Talk:Theory of everything/Archive 1

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Archive This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Here's why I deleted the reference to the Reciprocal System of Theory from the main article: this "system" does not even mention the strong or electroweak interactions, therefore it is not a theory of everything in the sense of the main article: it is not a physical theory unifying all four fundamental forces.

It may be a "theory of everything" in the same sense that the Greeks had "theories of everything": they had metaphysical systems that internally made sense. That however is not what physics is about, and it is not what the main article is about. --AxelBoldt

I'm not a physicist, but I think to assume something "not observed" in the superstring theories is sophomoric, because the definition of a string states it is a hundred million times smaller than a hydrogen nucleus, or proton. In this area try not to think that even the distinguished scientists observe anything. This is highly theoretical, and no one on wiki needs to contradict a fair reporting on the current status of these string theories, unless of course they are working on them with the handful of physicists who proposed the theories. TEO may be an assumption. "...some of the less experienced participants in the enterprise thought that we were on the verge of constructing a complete fundamental theory of the physical world." Then the press began saying there was now a TEO. I think this entire attitude may come from excitement surrounding the first superstring theory's release in 1985. There really isn't a theory of everything... yet[added]~BF

String theories make some very clear predictions which can be verified, most notably the existance of new particles. In fact, the whole concept of supersymmetry should be open to testing, depending on whether or not we are able to find the supersymmetric equivalents of known particles. Btw, TOE not TEO.

I have now made subheadings to distinguish between the general concept of a 'theory of everything' in the sense that physicists use, and that which would be understood by the common meaning of the term. The Anome

Good. There is no sane reason why a Theory of Everything should come from, or be expected from, physics alone. Tegmark seeks it in mathematics directly - Gabora in cognition. Lakoff's view is hard to differentiate from Gabora's without a link so I left them together. I know of no other TOE class idea that is compatible with the cognitive paradigm - but Tegmark's "ultimate ensemble theory" does seem so according to himself (someone has to observe and believe in the isomorphism which implies a cognitive process as strong as anything else in experience).

Not sure if cognitive paradigm conflicts with GUTs - I do not think so but I know of no statement by cognitive theorists that GUTs are immune to the objection they make to non-isomorphic mathematical TOEs (like string theory).

It's also quite fair to consider 'meme theory' and 'gaia theory to be legitimate theories of everything - if culture and ecology are "everything", which to most people on Earth, they are. I object to physicists monopolizing the term but if we make note of the cognitive objection, I am satisfied that this is closer to NPOV. Physicists love to take over generic universals it seems, e.g. Standard Model. A bit like Microsoft that way...

OK, I see what you did, but why is Tegmark's theory "in the common sense" and not "in the technical sense"? And by "technical" you mean "physicists'" so you should write "physicists'", since cognitive scientists and linguists are also "technical".

There are probably three levels of rigor here: physicists using the Standard Model as a foundation ontology (your "technical sense"), those looking at any combination of isomorphism, cognition, and anti-reductionist ideas to arrive at a derivation of the Standard Model (or its irrelevance to the macroworld), which is still "technical" but not strictly "physical", and a "common" sense by which we would mean more or less a foundation ontology or a full and complete [cosmology]] - somewhere between memes and gaia on the credibility scale...

If you let physicists monopolize the word "technical" and make every other field or profession "common", what does that say about wiki? Hmm.... meta:cliques should say something about that.


I also don't see why physics and their untestable crap, i.e. string theory, get so much attention or space or respect when there are testable theories, e.g. post-Dawkins meme theory, that get none, according to LDC's "Royal Decree"

Thank you for your invective wrt physics. When I want more I'll pull the chain again. If you want to write about post-Dawkins meme theory (whatever that is) go right ahead. Noone is stopping you, and I wish you'd stop implying that anyone is. If you start claiming that post-Dawkins meme theory explains the interactions of the four fundamental forces, we'll certainly point out that no physicist would give such an idea the time of day.
As to your substantive point, which in the middle of your anti-physics and general anti-science diatribe appears to be that physics isn't the only place a "Theory Of Everything" can come from, is both right and wrong, IMO. Lots of attempts to explain life, the universe, and everything (to borrow from HHGTTG) have been made by people who weren't physicists, or for that matter scientists. By this definition, theists claim a "theory of everything" - namely God's responsible for the lot.
However, the overwhelming majority of people who use the term use it in the context of a theory that "unifies the four fundamental articles of nature". Any theory that purports to do so *is* a physical theory whether it comes from a physicist, wanker^H^H^H denizen of the trendier arts departments, or a monk down from the mountains of Nepal. The content referring to your idiosyncratic and entirely different definition should be shifted to another article. --Robert Merkel, who is actually prepared to identify himself.

WRT the criticism of Tegmark, I've just read his paper and had a poke around on his website, and while I don't claim to understand all of it from the substantial parts that do make sense to me it's clear that he *is* a physicist (at Princeton IAS) with a fascinating new theory., which AFAICT is, in essence that *every* mathematical construct has its physical counterparts, and our world happens to have physics corresponding to a certain set of mathetmatical constructs because the mathematical constructs are the the right attributes for the existance of what he calls "Self-Aware Substructures" (concious beings). Now, 24, why were you attacking physicists again? --Robert Merkel

I removed most of the article. Question: Do cognitive mathematicians call their ideas a "theory of everything". If they do, then feel free to add the contents back. If not, then it doesn't belong on the page.

Grape nuts - have no grapes and have no nuts. You can't derive the meaning of something by breaking it down into words.

United States refers to one particular collection of states rather than all of them.

Ironically, this brings up the big objection anti-reductionists have to a theory of everything. TOE assumes that you can figure out the entire universe by dividing it up into collections of particles, just as our friend seems to think that the term "theory of everything" is merely the sum of theory and everything.

In arguing the case for the Reciprocal System of Theory, I would point out that the reason the theory does "not even mention the strong or electroweak interactions" is that it is based on the premise that physics is the systematic study of physical reality, not the consistent integration of current theories and their models (e.g. Standard Model). If the interpretation of the term TOE is to be constrained to only include currently accepted physical theories, then it is not, by such a limited definition, a TOE. However, by this measure, a much more accurate and useful theory from, say, an advanced alien, would also not qualify, though most informed people would find that fact quite amusing.

If I recall during the discussions on the RS, the suggestion was made that a new classification (Alternative Theories, or something to that effect) would be a fair compromise. Now, here many months later, I don’t see anything like that. I would really like the RS article to have a legitimate place in the physics section that is NPOV. Where would that be?

- Doug

Removed from the article:

In less than four weeks, Jim Baker from Houston will announce in a press release that he has a new TOE (Theory of Everything). He says he has certain conditions for its release: namely a suitable peer group of physicists from across the country, along with proper media coverage and much documentation of the release from various entities. His website will be given in a few weeks which will have the press release posted, and/or information on how to obtain the press release.

Great. Good luck. But this does not, in itself, make your announcement of encyclopedic interest, Jim.

The above talk seems to indicate that various people agreed at one time that Max Tegmark had a point or at least an interesting TOE. So why isn't it mentioned?

The claim that this theory of Tegmark's had some resemblance to cognitive theories of mathematics seems justified somewhat, since those too say that all mathematical constructs have physical structures they describe - in the human brain or cognitive system (only or primarily). It's going too far to say that Tegmark and Lakoff had the same idea, but some statements they make are utterly equivalent.

String theory, also, has the notion of two mathematical descriptions, one 'too big to see' and one 'too small to see', that describe the same observed physics. This seems compatible with the idea that the observed phenomena might be 'too big' and objectively within the universe, or 'too small' and within the cognitive system of the observer.

Without talking about this stuff, a TOE can't really be distinguished correctly from a GUT, can it?

why should some links be included (espousing specific points of view) but other be deleted w/o prejudice ? (see deletion by wik of link to http://www.theoryofeverything.com ) on 10/04/03

That was an obvious junk site almost certainly inserted by its own creator. --Wik 08:27, Oct 5, 2003 (UTC)
True - that was me. But it is also obvious the other two links are of a similar ilk. What differentiates them ? (are you one of those authors ?)
I hadn't checked the others. You're right, they're equally worthless. I deleted them. --Wik 02:26, Oct 8, 2003 (UTC)

A 'junk site'? Where do you get the authority to say what's 'junk' or not? This is a wiki, everyone is supposed to be equally represented. I know that there are hordes of authoritarian hall-monitors like you on this site that don't understand that at the moment, but perhaps one day it will sink in. Khranus

This site appears mostly comprised of people just doing their own thing who want to help the information organism that is wikipedia grow larger. Unfortunately, there also appear to be a large number of people on this site who are apparently only here to enforce the rules to a draconian extent and pick on people, often with no real justification. Worse yet, there are dogmatists who go around 'debunking' other peoples theories, or calling them 'hypotheses' when their own theory isn't any more tested than the one they're criticising. You'd fall into the draconian hall-monitor category. I'd appreciate it if you'd mind your own business and do something worthwhile, like thinking, rather than going around trying to fulfill your phallic need for control over other human beings. Khranus

Although I understand Khranus' POV - I (author / owner of http://www.theoryofeverything.com who's site reference was deleted by Wik) also very much understand Wik's desire to keep the NPOV consistency on this very cool topic. My question to Wik - what vital level of interest keeps you monitoring changes to this page (by the minute - based on how quick you respond to each and every change I make), while at the same time - by your own admitted oversight, had you overlooking the other references that were obvious and present for a relatively longer time ? It seems that your motivation for consistency is NOT being practiced consistently - does this indicate some underlying non-NPOV ?

Am I to believe (based on the evidence noted here...) that there is nothing significant WRT my simple URL addition which invoked your knee jerk reaction while you historically overlooked other similar content ?


Wrt the theoryofeverything.com site, for the purpose or reducing controversy, I suggest Wikipedia adopt the principle that if a domain name is identical to the topic of a Wikipedia article, there be a strong presumption that the contents of sites at that domain name are 1)relevant to the article and 2) of public interest.

In this case, given that strong presumption, theoryof everything.com meets those two criteria The third criteria for Wikipedia inclusion is that the matter be verifiable. In this case, it is not the verifiability of the TRUTH of the theory that is at stake (any more than an article on Christianity be required to present evidence of the verifiability of the truth of Christianity) but only the verifiability of the existence and nature of the theory. In this case, the criterion is clearly met because the theory is online.

(This may come across as an attack, but it's not meant as one.) In what sense is loop quantum gravity as it currently stands a "candidate for a theory of everything"? My understanding was that one of the main features of loop quantum gravity is its ability to quantize gravity alone, without needing to involve the complicated additional structure of the other forces. I am not in any way up to date with the current LQG literature, but I had been led to believe that efforts to unify the forces within that context were very much in their infancy and not yet at all compelling. Mind you, none of that means that LQG is less valuable or less impressive! It just doesn't seem to fit my notion of a physical "theory of everything". --Steuard 03:09, Mar 30, 2004 (UTC)

(And as a side note, there is no sense in which "string theory" and "M-theory" are different or competing theories of everything. They're part of the same structure, which will either work as a whole or not. --Steuard)

Just to underline Steuard's points: A theory of everything is *not* the goal of all people working in quantum gravity. Their goal is a quantum theory of gravity, which is just one of the four forces. It is the view of string theorists that you can't achieve that without bringing in the other forces, but quantum gravity is a broader topic than string theory. One could defend the view in the article from another angle, by saying that everything in physics is either quantum mechanics or general relativity, so once those two theories are united, one will have the template of the final theory. This line of argument treats the specifics of the Standard Model (which remains the empirical standard to which any TOE candidate must conform) as mere details, which is questionable. Mporter 10:53, 5 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Removed from article (and fixed the link):

Recently, an experiment (http://www.nature.com/nsu/nsu_pf/030324/030324-13.html ) was conducted to try to detect evidence for the existence of a smallest length scale (the Planck length). Measurements of a distant galaxy five billion light years away were compared with measurements of an exploding star 42 million light years away. The experimenters claim that if there was a quantization of distance on the order of 10^-35 m, this would blur the images of the distant galaxies. Furthermore, this blurring should be well within the detection capabilities of Hubble. However, no such blurring has occurred. This conclusion was obtained by two independent groups from the USA and Italy. Three explanations have been proposed: 1) Current theories of quantum gravity need to be revised. 2) Space and time vary together at the Planck scale so as to keep light waves in phase. 3) The blurring effect may reflect the square of the Planck length rather than the Planck length itself (which would make the effects almost impossible to detect experimentally).

This seems to be relevant and interesting, but it doesn't seem to me that a summary of one specific experiment belongs in a very general encyclopedia entry on this topic. (Also, it's been a year, but these observations haven't taken the physics world by storm: perhaps the early concerns listed above haven't proven to be as serious as they seemed.) --Steuard 20:38, Apr 21, 2004 (UTC)

a Relative Motion, Unified Field, Theory of Everything:source

The main argument against accepting any kind of a relative motion theory for the four fundamental forces was clearly stated by Robert Dicke who claimed that many relative motion theories for the invisible forces had been put forth but Dicke insisted that gravity could not be caused by relative motion because if it was then we would see interference fringes and we do not.

There is some interest now, however, in a wave related, relative motion, unified field Theory of Everything that would not produce any interference fringes which were Robert Dicke's main objection to any relative motion type of theory.

This new wave related, relative motion, unified field Theory of Everything is based on the scalar wave resonance of particles with their surroundings that Rhodes Scholar Milo Wolff discovered and on Caroline Thompson's discovery that repulsive force is always generated with out of phase waves but never with in phase waves.

Caroline H. Thompson, who graduated from Cambridge, and Bill Shockley, who won the Nobel prize for physics in 1956, have much in common.

The tensor math of general relativity uses space-time distortion instead of force. So does this new concept. But in addition this new hypothesis makes the claim that TIME is being produced at the scalar wave resonance frequency that Milo Wolff discovered and SPACE (repulsive force) is being constantly manufactured by out of phase, transverse waves that are produced at the scalar wave entity's spin/orbit frequency.

If this new concept is correct then Einstein was right and the answer is indeed a simple wave explanation with scalar wave resonances giving us TIME and particle. The lower frequency transverse waves, produced by these spinning particles and particle agglomerations, are then giving us SPACE and force.

ALL spin/orbit frequencies then will be producing an AVERAGE, out of phase wave, force

Waves more in phase than average will cause ATTRACTIVE forces and waves more out of phase than average will cause REPULSIVE forces.

Using the above concept, you can even begin to understand why we must have general relativity and even the tensor math of general relativity won't show you that.

While this concept is simple, the math will be the very reciprocal of this simplicity because all surrounding waves must now be taken into consideration.

This new theory considers ALL waves including gravity waves. If all the forces in this universe are formed by Caroline Thompson's out of phase waves then we have indeed unified all the forces.

Milo Wolff, evidently, has given us the very first mathematical proof of Mach's principle, that surroundings are entering into this. This is why it must be considered a relative motion theory that seems to obey Ampere's 1825 laws.

I'll expand on this somewhat as I see how Wiki works. This is all new to me.

I'm presently talking to both Milo Wolff and Caroline Thompson.

What is emerging is extremely interesting --DPFJr 16:00, 3 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Burkhard Heim

I've removed the recently-added discussion of Burkhard Heim's theory from the article. As far as I can tell, this theory is not at all well known (yet, at least), and as such I don't think it really belongs in a general article like this. That could obviously change if Heim's ideas begin to gain widespread recognition, of course.

If there is a consensus that Heim's work should be mentioned somewhere on Wikipedia, I think the right place for it would be the List of alternative, speculative and disputed theories page. However, my current feeling is that Heim's work is not (yet) sufficiently widely known to avoid Wikipedia's No original research policy. I've made further comments on the Burkhard Heim talk page, and I'd welcome input there.--Steuard 19:58, Nov 11, 2004 (UTC)

See the talk page for Burkhard Heim, where in the meantime we have established that Heim is receiving more recognition - a major German e-magazine, Telepolis, had an article on his theory in their first print edition (Jan 2005) and papers on Heim theory have been presented recently at conferences on space propulsion in Europe and the USA and work in peer reviewed journals is to follow in 2005. --hughey 14:26, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Some observations about the deletion
  • if deleted, this theory has been added back in (but not by me)
  • Wikipedia's No original research policy says no "new" theories; research that is 30-40 years old is no longer new
  • a "Burkhard Heim" search of google in English found 91 hits and around 50 seem to be relevent to his theory; in my experience, 50 google hits is above the threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia
Also, when I find odd claims on the web, I come to Wikipedia to get a balanced spin and, with 50 webpages out there, people are liable to run into this stuff. That said, inclusion in List of alternative, speculative and disputed theories would be fine by me; but there should be a link from this page to relevant items in that list.
Personally, I don't know enough to say if Burkhard Heim is above or below the threshold for inclusion here. However, I do want to get a synopsis and, especially, negative dirt on such theories so that I am well armed to fight off pseudoscience.
WpZurp 16:09, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)
The aspect of the "No original research" policy that I was referring to above was "If a viewpoint is held by an extremely small (or vastly limited) minority, it doesn't belong in Wikipedia". However, as was pointed out to me at Talk:Burkhard Heim, Heim does get many thousands of Google hits, mostly in German, so it's probably not unreasonable to include him in Wikipedia. (I don't think it's wise to set a specific number cutoff, and in any case 50 seems awfully low; even I get well over 4,000 hits, and I don't think I merit an article here.) I don't know whether he deserves to be mentioned prominently on this page as he is now. As for recognizing pseudoscience, one must always be careful not to reject new ideas just because they are unfamiliar or because they come from unconventional sources. Having said that, I have as yet seen no reason to believe that Heim's work is a TOE or the basis of one (admittedly, I haven't spent a lot of time on it).--Steuard 21:58, Nov 20, 2004 (UTC)
One cannot equate a former colleague of Heisenberg and Jordan, who was recognised as a genius already in the 1950s, with pseudoscientific theories. Heim's theory is dense in difficult, apparently self-consistent mathematics (his main work is of over 1000 pages) which no lunatic could have produced. Again as we have discussed on the Talk:Burkhard Heim page, Heim theory does fulfill the requirements for a TOE. All that remains is for more theorists to work through the formidable mathematics in Heim's legacy to confirm his calculations. As this is a difficult task, it may take some time to perform the full analysis. --hughey 14:41, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)
The only measure of pseudoscience is the science itself, not who is doing it or whom they knew. (For instance, existing claims regarding paranormal phenomena are generally considered pseudoscience, even though Nobel laureate B. D. Josephson supports them.) In Heim's case, I have pointed out at Talk: Burkhard Heim that the documents mentioned there reveal serious errors and shortcomings even without detailed study. Among other issues, Heim's theory has (at least) three timelike directions (unphysical), uses "1 meter^2" as a fundamental constant (unjustified), predicts a neutral version of the electron (unobserved), and doesn't provide uncertainties on its predictions (unprofessional). That makes me very doubtful that Heim's theory "does fulfill the requirements for a TOE". The place for further discussion of this is clearly Talk:Burkhard Heim, so I ask that any further comments be made there.--Steuard 19:53, Jan 7, 2005 (UTC)

To dismiss Heim in this way, by focussing on the supposed shortcomings, is rather limited. Curious that you never mention the positive points about Heim -

  • the incredible accuracy of the mass formula - as we just dicussed on the Heim talk page, the probability of predicting the masses of 16 elementary particles to a relative accuracy deltam/m < 10**-4 is < 10**-64. Also, it is agreed amongst the Heim-theory group that vol.1 of Heim's Magnum Opus contains several errors that are in need of correction - the group members are currently active in that area (why not join them instead of sniping from the sidelines?). However, vol. 2 was cross checked more thoroughly and is essentially error free - and it is here that the mass formula is derived. As for the 1 Meter**2 business - it is premature to be propagating the notion that this is a fundamental error before we have the clarification of the origin of E from the Heim theory group. Again as I said in the Heim talk area, the healthy reaction of a physicist should be curiousity as to whether this prodigy of the 1940s/50s did succeed in his long years of hard work in solving the problem of finding a TOE. Heim is certainly of a far higher calibre than the other candidates in the 'others' section - e.g. it is somewhat innocuous to see the vacuous 'time cube' cited alongside Heim.
  • The 8-dimensional extension by Droescher gives the interactions - and a group structure as in the Standard Model. It also gives 2 additional gravity forces - one that has the characteristics of quintessence. Thus the acceleration in the expansion of the universe emerges naturally in Heim/Droescher theory.
  • There are only a handful of free input parameters - h, G, vacuum permittivity and permeability. From these one obtains ultimately the particle masses and lifetimes, as well as several other parameters such as the fine structure constant.
  • It is a purely geometrical theory - space is quantised and all the forces arise in a similar way to gravity in GR.
  • Some of the predictions are still outstanding - e.g. the neutrino masses (see selected results in http://www.heim-theory.com/Contents/Introduction_to_Heim_s_Mass-Fo/introduction_to_heim_s_mass-fo.html).

--hughey 12:19, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I just saw that Heim is now in a section listed ' Amateur' or theories outside the professional physics community. This is a grave insult to Heim - cited by Stern as the successor to Einstein and sounded out by Von Braun and others on the progress of his theory. To see him lumped in with purely philosophical or otherwise hair-brained schemes is vile in the extreme. Is a theory for which someone who has won a major science prize ' amateur'? See New Scientist on Jan 7th. If Heim ever does oust string theory as the major TOE, I demand an apology from the ' genius' that continues to categorise Heim along with less worthy if not wholly unscientific efforts. --hughey 16:45, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

Although Heim was indeed trained as a physicist, it is my impression that most of his work on his TOE was done after he had left the physics community. He published almost none of his results in professional journals, and his ideas are essentially unknown in the professional physics community (if Stern had been that excited about Heim's ideas, he would have worked on them himself). Yes, his training places him somewhere above "amateur", but his TOE work seems to fall well short of "professional". (And as for that recent prize, I would point out that it was granted by aerospace engineers, not theoretical physicists. I hope you'll forgive my doubts that they would be more able to judge a theory of quantum gravity than I would be able to design a reliable airplane.) In any case, I've argued (below) for the removal of the "amateur" section here entirely, precisely because there are so many less-accepted theories with such different levels of sophistication: the current presentation is not fair to any of them.--Steuard 15:45, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

I've got to agree with the above comment. I am surprised that Heim is among the amateur section, simply because he was not an amateur physicist. It is especially galling to see an honest attempt at a TOE by a professional physicist being lumped with Douglas Adams and the Timecube. Whether the attempt was successful or not, it deserves better than this. 60.234.148.152 09:48, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

It is clear that user Steuard is not objective. It appears he is a professional Heim theory detractor.--Will314159 12:21, 8 May 2006 (UTC)Edit--Will314159 16:49, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

Emergentism; Time Cube

I think that the discussion here about reductionism and whether a physical TOE is a true TOE just doesn't belong in this article. The place to argue about whether a Reductionist idea such as a physical TOE will be able to explain everything in the world is the article on Emergentism or Scientific reductionism, or even a new article called, say, "Physical Reductionism." This is an article on Physics, not Philosophy. If such material is put on another article then it'll be a good idea to place a link here to that article, but it's just not relevant enough to be put on this article. It's about as relevant as inserting into the article on Nuclear fission a discussion of the morality of using Nuclear weapons.

Also, unless there're any serious objections, I'm going to kill the part about the Time Cube in a few days. String theory, Supergravity, and Loop quantum gravity all have proponents in the mainstream physics community and are supported by many published papers. The Time Cube does not; it's not even the most widely known crank theory; many of the world's religions, including Christianity and Islam, claim to be theories of everything, and are obviously far better known that the Time Cube. If there's no discussion on the "God is responsible to everything!" TOE then there shouldn't be anything about the Time Cube.

~ Alon Levy, 2004-11-22 12:06 UTC

Hmm. As I've pointed out before, LQG isn't even trying to be a TOE, and as far as I know, the hope that supergravity would be a stand-alone TOE died in the 80s. At the moment, strings (and related things) are the only game in town. As for the Time Cube section, I think the real issue here is whether any "speculative" ideas should be listed here at all. (I don't think that your religion analogy really applies, for the record: things like the Time Cube or Heim's theory actively try to present themselves as scientific theories, though I'll admit that for the Time Cube, that's a stretch.) If we want to include some of them, then the Time Cube is a pretty classic example. If not, then they should all go (but note that my attempt to delete the Heim section a while ago was reverted). In any case, this page shouldn't become a clearinghouse for speculative TOEs.--Steuard 16:13, Nov 22, 2004 (UTC)
I included Loop Quantum Gravity and supergravity simply because they were alternative theories that at least at one point were touted as competitors to string theory. The physics community by and large supports strings, but supergravity et al are scientific theories that at the very least try to make falsifiable predictions, something that cannot be said about the Time Cube (or creationism for that matter; it's as much of a TOE as Time Cube, pretends to be scientific, and has the distinction that most people on the planet believe some variant of it). ~Alon, 11/23, 20:15 UTC.
They still are competitors to string theory, or at least, LQG is (as I understand it, supergravity didn't work out on its own, and most work on it now is within string theory). It's just that LQG "competes" with string theory in just one (crucial!) area: quantizing gravity. Nobody (or almost nobody) has touted LQG as a stand-alone TOE. (Gotta love those TLAs. :) ) Let's not get into creationism; I think they've generally avoided focusing on the physics-related aspects of their claims. --Steuard 22:09, Nov 23, 2004 (UTC)
I'm ok with either deleting or keeping the Time Cube and Heim theories. However, I believe that even the nuttiest theories help illustrate a process of scientific thought. The Time Cube nonsense needs to be refuted and not simply excised; otherwise Wikipedia just presents a phony, santitized science without the scientific method. Presenting suspicious theories and giving concrete reasons to reject these theories is a service to knowledge. Let's helps arm people against all the pseudoscience garbage that mars the popular understanding of science. You know: give a man a fish and he eats for a day; teach a man to fish and he eats for a lifetime. So, at the very least, please include a list of "disputed pseudoscientific and protoscientific theories". WpZurp 16:40, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)
So, the proper treatment for Time Cube should be something like, "There is the theory of the Time Cube, which asserts XYZ, but crucially fails to take into account ABC and isn't supported by any peer-reviewed article in a reputable physics journal"? That, I think, will cause more NPOV-related uproar from Time Cubists than simply killing the reference to the Time Cube. ~Alon, 11/23 20:15 UTC.
Er, well, I suspect that the treatment of the Time Cube here should be rather different than the treatment of Heim, to say the least. In particular, Heim's theory apparently makes predictions about the sorts of quantities measured in physics experiments, and comparison to peer-reviewed experiments is precisely the right approach to take. As best I've been able to discern, the Time Cube's predictions are more qualitative in nature (except for its dedication to the number four, which seems more like a postulate). And the ongoing debate about the content of the Time Cube article shows just how difficult it can be to "refute" something here (at least when its supporter(s) are active in its defense and remain unconvinced that it's wrong). For the record, I absolutely agree with WpZurp that if discussions of specific speculative or disputed theories are removed from this article, the article should still contain or link to a list of them (preferably the latter, in my opinion).--Steuard 22:09, Nov 23, 2004 (UTC)

mappin consiquences which are incomplete are impossible to say randomness is dominant when all possible aspects have yet to complete and seem repetive in a vast space time continium is impossible since no one can see from one end of the universe to the next at all given times all the time . Randomness would require repetivness and to say everything is predetermined is impossible untill the end has come and it becomes analyzed. How can I post my own theory "T.O.N.E." to wikipedia ? 172.131.98.184 07:11, 31 December 2006 (UTC)