What do you all think about it? What are some of the problems plaguing it right now? And most of all, what could it mean to particle physicists (if the properties of a particle depend on the vibration of the string there should be an almost limitless "soup" of different kinds of particles right?)? Just curious because I recently finished reading Elegant Universe by Brian Greene.

I find myself acting partial to M-theory -- specifically Ekpyrotic theory..

I never could understand what they meant by string theory. I find multidimensional space to be much more comprehensible.

Originally posted by crackpot
I find multidimensional space to be much more comprehensible. A sure sign that it's wrong.

No more wrong than the ignited fart ... oops, sorry ... the Ekpyrotic theory. ;)

Why did string theorists change the formulas there were coming up with so the would demand 10 dimensions instead of 26? I read that this change destroyed all the "elegance" of the formulas and generally brought chaos to order. Just curious as to why they didn't leave it at 26 and keep the original string theory's clean formulas rather than introducing infinities and the like into the equations.

Xelios,

My guess is that the different number of dimensions was a necessity to prevent a lot more infinities and divergences popping up in the theory. Actually (so I have been told) it's the string theory for fermions (particles like the electron, proton) that requires 26 dimensions to be consistent, and the string theory for bosons (particles like photons) requires "only" 11 dimensions.

Bye!

Crisp

And no more wrong than the old fart ... err, sorry ... the hairless Old Fart. ;)

if the properties of a particle depend on the vibration of the string there should be an almost limitless "soup" of different kinds of particles right?)? Just curious because I recently finished reading Elegant Universe by Brian Greene.Same here. Actually the strings are under enormous tension, and there are other factors as well that limit the number of harmonious vibrations that the strings make, leaving us with a finite number of particles. But it does predict that there are a number of particles we haven't found yet, called superparticles.

Why did string theorists change the formulas there were coming up with so the would demand 10 dimensions instead of 26? I read that this change destroyed all the "elegance" of the formulas and generally brought chaos to order. Just curious as to why they didn't leave it at 26 and keep the original string theory's clean formulas rather than introducing infinities and the like into the equations.Actually, string theory used to predict 26 dimensions, but someone independantly discovered a theory that predicts 11 dimensions, and the theories merged and became superstring theory. It was found to work better in 11 dimensions. Eventually it evolved into M-theory.

That's no way to talk about Alpha.

Be nice, he's new to the forum.

Take care. ;)