rationalskepticism.org

Severian wrote:

twistor59 wrote:Just to prove I'm not (very) prejudiced against strings:

Here is an alleged testable prediction

Superstring theory involves a single unifying superstring current for bosons and fermions that in the low-energy limit generalizes the Klein-Gordon (not the Dirac) current. By adopting a relativistic-covariant probabilistic interpretation of the current, the low-energy limit implies electron interference patterns that, under certain conditions, differ from those predicted by the Dirac current.

Do you understand where his claim "(ii) that it cannot be derived from low-energy supersymmetric field theory" comes from? I would have said that "bosonic and fermionic particles are different states of the same object" in any supersymmetric theory.

No I can't really see the basis for that either to be honest. I wouldn't have objected to calling bosonic and fermionic members of the same supermultiplet "different states of the same object" in an ordinary (non stringy) supersymmetric theory.

I assume what he's getting at is the stuff around eqns (7)-(9) (incl the long para before eq 7) - that's the stuff that I think is uniquely string theoretic and gives rise to the observed effect. (Although I know nothing about string theory, so I'm not fully sure what's going on).