• Question: What is String Theory?

    Asked by Yami Yugi to Adrian, Gaia, Jim, Scott, Vicky on 11 Mar 2016.
    • Photo: Jim Barrett

      Jim Barrett answered on 11 Mar 2016:

      String theory is really complicated. It’s a very clever way of making gravity and quantum physics work together, and that’s abut all I understand! Those 7 extra dimensions make my brain hurt

    • Photo: Adrian Buzatu

      Adrian Buzatu answered on 11 Mar 2016:

      It’s a theory that tries to explain what are the building blocks of the Universe. The elementary particles are imaged as small strings. Instead of many particles, there is only one type of thing: a string. This can create the diversity of particles. Different particles have different masses, which means different energies, which means different vibration frequencies. By vibrating at different frequencies, strings can behave like one particle, or another. String theory is the closest theory we have to a theory of everything. However, there is no experimental proof for string theory yet. It is unlikely we will get experimental proof during our lifetime either. We would need energies very close to the Big Bang, which we can not produce in the laboratory today. However, if string theory were able to predict the mass of the electron from first principles, oh, people would start to believe it in it a lot. Even if a post-diction (instead of a prediction), it would still be so powerful!

    • Photo: Scott Lawrie

      Scott Lawrie answered on 14 Mar 2016:

      Great name Yugi. So you want to d-d-d-d-duel with string theory, eh?! String theory says that quarks and electrons (and the cousins of electrons) aren’t actually the fundamental building blocks of the universe: there’s actually a layer underneath that made of string! Supposedly every particle and force can be made depending on how you vibrate a string. It’s very complicated and is essentially un-testable so you can’t even show if it’s right or wrong! Very clever and neat idea, though 🙂

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