@Knixon said:

So, did Sheldon's discovery that won the Nobel Prize, prove he was right about string theory and Leslie Winkle (and others) are wrong about quantum loop gravity?

If string theory was convincingly proven because of Sheldon's paper on super asymmetry (fiction), then it should have been mentioned in one of the episodes. He would have gotten the Nobel Prize for the greatest achievement in science history. As this didn't happen, I guess that LQG is still going strong. In fact Leslie or anyone else could contest the confirmation of his theory, because it was done by Dr. Pemberton and Dr. Campbell, who were incompetent and untrustworthy, and might have 'faked' the results. Something similar happened when Sheldon thought that he had discovered a new element. There was talk of a Nobel Prize too, until Leonard reran the tests. And let's not forget what happened in the episode "The Electric Can Opener Fluctuation".

Or maybe they're unrelated?

Both string theory and LQG try to unify quantum mechanics and general relativity. If experiments at the Large Hadron Collider can find any evidence for supersymmetry, which has been unsuccessfull since it started in 2009, then string theory would certainly take the lead. I agree with Leslie that LQG "offers more testable predictions than string theory." So until anything is proven, both theories are possible.

@wonder2wonder said:

@Knixon said:

So, did Sheldon's discovery that won the Nobel Prize, prove he was right about string theory and Leslie Winkle (and others) are wrong about quantum loop gravity?

If string theory was convincingly proven because of Sheldon's paper on super asymmetry (fiction), then it should have been mentioned in one of the episodes. He would have gotten the Nobel Prize for the greatest achievement in science history. As this didn't happen, I guess that LQG is still going strong. In fact Leslie or anyone else could contest the confirmation of his theory, because it was done by Dr. Pemberton and Dr. Campbell, who were incompetent and untrustworthy, and might have 'faked' the results. Something similar happened when Sheldon thought that he had discovered a new element. There was talk of a Nobel Prize too, until Leonard reran the tests. And let's not forget what happened in the episode "The Electric Can Opener Fluctuation".

Or maybe they're unrelated?

Both string theory and LQG try to unify quantum mechanics and general relativity. If experiments at the Large Hadron Collider can find any evidence for supersymmetry, which has been unsuccessfull since it started in 2009, then string theory would certainly take the lead. I agree with Leslie that LQG "offers more testable predictions than string theory." So until anything is proven, both theories are possible.

"Have you heard of Schrodinger's Cat?"

"I've heard way too much about Schrodinger's Cat!"