I don't like that for anything that disagrees with an experiment, they cook up an explanation--a fix-up to say, "Well, it still might be true."

1. Tremendous self-confidence, leading to a sense of entitlement and of belonging to an elite community of experts.
2. An unusually monolithic community, with a strong sense of consensous, whether driven by the evidence or not, and an unusual uniformity of views on open questions. These views seem related to the existance of a hierachical structure in which the ideas of a few leaders dictate the viewpoint, strategy, and direction of the field.
3. In some cases, a sense of identification with the group, akin to identification with a religious faith or political platform.
4. A strong sense of the boundary between the group and other experts.
5. A disregard for and disinterest in the ideas, opinions, and work of experts who are not part of the group, and a preference for talking only with other members of the community.
6. A tendancy to interpret evidence optimistically, to believe exagerated or incorrect statements or results, and to disregard the possibility that the theory might be wrong. This is coupled with a tendancy to believe results are true because they are "widely believed", even if one has not checked (or even seen) the proof oneself.
7. A lack of appreciation for the extent to which a research program ought to involve risk.

You can tell if a group suffers from groupthink if it:

1. Overestimates its invulnerability or high moral stance,
2. Collectively rationalizes the decisions it makes,
3. Demonizes or stereotypes outgroups and their leaders,
4. Has a culture of uniformity where individuals censor themselves and others so that the facade of the group unanimity is maintained, and
5. Contains members who take it upon themselves to protect the group leader by keeping information, theirs or other group members', from the leader.

that what he proved was that a certain kind of infinate term does not appear anywhere in the theory. But he told us that he had not actually proved the theroy itself was finite, because other kinds of infinate terms might appear.

re: validity of string theory:

I'm certainly not an expert, But I am very interested, and have researched it a bit.


I think Richard Feynman actually said it best in the 80's before he died:
20 years later, and nothing has changed, just that they have 'cooked up' more excuses, as now M-Theory (basically a theory that unifies the 5 most prominant String Theroies) says there are 10^500 [that's a 1 with 500 zeros after it] different theories, as String Theory is background dependant, thus each one has a sollution for each background.



This should shed a little light on the problem...

The quotes below are from The Trouble With Physics: The Rise of String Theory, the Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next, by Lee Smolin, in a chapter titled How Do You Fight Sociology?:

Summarizing what is seen among those in the String Theory community:page 284


Describing and using the term "Groupthink":page 287


It was, and still is, believed that String Theory was proved finite by Stanley Mandelstam in 1992, never verified, and taken as fact ever since by String Theorists... This year, Smolin verified that it was never proved... In fact Mandelstam replied to an email asking about this, in it he explained page 281

Back to the OP again:

It's possible that metals do stick together in a vacuum, but i doubt it's for the reason stated in the linked article.

If we ignore some small physcial problems (like the fact that even the most precisely engineered metal surfaces are very far from flat), we're still left with one big issue: atoms in metals are bonded tightly together, which is what makes them hard.

Creating those bonds takes a lot of energy. That's part of how normal welding works. The fact that objects rarely stick together is little to do with protective coatings, and more to do with the fact that there's usually not enough energy around to form the necessary bonds between them - especially in a vacuum!

This should shed a little light on the problem...

The quotes below are from The Trouble With Physics: The Rise of String Theory, the Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next, by Lee Smolin, in a chapter titled How Do You Fight Sociology?:

Summarizing what is seen among those in the String Theory community:page 284

Sorry, yes you're right, I didn't explain that very well.

There would have to be enough energy to break and reform the bonds for the weld to occur.

Just out of interest, is it actually possible to create a surface which is just one continuous surface of one type of atom? It sounds like it would be very difficult.

Graphite would be one example where it's relatively easy. Mica also gives atomically flat sheets, but there's a number of different elements involved. In both cases it's simply because of their crystal structure.

If you're talking about metals, then yup, it's very, very difficult over any appreciable area.