[noobermin]

No one is arguing whether science is over, they are arguing whether modern theoretical physics is science.

Another thing somewhat impacted by this issue that people don't think about is that we might not be able to keep up this pace in research for things like string theory for non-scientific reasons: specifically, science funding has flat-lined while the number of students entering the fundamental research fields is increasing. Really, particle physics is probably one of the most saturated fields in theoretical physics today.

There simply isn't enough room for everyone to study what they want. Therefore, given the "zero-sum game" situation we have, we need to decide where it's beneficial to spend our tax dollars and time researching...or most likely, governments who barely understand how to balance a budget will decide it for us. Given that string theory's only argument at this point is suspect amongst a plurality of traditional scientists, it seems like low-hanging fruit to be picked off the funding tree.

Regarding the "keep researching" line in higher level theory that the end of the article and you seem to be promoting...I think yes, you will always have people researching something out there, although honestly, the people who will be able to will most likely be at a certain number of institutions which can be enumerated on one or two hands. The rest of theoretical particle physics? I guess the sustainability of that program is dependent on the stress tolerance of physics graduate students and post-docs for the time going forward.

The other way out is to, you guessed it, work in research that is testable, and leads to fancy toys the beltway boys can appreciate.

[VeilEm]

> science funding has flat-lined while the number of students entering the fundamental research fields is increasing

This is probably not true. All kinds of money is being poured into physics research to create better batteries for example. It may be indirect, but there's a ton of money going into physics research.

[noobermin]

I might be restricting it to government funding, so this might be true. Considering this in the context of the rest of my post, I'd think this kind of money is restricted to practical, applied fields, not quantum gravity. I do suppose once in a blue moon, a wealthy benefactor might want to support a grad student doing string theory. Still, the exceedingly small number of rich people willing to pay out for esoteric physics guarantees it will go to researchers working in those finger-enumerable universities as I said. For the larger pool of physicists across the country that mainly would be paid by NSF grants and the like? They lose out to the condensed matter physicists making leaps and bounds in material science.

On second reading of your post, you may be implying it isn't zero sum due to more money going to the applied physicists, leaving some for the stringy guys. It might be true, my impression is that it isn't enough[0], but I could be wrong.

[0] This is somewhat out of my ass, but it is tempered by colloquia at my university I've attended where this comes up from time to time.

[dozzie]

It's not science research, it's technology research. And it's not fundamental thing, it's just bells and whistles to be developed. Better batteries are not critical to our understanding of the universe.

[wolfgke]

> This is probably not true. All kinds of money is being poured into physics research to create better batteries for example. It may be indirect, but there's a ton of money going into physics research.

This is not research (in particular not physics research) but engineering or development.

[pheroden]

So science 2.0 will be encumbered by patents... Great.

[VeilEm]

Educational research at universities often leads to patents. Universities like Standford own patents or have helped research performed at a University lead to patents. Government funding for research in the U.S at least has never been hostile to commercialization.