• Question: What is string theory?

    Asked by anon-223739 to Valerio, Sreejita, Sam, Kate, Anastasia, Adam on 18 Nov 2019.
    • Photo: Sreejita Ghosh

      Sreejita Ghosh answered on 18 Nov 2019: last edited 18 Nov 2019 6:37 pm

      First of all thank you for the question. I don’t have the expertise in this area but I will point you towards some videos which I liked, which helped me understand a little bit about string theory when I was searching for an answer to your question. This is by one of my favourite Physicists, Michio Kaku.

      And here’s a lecture of a bit different nature… musical, but also about string theory

    • Photo: Adam Wootton

      Adam Wootton answered on 19 Nov 2019:

      String theory is really complicated, and it’s not something that I know a lot about, unfortunately! It’s also not something that all scientists agree on, which is why we call it a ‘theory’. I think that the basic idea is that we think of the universe as being made up of 1-dimensional ‘strings’ rather than 3-dimensional particles.

    • Photo: Sam Lawrence

      Sam Lawrence answered on 19 Nov 2019:

      String theory is a theory which explains how forces and interactions work on the smallest of scales. The theory claims that matter, at it’s most fundamental level (you cannot break it into smaller parts), is made up of tiny strings. The way in which these string vibrate and interact with one another gives rise to different particles and different forces. It had huge support towards the latter part of the 20th century because it was the leading theory which could explain how gravity and quantum mechanics (small scale particle physics) interact at very short distances. This is very important when trying to develop a “theory of everything”. It does receive its fair share of animosity; one consequence of the theory is that there are, rather than three spatial dimensions (length, width, height), sometimes up to twenty-five (it depends on which type of string theory). String theorists argue that these extra dimensions are curled up and we are unable to experience them, just like how a square on a piece of paper doesn’t know that it’s living in a 3D universe, where cubes can exist!

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