Post by @Roundtrip@federate.social

Cosmology's swampland ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Cumrun Vafa, of Harvard, coined, in 2005, the term swampland to describe universes beyond the scope of string theory... Proving it [the universe people call home] was on dry land would suggest that string theory might be true. Which would be nice, because a criticism often thrown at this theory is that it is elegant but untestable…

#giftlink #Economist #StringTheory
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https://economist.com/science-and-technology/2026/08/25/the-universe-is-peculiar-but-it-may-soon-become-less-so?giftId=OGRjNTk2YTMtYThlOS00MjZiLWFkMmItMTRmOWEwMzg5ZjYy&utm_campaign=gifted_article

The Economist

The universe is peculiar. But it may soon become less so

New theories and experiments should shine light on string theory

#stringtheory #giftlink #economist

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Greg Lloyd

@Roundtrip@federate.social 20 min. ago

🧵Cosmology’s swampland

“Dr Vafa’s proposal is that the two swampland conjectures, paired with measurements of dark energy, point to a special region in string theory’s landscape: one that would wrap together three of the universe’s biggest mysteries—dark energy, dark matter and quantum gravity—into a single, neat package.”

Greg Lloyd

@Roundtrip@federate.social 17 min. ago

🧵Cosmology’s swampland

“Dr Vafa calls this slightly uncoiled space the ‘dark dimension’. Its uncoiling allows gravitons—hypothetical particles responsible for the gravitational force—to pick up a mass as they pass through it. Those gravitons, he proposes, are the particles of dark matter. Dark energy therefore sets the size of the dark dimension, which in turn sets the mass of the dark matter, which is itself nothing but gravity seeping into the dark dimension.”

Greg Lloyd

@Roundtrip@federate.social 15 min. ago

🧵Cosmology’s swampland

“And, tantalisingly, the dimension’s uncoiled nature means it might be observable without the massive (and massively expensive) particle colliders that are the current preferred hardware of particle physics.”