I think ppl are asuming that sting theory comes from the meme about turning 1+1 = 2 into some massive integro differential equation. The world is rarely so simple.
(Or, maybe “a prediction” rather than “predictions”? I only heard about one, and I forget what it was.)
I'm aware of quite a few where they managed to "predict" something we already knew.
That said, they've made so many "predictions" that I'm sure that some likely worked out by sheer coincidence.
Actually, I think the value might have been something like, the electron mass? Or something like that. (Which, obviously, had been measured before string theory made a "prediction" of it.)
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/supersymmetrys-absence-l...
Yes, it took a couple of decades to test the existence of neutrinos. But, for example, general relativity was successfully tested within 5 years of being published. Gravitational waves were a prediction that took decades before we could test them, but the theory itself had lots of other verifications.
To date string theory has had many predictions that leads to failed tests. But not a single successful test in its favor.
All of those things you name came directly out of attempts to create testable hypotheses from experimental observations, and all of them were tested as soon as anyone could build an experiment apparatus or gather the data to do it. Which didn’t take that long considering the extreme engineering difficulties in actually building the apparatus for some of them.
String theory has avoided testability it’s entire existence, nearly a century now, and no one that I’ve seen is even attempting to make an experiment to try to test it - because at this point it’s clear that no one on the theory side is interested in making a testable hypothesis. That isn’t luck, that’s talent and hard work.
It’s one of the most absurd grifts I’ve personally seen play out so far.
BtW I think you got this 80 years number from looking at the earliest date on the Wikipedia page. You might want to read it more carefully. Not everything leading up to string theory is string theory.
I’m not saying string theory isn’t potentially interesting from a mathematics perspective, I’m just saying treating it like physics (which is, explicitly about testable/falsifiable theories) is BS.
If we were honest about it, it would be a maths speciality eh?
At least until there are more clear attempts at making testable hypotheses.
But that would cause other issues with funding I imagine.
If quantum loop gravity comes up with a testable hypotheses, then hey, maybe I’m wrong. But so far, not so much yeah? And I’m not talking ‘we’d need to spend a lot of money to test it’, I mean an actual testable/falsifiable hypotheses at all.