function can in fact be approximated by sufficient epicycles, and in fact this is the entire basis of the Fourier transform. For the same reason, a theory like Ptolemy's could be created to describe a vast number of different possible orbits around the sun, not just the observed ones. That's bc it was a method for describing a whole class of possible theories rather than a tool which narrowed down a specific mechanism for gravity. I am interested in understanding that whole class.$\endgroup$
    – Noah
    CommentedAug 27, 2024 at 10:23
  • $\begingroup$There is a research program called the "swampland" that aims to identify which field theories cannot be obtained from the string theory "landscape".$\endgroup$
    – Mitchell Porter
    CommentedAug 29, 2024 at 1:29

0

Reset to default

Start asking to get answers

Find the answer to your question by asking.

Ask question

Explore related questions

See similar questions with these tags.