• Question: what is string theory

    Asked by 10mcgowew to Christina, Colin, Jess, Samaneh, Steve on 24 Jun 2013.
    • Photo: Steven Gardner

      Steven Gardner answered on 24 Jun 2013:

      String theory is the idea that particles are not actually points in space but are in fact tiny loops of string, and the each particle corresponds to a different vibration (or note) on the string. So far it’s not really testable, so we don’t know if it’s true or not, but it does solve some problems that modern physics has been having, like the singularity and why gravity is so much weaker than all the other forces.

    • Photo: Christina Pagel

      Christina Pagel answered on 24 Jun 2013:

      And to add what Steve said, in string theory there need to be more than the 3 dimensions of space that we see around us (ie width, height and depth)… the maths says they need to be there but no one can really imagine them (current theory says there are 11 dimensions but there are other theories that give different numbers of dimensions)…

      why don’t we experience these extra dimensions? physicists think that the dimensions are curled up really small and don’t intrude on our experience of reality at all… but as Steve says, currently we can’t test between different string theory (or even if any string theory is right) so it’s a very active area of physics research!

Comments