No Strings Attached
July 29th 2010 05:25
Category: No Category
(Excuse the puns)
String theory is an emerging theory in particle physics which attempts to understand and incorporate quantum mechanics and general relativity. The string theory phenomenon started in the 1960s, there are currently around 5 versions, each with it’s own interpretation.
String theory it’s enough to keep you tied up in knots.
Think of a violin string that has been tuned by stretching the string under tension across a wooden frame. Depending on how the string is played and how much tension is in the string, different musical notes will be created by the string. These musical notes could be said to produce vibrations and harmonics of that violin string under tension.
In a similar manner, in string theory, the elementary particles we observe in particle accelerators could be thought of as the "musical notes" or vibrations of elementary strings.
String theory, is like playing a violin, the string must be stretched under tension in order to become excited.
However, the strings in string theory are floating in space or what`s called space time.
Ok if we relate to string theory as a theory of quantum gravity, then the average size of a string should be somewhere near the length scale of quantum gravity.
All this is great but you end up with string being too small to be seen even with our current technology. The next thing string theorists need to do is create new ways to test the string theory hypothesis.
String theories also require the existence of an extra, unobservable, dimension to the universe, in addition to what we perceive, that is three spatial dimensions (height, width, and length) and the fourth dimension of time.
What string theory does is try to make our understanding of matter in its smallest component.
In order to make sense of string theory we need to understand the basics of stuff ( matter)
Matter is defined as the substance of objects that also takes up space and has mass.
Although string theory is somewhat controversial and the theory itself is relatively new, at this time string theory remains largely unproven.
This does not mean that in the future it can be proven or not. It is going to require massive new technology and financial commitment to find out. Until we can come up with a new clever ways of testing this theory, we can only say that string theory is plausible.
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Comment by S.L.
The Political Brief
Comment by CarlCan
Astroearth
After all any excuse will do.
What President Lincoln said that you can most of the people……etc.
Murphy who was an Irish optimist said you can fool most of the people most of the time and that’s enough...
(You might want to incorporate this in your blog LOL)
Comment by S.L.
The Political Brief