Emergent spacetime

Sometimes Verlinde’s approach resonates in me with recessive hypothesis about gravity as a residual effect in New Wave era space opera by Barrington Bayley, The Zen Gun. Also quite a bold view, if only fictional; I recommend you to read this forgotten classics, a gem of rich and psychedelic satirical SF, had you not happen to notice it earlier.

Speaking about Verlinde further… like Žižek or Kesey should have said, even if his theory about emergent gravity didn’t happen, it’s aesthetically pleasing, and that’s the crucial message.

Anyway, I’m simple: every time I see scientist who, like Verlinde, manages to drive Luboš Motl nuts, I make a note to give him/her some credit.

Each and every scientist or blogger, who’s driving that ugly Russophobic far-right warmonger crank Motl mad, deserves favorable attention from me. Motl himself is known to ban opponents after the very first post he dislikes.

Let’s be honest though! Not only (super)string theory, but also its ole cousins, supersymmetry and supergravity, spawned their own great crop of cranks. Joël Scherk, who in 1970s could be found crawling on the streets of Paris and sending cryptic telegrams to Feynman, immediately springs (or should I say strings?) unto mind. It might have been Scherk who partially inspired M. John Harrison to develop maniacal serial killer physicist Michael Kearney for Light. (Be forewarned: Kearney’s plotline, alas, is of absolutely garbage quality, whereas the rest 2/3 of Light is, just like blurb by Iain M. Banks promises, brilliant.)

So I prefer more down-to-Earth-and-Sun version of strings.