http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/06/07/opinion/a-crisis-at-the-edge-of-physics.html?_r=0
So much for any 'falsification' potential, and so much for allowing a favorite theory to rise and fall based on the confirmation/falsification of it's "predictions".
Atheists love to claim that 'scientific' theories require empirical support, and/or they claim that all "scientific" theories must be falsifiable. There are however no such requirements in physics, and there really never have been such requirements in science or physics. Both claims are simply atheist urban legends.
Today, the favored theory for the next step beyond the standard model is called supersymmetry (which is also the basis for string theory). Supersymmetry predicts the existence of a “partner” particle for every particle that we currently know. It doubles the number of elementary particles of matter in nature. The theory is elegant mathematically, and the particles whose existence it predicts might also explain the universe’s unaccounted-for “dark matter.” As a result, many researchers were confident that supersymmetry would be experimentally validated soon after the Large Hadron Collider became operational.
That’s not how things worked out, however. To date, no supersymmetric particles have been found. If the Large Hadron Collider cannot detect these particles, many physicists will declare supersymmetry — and, by extension, string theory — just another beautiful idea in physics that didn’t pan out.
But many won’t. Some may choose instead to simply retune their models to predict supersymmetric particles at masses beyond the reach of the Large Hadron Collider’s power of detection — and that of any foreseeable substitute.
Implicit in such a maneuver is a philosophical question: How are we to determine whether a theory is true if it cannot be validated experimentally? Should we abandon it just because, at a given level of technological capacity, empirical support might be impossible? If not, how long should we wait for such experimental machinery before moving on: ten years? Fifty years? Centuries?
So much for any 'falsification' potential, and so much for allowing a favorite theory to rise and fall based on the confirmation/falsification of it's "predictions".
Recall the epicycles, the imaginary circles that Ptolemy used and formalized around A.D. 150 to describe the motions of planets. Although Ptolemy had no evidence for their existence, epicycles successfully explained what the ancients could see in the night sky, so they were accepted as real. But they were eventually shown to be a fiction, more than 1,500 years later. Are superstrings and the multiverse, painstakingly theorized by hundreds of brilliant scientists, anything more than modern-day epicycles?
Just a few days ago, scientists restarted investigations with the Large Hadron Collider, after a two-year hiatus. Upgrades have made it even more powerful, and physicists are eager to explore the properties of the Higgs particle in greater detail. If the upgraded collider does discover supersymmetric particles, it will be an astonishing triumph of modern physics. But if nothing is found, our next steps may prove to be difficult and controversial, challenging not just how we do science but what it means to do science at all.
Atheists love to claim that 'scientific' theories require empirical support, and/or they claim that all "scientific" theories must be falsifiable. There are however no such requirements in physics, and there really never have been such requirements in science or physics. Both claims are simply atheist urban legends.