String theorist Mike Duff famed for his pioneering work on M-theory has announced a novel and practical way to test the theory of strings. The Abdus-Salam Professor of Theoretical Physics at Imperial College delivered a talk on “Black Holes and Qubits” in Durban earlier this month. His work with Borsten, Dahanayake, Ebrahim, Marrani and Rubens caused a stir last year because of the widely misinterpreted claim that it provides a test of the mathematics of string theory. “Two different branches of theoretical physics, string theory and quantum information theory (QIT), share many of the same features, allowing knowledge on one side to provide new insights on the other. In particular the matching of the classification of black holes and the classification of four-qubit entanglement provides a falsifiable prediction of string theory in the field of QIT.” he said.
During the workshop, Duff teamed up with new collaborators from various fields of quantum physics to try out a completely new way of testing strings that came to light during the interdisciplinary discussions, and this time it was very much for real. Andrzej Dragan, Jason Doukas, Ivette Fuentes, Mike Duff and Nick Menicucci demonstrated the method that involves placing long strings under tension. The objective was to observe the temperature that results from uniform acceleration known as the Unruh effect. Some of their critics have already described it as “highly risky” and “jumping to wild conclusions.”, but Duff has responded by challenging them to test it for themselves. ViXra Log has exclusive video of how the amazing experiment turned out.
Update: I probably did not fool many people with this post, but in case anyone is wondering, that really is Mike Duff and other participants of the Relativistic Quantum Information Workshop doing the bungy jumping. The jump-off point is 106 meters above the Moses Mabhida Stadium in Durban. If anyone has experienced any equally unusual activities organised at conferences and workshops please do tell.