The bigggest rap against String Theory till now has been that while it successfully can explain lots of interesting things, it doesn’t actually predict anything. And if it doesn’t predict anything, then according to Popper’s ideas of Science, it isn’t actually scientific.

But today comes surprising news that a group of theorists have managed to massage a prediction out of the spaghetti mathematics that is String Theory. And the prediction actually has something to say about the phenomenon of quantum entanglement. Specifically, it makes predictions about the behavior of 4 qubit entangled systems:

“‘If experiments prove that our predictions about quantum entanglement are correct, this will demonstrate that string theory ‘works’ to predict the behavior of entangled quantum systems,’ said Professor Mike Duff, lead author of the study.

[…]Duff and his colleagues realized that the mathematical description of the pattern of entanglement between three qubits resembles the mathematical description, in string theory, of a particular class of black holes. Thus, by combining their knowledge of two of the strangest phenomena in the universe, black holes and quantum entanglement, they realized they could use string theory to produce a prediction that could be tested. Using the string theory mathematics that describes black holes, they predicted the pattern of entanglement that will occur when four qubits are entangled with one another. (The answer to this problem has not been calculated before.) Although it is technically difficult to do, the pattern of entanglement between four entangled qubits could be measured in the laboratory and the accuracy of this prediction tested.

The discovery that string theory seems to make predictions about quantum entanglement is completely unexpected, but because quantum entanglement can be measured in the lab, it does mean that there is way – finally – researchers can test predictions based on string theory”

Read the full article here.

Or drop the theory all together, if the tests indicate that String Theory is unable to make correct predictions regarding 4 qubit behavior.

Hate to give up the brane model of the multiverse though if this doesn’t verify. I really like saying “The Brane Multiverse”.