Do you believe that string theory is a reasonable explanation for how the universe works and why or why not?
Thanks:)

It's promising, but that's about it.

String theory has so far failed to provide any predictions, and so it's pretty useless as a theory.

It needs a lot of work to see if anything can come out of it.

Isn't it also just a bunch of fancy math not describing the real world.

Doesn't anyone have any evidence for their arguments? You can't just say it's crap and not say why it is! I mean, look at the theory of creation. I can say it's crap, but no one is going to listen unless I give it supporting evidence...

I think the string theory is a legitimate explanation for nature at rediculously small distances. Imagine looking at a vibrating string, if it is excited at such a high energy level, it can appear to occupy more space than its physical size allows. If you combine several subatomic boson particles, excite them, and let them vibrate, I imagine you would eventually see an object created by the volume they occupy. This is of course assuming they created enough fermions to be visualized.

This explanation is much more realistic than saying "god said we should see, so we do" but not as compelling as einsteins gravitational theory. Relating gravity to an objects density was just genious. Of course, this assumes the universe is a 2-dimensional plane, wrapped around a void. But what if you combine the two theories?

Lets say that strings make up the universe, and the fermions emitted make up the matter. If there were a mass associated with the fermions, you could essentially attribute the density of objects to the plank length, but we would still have to overcome the variability in volume... any thoughts?

I don't think it's worth talking about until the people working on it come through with some valid testable predictions, that is what science is about, after all.

That's all that I meant.

We may never know whether string theory is right, as it may never be possible to build experiments that would be able to confirm or refute any predictions that come out of it. Personally, I think any theory that relies on one-dimensional strings vibrating in 10 or 11 dimensions is a bit of a long shot. I can't back that up my feeling with any hard arguments - the mathematics behind string theory are so much beyond me that I would never profess any expertise. But I bet 10 years from now there will be a new theory that is all the rage.

Does this mean you don't think religion is worth talking about either, since there is no way to quantify it?

Science is about theory, not tests. Most of our laws are based on loose theories. Take gravity for example, or relativity, or the heisenburg uncertainty principle. How do we test any of these things? Are they worth talking about? I think the string theory is a valid argument until we find something that can be tested. I don't think it is right, but I'm willing to give it a chance. Science is about keeping your mind open to alternatives, until you have exhausted all possible outcomes. You are not quantifying the theory, you are disproving everything else.

Isn't the string theory the theory that the entire universe is only one string? If so, I don't believe in it. How can everything be one string if objects can separate themselves from other objects? Maybe I'm wrong about that, though. How would you prove that theory anyway? That's my argument. It's not very good, but at least it's something. :)

Universal Truth: Are you serious that is only one small part of science most of it is based on experiment and fact

Yes.

Are you serious? These are all very well tested theories. Relativity, for example, solves a problem we had with the precession of mercury. It also predicts gravitational lensing effects which we observe. The are very well tested indeed. Gravity is the easiest one to test. Just jump on the spot, you come back down to Earth, magic huh? Now you can work on ruling out other explanations for gravity through more stringent testing and forming a more solid theory.