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Probing the String Landscape:Implications, Applications, and Altercations

Dienes
Dienes

We are currently in the throes of a potentially huge paradigm shift in physics.  Motivated by recent developments in string theory and the discovery of the so-called "string landscape", physicists are beginning to question the uniqueness of fundamental theories of physics and the methods by which such theories might be understood and investigated.  In this colloquium, I will give a non-technical introduction to the nature of this paradigm shift and the history of how it developed.  I will also discuss some of the questions to which it has led, and the nature of the controversies it has spawned.