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String Theory, macro or micro?
bgjohn
Member Posts: 2,275 ✭✭✭✭✭
Are strings exceedingly large or small? Are they particles, waves or what?
JM[?]
JM[?]
Comments
JM
Former Member U.S. Navy Shooting Team
Former NSSA All American
Navy Distinguished Pistol Shot
MO, CT, VA.
JM
I don't know poop about string theory. I needed to "ask an expert", which is the name of this forum.
JM
They moved my topic. Y?
JM[?]
Former Member U.S. Navy Shooting Team
Former NSSA All American
Navy Distinguished Pistol Shot
MO, CT, VA.
told ya.
I guess it happens when the "Experts" don't know poop!
JM
[:0] Oh, wait, you meant the still-developing mathematical approach to theoretical physics, whose original building blocks are one-dimensional extended objects called strings.
Never mind!
If you can't feel the music; it's only pink noise!
According to the theory of everything, there are a gazillion universes which occupy the same time and space. Every time anybody makes a decision and takes an action that could have gone more than one way, it creates another universe where the other decision was made.
Makes as much sense to me as some of the other theories. [:D]
According to the theory of everything there is another universe, right here, right now, where gasoline is 18? per gallon, but they don't tell us how to ziggy over there an fill up the pickup.
quantum mirror...its at Area 51
According to the theory of everything there is another universe, right here, right now, where gasoline is 18? per gallon, but they don't tell us how to ziggy over there an fill up the pickup.
at least they could tell us how to siphon it somehow
Are strings exceedingly large or small? Are they particles, waves or what?
JM[?]
Apparently strings are very small making up the basic particles.
JM
It,s a great read-
Peering backward in time to an instant after the Big Bang, physicists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have devised an approach that may help unlock the hidden shapes of alternate dimensions of the universe.
A new study demonstrates that the shapes of extra dimensions can be "seen" by deciphering their influence on cosmic energy released by the violent birth of the universe 13 billion years ago. The method, published February 2 in Physical Review Letters, provides evidence that physicists can use experimental data to discern the nature of these elusive dimensions - the existence of which is a critical but as yet unproven element of string theory, the leading contender for a unified "theory of everything."
Scientists developed string theory, which proposes that everything in the universe is made of tiny, vibrating strings of energy, to encompass the physical principles of all objects from immense galaxies to subatomic particles. Though currently the front-runner to explain the framework of the cosmos, the theory remains, to date, untested.
The mathematics of string theory suggests that the world we know is not complete. In addition to our four familiar dimensions - three-dimensional space and time - string theory predicts the existence of six extra spatial dimensions, "hidden" dimensions curled in tiny geometric shapes at every single point in our universe.
Don't worry if you can't picture a 10-dimensional world. Our minds are accustomed to only three spatial dimensions and lack a frame of reference for the other six, says UW-Madison physicist Gary Shiu, who led the new study. Though scientists use computers to visualize what these six-dimensional geometries could look like, no one really knows for sure what shape they take.
The new Wisconsin work may provide a long-sought foundation for measuring this previously immeasurable aspect of string theory.
According to string theory mathematics, the extra dimensions could adopt any of tens of thousands of possible shapes, each shape theoretically corresponding to its own universe with its own set of physical laws.
For our universe, "Nature picked one - and we want to know what that one looks like," explains Henry Tye, a physicist at Cornell University who was not involved in the new research.
Shiu says the many-dimensional shapes are far too small to see or measure through any usual means of observation, which makes testing this crucial aspect of string theory very difficult. "You can theorize anything, but you have to be able to show it with experiments," he says. "Now the problem is, how do we test it?"
He and graduate student Bret Underwood turned to the sky for inspiration.
Their approach is based on the idea that the six tiny dimensions had their strongest influence on the universe when it itself was a tiny speck of highly compressed matter and energy - that is, in the instant just after the Big Bang.
"Our idea was to go back in time and see what happened back then," says Shiu. "Of course, we couldn't really go back in time."
Lacking the requisite time machine, they used the next-best thing: a map of cosmic energy released from the Big Bang. The energy, captured by satellites such as NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP), has persisted virtually unchanged for the last 13 billion years, making the energy map basically "a snapshot of the baby universe," Shiu says.
The WMAP experiment is the successor to NASA's Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) project, which garnered the 2006 Nobel Prize in physics.
Just as a shadow can give an idea of the shape of an object, the pattern of cosmic energy in the sky can give an indication of the shape of the other six dimensions present, Shiu explains.
To learn how to read telltale signs of the six-dimensional geometry from the cosmic map, they worked backward. Starting with two different types of mathematically simple geometries, called warped throats, they calculated the predicted energy map that would be seen in the universe described by each shape. When they compared the two maps, they found small but significant differences between them.
Their results show that specific patterns of cosmic energy can hold clues to the geometry of the six-dimensional shape - the first type of observable data to demonstrate such promise, says Tye.
Though the current data are not precise enough to compare their findings to our universe, upcoming experiments such as the European Space Agency's Planck satellite should have the sensitivity to detect subtle variations between different geometries, Shiu says.
"Our results with simple, well-understood shapes give proof of concept that the geometry of hidden dimensions can be deciphered from the pattern of cosmic energy," he says. "This provides a rare opportunity in which string theory can be tested."
Technological improvements to capture more detailed cosmic maps should help narrow down the possibilities and may allow scientists to crack the code of the cosmic energy map - and inch closer to identifying the single geometry that fits our universe.
The implications of such a possibility are profound, says Tye. "If this shape can be measured, it would also tell us that string theory is correct."
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I have enough to worry about as is, without the months you can read on the subject.
Assuming you can understand it at all.[;)]
Quantum physics,........it is like many theories, unproven, and most likely will never be, within our lifetimes.
I have enough to worry about as is, without the months you can read on the subject.
Assuming you can understand it at all.[;)]
The few times I have seen Steven Hawking explain it on T.V., I am lost after the first 10 min.[:D]
quote:Originally posted by Marc1301
Quantum physics,........it is like many theories, unproven, and most likely will never be, within our lifetimes.
I have enough to worry about as is, without the months you can read on the subject.
Assuming you can understand it at all.[;)]
The few times I have seen Steven Hawking explain it on T.V., I am lost after the first 10 min.[:D]
Leave it to the "experts",......my head begins to hurt when I attempt to spin all of these thoughts around inside of it.
I have seen some of Hawkings interviews,.......you may have "lasted" longer than I did![:D]
A subject to be entertained by a very few on this earth.
Former Member U.S. Navy Shooting Team
Former NSSA All American
Navy Distinguished Pistol Shot
MO, CT, VA.
JM[:)]
Quantum physics,........it is like many theories, unproven, and most likely will never be, within our lifetimes.
Ahhh, you are forgetting your history. No one knew how to build an Atomic Bomb as late at 1944. It was all theory until the bomb worked.
If anyone wants to feel humble, pick up a copy of Steven Hawkings "A Brief History of Time". The good Doctor "dumbed" down the book for laymen. Not a single Engineer (or any other co-worker) in my "Advanced" design group has finished the book.
quote:Originally posted by Marc1301
Quantum physics,........it is like many theories, unproven, and most likely will never be, within our lifetimes.
Ahhh, you are forgetting your history. No one knew how to build an Atomic Bomb as late at 1944. It was all theory until the bomb worked.
If anyone wants to feel humble, pick up a copy of Steven Hawkings "A Brief History of Time". The good Doctor "dumbed" down the book for laymen. Not a single Engineer (or any other co-worker) in my "Advanced" design group has finished the book.
Actually I did not forget the "bomb",......but I would undoubtedly be like the others in your group.
I have the luxury of finding all the facts on the "bomb",....but not the other.
Like I said,.........it makes my head hurt.
Actually I may pick up the book,.....thanks for the headache![;)]
Hawking has since revised his theory on Black Holes.
Marc - let me know how you do. I've tried to read that book several times. Each time I start at the beginning and then stop when I start to back track because I'm lost. My wife gave me a copy for a Christmas present in 88.
Hawking has since revised his theory on Black Holes.
Hmmmmmm,.....almost 20 years for you?
I may pass after all!
Marc - I hope you get a copy. What's life without a challenge?
That sounds like a "dare",...something I only rarely pass up.
I get 20 years also to read it, and still not grasp it, correct?[:0]
I will be 66 at that stage, and won't give a "you know what", assuming I am still alive!
I have seen some of the recent documentary of Hawkings black hole theories.
All of it is very interesting to me on a number of levels, although I do not hold the intellect to truly understand it.[:(]
string theory is something else. I think it could be described as another level of physics yet, like quantum physics is to newtonian physics.
string physics, as it may then be called, would be irrelevant in almost all places where quantum physics is practical now, just like quantum physics is irrelevant where newtonian physics is practical, like when designing a car tire.