String Theory makes first falsifiable prediction

The main problem of String Theory is that it had not been able to make falsifiable predictions so far that could be tested down here on Earth. Now for the first time it does.

According to Science News, physicists have now stumbled upon an answer to the unsolved quantum information theory question: in how many ways can four qubits be entangled. According to the authors (only co-author Michael Duff is mentioned by name), the answer is exactly 31.

It seems that they stumbled upon this solution while researching black holes, whose physics seem to be oddly similar to those of qubits somehow. Even the researchers themselves admit to be mystified by this finding.


And more cosmology: after the Big Bang there was true Chaos.

PhysOrg reports today that another cosmological conundrum has been solved: the state of the Universe right after the Big Bang: it was absolutely chaotic, not just relatively chaotic (i.e. as perceived by some observers but not others) but absolutely chaotic (for all possible observers). This means that unpredictable and incalculable tiny perturbations determined how the Universe would evolve.

Also at SD.

Ref. Katrin Gelfert, Adilson E. Motter. (Non)Invariance of Dynamical Quantities for Orbit Equivalent Flows. Communications in Mathematical Physics, 2010.