This thread isn't about string theory itself at all. I am completely unable to even remotely judge its chances of becoming or contributing to any future "Theory of Everything". And I don't want to go into the discussion if it merits the name "theory" at all (you kow, falsifyability and so on). It's just that I happen to have read some of the popular books about it and try to follow the layman level discussion about it on our favourite astronomy media. So this is a purely hypothetical question from an interested "Elegant Universe" reader, Babbloggee, Universe Todayist and Astronomy Castee:

Let's suppose string theory were to be proven wrong. Of course, that would necessitate String Theory made some predictions testable in our real old Universe on our little world (I read criticism positing that this hasn't been the case so far; never mind). Suppose these tests had been proposed, the assorted mega-experiments done and turned up a negative result; suppose further that some elegant alternative TOE had completely discredited the string concept, smartly solved all the problems that initially led to the development of string theory and would enjoy some tentative but convincing experimental support.

What would happen? I mean, this theory has had whole careers of the finest distinction built on it; lots of grant money have been requested, granted and spent. Some of the arguably most intelligent people on the planet have entirely devoted themselves and their careers to developing this theory and its fiercely difficult mathematics.

Would all this have been completely in vain? Nobody today talks about Einstein's attempts at "classical" unified field theories anymore - they are completely gone, and all the heavy intellectual investment of his later years (decades, really) has come to naught and not born any fruit (correct me if I am wrong). Would string theory just be the most elegant untrue concept of the Universe ever, and would its proponent have to go into business consulting instead?

Or would the concepts developed with and for string theory have a value for building other theories, could the (tremendous, it seems to me) intellectual achievement, could the whole highly developed mathematics be used to inform and enrich other fields of physics or even pure mathematics. Like, "string theory joined steady state cosmology on the trash heap of cosmology when it was finally shown that ABC didn't behave like it should have - if the DEF theorem of M theory had held true. String theorists were being treated for depression in huge numbers. Gosh, what an awakening when we realized that the solution to the GHI problem of JKL physics had an obvious solution in the elegant treatment M.N.O had developed for the PQR invariance in string theory". Or something.

In other words: Is string theory just an isolated field of mathematics that will be irrelevant if there is no observable physics to match it; or can its concepts be put to use elsewhere in cosmology/physics/mathematics?

Too speculative?

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Non sunt multiplicanda entia praeter necessitatem.

String theory is a mathematical model that takes a mathematical journey to predict what goes on in particle accelerator experiments. At one time it tried to describe the behavior of quarks and lost out to the quark model as inelastic scattering experiments were being conducted. Most of the ones I know do it part time and not full time. They are allowed to pursue it by renting space and time to calculate predictions while doing other physics the rest of the day.

String Theory is dependent upon the validity of supersymmetry being valid so if that if not proven to be correct then it will fall.

Mathematicians like to prove things differently than physicists and take a touch different approach. They like their two column proofs and verifying new theorums to be based on using past proven theorums as subcomponents of the new theorums they seek to prove. They cringe at Feynman's approach which was to make math fit what results in a lab. While they agree that math should describe accurately what goes on in the lab, they feel Feynman ad hocked math to do it.

The math of string theory won't die although the funds spent on it at labs might dry up. For those that hung their entire careers on it and dumped too much effort in that direction? They should have diversified like a lot of their colleagues did. I forgot who it was offhand but I believe someone committed suicide while claiming the atomic theory was correct while no one bought it during his lifetime.

blueshift...Which is why I love guys like Feynmann. pete

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A third rate theory forbids
A second rate theory explains after the fact
A first rate theory predicts...A. Lomonosov

Here! here! thrinitree, this is science not investment portfolios! Go where your passion of inquiry takes you!

I suppose it depends on how it gets proven wrong. Come to think of it, if String Theory gets developed far enough that it can be demonstrated to be wrong, then it probably did give us a framework for choosing experiments that will be shown to be good choices for finding the next step here.

Will it also have produced some useful Mathematical capabilities for whatever comes next? Maybe.

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Forming opinions as we speak

Good summary.

I don't think it will have been done in vain. Like quantum physics, if nothing else, it expands our mind, demanding that we leave the social, practical, and experiential world we dwell in and naively insist upon the rest of reality.

Lee Smolin's book The Trouble With Physics [2006] gets into this in 300 pages of detail. He rails against the situation in current academia that tends to put too many eggs in one basket and makes it near impossible for visionaries and creative thinkers to get jobs and pursue avenues different than those in fashion.

Yes, lots of researchers' time and funds would have gone into a promising idea that didn't ultimately pan out. But it would not have all been for naught. Research into string theory has yielded significant advances in gauge theories and I'm sure other areas. And negative findings have some value in themselves: If an area has been thoroughly investigated and found not to conform well with observations, we know that's not the answer and can move on to other possibilities.

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Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.

The work on string theory has already had impact in mathematics, particularly understanding of the structure of manifolds. Ed Witten has not received a Nobel Prize, but he did receive a Fields Medal.

http://www.mathunion.org/Prizes/Fiel...ten/page1.html

These were very valuable answers for me. Thanks everyone for the help (not that I'm asking you to stop here ).

Funny. Apparently, someone else asked this question elsewhere. Those backlinks can be very valuable, can't they?

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Non sunt multiplicanda entia praeter necessitatem.