String Ducky - String Theory in under 2 minutes.
Yep. String theory is pretty interesting. Of course, it is a yarn to talk about. We just need to tie up a few loose ends.
Yep. String theory is pretty interesting. Of course, it is a yarn to talk about. We just need to tie up a few loose ends.You don't understand it.
Well, why don't you wrap it up for me? Just knit everything together.
String theory- the “here there be dragons” of science.
We've come a long way since the Plum Pudding Model.
It doesn't matter, since we're all stuck in the Matrix.
; )
One way to understand string theory is to try to understand why something like it has to exist.
Everyone gets how gravity works. Someone pushes you out of an airplane, you will not fall toward the airplane, because there's something much bigger and more fatal drawing you that "down." The earth is huge, the plane is tiny, and you're a pancake. So why don't you go through the earth? Well, you're made of matter and so is the ground. Matter is made of particles called fermions, and no two fermions can share the same space.
But there's another kind of particle called a boson, and bosons can share the same space. Light travels over other particles of light, for example. This discovery led Einstein to come up with his special theory of relativity, to explain the behavior of these bosons. These particles travel irrespective of many other particles.
The problem is, the bosons are willing to behave by these relativistic principles only if gravity doesn't apply to them. But it does. It should, anyway. And yet it doesn't. So we need something to explain why certain particles--these tiny points in space--aren't affected by the existence of other particles. We have to pretend gravity doesn't exist at that level, and replace it with something that works the way we need it to.
String theory wants to occupy that space. It does so by saying, those tiny points aren't points. They're bigger and longer things called strings, and they stretch out in more dimensions than most people think exist (11, give or take). When the strings vibrate in a certain way, much like a guitar string, they occupy space as particles, but since they're somewhat anchored by this extra length through multiple dimensions, the strongest force on them is not the gravity we know and love, but the accumulation of the forces from all those dimensions. This makes them behave properly by the (modified) theory of relativity and gravity, though in enough dimensions to make it stick. If we're really lucky, that'll all result in a unified field theory that'll explain how everything works.
So is all that true? Well, maybe. Probably. Heck, I dunno. We can't tell, bcause we don't have either the math to tackle it or the technology to test it. But we're churning out both at incredible speed, and we'll know in my lifetime, I expect.
Mike
P.S. Yes, I know everything I just said is oversimplified and probably thus incorrect. Thanks for pointing that out, Poindexter.
Okay, 'Dex, now explain my fortune cookie dilemma. Today at lunch with Josh and Drew, I cracked open my fortune cookie and discovered no fortune inside. According to string theory, am I (a) so certain of my future that the fortune cookie basically said, "Hey, man, you're all good. I got nothin' here.", or (b) already dead?
Mike
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Okay, 'Dex, now explain my fortune cookie dilemma. Today at lunch with Josh and Drew, I cracked open my fortune cookie and discovered no fortune inside. According to string theory, am I (a) so certain of my future that the fortune cookie basically said, "Hey, man, you're all good. I got nothin' here.", or (b) already dead?
Mike
Yes.
One way to understand string theory is to try to understand why something like it has to exist.
That's the best explanation I've heard yet, though I'm still having a hard time wrapping my head around it. One question that's been bugging me literally for years; how was the number 11 arrived at? Why not 10 or 12 or 1,739?
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That's the best explanation I've heard yet, though I'm still having a hard time wrapping my head around it. One question that's been bugging me literally for years; how was the number 11 arrived at? Why not 10 or 12 or 1,739?One way to understand string theory is to try to understand why something like it has to exist.
Because 11 is one louder. That's ridiculous. It's not even funny.
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That's the best explanation I've heard yet, though I'm still having a hard time wrapping my head around it. One question that's been bugging me literally for years; how was the number 11 arrived at? Why not 10 or 12 or 1,739?One way to understand string theory is to try to understand why something like it has to exist.
They were looking for the smallest number they could fit to the equation; originally they were running with ten, if I remember correctly, due to the way the universe seems to go for symmetry in the way things work. Apparently ten wasn't working...
That's the best explanation I've heard yet, though I'm still having a hard time wrapping my head around it. One question that's been bugging me literally for years; how was the number 11 arrived at? Why not 10 or 12 or 1,739?
I think it's just the number where the imperfect math kinda works. There's something called M-theory at work there, and I do not understand that at all. (Not that I really understand string theory, but I couldn't even write a summary of M-theory.)
Mike
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Okay, 'Dex, now explain my fortune cookie dilemma. Today at lunch with Josh and Drew, I cracked open my fortune cookie and discovered no fortune inside. According to string theory, am I (a) so certain of my future that the fortune cookie basically said, "Hey, man, you're all good. I got nothin' here.", or (b) already dead?
Mike
"A fortune cookie with no fortune, written by a master that does not exist?"
You are the Last Dragon.
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"A fortune cookie with no fortune, written by a master that does not exist?"
You are the Last Dragon.
"You possess the power of the glow!"
Great, now that song is gonna be stuck in my head all day. 20 frikkin years ago I watched that movie, and it never goes away.
Ah well, Manamana cures all.
You are the Last Dragon.
"YOU'LL... NEVER... USE... THIS... FOOT... AGAIN!"
Gets my vote for the most racist, most sexist movie of the 80s. And boy, is that saying something. I expect Eddie Griffin to do a remake any day now.
Mike
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I've been hearing a lot about this lately, but I don't know what it is, precisely. So I looked it up. BIG FRIGGIN' MISTAKE. I either got the super-layman's version, or the MIT professor's version. I need an explanation somewhere in between the two.
Does anyone know anything about it?
THis is why people go loony when I tell them String Theory invalidates Religion and Evolution.
Matter is strings. strings are a an entanglement boundary tying off a certain set of possibility. What does this mean?
The perfect Universe is defined by an unfixed infinite set of possibilities {k^n} functioning in a state you would call a singularity. The universe exists when these posibilities change creating the universe we think we know(debris of change in possibility), then returns to a singularity state. Basicly the universe is a state of transition. Time is a consequence of continuous change in possibility created from outside a given set of possibility. Black holes are the boundary of change in possibility, and all strings in the universe are debris of change tied to a moment of change.
Reality is the same change over and over forever, so maths works not because it is the rules but because it is used and as an active possibility event defines the shape of the universe.
Most importantly only life can create change in possibility.