#Strings theory unvibrating string update

A world where, in fact, the very notion of space and time is bound to disappear.

It's a world of 10 dimensions, with some curled up at a microscopic level and some 'big' dimensions that we perceive as 'real.' A world where the distinction between space and time is spurious (as taught by general relativity). If the handful of physicists involved in what are called 'superstring theories' (or string, for short) are correct, we live in a world weirder than you can probably imagine. More than 40 years later, Einstein is almost vindicated: The long lasting problem of incompatibility between general relativity and quantum mechanics seems to be on its way to a resolution. He didn't succeed and died without seeing his dearest dream realized. For the last years of his life, he worked on a way to reconcile his own theory of gravitation and the quantum description of the world. While quantum theory, the theory of the infinitesimally small, was being tested with accuracy never attained before, he refused to accept that it was the ultimate theory. Find out more.For the last 20 years of his life, Albert Einstein was something of an oddity in the physics community, like a beloved eccentric uncle whose favorite subject of conversation draws embarrassed looks around the table. And that's really, really exciting.īrian Greene is doing his first Australian tour in March 2016 and ScienceAlert is a promotional partner. However, now that it's running at record-breaking new energy levels, and with China announcing they're going to be buliding a particle accelerator twice the size in the coming years, we're closer than ever to being able to actually test string theory.

#Strings theory unvibrating string update

We promise that by the end of it you'll actually be able to explain string theory to your friends at your next dinner party.īut there is one quick update we need to make – obviously this was filmed while the Large Hadron Collider was still being built at CERN in Switzerland, and as yet, the machine hasn't been able to confirm the existence of these extra dimensions. Watch the video above to find out why that makes more sense than you might think and how physicists are now actively seeking out these extra dimensions. We actually need 10 dimensions of space, and one dimension of time. Unfortunately it's not that simple, because for this theory to pan out mathematically, we can't just have three dimensions of space in the Universe. According to the idea of string theory, these cosmic strings vibrate in different patterns to make up all the different types of particles that form the world around us.Īnd that's where the theory of everything comes into it, because if string theory is correct, then everything in the Universe is controlled and composed of these tiny cosmic strings, and if we can understand them, then we could understand the fundamental rules that govern nature. And that's where conventional ideas end.īut, according to string theory, there's actually something even smaller inside the quarks, and these are dancing filaments of energy that look a lot like beautiful vibrating strings – hence the name string theory. If you get even further down, protons and neutrons are made up of quarks. And the atoms are made up of electrons, protons, and neutrons. We all know that if you look closely enough, that candle is made up of atoms. Take an object like a candle, for example. But if you're looking or the ELI5 version, we can help you out with that.īasically, superstring theory is an attempt to figure out what the smallest, most indivisible, fundamental constituents of the Universe are.

So what does it all mean? As you might expect, Greene does a much better job of breaking it down than we can, so you should really watch the video above. In addition to his work as a science communicator, Greene is also a researcher at Cornell University in the US, where he works on superstring theory, which is an attempt to come up with a theory for everything to explain how all the particles and forces in the Universe work. Importantly, superstring theory tries to explain why all the conditions in the Universe are finely tuned to support life.