************************************************** It might be like a man trying to understand woman and woman trying to understand men... We just might know but we don't realize it... ************************************************** I'm not sure I want to understand that one. I'd rather start with something easy like Tensor Analysis...
There is a good show on Discover channel about the differences between boys and girls tonight... nitro
Sounds terrifying - I'm glad I missed it. You know that a lion can rip the skull off a gazelle with one bite. But is there anything so graphic as a scientific explanation of the fact?
Getting into this would require me to write my longest post on ET by far, but here is the very shortened version. String Theory really is a theory of the very small. The link with Relativity is an incredible manifestation of the "dual" maps that were discovered by Witten. In particular, we know that by increasing the coupling constant of a Type IIA string (the original String Theory was 5 seperate String Theories, Heterotic-O, Heterotic-E, Type IIA, Type IIB, Type I, all of which were thought to be possible explanations of the Universe) from a value much below 1 to a value much above 1, we get a low energy approximation of 11-dimensional supergravity Quantum Field Theory, the Physics that all physicist have been doing for a long time before anyone heard of String Theory!!! M-Theory is truly astonishing. For the first time, we can see the fundamental fabric of the Universe (it is M-Branes, where the 1-brane is the traditional string, and oscillates in it's given dimension.) GUTs are at a point similar to that of the cartographer mapping the last point on the planet. Like the cartographer, once she can fill in every region of on a spherical globe of the earth, the map is done and geographical knowledge is complete. By including the dualities involving the geometrical form of spacetime and M-theory, all the string theories are joined together in a web of dualities. This gives a map that describes how to move from one string theory to the next!!!! Now we need to find that point on that map that describes the Universe we live in, the challenge of this century and possibly the next. I could go on forever... nitro
I've got a number of questions about what you just wrote, but I certainly don't want to coax you into your longest post. I heard a lecture just a few years ago about the various sting theories, so I have just enough knowledge to be dangerous. First question: what do they mean by "coupling constant" - coupling what to what? Also, what is the significance of "low energy" - are they talking about how the background radiation ends up at only 3K?
Sorry - here's another one: why do we have 5 string theories that seem to work? How does M-theory make that okay?
What I don't quite understand is how string theory fits in with our view of the universe? Does our universe contain many different strings, or is our universe just a speck of dust on a mush larger system? Also, hasn't the recent discovery that gravity moves at the speed of light shoot some holes in existing string theory?