[tom mccurdy]

http://www.quantumninja.com/toe/modu...le=print&sid=2

Here is short paper I wrote about the comming of string theory

[tom mccurdy]

This is about as basic as it can come for an Intro to string theory

Tom McCurdy
Mrs. Wynkoop
English 12
12 November 2004
The Quest for the Holy Grail of Physics
String Theory is a theory many physicists hope will lead to the theory of everything.
The theory of everything was something that was even able to elude Einstein for the 3 decades he searched for it. The theory of everything would unite the four forces of our world and our universe; electromagnetism, the strong force, and the weak force. In doing so it hopes to solve one of the biggest conflicts in the history of physics, the conflict between General Relativity versus Quantum Mechanics. However, before examining the current conflict it is necessary to see how we arrived at this conflict. The conflict between General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics is really the third of three major conflicts in physics.
The first major conflict in physics was between predictions made by Maxwell’s electromagnetism equations vs the older Newtonian ideas of the universe. According to Newton if you were able to run fast enough you could quite literally catch up and surpass light in speed. This is not to say that Newton in any way thought it was possible for some living thing on earth to catch up to light, it just meant that there were no laws preventing it from happening. However Maxwell’s equations prevented you from catching up to light. The conflict was eventually solved by Albert Einstein., with the creation of Special Relativity. Einstein’s Special relativity completely revolutionized our view of the universe. It modified it from the classic view of a static unchanging universe to the idea that the universe was actually a malleable construct whose form and appearance was dependent upon one’s state of motion. This is the law that causes things such as Lorenz contraction and time dilation (Joseph McMaster).
It seems like everything should be fine in physics at this point, after all the conflict was solved. However as often in the case in physics, especially in the quest for the theory of everything, one solution leads to a whole new problem. This problem will be referred to as Conflict Number two. Conflict number two stemmed from some of the implications of Special Relativity. According to Special Relativity nothing could travel faster than light, including any sort of influence or disturbance. The restraining of speeds to a maximum of light went directly against what is described Newton’s Universal theory of gravitation, which implies that everything has instant influence on other objects, versus Einstein who said this influence is limited by the speed of light. This second conflict put Einstein’s newly discovered equations against the already respected Newton equations. To really illustrate what the problem is let’s use the common example that many physicist like to use. Hypothetically lets us say for whatever reason the sun explodes. According to Newton the inhabitants of earth would feel its lack of presence instantly and the earth would immediately veer off its elliptical orbit. However according to Einstein the earth would not feel its affect until at maximum around the eight minutes it takes light to reach earth or in other words it is limited to go no faster than the speed of light. It turns out that Einstein was able to solve the problem presented by his previous solution and in doing so he once again revamped our views of the universe. He was able to do something that had puzzled Newton to the point where he simply “feigned no hypothesis.”
Einstein provided an explained gravity with the creation of General Relativity. Now the universe was something that could in fact warp and curve in response to matter of energy, it wasn’t the boring old static place that sometimes comes to thought. Nevertheless, the familiar curse of one solution giving birth to a new problem did not want to be left out of the picture and bore its ugly head once again, and lead to the current problem, the 3rd Conflict general relativity versus quantum mechanics. General relativity governs the world of the very large with its laws, things such as planets, stars and galaxies, while quantum mechanics governs the world of the very small, things like atoms, electrons and quarks. The problem was and still is that both general relativity and quantum mechanics have been proven to work to impressive degrees of accuracy, however mathematically speaking if one of the theories is correct than it forces the other theory to be wrong. They just don’t get along with each other peacefully. The fact at first glance leads many to wonder why a unified theory is even necessary, but there are many situations that would require its existence to examine. The problem is both theories work when you are examining something that requires only one theory, something solely large or solely small. Unfortunately there are many questions in physics that require the use of both equations. These problems are some of the most important mysteries to solve, such as the mystery of the big bang. What exactly happened during the big bang, when you have the mass of the entire universe compressed to an infinitely small point? Should you use General relativity because of the incredible mass or should you use quantum mechanics because of how minuscule the point was. A similar paradox occurs when you examine other things such as black holes where matter is being sucked in by an enormous amount of gravity and being crushed into a small singularity. Which law should you use for either case? The answer is neither. Both theories give non senseical answers. An example of this conflict can be seen when examining some interesting particles in quantum mechanics called spinors (selfAdjoint 3).
Spinors are quite similar to vectors, they have components, however they stop acting like vectors when you change coordinates. However in general relativity it is very important that you are able to change coordinates freely and that the equations describing whatever “physics” you are doing will still be true in this new coordinate system. This is necessary because coordinates determine different frames of reference, different viewpoints. Anything that behaves this way are referred to as tensors, and as you might therefore expect Einstein’s physics is built out of tensors. The conflict arises by the fact that spinors aren’t tensors and they won’t behave like tensors when you change coordinates. A spinor equation will be changed completely. Therefore you could have this spinor representing and electron over here and you look at it from a different frame of reference and it’s a different particle, say a quark (Kaku 2). So that is why we are looking for a solution between quantum mechanics and general relativity we are looking for this theory of everything, something that could describe everything, all of the universes particles and the four forces that govern them; electromagnetism, the strong force, the weak force and the oddball of the group, gravity. And depending upon who you ask in the field we seem to be approaching the resolution to the conflict with various theories. Currently the leader of the TOE wannabes would be something that would completely blow up any idea current perception of the universe, String theory. Sting theory is a predicted theory of everything that makes some radical new claims. When examining string theory at its most basic level it would be easiest to describe it as changing what is believed to be the fundamental constituents of the universe. Instead of the many fundamental particles we have predicted currently string theory predicts that one dimensional loops the size of 10^-34 cm are the fundamental particle of everything (Green 137-152).
The strings in string theory are like those on a guitar for example they can vibrate at different frequencies. Each frequency pattern would represent a different fundamental particle (Woit 3). However in order to do this the string needs more freedom than you or I. Instead of moving in only three dimensions with one dimension of time, strings need more dimensions to work properly. You see as you add more dimensions to our universe you allow for more degrees of freedom. In essence the strings can just do more things. So it was then theorized that we lived in a world with three spatial dimensions one time dimensions and 6 “hidden” dimensions that would be curled up into such predicted shapes as Calabi-Yau manifold.
In the end string theory will remain just a theory until there is experimental evidence to confirm or disprove its existence. The truth is no one knows what the future will hold with the creation of the new particle accelerators like CERN. Over the next 10 to 20 years the way we view the universe is likely to change, whether or not it confirms string theory to be true or not, no one knows. However for the sake of the many physicists who have spent large amounts of time researching it, many hope that it does (Ghitis 1).





























Works Cited


Green, Brian. The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory. New York: Vintage; Vintage Edition, 2001

Ghitis, Jacob String Theory Revisited. Online. 3 Nov 2004. <http://www.journaloftheoretics.com/Articles/201/jg.pdf>

Kaku, Michio A Thoery of Everything. Online. 10 Nov 2004 <http://home.flash.net/~csmith0/theryall.html>

SelfAdjoint Example of Conflict Between General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics. 18 Jun 2004. Online. 11 Nov 2004.
<www.physicsforums.com>

The Elegant Universe. Dir. Joseph McMaster. Nova, 2004

Woit, Peter String Theory: An Evaluation 29 Jan 2001. Online. 1 Nove 2004 <http://www.math.columbie.edu/~woit/strings.pdf>

[tom mccurdy]

Although this is very rough... with many grammatical errors it should help you understand a lot about string theory if you were to read it

here is url for better formating
http://www.quantumninja.com/toe/modu...le=print&sid=7

Part 1:
Greetings, My Name is Tom McCurdy and I will be discussing the quest for the holy grail of physics, the quest for the theory of everything or as it is sometimes referred toe. This theory that was even able to elude Einstein for the 3 decades he searched for it. The search for the theory of everything is trying to unite the four forces of our world and our universe; electromagnetism, the strong force, and the weak force. In doing so it hopes to solve one of the biggest conflicts in the history of physics, the conflict between General Relativity versus Quantum Mechanics. However before you we talk about the current conflict it is necessary to see how we arrived at this conflict. The conflict between General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics is really the 3rd of three major conflicts in physics. The first major conflict was between predictions made by Maxwell’s electromagnetism Equations vs the older Newtonian ideas of the universe. According to Newton if you were able to run fast enough you could quite literally catch up and surpass light in speed. This is not to say that Newton in any way thought it was possible for some living thing on earth to catch up to light, it just meant that there were no laws preventing it from happening. However Maxwell’s equations prevented you from catching up to light. The conflict was eventually solved by none other than our good friend, Albert Einstein., with the creation of Special Relativity. Einstein’s Special relativity completely revolutionized our view of the universe. It took it from the classic view of a static unchanging universe to the idea that the universe was actually a malleable construct whose form and appearance was dependent upon one’s state of motion. This is the law that causes things such as Lorenz contraction or time dilation, it is the thing that would cause two passing people in space traveling at good portions of c to see the other’s person’s time as running slower. However To better understand some of the implications of SR let me give you an example with this little riddle. Hypothetically speaking lets say there is fierce fighting between two countries that we will refer to as Country Bob and Country Joe. To solve the problem between the two countries the UN gets the leaders of Bob and Joe to agree to sign a peace agreement to end the violence. The problem is that neither leader wishes to sign it first. To solve the problem they put the two leaders in a room across from each other equal distant to a light source at a long table. They decided that the peace agreement signing will occur the exact second the light reaches each leader. Since light travels at the same velocity it reaches the leaders at the same time, and the agreement is signed and both countries are happy as there is now peace between the longtime rival countries. Later two new countries lets call Flat and Round are fighting. The US is trying to help the two countries get a peace agreement signed to end the fighting, however they have the same problem as the first two countries. The leaders of both countries again refuse to sign the document first as it would anger their people. To solve the problem the leaders meet on a train, and again the same thing is set up. The two leaders sit on opposite ends of a table on the train, one facing the front of the train (F-Leader), the other facing the back of train (B-Leader). They set up the light in the middle and turn it on, and they both sign it when the light hits them. The two leaders and especially the US are quite pleased until they find out the fighting started again. It turns out to the observers watching outside of the train, they "saw" the F-leader sign the document just before the b-leader claiming the light had to travel a smaller distance even though it is at the was traveling the same speed. However the people on the train maintain that the peace documents were signed at the exact same time. Who is correct? Why? The answer is that they are both right. Special relativity allows for each viewer to have a unique viewpoint and still be telling the truth about what they see. To the people inside the train the documents were in fact signed at the same time, however to the people outside the train the documents were signed at different times. What’s the lesson: Don’t trust the U.S. to solve any foreign relations problem by itself. Or make sure everyone has the same frame of reference when attempting anything similar again. So it seems like everything should be fine in physics at this point, after all the conflict was solved however as often in the case in physics, especially in the quest for the theory of everything, one solution lead to a whole new problem. This problem we will refer to as Conflict Number 2. Conflict number 2 stemmed from some of the implications of Special Relativity. According to SR nothing could in fact travel faster than light, including any sort of influence or disturbance. This went directly against what is described Newton’s Universal theory of gravitation, which implies that everything has instant influence on other objects, versus Einstein who said this influence is limited by the speed of light. So at this point we once again we find ourselves in the boxing ring of physics with Newton returning fresh from his recent defeat and apparently back from the dead against Einstein. To really illustrate what the problem is let’s use the common example that many physicist like to use. Hypothetically let’s say for whatever reason the sun explodes. According to Newton we feel its lack of presence instantly and the earth would immediately veer off its elliptical orbit. However according to Einstein the earth would not feel its affect until at maximum around the eight minutes it takes light to reach earth or in other words it is limited to go no faster than the speed of light. However unfortunately for Newton he was going to go 0 and 2, once again Einstein stepped in and solved the problem presented by his previous solution. And in doing so he once again revamped our views of the universe. He was able to something that had puzzled Newton to the point where he simply “feigned no hypothesis.” Einstein provided an explained gravity with the creation of General Relativity. Now the universe was something that could in fact warp and curve in response to matter of energy, it wasn’t the boring old static place we sometimes would like to think it is. However the familiar curse of one solution giving birth to a new problem didn’t want to be left out of the picture and bore its ugly head once again, and lead us to the current problem, the 3rd Conflict General Relativity versus Quantum Mechanics. This time the boxing gloves were off and it was a good old fashion brawl. General Relativity governs the world of the very large with its laws, things such as planets, stars and galaxies, while Quantum Mechanics governs the world of the very small, things like atoms, electrons and quarks. The problem was and still is that both General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics have been proven to work to impressive degrees of accuracy, however mathematically speaking if one of the theories is correct than it forces the other theory to be wrong. They just don’t get along with each other peacefully. By now one question may be popping up in your minds. Alright so we have two theories, that both seemingly work. Why do we even need a unified theory? The problem is they work when you are examining something that requires only one theory, something solely large or solely small. Unfortunately there are many questions in physics that require the use of both equations. These problems are some of the most important mysteries to solve, such as the mystery of the big bang. What exactly happened during the big bang, when you have the mass of the entire universe compressed to an infinitely small point?

[tom mccurdy]

Part 2:
Should you use General relativity because of the incredible mass or should you use quantum mechanics because of how minuscule the point was. A similar paradox occurs when you examine other things such as black holes where matter is being sucked in by an enormous amount of gravity and being crushed into a small singularity. Which law should you use for either case? The answer is neither. Both theories give non senseical answers. Alright those were examples where I just basically told you trust me the math doesn’t work out, but let me see if I can give an example that you can more clearly see the conflict between the two theories. In Quantum Mechanics some of the most interesting particles are defined by something called spinors. Spinors are quite similar to vectors, they have components, however they stop acting like vectors when you change coordinates. However in general relativity it is very important that you are able to change coordinates freely and that the equations describing whatever “physics” you are doing will still be true in this new coordinate system. This is necessary because coordinates determine different frames of reference, different viewpoints. Anything that behaves this way are referred to as tensors, and as you might therefore expect Einstein’s physics is built out of tensors. Now here is the bummer. Spinors aren’t tensors and they won’t behave like tensors when you change coordinates. A spinor equation will be changed completely. Therefore you could have this spinor representing and electron over here and you look at it from a different frame of reference and it’s a different particle, say a quark. And this just wouldn’t be very good now would it. So that is why we are looking for a solution between quantum mechanics and general relativity we are looking for this theory of everything, something that could describe everything, all of the universes particles and the four forces that govern them; electromagnetism, the strong force, the weak force and the oddball of the group, gravity. And depending upon who you ask in the field we seem to be approaching the resolution to the conflict with various theories. Currently the leader of the toe wannabes would be something that would completely blow up any idea current perception of the universe. String theory, which I will now try to describe. Sting theory is something that makes some new claims such that it predicts that a one dimensional loop the size of 10^-34 cm is the fundamental particle of everything, however before jumping in the pool of strings head first, lets see if we can get our feet wet. Lets start, where else, the beginning. The ancient Greeks were the first ones to start to describe matter. They believed that the world was made up of small “uncutable'” constituents coined “atoms” by Democritus in around 500 BC. Later in the 19th century scientists were noticing that Carbon and Oxygen had Recognizable smaller constituents, and in honor of the Greeks they decided to name atoms. The difference was that these atoms were in fact cutable. And with the development of the atomic model with such people as JJ Thompson, Ernest Rutherford, Niels Bohr, and James Chadwick the atomic model took the shape of the solar system model with protons and neutrons making up the massive nucleus with the tiny electrons whizzing around it in a probabilistic cloud. At this point many scientists did actually believe that they had found the smallest constituents of matter, that they were in fact protons, neutrons, and electrons. However in 1968 this idea was crushed when at the Stanford linear Accelerator Center found that the protons and neutrons were not actually fundamental. Each consisted of 3 quarks a combination of up and down quarks. The name quark actually coming from James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake by Murray Bell and was used by Monn a theoretical physicist who had surmised their existence. The quarks were arranged in such a fashion that Protons consited 2 up quarks and 1 down quark and Neutrons consisted of 2 down quarks and 1 up quark. Then after the discovery of the up and down quarks the predictions of the neutrino made by Wolfgang Pauli proved to be correct as it was discovered. The neutrino is described to be a ghost like particle that could travel through trillion of miles of lead with out being affected. At this point everyone was happy, as many scientists thought that they had discovered all of particles, however to much of their dismay this was just the beginning of the so called particle zoo. The next particle is what I like to describe as the Unwanted Particle, the muon. The muon was discovered almost on accident while studying cosmic rays. It was the same as the electron in properties, other than the fact that it was 200 times more massive. At the time of the discovery of the muon, the Nobel Prize winning particle physicist Isidor Isaac Rabi was quoted to say “Who ordered that?” After the discovery of the muon things just went crazy, as technology increased the power of the particle accelerators increased allowing scienstists to discover more and more particles. These scientists discovered four more quarks, an additional cousin of the electron that was actually heavier than even the muon. Scienstists also discovered two additional cousins to the neutrino, named the muon neutrino and tau neutrino (causing the original neutrino to be renamed to electron-neutrino). These particles although all different in mass were split into three families based upon their other properties. Each family consisted of two quarks, an electron or cousin, and one of the neutrino types. Then when all was thought to be done an anti-particle, with the same mass yet opposite charge, was found for every particle mentioned, for example the electron’s anti-particle was a positron with a charge positive one. The problem that many physicists had of this model was the odd numbers and large numbers of constituents. Physicists are inherently lazy in heart and want things to be as simple as possible; they are also fans of symmetry. So a large number of constituents that were divided into three families were not what they wanted. So it is now theorized by String Theory that strings are actually the smallest constitutes in our universe. These tiny one dimensional vibrating loops of energy with predicted sized along the range of 10^-34 cm are now believed to make up everything including the previous particles mentioned earlier. Now that we have gotten are feet wet its time to go swimming, lets dive into string theory and take a brief and over simplified look at something that may bring us to our holy grail. String theory right now is kind referred to as the wild west of physics its something that if proved correct will forever change any, and I mean any currently held views of the universe. String theory like I mentioned before first theorized that these little vibrating one dimensional strings were reasonable for everything, and like stings on a guitar for example they can vibrate at different frequencies. Each frequency pattern would represent a different fundamental particle. However in order to do this the string needs more freedom than you or I. Instead of moving in only 3 dimensions with one dimension of time, strings need more dimensions to work properly. You see as you add more dimensions to our universe you allow for more degrees of freedom. In essence the strings can just do more things. So it was then theorized that we lived in a world with 3 spacial dimensions 1 time dimensions and 6 “hidden” dimensions that would be curled up into such predicted shapes as Calabi-Yau manifold. Right now you may be asking your self as I did the first time I heard of 6 extra dimensions, “What the hell is a Calabi-Yau Manifold” A Calbi-Yau is quite literally impossible to imagine because it has 6 dimensions but, lets try to get a rough picture anyways. Picture the manifold as a balled up paper except it’s one where its curves would be more intricate and Mobius like. It would know nothing of straight lines and it may be possible to do something as throw a baseball and it come and hit you in the back. String theory also seems to fix other problems of the universe as well. According to Einstein’s view of the universe it is something that can bend and warp. So theoretically it is possible to have it bent on top of itself. With the universe in this shape it is also possible that there may be rips in the fabric of space, called worm holes that would allow a short cut from one part of the universe to another. The question is could we create wormholes, these short cuts. The answer according to Einstein was no, other than the wormholes that may already exist it is impossible to rip the actual fabric of space. However string theory says otherwise. Strings operate in the quantum mechanical world, a wild world where things don’t operate the way they do here. Things don’t always go in order everything is chaotic. Also in this world it is quite possible for there to be tears in the fabric of space, with strings. The problem before strings was that what would prevent the tear from enlarging creating a cosmic disaster. The answer is that strings when moving through space create a kind of bubble shield that kind of drags behind the strings. This tail behind the moving strings can prevent tears of space from becoming to large by using its shield to preventing the tear from getting any larger. This may imply that someday we may be able to control tears if we can master the rhythm of strings. However like many theories string theory also had a couple of problems with it. After string theory really started to become mainstream in 1984 a problem arose.

[tom mccurdy]

Part 3:

The problem was that there wasn’t one version of string theory, in fact there were five versions of string theory. All involving strings however all with what seemed like very different math. This may have seemed good to some people; the optimist would have said that well now we just have more theories that could lead to the theory of everything, greater odds of success. However to most physicists it was, well, embarrassing. How could there be five versions. The problem was solved by what may be Einstein’s successor, Ed Witten. Ed Witten wanted to do something special for the annual conference of string theorists in 1995 at the University of Southern California, so he decided to eliminate some of the string theories. When he actually went to the meeting he announced that he had solved the problem of the multiple theories and presented a solution that basically said that the other string theories were just kinds of reflections of each other. He basically looked at the problem from a different perspective and incorporating all of the theories M-Theory was born. The M part of M-theory seems to be a somewhat of a mystery. Some think it is an upside down W for Witten, however Witten explains that the M stands for Magic, Mystery, or Matrix depending upon which you prefer. He also has been rumored to call it Murky because he stated that the understanding of string theory right now is so feeble. M-Theory was a massive success for string theorists, they now had eliminated one of the major problems, it was almost as it had re-sparked interest in the topic and everyone wanted to keep up with this new development. M-theory however changed the 10 dimensions needed for the old models and added one more dimension to make the grand total of 6 dimensions. M-theory also allowed for some other spectacular ideas. One was that strings could stretch to the size of say a universe or greater into something called a membrane, or brane for short. M-Theory also inferred that we, our entire universe, be living on a membrane that is in higher dimensional space, next to many parallel universes. It would be like we were a slice of bread on a bigger thing that physicists like to refer to as the bulk. This could mean that there could be parallel universe next to us in the other dimensions of space less than a mm away, it’s just since it would be in other dimensions and we are trapped in ours that we can never touch it. However if this is true this means that are perception of the universe is limited by what we experience in our universe where we are on the brane. It very will could be that these other universe could be similar to ours having planets and maybe some sort of beings or it could be that these universes be completely different from ours ruled by entirely different laws of physics. However living on a brane may explain something that has puzzled scientists for a long time. Why the hell is gravity so weak compared to the other forces. I mean it is a thousand billion billion billion billion times weaker than even electromagnetism. In fact I am able to lift this up (pencil or some object), overcoming the entire planets gravitational pull. Is this because I am super human, no it’s because although gravity may seem very strong it is actually incredibility weak compared to the other forces. If you need another example just grab a magnet and have it pull something up, again a small magnet versus the entire planet’s pull and the magnet will win. So how does the weakness of gravity have to do with the idea of the universe being trapped on a brane. Well the answer lies on the differences in dimensions. Lets for simplictic sakes reduce our universe to 2 dimensions and the brane to 3 dimensions. In this aspect we can go back and forth and side to side but never up and down. It is theorized that M-theory would require instead of only closed loop strings that the loops have endpoints that are connected to the brane. However there would still exist some closed loop strings and one idea of what a closed loop string would be would be the graviton, the theorized particle that would be responsible for gravity. It may be weird to think of gravity working because of a force particle but all the other forces work by using force particles. The force particle for the strong forces is the Gluon, for the electromagnetic force is the photon, and for the Weak forces it is the weak gauge boson. So even if gravity has a force particle, how does it explain why gravity is so weak? It explains why gravity is so week because of the idea that it would be a closed loop string. Instead being attached to the brane and limited by our dimensions it could be free to travel into the other dimensions, thereby in a sense disappearing from our dimension. In this fashion the reason gravity is so weak is because it quickly moves out of our universe and into others. However this in a fact leads to another possibility. If in fact string theory is true and we do live on a brane with parallel universes than why would it be hard to imagine that there is life in these parallel universes, and hypothetically if there was life on these parallel universes why would it be hard to imagine that they are close to us in intelligence. Then although we could never see each other it would be possible to communicate with each other through strong gravity wave sources. The brane theory also offers a new model to the idea of the creation of the universe. It basically says that if there is one brane then there must be other branes out there, and if they are what would happen if the two branes collided. Some now believe that this may have been the even that triggered the big bang, however his has two major implications. First of all it means that the creation of the universe was nothing special and things like this happen all the time. And Secondly that we are currently on a crash course with another brane. However this theory is highly controversial even amount string theorists. The thing that is unique about this theory of the big bang is that it finally allows for something that would have triggered the bang as compared to most theories which trace back towards right after the bang, but don’t include anything on what actually caused the bang. However something all string theorists agree on is that String Theory needs to provide evidence of it being correct, otherwise if it can’t no one should believe it. If there is no evidence that can help prove string theory than many feel it is not a theory of physics, rather a theory of philosophy. This may at first glance seem very hard to do since strings are so close to Planck’s length in size that they will probably never be able to be viewed directly. However if strings were around at the beginning of the universe than we may one day be able to find evidence of strings in space, as any “evidence” or traces strings left in the beginning of the universe would have been stretched out and enlarged. There is also hope that we will be able to find evidence for string theory here on earth using powerful atom smashers. The folks at Fermi lab and in a few years CERN will be looking for many things that could help provide evidence for string theory. There is also hope that the atom smashers could show the existence of something called sparticles which would show evidence for something called supersymetry. Supersymetry is something that predicts extremely much heavier particles for things such as electrons, protons, and even gravitons. The problem is that they would be so heavy that the current detectors may not notice them, and so far no one has found any evidence of their existence. However since string theory predicts their existence it would provide strong evidence for string theory. However probably the best way to provide evidence for string theory would be if they could find a graviton, at its moment of disappearance when it would be moving into other dimensions, not only would this prove the existence of the graviton but it could also explain things such as why gravity is so weak. So in all reality when do we know if string theory is real or not? The truth is no one knows, one thing is for sure, with the creation of the new atom smashers like CERN over the next 10 to 20 years the way we view the universe is likely to change, whether or not it predicts string theory to be true or not, no one knows. However for the sake of the grail, many hope that it does.

[tom mccurdy]

Also here is a link to the powerpoint that goes with it

http://www.quantumninja.com/toe/powerpoint.ppt

[tom mccurdy]

And if you get really lazy you can listen to the entire lecture here

http://www.quantumninja.com/toe/StringIntroLecture.mp3