How Crackpots and String Theorists Attack Einstein's Relativity

According to Nima Arkani-Hamed, crackpots attack Einstein's relativity in the following incorrect way:

Crackpots (20:21): "Everything old is wrong. Einstein was an idiot. You guys all believe in deep authority. No one is brave enough to challenge Einstein." http://www.cornell.edu/video/nima-ar...ntal-physics-1

The only correct way to attack Einstein's relativity, practiced by string theorists, is as follows. Einstein's spacetime is wrong, doesn't exist, and should be abandoned, but the underlying premise, Einstein's constant-speed-of-light postulate, is gloriously true, Divine Einstein, yes we all believe in relativity, relativity, relativity:

Nima Arkani-Hamed (06:09): "Almost all of us believe that space-time doesn't really exist, space-time is doomed and has to be replaced by some more primitive building blocks." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U47kyV4TMnE

Nobel Laureate David Gross observed, "Everyone in string theory is convinced...that spacetime is doomed. But we don't know what it's replaced by." https://www.edge.org/response-detail/26563

What scientific idea is ready for retirement? Steve Giddings: "Spacetime. Physics has always been regarded as playing out on an underlying stage of space and time. Special relativity joined these into spacetime... [...] The apparent need to retire classical spacetime as a fundamental concept is profound..." https://www.edge.org/response-detail/25477

"Splitting Time from Space - New Quantum Theory Topples Einstein's Spacetime. Buzz about a quantum gravity theory that sends space and time back to their Newtonian roots." https://www.scientificamerican.com/a...me-from-space/

"Rethinking Einstein: The end of space-time. It was a speech that changed the way we think of space and time. The year was 1908, and the German mathematician Hermann Minkowski had been trying to make sense of Albert Einstein's hot new idea - what we now know as special relativity - describing how things shrink as they move faster and time becomes distorted. "Henceforth space by itself and time by itself are doomed to fade into the mere shadows," Minkowski proclaimed, "and only a union of the two will preserve an independent reality." And so space-time - the malleable fabric whose geometry can be changed by the gravity of stars, planets and matter - was born. It is a concept that has served us well, but if physicist Petr Horava is right, it may be no more than a mirage." https://www.newscientist.com/article...of-space-time/

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String theorist Petr Horava: "What happens in string theory, and I think there is an important lesson in this, is that it does not modify the laws of quantum mechanics one bit. It takes quantum mechanics as is, as it was formulated almost one hundred years ago. The lesson there is maybe that the laws of quantum mechanics are very, very difficult, if not impossible, to modify. On the other hand, string theory very naturally modifies and improves and enhances the laws of general relativity and gravity." http://www.radio.cz/en/section/czech...ntum-mechanics

This is euphemistic - Petr Horava's ideas are much more radical:

"Rethinking Einstein: The end of space-time. It was a speech that changed the way we think of space and time. The year was 1908, and the German mathematician Hermann Minkowski had been trying to make sense of Albert Einstein's hot new idea - what we now know as special relativity - describing how things shrink as they move faster and time becomes distorted. "Henceforth space by itself and time by itself are doomed to fade into the mere shadows," Minkowski proclaimed, "and only a union of the two will preserve an independent reality." And so space-time - the malleable fabric whose geometry can be changed by the gravity of stars, planets and matter - was born. It is a concept that has served us well, but if physicist Petr Horava is right, it may be no more than a mirage. Horava, who is at the University of California, Berkeley, wants to rip this fabric apart and set time and space free from one another in order to come up with a unified theory that reconciles the disparate worlds of quantum mechanics and gravity - one the most pressing challenges to modern physics." https://www.newscientist.com/article...of-space-time/

To "rip this fabric apart and set time and space free from one another" means to declare that Einstein's constant-speed-of-light postulate is false (string theorists are not so brave):

"Special relativity is based on the observation that the speed of light is always the same, independently of who measures it, or how fast the source of the light is moving with respect to the observer. Einstein demonstrated that as an immediate consequence, space and time can no longer be independent, but should rather be considered a new joint entity called "spacetime." http://community.bowdoin.edu/news/20...rs-of-gravity/

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What scientific idea is ready for retirement? String theorist Steve Giddings: "Spacetime. Physics has always been regarded as playing out on an underlying stage of space and time. Special relativity joined these into spacetime... [...] The apparent need to retire classical spacetime as a fundamental concept is profound..." https://www.edge.org/response-detail/25477

Spacetime should be retired but ripples in spacetime should remain - thanks to the ripples LIGO chieftains became millionaires. Steve Giddings concludes that it is worth living for ripples in spacetime:

"In celebration of Einstein's birthday, physicists reflect on the German-born scientist's work and its impact on the field and on everyday life. "We have good reason to believe general relativity is not a complete theory and, in particular, that it's going to break down in the context of describing black holes," said UCSB physics professor Steve Giddings. "That's very much an important problem in physics today. "The direct observation of gravitational waves from colliding black holes really constrains the possible departures from general relativity that we know are there and limits where modifications can be made," he continued. "But the discovery is still spectacular and its announcement was one of those moments in science that you live for." http://www.news.ucsb.edu/2016/016562...ein-revolution

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