Strings are all around you. Your clothes are made of strings woven into cloth.

S
pider webs are string. To physicists, who study energy and matter, a string is a
nything much longer than it is wide. The cables that hold up suspension bridges
are strings even though they are six inches thick. Some people collect string an
d wind it in a ball. No one knows why. A scientist would even call your DNA a st
ring, though it curls up and those curls curl up and so on. Your DNA stretched o
ut like a string would be a few meters long. To a mathematician a string has no
width, only length. Scientists are beginning to believe that absolutely everythi
ng, from stars to cotton candy, may be made of string, very tiny mathematician s s
tring. This is string theory.
String theory is very weird, more than you can imagine. It involves higher dimen
sions and other universes. Vibrating strings make up everything. Everything is c
hunky and fuzzy when you look at it close enough. You can still hear and see the
Big Bang that started the universe. Black holes are hairy. Is dark energy makin
g you lose weight? Is dark chocolate matter making you gain weight? Instead of u
sing the dog-ate-my-homework excuse, try this one. I left it in the eighth dimens
ion.
String theory is the first theory of physics that tries to explain everything. W
hat does it mean to explain everything? We would know how the universe began and
where it is going. A theory of everything would explain everything we feel, see
, or measure. We would understand all the forces and all types of matter. We wou
ld know what is most basic and how everything else is composed of these basic pa
rts. Could the universe have been different? Are there other universes? A theory
of everything should answer these questions. Every big scientific discovery cha
nges how we think about our purpose and ourselves. String theory is the biggest,
most exciting change that ever happened in science.
As you read, you will find this symbol ? looking like a wiggly string. It means,
pause here and answer a question or think about what you just read. I don t know o
r understand, can be your answer, but it is more fun to guess. Answers will come
as you read more. You will also sometimes find a String Break!
This is a way to relax before plunging further into string theory. String breaks
contain forgettable facts about strings. Finally, there are quotes from Albert
Einstein. He was the world s most famous scientist, recognized as the most importa
nt man of the 20th century. All his life he had trouble with his hair. This led
him to discover several hairdos: the afro, the cotton ball, and spiked hair. Her
e he is in wilting spiked hair with the first quote.
The important thing is not to stop questioning.
Curiosity has its own reason for existing. A. Einstein
To understand string theory we have to know about some of the discoveries of the
last century. Science almost never says that an old theory is wrong. Scientists
test a theory every way they can imagine. If it passes the tests, the theory is
true for all the stuff tested. If it does not pass, then you modify the theory.
The old theories were carefully tested. That means string theory has to give th
e same results. It may not replace many theories. It will mostly add to them or
pull together different looking parts into a whole. That is why we have to know
what was happening in physics before string theory. String theory depends on the
theories of the 20th century.
Big Numbers and Small Numbers
To understand physics, it helps to be comfortable with big and small numbers. Sc
ience gives most of its results as numbers. We are going to discuss everything f
rom strings, much smaller than an atomic nucleus, to the whole universe. Scienti
sts have a way to give an estimate of the sizes of things. They round the number
to the nearest power of ten and just keep track of the number of zeros in an ex
ponent, a little number to the upper right of the ten. For example, in this nota
tion, 822 to the nearest power of ten is 1000 or 10+3 in the shorthand. There ar
e three zeros in 1000. The number 147 is closer to 100 than 1000 so it is 10+2.
There is a similar trick for small numbers. A proton is about 0.000000000000001
meters. That is 14 zeros and a 1 after the decimal point. If you wrote it as a f
raction, it would be 1/1,000,000,000,000,000. One divided by a one followed by 1
5 zeros. That is small. It is one quadrillionth. In shorthand, it is 10-15 meter
s, our small number. The minus sign tells us the number is less than one and the
number zeros you would need to write it as a fraction.
A billion is one followed by nine zeros. A trillion is one followed by twelve ze
ros. A quadrillion is one followed by fifteen zeros. Other Western languages use
trillion and quadrillion but they have different values. Our quadrillion is the
British trillion. In exponential notation, everyone agrees. The table shows tha
t the exponential notation is neat, simple, and easy to read.
Three Ways to Write Large and Small Numbers
10-30 0.0000000000000000000000000000001 One quadrillionth of a quadrillionth
10-8 0.00000001 Ten trillionths
100 1.0 One
10+10 10,000,000,000 Ten billions
10+41 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 100 billion quadrillion quadrillions
000, 000,000,000,000,000
Big things are very big and small things are very small. The number of bacteria
end-to-end it would take to cross the universe is almost the same as the number
of strings it would take to be as long as a bacterium. ? The biggest things are
huge. Humans and our piece of the universe are insignificant judging by size alo
ne.
We are only aware of the things that are near our size, about a meter. Bacteria,
10-5
meters long cause strep throat. Your fingertip can just barely detect an edge th
at size. One of the biggest things in our environment is a skyscraper, 10+3 mete
rs. That gives a range of sizes in our piece of the universe of about eight powe
rs of ten. A skyscraper is 10+8, or 100,000,000 times bigger than a bacterium. T
his is just a tiny slice of the universe that covers 61 powers of 10. The univer
se is 10+61 times bigger than the smallest thing, a string. String theory aims t
o explain it all.
The number to the upper right of the ten, the exponent, tells the story. Negativ
e exponents mean small numbers. Positive exponents mean big numbers. The larger
the number in the exponent, the bigger the number is if it is a positive exponen
t. The larger a negative exponent is, smaller the number is. The range of sizes
of parts of the universe is amazing.
How BIG and How Small Things Are
String Proton Atom Bacteria Kid Earth Solar System Milky Way Universe
10-35 10-15
10-11 10-5 1 10+8
10+13
10+21 10+26 meters
Science explores the wonders of the universe we cannot directly see. To study th
e very large we have telescopes, satellites, and space probes. For the very smal
l there are microscopes. The electron microscope can detect individual atoms. Is
there anything smaller? ? There sure is. Atoms are made of elementary particles
. To see that small we need a different tool, particle accelerators, once called
atom smashers. Elementary particles contain strings. The strings of string theo
ry are the smallest things that can exist in the universe. We will never see the
m, but they explain all there is. String theory is a theory of everything, but i
t is not the first. We will look next at some of the oldest theories of everythi
ng.
Myths and Creation Stories
Men and women have always been curious. We want to know who we are, where we cam
e from, how the world began, and why the world is the way it is. We do not know
what life was like for cave dwellers. They could not write. They left behind lit
tle more than their bones. Therefore, this is just a guess. For cave dwellers, t
hese questions were answered by the strongest one in the tribe, later by the hol
iest, and then by the smartest. The questioning led first to myths, then religio
ns, and to science. The first idea was that gods and other supernatural beings l
ived in everything: trees, animals, stars, water, and sky. This idea is still fo
und in the most isolated and primitive tribes.
Cave dwellers had a hard life, with little time for thinking. They were constant
ly searching for their next meal and hiding from saber tooth tigers and other na
sty animals. Eventually, they learned how to hunt, protect themselves, and grow
some food. Then a new thing happened, spare time. They had spare time but no vid
eo games. What should they do? What would you do? ? Cavemen began to play, explo
re, observe, think, ask questions about the world, and make art. This happened a
bout 40,000 years ago. Their biggest questions were the same as ours. Why am I h
ere? Why is the world as it is? About 10,000 years ago, men started developing c
omplex myths and the first religions. We are going to learn about some of these
before we tackle science.
Even before we got smart enough to carefully observe nature, we wanted an explan
ation of how humans and the world began. Here are the stories of some ancient pe
oples. While you are reading, try to notice errors or holes, something not expla
ined, in these stories. Is the story more complicated than what it tries to expl
ain?
AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINES
The ancient people of Australia believe that the Earth started bare and flat but
many things slept under the Earth including their ancestors. The ancestors woke
up and wandered around the Earth in strange forms, sometimes animal, sometimes
plant, and often all mixed up and missing parts. Two beings popped into existenc
e out of nothing, they were the Ungambikula. Wandering the world, they found hal
f-made human beings everywhere. They took great stone knives and carved all the
badly formed part humans into real humans.
What do you think of this story? Does it leave a lot not explained? What are som
e holes? ? Where did those ancestors in the ground come from? Can things pop int
o existence out of nothing? ? Surprise! Modern physics found that strings could
pop into existence out of nothing.
CHINESE
Phan Ku hatched from a giant cosmic egg. He pushed half the shell above him as t
he sky, the other half below him was the Earth. He grew taller each day for 18,0
00 years, gradually pushing the pieces apart until they reached the correct plac
es. After all this effort, Phan Ku fell apart. His limbs become the mountains, h
is blood the rivers, his breath the wind and his voice the thunder. His eyes are
the sun and the moon. The fleas in his hair became human beings. Ugh!
GREEK
This myth is more recent than the others are and is more complex. All is emptine
ss, except for two things, Nyx, a bird with black wings, and the wind. Nyx laid
a golden egg, and for ages she sat on it. Finally, life began to stir in the egg
and out came Eros, god of love. One-half of the shell rose into the air and bec
ame the sky. Eros made Nyx and the wind fall in love. They had many children who
were giant gods, the Titans. The Titans had children and grandchildren, who wer
e normal sized. They were afraid of the grandchildren. Cronus decided to protect
himself. He swallowed his grandchildren when they were still infants. Ugh! Zeus
hid and was not swallowed. He made Cronus barf up his brothers and sisters. Dou
ble ugh! They battled the Titans and took over. Soon the Earth was looking good
but without humans and animals. Zeus told his sons to go to Earth, make them, an
d give each a gift like speed, the ability to swim, or camouflage. One son used
up all the gifts making the animals. The other, Prometheus, had nothing to give
to humans, so he gave them fire. This made Zeus mad. Earth was like the Garden o
f Eden, and fire gave man too much power. Zeus got even by giving Pandora a pret
ty box she was never to open. Of course she did, releasing wars, sickness, skinn
ed knees, and playground bullies.
Are you glad we got fire even though we got all the troubles in Pandora s Box? ? N
otice how much you have to accept to believe this story. Do you have to accept m
ore than it explains?
IROQUOIS INDIANS
They believed that at first there was only an island in the sky, where the sky p
eople lived. Maybe it was a flying saucer. No one died and no one was born. Then
a sky woman discovered she was going to have twin sons. Her husband got mad and
threw her out of the sky. Kids would change things. She fell down to the water
covering the Earth where animals caught her and made her a place by spreading mu
d on a giant turtle s back. The mud grew big as North America. One son was good an
d one evil. They created the rest of the Earth. They made animals and humans. Th
e bad son made all the bad things like bones in fish, thorns around roses, winte
r without snow, and poison ivy.
Where did the sky people come from? ? Many other creation myths have the world c
reated by opposites such as good/bad, man/woman, creative/destructive.
HINDU
According to the story, an elephant supports the world. But, someone asked what
holds up the elephant? A turtle. What supports the turtle? A bigger turtle. Well
, what supports that turtle? After that, it s turtles all the way down. This story
illustrates how an explanation may not explain anything but just puts off havin
g to answer the real question.
BIBLE
God took seven days. He created light and separated it from darkness. A separati
on of light and darkness happens in the Big Bang. Then he made the rest of the w
orld. Man was last. He started with just Adam and Eve, in the Garden of Eden. Go
d said do not eat the fruit of a certain tree, but of course, they did. That was
like Pandora s Box, and since then we have had a hard time. They had to leave par
adise and populate the Earth.
Which creation story do you like best? What story seems most true to you? ? Imag
ine that science never happened. You might believe the world is on an elephant o
n a stack of turtles and that your ancestors were fleas in a giant s hair. ? The s
tory of string theory is going to seem even stranger to you.
Physics Begins with Astronomy
Science started about 2000 years ago with the first tries at biology, astronomy,
and medicine. Physical science, study of non-living things, started 500 years l
ater. There were reasons for the slow start. Science was confused with magic and
witchcraft and religion opposed it. In addition, science demands concentration,
time, and record keeping. All were in short supply several thousand years ago.
The first physical science was astronomy. Astronomy was important because it cou
ld predict the seasons and tell when to start planting. Many civilizations built
monuments like Stonehenge to tell the seasons.
The Greeks and later the Christians thought the Earth was imperfect. There was h
unger, disease, and death. However, the stars looked perfect. They were little t
winkling points of light that moved smoothly across the heavens with the seasons
. Anyone looking up on a dark night could see that the stars circled the Earth.
The Greeks decided the sun and stars hung on a moving glass sphere with the flat
Earth at the center. The sphere was the Greek ideal of perfection. This model o
f the universe was beautiful and simple. Then someone noticed that a few stars m
oved at different speeds. The Greeks called them planets, meaning wanderers. The
y decided they could still keep the heavens neat if the each planet moved on a d
ifferent glass sphere. The spheres moved in perfect circles around the Earth. Th
ey even had a phrase to describe this perfection, the music of the spheres. Not th
e kind of music you hear with your ears.
As observations got more accurate and covered more years, the Greeks found that
this did not work. The planets sometimes moved backwards and then went forwards
again. Ptolemy, a mathematician, developed the most sophisticated model of the m
otions of the Earth-centered solar system. He was great at algebra and geometry.
That was all the math Greeks knew.
In order to follow the details of planetary motions, his model was very complex.
He could fix things up if the planets stuck to smaller glass spheres that rolle
d around outside the original planetary spheres. The original glass spheres also
had to shift off center from the Earth. Even that did not quite work so he ende
d up with 39 spheres. The sun still circled the Earth. The glass sphere approach
was beginning to look cracked. Why didn t someone ask where all that glass came f
rom? What is holding up the flat Earth? Those are two holes in that theory. You
know much more science than all the ancient Greeks combined.
Copernicus finally got it right. He put the sun at the center and the model simp
lified. Religion, however, favored Ptolemy s view of the heavens and did not want
to hear anything else. What do you think of religions trying to block the facts
of astronomy? ? Which is the better theory Ptolemy, or Copernicus? ? If they bot
h accurately fit observations, which is the better theory? ? Hurray, if you chos
e Copernicus. Scientists have a profound faith in the beauty and simplicity of t
he world. They believe that the world s beauty should show in the beauty and simpl
icity of their theories. They also have faith in math. Some Greeks thought mathe
matics was abstract perfection.
This look at early astronomy shows how science works. Make a theory from the fir
st available data stars and planets move smoothly across the sky. Test it by more
observations. Planets move differently. Use math, the language of science. If it
fits the theory, that is great. If not, try for a better theory. The Greeks add
ed more glass spheres resulting in a very complex theory. Copernicus moved the s
un to the center. Copernicus s theory was more accurate and much simpler than the
Greek s model. Sometimes the new data is something we missed; sometimes a new piec
e of equipment gives data never imagined. Galileo made the telescope. With it, h
e could see moons of Jupiter, and the phases of Venus. This made him certain tha
t the Earth circled the sun. New data and striving for simplicity makes a better
 theory.
Classical Physics
At the start of science, the basic stuff of the universe was the four ancient el
ements Earth, wind, fire, and water. Different mixes of these four elements made
everything. We still describe people by the properties of these four elements.
He has a fiery temper. Nice people go with the flow. Classical physics began wit
h machines and mechanics, the science of motion. This included the motions of th
e planets and stars. Classical physics is the period 1700-1900. Before classical
physics, there was not a good theory of matter.
Classical science discovered the 92 modern elements and their atoms. If you star
ted dividing a little bit of gold smaller and smaller, you could not get a piece
of gold smaller than a gold atom. Atoms made everything. Atoms were the smalles
t things that could exist. They were hard little balls, a different ball for eac
h of the elements.
The greatest classical physicist was Newton. Around 1700, he discovered three la
ws of motion. The first is the law of inertia; objects do not change speed or di
rection unless acted on by a force. The second law says that if there is a force
on an object, it changes the speed, causing a constant acceleration. The third
says every action has an equal but opposite reaction. The laws of motion applied
to every moving thing. Other scientists were beginning to understand parts of t
his but Newton put it all together. Newton s laws helped the industrial revolution
happen. Gravity and the electromagnetic force are two of the fundamental forces
string theory unifies.
Newton s Law of Gravitation
His other big accomplishment was the law of gravitation. It says there is an att
ractive force between any two objects that have mass. It also tells us how to ca
lculate the gravitational force. Before Newton, there was not even a word for gr
avity. Newton had to invent it. We walked around on the Earth because that is ho
w it is. We stand on the ground. If there were, something holding us down, no on
e could imagine it could also hold the Earth around the sun, no one except Newto
n. The Greeks and Copernicus made models that duplicated the movements of the st
ars and planets. They did not know why they moved. Newton provided that answer.
There was not another scientist as great as Newton until Darwin in the 1800 s. Dar
win s work with evolution provided the framework for the study of living things li
ke Newton did for non-living.
Newton had to develop a new math, calculus, to describe the motions of machines,
falling objects, planets, and clocks. Calculus is about position, speed, time,
and acceleration. If you know some of these, calculus lets you figure out the ot
hers. It is even more powerful. If you know physics and the starting positions a
nd velocities of the planets, for example, then with calculus and Newton s laws yo
u can calculate their positions and velocities for any time in the distant futur
e or in the past. When Newton applied mechanics, the study of motion, to the pla
nets, he found that their orbits never were circles. They travel in an ellipse,
a squashed circle.
He came up with an equation to describe the force of gravity between two masses.
Objects feel this force even when they do not touch, even when they are all the
way across the solar system, even all the way across the universe. Fields are f
orces that work without contact. Every mass surrounds itself with a gravitationa
l field of force. Iron filings and a magnet show the magnetic field.
[Figure force field, illustration] Nobody understood forces until Newton. He als
o determined how bodies responded to force. This defined inertia and acceleratio
n. Then with a simple equation and calculus, Newton could predict the orbits of
planets. A mathematician in Newton s time was studying curves, looking at position
, slope, and change of slope, which are similar to position, velocity, and accel
eration that Newton was studying. Frequently science and math develop together.
Sometimes math is ahead, sometimes science.
Newton wrote this equation for the force of gravity between two masses:
F = GmM / R2
F is the force of gravity; m is the light mass; M is the heavy mass; R is the di
stance apart; G is a constant, the gravitational field strength.
Do not be afraid of equations. They just say that the left side equals the right
side. They are just shorthand for how to calculate something. Scientists usuall
y leave out the, multiplication signs between two variables. If variables are ne
xt to each other, like mM, it means multiply these two masses. This equation say
s to calculate the force of attraction between a mass m (you for example) and a
larger mass M (the Earth), multiply the masses, divide by the separation squared
R2, or R times R. The separation is the distance between you and the center of
the Earth. Then multiply the result by the gravitational force constant G, a num
ber. If you do that, then you have figured out the numerical force of gravity, F
, on you. If you put in the actual numbers for the symbols G, m, M, and R, you w
ould find that the force on you, F, is your weight. It is interesting that you p
ull on the Earth as hard as it pulls on you. That is Newton s law of action-reacti
on. The Earth is too heavy to notice.
The equation tells us gravity gets stronger if the masses are heavier. What happ
ens if the masses get closer? R gets smaller; the force is stronger. The closer
the masses are, the stronger the attraction. In fact, if R = 0, the force is inf
inite. That can only happen if the masses have zero radiuses.
In 20th century physics, theoretical physicists treated elementary particles, pr
otons and neutrons, as if they are points. Their radius is zero, but they have m
ass. Zero radius means they can get so close that their separation is zero so R
= 0. No matter what the numerator GmM is, divide it by zero and the result is 8,
infinite. Is the gravitational force between elementary particles infinite? Do
you believe it? ? In the real world, values of measurements can equal zero but t
hey cannot be infinite. Only string theory solves this problem. It took three pa
ragraphs to explain Newton s equation for gravity. This is why physicists like mat
h and equations. With a glance, they can understand all the above and more.
How big is infinity? Think of the biggest number you can. Then multiply it by it
self. Do that ten times and you are still nowhere near infinity. Subtract the bi
ggest number you can think of from infinity and the result is still infinity. Al
l you can say about infinity is that it s bigger than that. Here is another exampl
e. If you throw dice, there is a chance that the dice will stop with snake eyes,
both sides with one dot up. On average, snake eyes turn up one time in 24. If e
veryone on earth rolled dice, what is the chance of all rolling snake eyes? ? It
is impossibly small never in a billion years. What if everyone rolled an infinite
number of times? How many times would all snake eyes appear? All snake eyes wou
ld occur an infinite number of times. No, that does not mean it happens every ti
me. This is like a bunch of monkeys typing at random for a long enough time. One
of them would type a whole Shakespeare play at random. Another would type the w
hole play but misspell The End as The E%$## . One would start it off by typing a Play
by YOUR NAME. There is a lot of room in infinity for nearly everything you can im
agine. Things get strange when you are dealing with infinity. xxstopped
Infinity was not a problem for Newton. He did not know and could not imagine any
thing with a zero radius. For him everything had a size, from a speck of dust to
 Jupiter, all non-zero. Therefore, for him the separation between the centers of
two objects could never be zero. We will soon look at some physics that sometim
es gives infinity for exactly this reason. To a physicist infinity usually means
he did not just make a mistake, he made a BIG mistake.
String Break! Native people in Asia, Australia, Africa, the Arctic, the Americas
, and the Pacific discovered the fun of playing with a loop of string to make de
signs. This one is flock of birds, from the South Pacific. Some designs are anci
ent. There are over 2000 designs. Why did people do this?
They didn t have entertainment so they had a lot of time on their hands, which tur
ned into string on their hands. Cat s Cradle is a game, played with a loop of stri
ng, where one person makes a pattern. Then another lifts the string into a new p
attern. String theorists do this while waiting for their computer to finish a ca
lculation. You can find out more about string loop patterns at http://www.isfa.o
rg/.
Electricity and Magnetism
Newton pretty much settled the study of motion. Later, other scientists tried to
understand electricity and magnetism. Classical physics discovered electricity
and also discovered magnetism but at first did not understand them. Physics knew
of three forces. They were gravity, electricity, and magnetism. At first, elect
ricity and magnetism were only good for impressing your friends by making their
hair stand on end.
In the late 19th century, James Clerk Maxwell found equations that explained ele
ctricity and magnetism and showed that they are different views of the same thin
g. There are four Maxwell s equations. They are complex, relating currents and cha
rges to electric and magnetic fields and how they vary with distance and with ti
me. The equations say that moving electricity, a current, generates a magnetic f
ield. That is how loudspeakers work. A moving magnetic field generates a current
of electricity. That is how a car alternator works.
Maxwell discovered that one solution of his equations was a wave that could trav
el through empty space. This was something that popped out of the math, but was
totally unknown and unexpected. What do you think physicists did? ? Did they sen
d him to remedial math? Try for a theory that did not predict silly things? Use
the equations for everything else? Physicists did not do anything like that. The
y started looking for those waves. They believed the equations more than experie
nce or common sense. They were right. Experimenters made radio waves and showed
that they moved through empty space. Not only that, light is also a wave of elec
tricity and magnetism.
The Missing Paper Caper
Physics is the most complex science. It is the study of matter and energy. Matte
r can range from the particles inside an atom to all the matter in the universe.
How do physics and the other sciences work? Is it different from myth? ? Scienc
e relies on observation, experiments, and confirming predictions. Myths rely on
faith in people s thought, feelings, and imagination.
Sometimes there are two or more explanations when something happens. For example
, your teacher wants you to take a book to the library. When you come back, your
book report is gone (observation one). Courtney tells you that three crows flew
into the room, shredded your paper, and flew away with it to make a nest (theor
y one). James tells you that Courtney took it (theory two). You remember that th
e window was closed (observation two), but Courtney says the teacher opened it b
ecause it was hot. This explanation added to theory one to explain contradictory
observation two.
What do you think of Courtney s explanation? ? Courtney s story is complicated. Like
a scientist, you think about predictions of Courtney s story and observe if the p
redictions are true. If the window was open, it should still be open (prediction
one). It is not. If crows were in the room, there should be feathers or paper s
hreds on the floor (prediction two). None are visible. Courtney says someone cle
aned up and closed the window. This is theory three which improves theory two by
adding cleanup. Looking around, you see that no one has a book report. Since no
one else has their report, you decide that the teacher took yours too (theory f
our). Later the teacher asks you for your paper and you now have data that contr
adicts theory four. You decide Courtney took it (theory two). If she took your p
aper, it should be nearby (prediction three). Looking at her desk, you see the c
orner of your paper sticking out of her books. Case solved, theory two is correc
t.
In science, there are often several theories as there were for the missing paper
. A theory must match current data. It should make good predictions and there sh
ould be a way to show it is wrong. Theory one made bad predictions, no feathers,
or paper shreds. That was fixed by making the theory more complicated, adding t
he clean up. What if two theories make good predictions and fit the current info
rmation, like theories two, three, and four did for a while? What should you do
then? ? Pick the simple one. The simplest theory is the one that has the fewest
assumptions, and depends on the least number of unproven facts. If you picked th
e simplest, you would have correctly decided on theory two.

Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.

A. Einstein
Courtney took the paper. Why pick the simple one? ? Let Courtney convince you wh
y. She still wants you to believe her crow theory. She says she followed the cro
ws and climbed up a tree to get the paper back. She glued it neatly together and
put it between her books to squash it flat. Now do you believe her? ? Courtney s
story gets more and more complex. Explanations often become more complex in orde
r to try to save a broken theory.
Which Came First? Chicken or Egg, Math or Science
Math is important to science because science often begins with measurements and
numbers, as the most important information. More importantly, the universe seems
to follows mathematical rules. Isn t that amazing? ? We could live in a universe
where one day the sky is clear blue and the next day it has purple polka dots. O
ne day you go outside and you are taller than the trees, and your dog turned int
o a blue hippo. Our world is very orderly. [Figure James tall see sneakers house
from elevated point of view and blue hippo dog, drawing] Things do not change wi
thout reason. Things are so normal that measurements agree day-to-day, century-t
o-century all over the Earth and the universe, done by different scientists. Whe
n measurements do change, the change is orderly and predictable using math. This
is the reason math and science need each other.
Newton came up with the theory of gravitation. Without math his theory would hav
e been: Planets attract each other. That is not a theory that could get a man to t
he moon. Newton needed to develop calculus, which could deal with speed, positio
n, and acceleration. Mathematicians discovered the math Einstein needed for gene
ral relativity, math for warped space, before he even started work. The same thi
ng happened with string theory. Mathematicians developed much of the math before
the physicists got going.
Math is abstract. You start with a set of objects, operations, and rules. The ob
jects do not have to be numbers, they can be spaces, geometrical forms, any idea
 mathematicians can imagine. The most familiar set of objects are the numbers an
d the operations of add, subtract, multiply and divide. All of mathematics follo
ws from a small set of rules called axioms.
Mathematicians care about math and are not concerned that their work corresponds
to reality. For example, they consider objects where a + b does not equal b + a
. They also invented imaginary numbers. Complex variable math deals with imagina
ry numbers. Imaginary numbers come from taking the square root of negative numbe
rs. Mathematicians worked out how they should add, subtract, multiply, and divid
e, and how to handle numbers that are part normal and part imaginary. Some equat
ions have solutions that are imaginary or part imaginary, part real. Mathematici
ans did this work for the pure joy of solving an interesting problem. Most mathe
maticians do not care whether their work applies to the real world or not. Some
do not even leave their office for a week. Complex variables turned out to be ne
cessary to analyze periodic motion like waves. Again, math turns out to describe
how the universe works. This is true many, many times even though mathematician
s were not heading in that direction. Even Einstein could not figure it out. Wha
t do you think? ? Just how can ideas that start in a mathematician s imagination l
ead to detailed explanations of the world?

How can it be that mathematics, being after all a product of human thought indepe
ndent of experience, is so admirably adapted to the objects of reality? A. Einste
in
Science is public. Results are public. Anyone can find the latest research on th
e Internet. Scientists check results, reproduce, and reinterpret. Significant th
ings get hundreds of checkers. Predictions are very important because a clever s
cientist or Courtney could bend or invent a theory to fit old data. No one can f
udge data that does not yet exist. Philosophers and scientists agree that a theo
ry needs to have a way to prove it is true. This could be as dramatic as setting
off the first atomic bomb to prove that nuclear physics was correct. Many philo
sophers and scientists also believe every theory should also have a way to prove
that it is wrong.
That brings up an embarrassing subject. There is a nasty duck on your head! It i
s angry and it is stomping on your head. It is invisible so no one can see it. T
here is no way to detect it. It is like magic. It is weightless, invisible, not
affected by any force, silent, and it is on your head. You know what ducks do be
sides quack. Can you prove the duck is not there? There is no way to prove it is
there or not there because of the magic way it affects nothing, but it s there. Y
ou may think I am lying or joking. Can you prove there is not an invisible duck
on your head right now? Yes, your head. ? No, you cannot.
Scientists would say the duck is nonsense. Existence of the duck is impossible t
o prove. To a scientist, something that cannot be proven true or false is not pa
rt of science. The duck idea does not lead to any predictions, because it does n
ot affect anything. There is no way to prove that the duck isn t there. People hav
e made up millions of such beliefs and many more will follow. Science deals only
with ideas that can be proven one way or the other. This is important for strin
g theory. So far, there is no way to prove it is true or false.
In this information age, many other sources of information: politicians, adverti
sers, preachers, songs, videos, the Internet, cults, and blogs constantly bombar
d us. Are they as reliable as science? ? Should we apply to these sources of inf
ormation some of the rules of science? ?
The Mechanical Universe
At the end of the 1800 s Maxwell discovered that electricity and magnetism were on
e force, the electromagnetic force. Physicists then knew of only two forces, ele
ctromagnetic and gravity. Newton s laws were marvelous in understanding the motion
of everything from pendulums to planets. Physicists began to feel confident tha
t they knew just about everything. Men built fine clocks and large complex machi
nes. The universe was neat and tidy. Everything in it moved like clockwork. Some
physicists thought they were near the end of the exciting physics. The patent o
ffices could close. Physicists would need new jobs. Some wondered if they could
get on American Idol. It turns out there was more than enough to keep them worki
ng through the 20th century.
Classical theory was close to a theory of everything. Newton could calculate the
positions, velocities, and accelerations of the planets for any time in the fut
ure or any time in the past. He did not even have a laptop. The model of the uni
verse was the clock. People could imagine that everything moved in an orderly an
d predictable way. Forces happened and calculus let us determine the result. Cla
ssical physics let men build and understand machines, pumps, pipes, pressure, st
eam engines, autos, airplanes, levers, pulleys, gases, ships and much more. Succ
ess made scientists optimistic and confident. To predict the planets paths all yo
u had to know was their initial velocity and position. The model for atoms was t
iny hard balls. Therefore, the atomic world was just like a game of pool. Classi
cal mechanics worked for pool so why not for atoms. According to classical physi
cs, the past and future could be determined if we knew where all the atoms or po
ol balls were now and their velocities. It was as if the universe were a clock;
wind it up and away it goes in a neat predictable way.
Even living things like bacteria are complicated tiny machines, containing small
er, complex machines. The machines inside are just too tiny to see. Recent work
in molecular biology agrees that a cell is a combination of many molecule-sized
machines. Genes are the control system turning on cell-sized machines when neede
d. If bacteria are machines, then maybe animals are machines. Animals are just a
large number of cells. Newton s laws apply to all parts from the atoms on up. Bio
logical processes were due to the interactions of hard little atom balls that jo
ined up to make molecules, that joined to make cells, and all exerted forces on
each other. That sounds mechanical. The internal molecular machines had to follo
w the same Newton s laws. Can you see where we are going with this? ? Animals woul
d be mechanical devices just like a clock only more complicated. We are animals
so we also are very complicated mechanical devices. This made many uneasy becaus
e there was no room for soul or mind. Worse, the future of mechanical devices is
determined by their past. There is no sin, no free will. The ultimate statement
of classical physics was that given the initial velocity and positions of every
thing, you could calculate the fate of the universe. What do you think of this i
dea? Why? ? Do you feel like a robot with your life determined by physics? ?
Physicists now know that the above series of generalizations from planets to poo
l balls to people goes too far. A thing can be greater than the sum of its parts
. We are made of a few chemicals and a lot of water but you would not expect a f
ew gallons of water and some chemicals to drive a car or write a symphony. Compl
exity theory studies how some simple things and simple rules can lead to things
as complex as living things. Chaos theory studies how complex things like the gl
obal weather changes and how even a small event, a butterfly flying, can change
the course of a storm.
Space and time were simple, an unchanging framework where everything happened. P
hysicists took them for granted. Everyone could agree on the meaning of time and
space. Newton s laws of motion and gravity applied to everything in the universe.
There were only two forces, gravity and electromagnetic. After classical physic
s, the most interesting research was of parts of the universe that we do not exp
erience every day. They were things that were either huge or very small.
In 1900, there were just two problems handled incorrectly by classical physics.
These were a small part of physics, and someone would figure it out. The first p
roblem was that physicists could not measure the speed of the Earth through spac
e. They got zero. That meant the Earth was standing still. Therefore, it had to
be at the center of the universe since all the stars were moving. Were Copernicu
s and Galileo wrong? The solution to this problem changed our understanding of t
he large things in the universe and the universe itself. Second, when physicists
calculated the color of hot objects, it came out wrong. That did not seem to be
a big problem. This problem changed understanding of the atomic world and reali
ty to its roots. The solution of both these problems profoundly changed our view
of reality and of measurement. This, of course, had a large impact on string th
eory which was to follow..
Relativity
Einstein was a clerk at a patent office, but he followed the latest news in phys
ics. He knew about the speed of the Earth experiment. He knew we were not at the
center of the universe. He started thinking about it. That got him to thinking
about how different observers see the same thing. This began the theory of relat
ivity.

When you sit with a nice girl [boy] for two hours, it seems like two minutes. Tha
t s relativity. A. Einstein
It is true that your point of view, your surroundings, who you are, who you are
with and what you are doing all affect how you see and interpret things. This is
the relativity that psychology studies. Einstein thought most about how observe
rs moving at high speed past each other on rockets would see things. This was on
e of his famous thought experiments. Let us do our own thought experiment about
relativity.
Relativity Baseball
You are in a softball game against the Blue Meanies. They always play dirty. For
this game, their pitcher is riding on a four-wheeler. [Figure 4-wheeler basebal
l, drawing] Coach Nozair says, There s nothing in the rules against pitching from a
four-wheeler. If it s not forbidden, it s allowed.
Your coach, Mr. Whimper, agrees! The game is for the championship. Their pitcher
does not have a fastball. In the game, he drives the four-wheeler out near seco
nd base and guns it toward home. As the four-wheeler crosses the mound, he throw
s the ball. It has wicked fast. He then puts the four-wheeler in reverse and dri
ves backward back to second base.
Between innings, you hear their pitcher telling Nozair, My pitch is still slow co
ach. It doesn t look any faster to me.
Nozair replies, Do you have a banana for a brain? Of course, it looks the same to
you. Relative to you the ball always has the speed you throw it. Relative to th
e batter, the speed of the four-wheeler adds to the speed you throw. That way, a
ll your pitches are fast.
The score is tied. You are at bat. Bases loaded. The count is three and two. The
ir pitcher decides to be cute and surprise you by throwing the ball early. He ha
s to pitch from the mound, but he does it while he crosses the mound speeding ba
ckwards to second. He throws and the pitch rolls slowly toward second. It never
reaches home plate. Your team wins. What happened? ? The vehicle speed was oppos
ite to the direction of the pitch speed. To get the speed relative to the batter
, subtract the vehicle speed from the pitch speed. Since the four-wheeler was go
ing faster than he could pitch, the ball rolls away from the plate. You walk and
that pushes in a run so your team wins.
Einstein became the world s most famous scientist by doing thought experiments abo
ut relativity like the one we did. Our analysis of the softball game is correct.
The speed of the four-wheeler adds to the speed of the ball. When the four-whee
ler is moving opposite to the direction of the ball, it subtracts from the speed
of the ball.
How Fast Is the Earth Moving?
Since it worked for baseball, it was natural to assume that a light pulse fired
in different directions from a moving body would travel at different speeds. At
the start of the twentieth century, several physicists decided to determine the
speed of the Earth through the universe. Mirrors split a light beam and sent it
along two perpendicular directions. Mirrors reflected it back to a point to a co
mpare their speeds. The apparatus could very accurately determine the time to tr
avel the identical arms. [Figure Earth speed measurement, illustration]
The earth was moving so they expected that the time along one arm would not equa
l the time on the other. In the ball game, this is like comparing the speed of a
pitch to the speed of a pick-off throw to first base. The four-wheeler speed sp
eeds up pitches to the plate. The speed of a pitch to first is just the normal s
low speed because the four-wheeler is not moving toward or away from first base.
The pitch to the plate is faster than the throw to first by the speed of the fo
ur-wheeler. They predicted that the light going in the direction of the Earth s mo
tion would take a different time than that aimed perpendicular to the motion.
The experimenters did not know exactly in which direction the Earth was moving b
ut expected a difference. One arm would point more in the direction of travel of
the Earth than the other would. The result of the experiment was that the veloc
ity of light along each arm was equal. The arms were long and the detector looke
d for interference between the two light beams. This made the measurement very s
ensitive. They waited a few hours for the Earth to turn and the arms to point in
different directions. The velocities were still equal. They did it dozens of ti
mes with the same result. In the four-wheeler and ball example, this was like th
e ball coming to the batter at the same speed whether the four-wheeler was comin
g or going away. This was an astounding result. What is the explanation? ?
The great thinkers first pay attention to the details, but don t stay there. They
next make their point of view bigger. They think about everything connected to t
he details. Einstein didn t just think about the experiment. He asked how we shoul
d change our thinking to make it agree with the experiment. It did not matter if
the change was silly or weird. This lead Einstein to ask himself the question w
hat is reality? You cannot get much bigger than that.
He worked through the thought experiments and decided that high-speed rockets mo
ving by each other could not change reality. The pilots should agree about most
of their observations. Don t you think that makes sense? ? He decided that there w
as no way for them to know their real speed. In fact, both could be moving or ei
ther one could be stopped and only the other moving. Looking out a window does n
ot help. You would not know if what you see is moving or you are moving. Have yo
u ever been in a vehicle stopped with others? You look out the window and the ve
hicle next to you moves backward. For a second you can t decide if it moved backwa
rds or you went forwards. The pilots could only agree on the relative speed, the
difference in speed, between them.
Einstein decided that reality not changing meant that scientists on board would
come up with the same laws of physics. It does not matter which rocket you are o
n, or whether you are still or moving. If the rocket pilots cannot tell if they
are moving or not, then we on Earth also cannot tell and that is why the experim
ent failed to measure the speed of the Earth. From thinking like this, Einstein
came up with a powerful, simple theory called special relativity. Special relati
vity is required when speeds are very fast, near the speed of light. He accepted
that the velocity of light is a universal constant. The velocity of light was t
he same no matter how fast the source or observer was moving, even if they were
moving nearly at the speed of light toward each other. What Einstein did was sim
ply restate the experimental results. Light travels at a constant speed no matte
r how fast the source or receiver is moving. The constant velocity of light is o
ne of the major results of relativity.
Lightball Game
The announcer breaks into the program you are viewing and says, We switch now to
live coverage of the finish of the 22nd Century Lightball Championship. [Figure
Lightball, drawing] It looks suspiciously like the Blue Meanies game about 150 y
ears ago. Their pitcher does not have a fastball and the count is two balls and
two strikes in the bottom of the ninth with bases loaded and the Blue Meanies ah
ead. Coach Nozarino rolls in his secret weapon, the light speed rocket pack. It s n
ot forbidden so it s allowed, he says defiantly. The pitcher puts on the rocket pac
k at second base and we have ignition. The pitcher flies over the mound at 98% o
f the speed of light. He fires his lightball laser gun. Will the batter be able
to see it? He does. To the batter it appears to travel at the speed of light lik
e a standard Lightball and it is high and inside. Ball three. The pitcher is des
perate he turns up the power, and he and decides to trick the batter by firing h
is lightball backwards while crossing the mound heading back to second. He tucks
the lightball laser under his arm, powers up his rocket, and fires while moving
backward over the mound. Game over.
Coach Nozairino is all excited. Why did you fire backwards?
Pitcher replies, I know I can t throw faster than the speed of light. That is the s
peed limit for everything in our universe, but I thought I could throw slower. Y
ou know a change-up.
Nozairino asks, Do you have a banana for a brain? The speed of light is a constan
t no matter if you go toward or away from the batter so you cannot throw slower.
I thought the rocket pack noise might confuse their batter, and the batter woul
d expect an extra fast pitch, but they all know relativity better than you do. Y
ou, however, were brilliant to pitch backwards. Light from a source that is movi
ng away shifts toward the red. The rocket pack goes so fast that the lightball s
hifted past red into the infrared, a color the batter could not see. Instead of
a pulse of light, the lightball became a pulse of heat. He could not see it; he
could not hit it. He struck out.
The pitcher cheers, The Blue Meanies finally won!
Einstein s Solution
Experiments showed the speed of light is constant. To keep the speed of light co
nstant and reality the same for moving observers, space and time had to mix. The
result of this mixing is that objects moving near the speed of light squash in
the direction of motion, get heavier, and their clocks run slower. If two rocket
s, moving near the speed of light, pass each other, one observer would see the o
ther rocket looking shorter and with its clock running in slow motion compared t
o his own. Do you know which one? ? Trick question. Both are doing exactly the s
ame thing. The problem is unchanged by switching the two rockets. The problem is
symmetric to changing rockets. Whatever the pilot of one rocket sees, the other
has to see the same. They each would think the other passed them looking squash
ed and with their clock running slow. Symmetry is a powerful tool. Since symmetr
y is common in nature, it is common in physics.
Mathematically these changes behaved as if time were another dimension, just lik
e the three dimensions we know. Everyone called it spacetime. The real differenc
e between the two observers is that their spacetime coordinates are rotated. Rot
ating coordinates in spacetime means any coordinate, x for example, would become
a combination of x, y, z, and time. The speed of light is the absolute speed li
mit for anything in our universe. Muons are unstable elementary particles that d
ecay in two millionths of a second, 2 x 10-6 seconds. If a muon could move at th
e speed of light, its time would have stopped (it would never decay). It would h
ave zero thickness in the direction of motion, and its mass would be infinite. T
hat sounds very non-physical and it is. The infinite mass means would require in
finite force to get to light speed. Therefore, we never can accelerate a particl
e with mass to the speed of light. Only massless particles, like light itself, c
an move at the speed of light, but current accelerators can move muons fast enou
gh to lengthen their lifetime to a millisecond, one thousandth of a second, 10-3
seconds. That is 500 times longer than their lifetime if they are not moving.
The time and length changes are precise and happen in a mathematical way called
a rotation of coordinates. This just means tilting the coordinates of a graph. W
hat if Monaco, a European country smaller than some parking lots, conquered the
world? They wanted to be more popular and decided that the North Pole should be
in Monaco. That would be a rotation and movement of coordinates. All of the maps
would have to be redrawn. Every place on Earth would be south of Monaco. The ol
d latitude and longitude lines would be wrong. The new latitude and longitude wo
uld be a combination of the old ones. Not everything would change. Would the dis
tance from Rome to Paris have to be changed? ? Would the shape of Florida have c
hanged? If you walked up a creek to get to your friend s house, would that change?
? If you said no to these questions, you are right. Einstein knew that if the c
oordinate system moves to a train traveling in a straight line at high velocity,
the distances in four-dimensional spacetime do not change. Monaco s rotating and
moving the coordinate system on the Earth leaves the Earth unchanged. Rotating t
he directions in spacetime mixes space and time. From this, all of relativity fo
llows.
We know Einstein was right when even though we do not have enough energy to move
a rocket anywhere near to the speed of light. Physicists have built accelerator
s that can move sub-atomic particles faster than 99.999% of the speed of light.
Unstable particles moving that fast take much longer to decay. We do have enough
energy to move a clock fast enough to see relativity effects. Atomic clocks now
orbit Earth. They are very accurate and tick billions of times per second. They
run exactly the way predicted by relativity. With these hiflying clocks, there
are two relativistic effects a slow down from their speed, and a quickening from
being in a since gravity is weaker up there. The latter comes from special rela
tivity. Global positioning satellite systems needs correction for relativity. An
other property changes, the mass of the particles increase. Einstein found the f
amous equation E = mc2 .This says that matter, m, can convert into energy, E, an
d vice versa. The speed of light is c.
Messiness
Even though relativity mixes time with spatial coordinates, time remains special
. One question that has bothered scientists and philosophers for a long time is
What is time? Can time go backward? We think time moves in only one direction. W
e remember the past, but not the future. However, physics equations work fine if
you put in a negative time. That is exactly how to calculate where a planet was
three years ago. Relativity also allows negative time. Nevertheless, the univer
se seems to know which way time is going. It goes from neat to messy just like y
our room. The universe began neatly. Everything was in a point at the Big Bang.
After, things got messy.
It is a law of classical physics that randomness, messiness, or information incr
eases in all processes in the universe. Physicists call it entropy. Information
seems very different from messiness, but it is not. Think about writing a long l
ist of all the stuff in your room. You list what it is and where it is. It is a
shorter list if your room is neat. It takes more words to describe a mess.
Try this out if your Mom says you have to vacuum. I can t vacuum because it makes t
hings messier. When you vacuum, you are making the universe messier. The vacuum r
uns on electricity. The power plant that makes the electricity burns coal with a
ll the mess that comes from mining, shipping, burning, CO2, and ashes. You have
to eat food for the energy to push the vacuum around. You make waste. The walkin
g and vacuuming shreds up the rugs a little more, making more dust to clean up.
When she knows all that, your mother will forbid you to vacuum ever again.
If we are looking at a video of a system, we can determine if the movie is runni
ng forwards or backward by seeing if the mess increases. Broken cups do not fly
back onto a table and reassemble themselves. Positive time goes in the direction
of increased messiness. These concepts of entropy are very important in analysi
s of the Big Bang.
Maxwell s Equations
Maxwell s equations were the greatest achievement of classical physics so we have
to look at them. The four equations for the magnetic field, M, and electric fiel
d, E, in free space are:

You may have seen magnetic field lines by holding a paper with iron filings over
a magnet.
The equations are just for looking at. They are college level. How do they look
to you? ? They are a powerful set of equations and not bad looking as equations
go. Physicists call them elegant, even beautiful. The E and M, electric and magn
etic fields, behave in the same way. Put more elegantly, the equations are symme
tric in E and M. If you switch M and E, you get back the same equations.
The triangle symbol with the dot and the triangle with an x after it are shortha
nd for two different ways of calculating how a field changes in space. These two
Maxwell s equations say that the way one electromagnetic field changes in space e
quals the way the other field changes with time. The two equations that equal ze
ro say the field is zero unless a charge or magnet is present.
If an electric field varies in time, it causes a perpendicular magnetic field va
rying in space, and vice versa. A magnetic field varying in space causes an elec
tric field varying with time. This action of causing each other causes electroma
gnetic waves. A changing magnetic field produces a changing electric field, whic
h produces a changing magnetic field, which produces a changing electric field,
and so on through space. This makes waves like light, x-rays, and radio.
These equations are the basis for woofers, alternators, and computers. Physicist
s consider these equations beautiful because the pack so much information into a
compact form and they explain so much of the world. Can spacetime simplify them
even more? Einstein redid the equations in four-dimensional spacetime. A change
in spacetime covers changes in space and in time. The magnetic and electric fie
lds combine into one four-dimensional thing, F, filled with the parts of E and M
in the different directions of spacetime. This had an amazing result the four e
quations become one beautifully simple equation.
Maxwell s Equation in Spacetime for F the Electromagnetic Field
e F = 0
F is the four-dimensional electromagnetic field. The e is a four-dimensional gri
d made up of 1 s, 0 s, and -1 s. Four complex Maxwell s equations became this one simple
one when expressed in spacetime. Most physics students spend a semester battlin
g with the original Maxwell s equations. Then this equation appears, and they know
once more, why they want to be physicists. The beauty of a theory often shows i
n the math.
Einstein all dressed up in his Nehru jacket and cotton ball hair.
An equation is something for eternity.
A. Einstein
Einstein s theory of special relativity mixed together things that classical physi
cs thought completely separate space with time and energy with mass.
Gravity by Einstein
Einstein was not done. Special relativity uses Newton s gravitation and it explain
ed the Earth speed experiment. Special relativity says that nothing can move fas
ter than the speed of light. Newton s gravitational field, however, works instantl
y between two objects no matter how far apart. Even Newton noticed this and was
uncomfortable. Einstein knew there was a mistake. Every mistake is an opportunit
y to learn. For special relativity, he thought about viewers moving past each ot
her at constant speed. What would happen if their speed changed steadily? This i
s acceleration, and it leads to general relativity.
Gravity causes a constant acceleration. He considered gravity, the constant spee
d of light, and relativity, and he wondered what different observers see when ac
celerating. You wake up one day and found yourself in an elevator, and your weig
ht is the same as before you went to bed. Are you still on Earth or are you in a
rocket accelerating at one g, the acceleration of gravity? ? Elevators have no
windows so you couldn t tell. Einstein concluded that an observer could not tell t
he difference between moving with a constant acceleration and being still in a g
ravitational field. Then he predicted that the light from a star, passing close
to the sun, should bend toward the sun. How can that happen, since light has no
mass? He discovered that anything with mass distorts spacetime. If the space aro
und the sun is distorted, then paths that would be straight are bent, even the p
ath of light that has no mass.
Fortunately, mathematicians, just fiddling around with an interesting problem, h
ad discovered the math for curved space. It is hard to picture a three-dimension
al curved space. The sun makes a big dent in spacetime, like a bowling ball on a
soft bed. On Earth, we feel the sun s dent weakly so far from the sun. It is stil
l strong enough to keep the Earth in orbit.
During an eclipse of the sun, you can see stars that graze the surface. The ecli
pse blocks the sun s glare and allows measurement of the position of those stars.
[Figure space warp and sun blocked, illustrate] Their light bends exactly as pre
dicted, making it appear that those stars have moved. This gives an alternative
view of the gravitational force between masses. Mass distorts spacetime to make
it look like there is a force.
Space and time, matter and energy are no longer the absolute unchangeable things
they were in classical physics. In special relativity, space and time mix when
speeds approach the speed of light. In general relativity, matter warps space. T
his is not just a local effect around stars like the sun. All of the matter in t
he universe shapes the universe itself. All of this started with a puzzling resu
lt in measuring the speed of the Earth.
Quantum Mechanics
Calculations of the color of hot objects kept making everything look much hotter y
ellower and whiter than they were. This was frustrating. Everyone knows a heatin
g element on a stove glows red. All efforts to calculate this color came out whi
te-hot. After much study, the only way to get the right colors for hot objects w
as if hot atoms could not radiate any amount of light energy, but only amounts t
hat were an integer times a certain small chunk of energy. That meant energy and
light came in chunks. An atom could emit one chunk of energy or five, but it co
uld not emit 4.7 units of energy.
Quantum means chunk. Quanta is plural, many chunks. Chunky bars come in quanta.
The mechanics part in quantum mechanics means how quanta move and interact. Solv
ing this physics problem changed our ideas about the very smallest objects and s
et limits on what we can know.
Quantum Land Playground
Imagine you and your strange alien friend, Qued, are in the quantum land playgro
und. In quantum land, the chunkiness is exaggerated. You ask Qued for a push on
the swing. He pushes hard but nothing happens. Qued gives a bigger push and you
are swinging. At the high point, you are three feet off the ground.
The strange creature Qued from the 26th dimension.
Push me higher. With the next push, you are six feet off the ground. That s great. You
are amazed because even when you stop pumping and coast, you do not slow down a
bit.
Hey Qued. You want to tell him about this but he thinks you want another push. Zap
, instantly you are at nine feet. This is above the bars and you feel those bump
s. You try dragging your feet to slow down but your feet slide over the ground w
ithout friction. [Figure Qued and kid quantum swing, drawing]
Qued, slow me down!
He tries to grab the seat but that has no effect. Hold on, says Qued. This is going
to be rough.
Qued stands right in front of the swing and it knocks him down. Your height drop
s to six feet. He does it twice more. You drop three feet each time so finally y
ou stop.
Qued brushes himself off and says, I m glad the energy quanta aren t any bigger.
What was happening, Qued?
The swing is quantized. You cannot just swing at any height you want. When I firs
t pushed, I did not push hard enough, I did not give you a whole quantum of ener
gy. The quantum is enough energy to get you swinging three feet high, or six fee
t if you have two, or nine feet when you absorb three energy quanta. The heights
in feet are the energy levels of the swing system.
You ask, But why couldn t I slow myself down?
Dragging your feet didn t work because you can t burn up a whole quantum of energy th
at way. Energy can only be absorbed or released as a full quantum. The only way
to drop you down to a lower energy level was to absorb one quantum. To do that,
I had to let the swing knock me down. Each time I went flying, I absorbed one qu
antum. It is just the same with atoms in your world. Electrons spin around the n
ucleus at various energy levels until they absorb a photon (light particle) with
the right amount of energy to hop to a higher level. Now I m going to go meet Jam
es to shoot some quantum pool.
Atomic Physics
Quantum mechanics stimulated intensive research into atoms. After discovery of t
he electron, atoms became miniature solar systems with electrons orbiting the nu
cleus. The electrons gave problems. Physicists pictured the negative electrons c
ircling around a heavy positively charged nucleus. Opposite charges attract. Why
did the electrons not smash into the nucleus? ? It gets worse. Maxwell s equation
s imply that an orbiting charge makes electromagnetic waves. Making waves would
make the electron lose energy and again spiral into the nucleus. Did the solutio
n to these problems have anything to do with energy coming in well-defined chunk
s? ? Of course, energy chunks solved the problem. Just the discovery that energy
came in chunks was enough to change completely our view of the world.
Electrons circle the nucleus, but they cannot orbit just anywhere. Let us think
about a city, Circleville, with circular streets, in rings around a central park
. [Figure Circleville, illustration] Moscow and Paris are partly this way. When
you park in Circleville, you can only park on a circular street. Parking on the
grass is forbidden. Streets are at set distances from the central park. The clos
est you can get to the center of town is the street that circles the central par
k. The same is true of electrons around the nucleus. They can only be in particu
lar orbits. Energy levels can be changed up or down only by an exact amount of e
nergy. This explains why electron orbits are stable. When the electron is in its
lowest energy level, there is nowhere lower to go. Thus, there is no way to cra
sh into the nucleus. This would be like driving on the grass of the central park
. That s not allowed in Circleville. To make Circleville more like electrons aroun
d an atom, there are not any streets going between circles. Then the cars behave
like electrons; they cannot drive to another circle. They have to circle around
on the same street until they absorb or emit a lot of energy. Then pop! They ap
pear on another street. Circleville is a far-fetched analogy. Cars could never d
isappear and reappear. Many physicists thought the same thing about electrons di
sappearing and reappearing at another level. It is pretty strange. ?
We Are Certainly Uncertain
The uncertainty principle of quantum mechanics says that things on the atomic sc
ale are not only chunky. They are fuzzy. A fundamental fact of quantum mechanics
is that we can never know exactly the position and velocity of a particle. Quan
tum mechanics equations for the motion of elementary particles are equations for
a wave. The wave only predicts the chance (probability) of finding a particle he
re or there. It is most likely located where the wave is the highest.
An oval balloon represents features of a wave function. The mid-section of the b
alloon represents the position wave function and the ends the velocity wave func
tion. If you squeeze it in the middle, it pops out at the ends. If you accuratel
y locate an electron, its velocity becomes more uncertain. The mechanical univer
se cannot happen because nature prevents us from accurately knowing both the pos
ition and velocity of an elementary particle. Chance did not feel right to many
scientists, including Einstein. Some thought there must be a better theory that
would remove the uncertainty.

I am convinced that God does not play dice

with the universe. A. Einstein
No one has come up with such a theory. Chunks and fuzz are how things are on the
atomic scale. [Figure chunky fuzzy particles, drawing] The nice universe tickin
g along like a clock does not apply. The universe limits our knowledge. We are n
ot complex wind-up robots.
James thinks he understands uncertainty. Qued, there are things in the ordinary w
orld that are uncertain.
That s true. We do not know what the weather will be a week from now or who will be
elected president. These are two kinds of uncertainty. We could know who will b
e elected if we asked everyone, but the weather is chaotic. It depends on many m
ore variables in such a way that a minor change in any variable can make a big c
hange in the weather. A butterfly flapping it wings in Madagascar could be the c
ause of a hurricane in Florida. Really. Another unpredictable event is the decay
of a radioactive atom. We know half of a batch of these atoms will decay in a p
eriod of time called the half-life, but we don t know which atoms or exactly when
they will decay.
When I flip this penny in the air, you don t know if it will land heads or tails. T
hat s uncertainty, too.
James, I ll bet a penny against yours that I do.
Okay you re on.
Hold on while I set up my multi-laser ranging imager. It connects to this bio-imp
lant computer.
That s not a computer. It s a freckle on your arm.
That spot is a data interface to my bio-computer, James. This other freckle is my m
ainframe quantum computer. Besides, I do not have arms. I am ready.
James starts flipping. He gets more and more excited and says, You were able to p
redict ten for ten. How did you do that, Qued?
My equipment measured the spin, position, and velocity at the start of your coin
toss. It is an easy calculation to determine its orientation as it falls. Theref
ore considering also roughness and elasticity of the floor, I can compute which
side will be up.
James asks, If flipping a coin isn t really random, why can t we do the same thing wi
th quantum processes get better equipment to measure what we need to predict rad
ioactive decay of an atom?
The hidden variables I measured allowed prediction of the coin flip. Quantum proc
esses have no hidden variables. That is why decay of an atom is unknown. In one
half-life, an atom has a fifty percent chance of decaying. That is all we can kn
ow. There is no way around the uncertainty in quantum mechanics. In fact, there
are at least three kinds of uncertainty. There is uncertainty due to chaos, the
weather; uncertainty due to lack of enough information, coin flip; and quantum u
ncertainty built into the universe.
Quantum Pool
James walks in and sees Qued setting up the pool table.
Come James, and let s shoot a little pool. This is quantum pool where the balls beh
ave like sub-atomic particles do in the real world.
 Where are the balls, Qued?
They are the different colored clouds on the table. The cue ball is the white clo
ud. The balls are a little fuzzy because on the quantum level, nothing ever stop
s, and our knowledge of things like position or energy is only approximate. If y
ou shoot other balls at the balls on the table then you can tell from the collis
ions where the balls were. You still would not know where the balls are now beca
use you would have knocked the ball out of position and given it some velocity.
No matter what technique you use, knowledge is limited by the uncertainty.
Well I just tried a shot and missed the cue ball. [Figure quantum pool, drawing]
Yes, even the position and velocity of the cue ball are uncertain, but in quantum
pool, you get to try until you connect. I usually shoot with the metal end of t
his.
Qued, I did it. I hit the cue ball with your garden hoe.
As the cue ball moves away, its cloud gets wider. Yes, it is spreading out, just
as the wave equation says. Because it spreads out, we are less sure of the ball s
position. The brightness of the cloud shows where the ball is most likely locate
d. That was a good shot. The cloud is brightest right in line with the number fi
ve ball.
Look at that. The white cloud passed right through the five-ball cloud. That s not
fair.
The cue ball as a particle can be anywhere in the cloud. Most likely it is at the
center, but that time it was not.
James gets some apple juice. Now the cue ball cloud has spread out over most of t
he table. Then he hears a ball fall off the table and asks, What was that?
That was your cue ball. It tunneled through the pool table cushion. Remember, her
e we deal in probabilities. Even though it is a sturdy cushion, there is some pr
obability that the ball can leak through the cushion. It did not make a hole thr
ough it. It did not jump over it. It just leaked through and suddenly it appeare
d on the other side. If this did not happen, most computers would stop working.
Quantum effects are important in designing computers.
This quantum pool is sure hard.
That is true, James.
Look. Two new clouds are on the table. Are they balls? Where did they come from?
They are virtual balls. They pop up at random from the vacuum. The white cloud is
a virtual cue ball. The black one is a virtual anti-cue ball. Watch, they will
roll only a few inches and then annihilate each other. See; they are gone. Virtu
al elementary particles are continuously appearing and disappearing everywhere i
n the universe, even in outer space. They affect how particles interact with eac
h other.

String Break! With your thumb and finger, hold both ends of a whole, raw piece o
f spaghetti. This is a stiff string like the ones in string theory. Holding the
ends, slowly bend the spaghetti until it breaks. It almost always breaks into th
ree pieces not two. Try it again. Why does it do that?
How Can We Understand Something We Cannot See?
At first physicists believed that three elementary particles: the proton, neutro
n, and electron were the only ingredients for making everything. How could they
study the elementary particles that are smaller than atoms? The only way is to b
ounce the particles off each other.
Imagine it is your birthday. Your grandparents shipped a gift to you with strang
e directions for opening. Old people get a little strange. First, it is put in a
pitch-black room. They included an air cannon that can fire different sized bal
ls at the gift and they challenge you to shoot and then guess what it is. You de
cide to shoot the beach balls. You cannot see any balls hit, but you note where
you aimed and at what angle the balls bounce back. If they do not return, they d
id not hit the present. From the hits, you can tell that it is roughly four feet
wide and three feet high, but that is all. What is it? You switch to tennis bal
ls. Now some of the balls go through in places that bounced back the beach balls
. This means there are holes there smaller than beach balls. One is middle heigh
t in the center, and the gift is rounded on both ends. What is it? ? Let us shoo
t marbles. When you do that, you find two-foot diameter rings at the front and b
ack. The inside of the rings sometimes let a marble go through. Looking closely
at the data, the rings seem to have wires, like spokes, going through them. What
is it? ?
Scientists have to shoot small particles to determine the structure of elementar
y particles. For a particle to be small, it has to have high energy. The smaller
the features you want to see, the higher the energy needs to be. We could not d
etect the bicycle spokes until we used marbles. You can think of them as high-en
ergy beach balls.
For all of the 20th century, physicists shot elementary particles at targets to
understand the structure of matter. The first experiment was with radium that em
its alpha particles. When aimed at a piece of aluminum foil, most went right thr
ough. One in 1000 bounced back toward the source as if they hit a brick wall. Th
is showed that aluminum atoms were mostly empty space with a heavy center, the n
ucleus, which took up one thousandth of the area of the atom. The nucleus was he
avy enough that an alpha particle hitting it was like bouncing a ball off a wall
.
Some German scientists discovered that uranium released energy when hit with neu
trons. Maybe you are wondering why someone would aim neutrons at uranium. A clim
ber asked why he climbed Mt. Everest, said because it is there. That is a good a
nswer for Why shoot neutrons at uranium? A scientist rarely knows the results of a
n experiment. Otherwise, why do it? World War II started and there was a lot of
fear that the Germans could somehow turn uranium into a weapon, so we did. There
was a huge concentration of physicists at Los Alamos. They made the atomic bomb
. Along the way, they developed nuclear physics and quantum mechanics, and showe
d the way to nuclear power.

In the center is an eight story tall detector array and shielding at the Large H
adron Collider.
We learned the most from small balls shot at the bicycle. Physicists have to use
small particles. Particles behave like particles and like waves. Accelerating t
hem to higher energy shortens their wavelength, making observation of more detai
l possible. At high energy, the collision can also cause a reaction producing ne
w types of particles. When the particles are photons, their wavelength also decr
eases with energy. Thus, gamma rays show more details than red light.
Accelerators
Accelerators and colliders are the machines that produce high-energy particles.
The first ones were metal donuts filled with vacuum. Magnets bent the path of th
e charged particles into a circle to stay in the donut. To get them to move fast
er, a microwave signal made a wave that the particles surf on to higher energy.
Then the particles hit a target where nuclear reactions take place, sometimes ma
king brand new particles. The first accelerators could fit on a desk. To get hig
her energy, accelerators had to be bigger. After World War II, building and usin
g accelerators became a major effort in nuclear physics. This work is high-energ
y physics. An accelerator beam hits a stationary target. For even more energy, t
wo high-energy beams accelerate and hit each other.

Aerial view of the countryside over the five-mile diameter LHC. At the top of th
e photo are the Swiss Alps.
The biggest collider is the Large Hadron Collider, LHC, in Switzerland. The vacu
um pipe that the beam follows is a circle five miles in diameter. The LHC gives
protons a lot of speed or energy by creating strong electromagnetic waves that p
ush them along. The protons divide into two groups that move in opposite directi
ons through a ring shaped vacuum pipe. As they go faster, their mass increases.
That is relativity. The particles then slam into each other. During the collisio
n, the particle s energy and mass can convert into new heavier particles. This pro
cess creates heavy unstable particles for study. Giant arrays of detectors six s
tories tall monitor the reactions. Many different detection techniques are avail
able. Modern ones are ionization chambers and bubble chambers. The ionization ch
ambers work very much like Geiger counters did, but at LHC, they are gigantic. T
he LHC energy may be high enough to make a black hole.
A problem with quantum mechanics was that it was not compatible with relativity.
General relativity showed that gravity was due to a warping of space by anythin
g that has mass. Quantum mechanics had discovered the constantly bubbling energy
and virtual particles in the vacuum. The virtual particles shred up spacetime s
o badly that the equations of relativity give crazy results. They just do not ap
ply.
In many other ways, quantum mechanics is impressive. Physicists can very accurat
ely calculate the properties of atoms, molecules, and interactions of elementary
particles. Particles had properties of both waves and particles. Virtual partic
les made their influence felt by how they changed reactions between particles. T
he properties of the elementary particles always were uncertain.
Accelerators produced two hundred different elementary particles. Having hundred
s of elementary particles did not seem right. That many particles did not seem e
lementary any more. In addition, attempts to calculate the interactions between
particles often gave infinite answers. Something big was wrong. The Standard Mod
el solved both these problems. The excess particles were not elementary, but com
posed of other particles. A trick solved the infinity problem.
The Standard Model contains a method or recipe for calculating the interaction o
f particles with each other and with the forces of nature. The Standard Model re
sts upon special relativity, quantum mechanics, and the rule that particles are
points, with radius of zero. Special relativity does not include gravity. The eq
uations of the Standard Model do not work if any of these three things are wrong
. Early accelerators showed that particles are not points. Ignore that. Still ke
ep radius zero in the calculations.
Even though the calculations take the wrong radius, the calculations are very ac
curate, usually closer than one part per million. If you counted the number of g
rains of sand in a thimble, it would come out about a million. For your result t
o be as good as the Standard Model, your count could only be off by one grain of
sand. To get that kind of accuracy the Standard Model needs to have nineteen ph
ysics constants inputted. These are things like the mass of the elementary parti
cles, the strengths of the forces, and the magnitude of particle charges.
The Standard Model requires several tricks. One trick fixes the problem caused b
y requiring that the radius of the particles be zero. We saw with Newton s Law of
Gravitation that this results in infinity. The other trick comes from quantum me
chanics itself. Particles are fuzzy and in turn, how they interact is fuzzy. Any
interaction has a whole series of ways it might occur and a range of possible o
utcomes. Many of these variations are due to virtual particles popping up in the
middle of the reaction. The Standard Model calculates the main possibilities an
d the probabilities that they will happen. The sum of the possibilities times th
eir probability gives the Standard Model answer. Quantum pool showed some of the
possibilities. Pool balls would end up in different pockets according to a prob
ability curve, the wave function. Balls aimed at each other could hit or pass th
rough each other without interacting. In addition, virtual particles can pop up.
The virtual particles can appear in varying numbers, kinds, and places in an in
teraction. With balls shot at a bicycle, this would be as if a tennis ball chang
ed into a virtual pair of beach balls, and back to a tennis ball while hitting t
he bike. In another possibility, the beach ball could become a virtual pair of m
arbles that annihilate and produce a tennis ball. There are dozens of other vari
ations. This sounds crazy talking about balls and marbles, but in the quantum wo
rld, this behavior is normal. Therefore, there are many ways for a reaction to h
appen. Quantum mechanics has to calculate the likelihood of many possibilities a
nd sum them up for the right answer.
To keep track, physicists use Feynman diagrams. Each diagram represents a possib
le interaction and defines the required calculation. Fortunately, the first few
simplest possibilities contribute most of the answer. Physicists ignore the rest
because they occur too rarely. The diagrams account for the quantum uncertainty
in the wave function of the particle. There are always many possibilities. [Fig
ure bike Feynman diagram, drawing] This calculation is partly a trick because it d
oes not give the right answer; it gives an approximate answer. The answer gets m
ore accurate by considering more possibilities.
How can the Standard Model be accurate when many calculations give infinity? Alo
ng the way, infinities are removed by a clever math trick we will call the infin
ity stomper. This is like Infinity Wars. If one step of your calculation gives i
nfinity, find a negative infinity to cancel it. When the infinities cancel each
other, the leftovers are very accurate. Nobody likes this trick. It is as if we
took infinity minus infinity equals almost zero. That is not valid math, but it
works. Infinity stomping fails completely for anything involving gravity. For ex
ample, when the Standard Model calculates the mass of a particle, it could turn
out to be heavier than a
Buick
.
Elementary particles create tiny bubbles as they move through ultra-cold liquid
hydrogen. Magnets bend paths of the charged particles.
Elementary Particles
The Standard Model of quantum mechanics made sense of the many elementary particle
s. Most of them were not elementary. The result is only twelve truly elementary
particles and five other particles that carry the four forces. The weak force, i
nvolved in radioactive decay, is unusual requiring both W and Z force particles.
Half of the twelve particles are lightweight, for example the neutrino, electro
n, and muon. These lightweights are the leptons. Half the particles are quarks,
-which provide most of the mass of the universe. All of matter is composed of th
ese two groups. If you know a little about atoms, you may be wondering where the
proton and neutron are. They are no longer elementary particles, because they c
ontain three quarks. A neutron contains an up and two down quarks. The proton is
two ups and a down. Gluons that carry the strong force hold the quarks together
. Yes, the name gluons came from glue. The weak and strong forces are short rang
e and act only between quarks in the nucleus. Passing gluons back and forth keep
s the nucleus together. The electromagnetic and gravitational forces are long ra
nge.
There are three families of particles. They each have a particle similar to an e
lectron, another particle similar to a neutrino and two quarks. Neutrinos have n
o charge and nearly zero mass. From family I to III, the mass of the particles i
ncreases. In everyday experience, we only observe the first family, and these fo
ur particles and the four forces make up our world. Quantum mechanics does not h
ave a good explanation for the families. One family seems to be enough. The othe
r two families only occur in high-energy collisions.
FORCE
MASS
photon
electron
mu
tau
Leptons
gluon
neutrino
mu neutrino
tau neutrino
Leptons
W, Z
up
charm
top
Quarks
graviton
down
strange
bottom
Quarks
I
II
III
FAMILY
Each particle has an anti-particle. Anti-particles make up anti-matter. If a par
ticle meets its anti- particle, they both annihilate with a burst of pure energy
. All of their mass converts to energy. The equations in physics are the same fo
r matter and antimatter. That makes most physicists believe there should be as m
uch antimatter as matter in the universe. As astronomers look over the universe,
they cannot find any antimatter. Anti-matter galaxies should be crashing into m
atter galaxies and be the brightest things in the sky. Why is this not happening
if the laws of physics are the same for matter and antimatter? Neither quantum
mechanics nor string theory has a widely accepted answer.
Forces exist only between particles with mass. Forces are due to the exchange of
virtual force particles. This is hard to understand and harder to prove. There
is no way to detect a virtual particle. This is another example where we have to
believe the math. When calculating the effect of forces on elementary particles
, the results are super accurate only if virtual force particles are included. R
emember that a virtual particle is real for that short instant of time that it e
xists.
Qued, I believe in force fields a little because I ve played with magnets, but I do
n t see how exchanging virtual particles can make a real force. Can you explain? as
ked Goofer.
Sure, Goofer, you get in between Courtney and James. They are going to experience
the Goofer force. James, push Goofer at Courtney. Goofer bounces into Courtney a
nd pushes her backward. Courtney, you just felt a force from the exchange of a Go
ofer particle.
Yes I did and it was repulsive.
Correct. Goofer brought some momentum to you and it pushed you away just like ide
ntically charged particles repel each other by exchange of a virtual photon.
Goofer wants to know, How can I become an attractive force?
James mumbles, I don t think he can.
We have to remember that we are dealing with individual elementary particles and
the uncertainty principle applies. That means that the position and velocity of
all three of you are fuzzy. To be proper fuzzy particles you have to be vibratin
g like crazy. The three kids become three blurry clouds, making shrieking sounds.
I ll stop you two so you can see what Goofer does. Goofer s position and velocity ar
e fuzzy. In fact, even his existence is fuzzy. Qued continues, Watch what happens
when I make Goofer into an attractive force. Courtney and James were in a Goofer
cloud. There were multiple images of Goofer going in all different directions.
James smiled and said, The Goofer cloud is now big enough to surround Courtney an
d me. I m feeling Goofer bumping me on all sides but mostly from behind.
I m feeling the same thing. Those bumps are pushing us together, said Courtney.
When Goofer solidified again he said, I knew I was attractive to Courtney.
Applying the uncertainty principle to you, Goofer, shows how an exchange of force
 particles can create an attractive force but it s even more complicated. An excha
nge sometimes uses two or more Goofers. Courtney and James also have uncertain p
osition and momentum. They would start as separate blurs, and their probability
waves would have different shapes since they are male and female. Physicists acc
ount for all this in the probability waves for the particles. When done correctl
y, the probability waves for the original particles are still a pair of bumps bu
t they bend a little toward each other and the centers of the bumps get closer a
s time goes by. The result of such a calculation for real particles and forces i
s as accurate as we can measure.
All this high-energy physics is so strange that maybe it is sounding to you like
a sci-fi movie. Here is the opening scene. You are in a giant laboratory.
The mad scientist (Why are they always mad?) is explaining to his teen-age sidek
ick, There are these virtual, not real particles, and they can never be detected,
and they are used in a bookshelf full of difficult theory turned into terabytes
of calculations by supercomputers to explain what happens when points of matter
that can t be seen, come together in a billion dollar accelerator, an internation
al group of scientists buried in Switzerland, where thousands of supercomputers
decide yes, that is the event we were looking for, and when the particular event
appears we ll know that the Klingons are preparing to invade or that string theor
y is correct.
Even though it sounds like science fiction, it is all true, except for the Kling
ons.
Quantum mechanics does not have gravity. Strings naturally produce a force parti
cle predicted for gravity, the graviton. No one has seen it. The exchange of vir
tual gravitons between particles causes gravity. Another possibility to give par
ticles mass is the Higgs particle. Space would be full of Higgs particles. Other
particles have to push through this Higgs sea and that makes mass. Discovery of
the Higgs would complete the standard quantum mechanical model of elementary pa
rticles. There have been many efforts to detect the Higgs. They failed. Physicis
ts hope the LHC will have enough energy to produce it. Strings naturally give ma
ss to the elementary particles. The energy of the string vibration comes from an
d equals the mass, E = mc2. Longer strings and strings with more wiggles have gr
eater vibration energy and greater mass.
Gravity does not fit in quantum mechanics. Physicists do not like this but can l
ive with it. That is where things stood until black holes. The center of a black
hole is extremely small, smaller than an elementary particle and therefore requ
ires quantum mechanics but it contains the mass of many stars, requiring general
relativity. They have a lot of gravity but it comes from a point. Quantum mecha
nics with gravity or string theory is required to understand black holes.
Entanglement
One of the stranger quantum phenomena is entanglement. Even physicists think thi
s is spooky. Qued is going to demonstrate it to Goofer.
Goofer, today we are going to learn about spin and entanglement. Elementary parti
cles have a quantum property called spin. In some ways, it is like the spinning
of a top but it has weird quantum properties and once spinning, the particle nev
er runs down or stops. An electron s spin is quantized and can have only one of tw
o states, spin + (spin up) or spin (spin down). Like other properties of an elect
ron, the spin is uncertain until we measure it. On average, half of a group of e
lectrons will have spin +, and the other half will have spin .
Okay, electrons spin only two ways, spin up, and spin down. I have a toy gyroscop
e that can spin on either end, Says Goofer as he tiptoes around.
 You notice all the small boxes I have assembled?
Yeah, I m falling all over them. What s inside? says Goofer.
Each contains a penny. These pennies have the quantum property of entanglement. T
his is a property that real elementary particles have. You can shake up the boxe
s then look to make sure they are randomly heads or tails.
Goofer shakes and opens one hundred boxes. They look random, 52 heads and 48 tail
s. I got my hair tangled in box 34.
This entanglement happens when the pennies interact. We do that by touching two b
oxes together. When the pennies are entangled, they behave like electrons and mu
st be in opposite states, one heads and one tails, says Qued.
How do we know which will be which?
That we can t know, says Qued. The state of a penny is a quantum variable that is sim
ply unknown until we make a measurement. We know that whenever we look at an ind
ividual penny, it has equal probability of being heads or tails. If an interacti
on entangles electrons, then we know that they will be in opposite states. Now t
ouch together the sides of any two boxes. This entangles the pennies. Then open
the boxes, and they will be opposite, one heads and one tails.
Goofer gets busy. You re right. Every pair of boxes I have touched together and ope
ned has one penny heads and one tails. No pairs are either both heads or both ta
ils. How did you do that Qued? Do you have a hidden flipper in the second box so
you can set the penny correctly? Maybe thin fiber optic cables connect them and
allow each to sense the other. The pennies or boxes must be signaling each othe
r.
No, Goofer, there is no communication between the pennies. By the standard interp
retation of quantum mechanics each penny before or after entanglement is fifty p
ercent heads and fifty percent tails. You ensured this by shaking up the boxes w
hen we started.
Does that mean they are on edge?
They are not on edge. The penny s heads state is like an electron with spin + or spi
n up. The tails state corresponds to an electron with spin down or spin . A penny
on its edge would be like saying an electron is at spin zero. That s forbidden for
electrons and being on edge is forbidden for these pennies.
Goofer, looking even more puzzled than usual, asks, Then shouldn t I see a blur of
heads and tails when I open a box.
Not in a quantum universe. The act of observing forces the penny into one of the
allowed states. Some physicists think it is meaningless even to ask what the pen
ny is doing when we do not look at it. The penny exists in a well defined state
when we do look at it.
What if we had a flash camera in the box and we trip it just before opening?
That would be equivalent to a measurement and would force the entangled particle
into the opposite state. Quantum effects are normal for elementary particles. Ev
erything is made of elementary particles and has quantum behavior. It is hard to
see quantum effects for large objects.
I don t want to think about this. My brain is melting down like ice cream in frying
 pan, but I could work a good scam on Courtney. We entangle a pair of pennies. I
give her one box and bet her I can guess if her penny is heads or tails. I look
at mine and guess the opposite.
Qued says, That would work and you would guess it right every time, but I can tel
l you a more dramatic demonstration. She might wonder if the pennies or boxes co
uld be communicating with each other. The fastest any signal can move is the spe
ed of light. If the pennies are far apart before opening, then we can open them
quickly before any information would have time to travel between the pennies. Yo
u and Courtney synchronize watches. After entangling a pair of boxes, you take o
ne by rocket to Mars. You and Courtney open your boxes at the same time. The pen
nies will still be opposite. This is true even though it takes minutes for any s
ignal to get from here to the Mars. In this example, there is no chance for one
penny or box to signal the other. If one penny is heads, the other knows instant
ly to be tails.
I bet no one ever proves anything as crazy as entanglement.
Entanglement experiments usually use photons and measure the polarization of ligh
t. This experiment has been done and entanglement was confirmed, and the photons
were in the correct states instantaneously.
Goofer says, That s cool, Qued. Can you do anything with a pea under one of three s
hells? Meanwhile I ll go get Courtney.
Symmetry
Almost every paper in high-energy physics mentions symmetry. Something is symmet
rical or has symmetry if it is similar to its original state after you apply a c
hange. Daisies are symmetrical to a rotation. If you turn one the width of a pet
al, it looks the same. The human face is symmetrical to a reflection through a v
ertical plane at the middle of the face. An isosceles triangle (three equal side
s) is symmetrical to a rotation of 120 degrees. Symmetry is not limited to physi
cal things. We saw symmetry in Maxwell s equations. There are symmetries in art an
d music.
There are many symmetries we take for granted. There is the linear symmetry of t
ime. You are pretty much the same as you were a half hour ago. All the laws of p
hysics are the same as they were a half-hour ago, and at any other time. Symmetr
y is very important to physics. A law of physics comes from every symmetry. The
law connected to time symmetry is the conservation of energy. Energy cannot be c
reated or destroyed. There is symmetry to spatial position. Moving an experiment
twenty feet over does not change results. Symmetry to spatial position gives th
e law of conservation of momentum.
What s Real?
There is the old brainteaser, If a tree falls in an empty forest, does it make a
sound? Are things still there when we are not looking? We would say yes to both t
hese questions but quantum mechanics leads in a different direction.
Quantum mechanics is weird in many ways but one of the weirdest things is how ob
servation influences things on the quantum scale. We cannot see or touch an elec
tron. When we look at TV, we are seeing light that happened when an electron hit
s the screen. At quantum pool, we learned that electrons are usually a wave. If
they remained waves, the TV would be blurry. It is not, and if we used a microsc
ope, we could look at individual light pulses from individual electrons hitting
the screen. Why do we get The Today Show instead of a blur? That is the weird part
. When we observe the electrons by tuning in, we collapse their wave functions o
r probability waves. What does that mean? Before we look, the electron is smeare
d out somewhere in the picture tube. It is most likely where its probability wav
e is highest. Once we look, it is 100% where we found it in The Today Show image o
n your TV. How did that happen? ? I know fifty thousand physicists that would li
ke someone to tell them how it happens. No one knows. It just happens.
The usual explanation is that the electron is everywhere until observed. Then po
p. There it is somewhere at random inside the wave function. Another is that the
electron is nowhere until we do a measurement. Another idea is that the electro
n follows all possible paths but in different universes. When we see it, we sett
le both of us into the universe where we see The Today Show with the electron ligh
ting up a spot in the upper left corner.
This problem has led some physicists to consider if thoughts or consciousness ha
s some connection to the quantum world. Physicists have wondered about this for
nearly 100 years. What do you think changes the electrons from wave to particle?
?
Summary of 20th Century Physics
Much more science happened in the twentieth century than in the rest of human hi
story. The acceleration of research continues. The 20th century began with two m
inor problems. Their solution led to quantum mechanics and relativity. Relativit
y mostly changed our idea of space and gravity. Special relativity showed that t
ime behaves similar to a space dimension. At speeds near the speed of light, obj
ects shrink, clocks slow, and mass increases. Mass can convert to energy and vic
e versa.
Force is something we all know because we can feel gravity. Physics digs deeper
and asks what produces the force. We looked at three versions of gravity. Newton
believed it was a field. A mass just naturally makes the field. He gave an equa
tion to calculate the field anywhere. Einstein described gravity as a warp of sp
acetime.
Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love. A. Einstein
He gave equations to calculate the warp. These two theories almost agree. Einste
in s theory is better because it correctly predicted the bending of light by the s
un. Quantum mechanics sees gravity as coming from exchange of gravitons but when
applied it gives elementary particles heavier than a Buick. Gravity shapes the
whole universe.
Quantum mechanics gives a series of results that are completely different from o
rdinary experience. Sub-atomic particles behave like both waves and particles. T
hese particle-waves can tunnel through barriers. Our measurements on them always
are uncertain. It is not a matter of buying new instruments or being more caref
ul, the uncertainty is part of the universe. There is a good reason quantum mech
anics seems so strange. It is concerned with objects far smaller than anything w
e can see or feel.
The number of elementary particles went from just the proton, neutron, and elect
ron to about 200 more. High-energy accelerators discovered these. They get proto
ns or electrons moving near the speed of light and slam them into a target. Putt
ing that much energy into a tiny spot can create particles never before seen. In
the last half of the 20th century, the Standard Model reduced the number of ele
mentary particles to a dozen. Standard Model calculations often produced infinit
e results, but a trick called renormalization or infinity stomping can cancel th
e infinity and still leave very accurate results. It does not work for gravity.
Newton s laws were wonderful. If you knew where everything is and the velocity of
everything, then you could accurately calculate the past and the future. Quantum
 measurements, however, are fuzzy. It is impossible to measure anything without
changing other things. Measurements come in pairs, like velocity and position. T
he more accurately you measure one, the less accurate the other becomes. This is
the uncertainty principle. Therefore, the classical idea of finding the positio
n and velocity of everything so you can predict the future cannot happen.
Quantum mechanics does not make sense to us. We operate in the normal sized worl
d. Quantum effects also happen here but they are so small that we cannot detect
them with the best instrumentation, and we certainly cannot see them. We touch o
ne result of quantum mechanics when we use a computer. In fast computer chips, e
lectrons often move by quantum tunneling. Nano-technology has to consider quantu
m effects. At the atomic scale and smaller, chunkiness and fuzziness rule.
Quantum mechanics and relativity deal with opposite ends of the universe, sub-at
omic particles, and the whole universe. It is hard to imagine that a single theo
ry could combine them. Worse than that, the equations of quantum mechanics do no
t know there is such a thing as spacetime or gravity. Quantum mechanics and rela
tivity could not work together. Black holes require both and are a big problem t
o theoretical physics. Gravity was not the only problem. Eight of the elementary
particles look like excess baggage. The universe might be fine without them. Ph
ysicists adjust nineteen physical constants to make the Standard Model work and
fit the observed properties of the elementary particles. It would be nice if the
theory predicted the values of the nineteen numbers. Even better would be to ex
plain the origin of the elementary particles.
String theory is required to agree with both quantum mechanics and relativity re
sults. Both are correct in their where they apply and they are very accurate.
String Theory
Quantum mechanics required accepting some bizarre new ideas: particle-waves, qua
nta, observers affecting reality, and uncertainty built into the world. String t
heory is going to make these seem ordinary. String theory, as the first scientif
ic theory of everything, should explain all the forces and elementary particles.
It should explain the origin and evolution of the universe. String theory shoul
d agree with the accurate results of quantum mechanics and relativity and become
the foundation of the rest of science. Physicists came to string theory by obse
rvations of the biggest and smallest things in our universe. We do not have any
experience of these realms. It is no wonder string theory is going to seem stran
ge.
Our thoughts about the basic components of the universe have changed greatly sin
ce we first started thinking about it.
Oh! Himmel! My mustache is slipping

If at first an idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it. Imagination is m
ore important than knowledge.
A. Einstein
In the last century, physicists discovered the twelve elementary particles. Surp
risingly, eight of those twelve do not occur naturally and appear to be unnecess
ary. Coincidentally we are back to four modern elements or elementary particles th
at make up everything. String theory reduces that to one thing: string.
Many Beginnings of String Theory
Physicists realized that many of the problems in high-energy physics came from r
egarding particles as points. Many calculations of particle properties gave infi
nity. Within a few years of the first discoveries in quantum mechanics, some of
its founders tried to replace the point with a more realistic small sphere. Even
the best physicists could not make it work. Nevertheless, most physicists knew
that particles were not points. Later there was only a small effort to replace p
oints, because the Standard Model could give the right answers.
During the last century, physicists tried to unite the forces by making them dif
ferent aspects of one force. This was successful for the strong, weak, and elect
romagnetic forces. Gravity was the odd man out. Thus the century s two greatest di
scoveries: the Standard Model of quantum mechanics and relativity had little to
do with each other. Efforts to add gravity to the Standard Model was like adding
vinegar to milk. They led to lumps of infinities that made the calculations wro
ng. Adding the Standard Model to relativity made relativity go crazy because vir
tual particles rapidly pop up and disappear. This made spacetime twist, turn, an
d tear and that makes the equations of relativity break down. Nevertheless, it s
imply was not acceptable that the Standard Model and relativity did not fit toge
ther.
Many physicists would like to take credit for string theory. Like most things in
science, string theory did not pop into existence from one person. It evolved f
rom earlier work as many unrelated paths crossed. Soon after Einstein discovered
relativity, two physicists tried to unite the only known forces, gravity and th
e electromagnetic force. They did it! This was astonishing since these two force
s seem so different. The trick was adding another dimension to spacetime. In a u
niverse with four space dimensions instead of our three, there was just one forc
e. Let us call it electrogravity. When they calculated what electrogravity looke
d like in our familiar three space dimensions, this one force split and became t
wo forces, gravity, and the electromagnetic force. This astonishing idea gave an
amazing result. At the time, no one took it seriously. An extra dimension seeme
d too strange. The recently discovered nuclear forces did not fit the four-dimen
sional picture. For 50 years, the idea was lost.
Another push toward string theory came from the study of scattering of elementar
y particles. In these experiments, a beam of particles hits a target and the par
ticles go flying in all directions. The equation that best described the results
looked familiar. Scientists went back two hundred years to identify the equatio
n as Euler s equation describing the motion of a vibrating body like a guitar stri
ng.
Around the same time, some physicists started working out the behavior of quanti
zed strings. Why? Because their TV was broken? Did they just think it was someth
ing interesting to do? Could they make it a homework problem for graduate studen
ts? ? To them it was just an interesting thing to do like learning a new hip-hop
dance move. They did not expect their work to be very significant. Some of the
results were very strange.
They first worked out the behavior of real strings using classical physics. Then
they turned on quantum mechanics by making the energy of the string come in qua
ntum chunks. The results were interesting but they soon found that the strings c
ould not move. That was not a good result if this were ever to become a theory o
f elementary particles, but it gets weirder.
The calculation also produced a tachyon particle. Tachyons move backwards, yes,
sdrawkcab in time. Giving them energy slows them down. They have imaginary mass
equal to a tenth of a Cheshire cat. They only exist in science fiction. This was
a big hint that string theory would never apply to anything in the real world.
This was the situation at the start of string theory. Several things pointed vag
uely to the idea of particles being like vibrating strings. Curiously, only one
of these came from an experiment. The other ideas were theoretical. As a Moody B
lues song puts it, Thinking is the best way to travel. Before this, experiments us
ually turned up something that theory could not explain. That would get the theo
rists going and experimenters would do more work in order to give theory people
enough to build a new theory. After that, more experiments would confirm the the
ory. With string theory, theory took the lead and experiment has not been able t
o catch up.
String Theory with a Jump Rope
You can start to learn about string theory from life sized strings or rope. An i
nteresting property of string is that it can only wiggle in particular ways. Gra
b your jump rope and tie one end to a railing or something else that does not mo
ve, like your Dad watching football. Your rope will copy the behavior of real st
rings. Hold the rope and rotate your hand the way you usually do when you play j
ump rope. A single bump goes round and round, and that pattern repeats as long a
s you keep your hand moving. Now try going slower and faster. The rope will not
turn well at just any frequency but only turns well at the first speed you used.
You have just discovered the lowest energy level or lowest energy mode of vibrat
ion of your rope. If you start moving your hand much faster, you can get the rop
e moving nicely again but with two bumps. [Figure jump rope speeds patterns, ill
ustrate] You have to look sharp but one bump is up, the other down, and then the
y switch. Notice it takes more energy to get your rope going with two bumps than
one. The rope is also moving at a higher frequency of rotation. This is the sec
ond energy level. If you can get more speed, you can get three bumps. The energy
of your jump rope is quantized. Only certain amounts of energy make it turn smo
othly.
This is how the strings of string theory behave. Strings vibrate only in certain
modes. The vibration modes have different amounts of energy. Using E = mc2, thi
s gives a distinct mass for each mode. Elementary particles come only in certain
masses. Maybe we are on to something. That is a smart jump rope. The different
modes of vibration of strings correspond to the elementary particles in the univ
erse. The first four modes of vibration of strings should correspond to neutrino
, electron, up quark, and down quark.
Forces
There is only one kind of string. All the variety of things in the world is due
to where and how strings vibrate. Each way a string vibrates is a different elem
entary particle. From quantum mechanics, we know elementary particles are comple
x and can be waves. That is their behavior at atomic size, but if you could look
deep inside you would see a single tiny vibrating string. Instead of calling el
ementary particles elementary string vibrations, we will usually call them parti
cles or elementary particles as most physicists do. Remember that from now on ele
mentary particles means elementary strings.
One kind of string vibrating in different modes can generate the elementary part
icles. Other types of string vibration create the particles that carry force. Qu
antum mechanics took the forces and particles as the fixed properties of the wor
ld and built up the theory from there. The theory had nineteen parameters or con
stants that determined particle masses and force strengths. String theory explai
ns all the forces and particles with one constant, the stiffness of the string.
In string theory, the four forces are united in a very profound way. The forces
are the same thing, in a sense because they are just different vibrations of str
ing. The personality of each force comes from the shape of spacetime and the mod
e of vibration of the string. Force particles and mass particles are fundamental
ly the same. Again they too are just string vibrating in different ways. You, ba
cteria, atoms, stars, everything is string vibrations. [Figure funny virtual par
ticles with messages between strings, drawing]
The four forces differ in strength and the distance over which they act. They ar
e so different that it is hard to imagine they could arise from different modes
of vibration of string. The forces we know perssonally are electromagnetic and g
ravity. They both have a long range, which is why we know them; we can feel them
. The electromagnetic force is fascinating because it accounts for things as dif
ferent as lightning, magnets, light, radio, and x-rays. Strong and weak forces a
re nuclear forces that do not reach outside the nucleus. We do not feel them.
Comparison of the Four Forces
FORCE STRENGTH RANGE CARRIER
Strong force Strong 10+3 nucleus gluon
Electromagnetic Medium 10+1 infinite photon
Weak force Weak 10-10 nucleus W+, W-, Z
Gravity very weak 10-35 infinite graviton
There is a huge difference in strength between gravity and electromagnetic force
. The electromagnetic force is 10+36, a million quadrillion quadrillion, times s
tronger than gravity. However, that does not seem right gravity holds us on the
Earth. One followed by 36 zeros is a big multiplier. Gravity holds us down on Ea
rth. Did you ever rub a balloon on someone s hair? The static electricity makes th
eir hair stands straight up. That s the electromagnetic force generated by a littl
e static electricity from hair beating the force of gravity produced by the
whole Earth, trying to pull it down. The electromagnetic force wins; your hair g
oes up, even though the Earth is huge and heavy.
String theory inherits the quantum mechanics view that forces are due to the exc
hange of virtual force particles. The four fundamental forces, electromagnetic,
strong, gravity, and weak hold the world together by exchange of virtual force c
arrying strings. These are, respectively, the photon, gluon, graviton, and the W
and Z bosons. These strings are vibrating at different notes or frequencies and
can have different spin and mass.
String Break! Silly String was discovered in 1972, the year that string theory b
egan. That is suspicious. There is a tenth of a mile of string in a can. The arm
y uses silly string. No, not to make the enemy laugh. In Afganistan, they spray
it ahead before they enter buildings. Some buildings are booby-trapped. Silly st
ring hangs on the trip wires, showing
where explosives are. Soldiers should be home where their kids can cover them in
silly string.
String Surprises
String theory may be able do it all and explain everything, but it very quickly
gets more complicated. The first complication is just the change from points in
quantum mechanics to string. A point has no size. It has no direction. From all
directions, it looks the same, completely spatially symmetric. Strings break tha
t symmetry. A string has length. The length can point in a particular direction.
The effect of a force still depends on the direction the force is pointing, but
now may also depend on the direction the string is pointing.
When a point is still, it is still. Even if a string stops, it still vibrates ne
ar the speed of light. Therefore, strings must always obey the rules of relativi
ty. Strings, like points, also have to obey all normal laws of physics, like con
servation of energy, momentum, and angular momentum (spin). When a string moves
in spacetime, its spin, mass, charges, and length stay the same. As a string mov
es, we cannot have one end show up in St. Louis and the other in New York.
A string can change shape. When bumping into other strings, strings can split or
join the other strings. All this is much more complicated than what points can
do. These complications result in many rules that strings must obey. Does your s
chool have so many rules that no one ever gets a hall pass? String theory is jus
t like that. There are so many rules that a string cannot move at all. This is n
ot going to be a good theory of everything if nothing moves. You will never gues
s how physicists solved this problem. ?
We can t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created
them. A. Einstein
THE ROPE TO SCHOOL
No one is confused about the three dimensions of space. Thinking of your town, t
hey are north south, east west, and height. Three numbers can locate anything in
your room, on Earth, or out in space. The three dimensions are also the three d
ifferent ways something can move. Hmmm, strings cannot move.
Imagine you tied a rope seven blocks long between your school and your house. Wh
y? Well, tomorrow you are going to get drops in your eyes and you are sure you w
ould get lost without the rope. You want to meet Courtney today at the rope. It
is so long that you have to tell her more. You are very precise and tell her to
meet you at 152 meters from the school end. At 152 meters is just one dimension.
An ideal string (the abstract mathematical string in physics) has just one dime
nsion. You go but she is not there. You call her back and find out that she was
there ten minutes before you. You have to add the time. You agree to meet at the
same point on the rope at 3:45 P.M. Time is one of the dimensions of spacetime.
You need it to meet Courtney.
You meet and talk. Both of you decide to go back to your laptops and play with y
our computer controlled miniature mechanical bugs. Let s have the bugs meet at the
same spot, 152 meters, at 5:10 PM Central time. [James fig of rope, bugs, and neig
hborhood drawing] The bugs are one-tenth the size of a period but have excellent
claws. They give good wireless video feedback to your computer allowing you to
direct your bug to the right place and time but Courtney s bug is not there. After
a flurry of emails, you figure out that hers is on top of the rope and yours is
on the bottom. You need another dimension to give the angle around the rope, an
d you decide to meet at 90 degrees.
For people meeting at the rope two dimensions were fine, time and the length alo
ng the rope. For the small bugs, we needed a third, the angle around the rope. T
he angle around the rope is an unnecessary small dimension to you. If you back u
p far enough from the rope, that dimension is invisible. We re not done yet. The b
ugs are so small that they can push into the rope. We have to add how deep in th
e rope, giving four dimensions. Ropes are made of strings. If we had super-minia
ture bugs, we would need to say which string and add the angle and depth in the
string giving seven dimensions. In addition, strings are made of threads three m
ore dimensions giving ten. Threads in turn are made of fibers so we could go on.
We don t have to because ultra-microbugs don t come out until next year. The added
dimensions in this example were small enough for kids to ignore. Only the miniat
ure bugs could sense them. This example shows how some dimensions can be so smal
l that they are invisible and ordinarily unnecessary to us. Is our rope really t
en-dimensional? ?
Knots in the Rope Hidden Dimensions
Physicists were desperate to solve the problem of making strings move and have s
tring theory work. They knew string could answer many fundamental questions. The
refore, no one fell off their chairs (well a few did) when the only way to make
strings move was if space had ten dimensions. This is a very new thing. One way
to look at it is to say this is crazy. Theorists gave it a positive spin, like p
oliticians do, that no other theory ever determined the number of dimensions spa
ce should have. So now, we know we have been wrong all these years.
How can space have ten dimensions when all we experience are three? Only three o
f the dimensions are large. The other seven are tiny. The rope to school actuall
y does not have ten dimensions. It is four-dimensional. Once the distance from t
he school is fixed, only the angle and distance into the rope and the time are r
equired to locate a bug or any point in the rope. The coordinates just have to b
e very accurate to locate something as small as a particular fiber or bug.
String theory s extra dimensions all curl up on each other into tiny, complicated,
seven dimensional shapes that look like knots. The knots are about the size of
a string. That is so small that no equipment will ever see them. A knot of curle
d up dimensions exists at every point in space. They might be like small chunks
of Swiss cheese or more pretty like Play-Doh with twists and holes. The curled u
p dimensions exist at every point in space the way an angular dimension is at ev
ery point along the rope. Mathematicians have thought about spaces with many dim
ensions long ago and worked out the math to deal with objects having more than t
hree dimensions. This made the work of physicist s a little easier.
We do not notice the knots and bumpiness of space for the same reason we do not
notice quantum effects. They are far too small. Take the period at the end of th
is sentence. The knots in space are much smaller than that. Put one hundred smal
l dots across a period. Pick one of these dots and put a million dots across it.
Pick one of those and put a million small dots across it. Better sharpen your p
encils. You would have to do this division of a dot into a million dots five tim
es to get as small as the curled up hidden dimensions of space.}
James finds himself and Qued looking at a large lumpy ball. Qued has a stringed
instrument like a guitar-harp floating over his head.
Qued yells James, come hear in this cave. I want to play you a song on my strinya
r.
This isn t a cave. We are at some kind of giant ball of cookie dough. Oh, here is a
hole that is something like a cave. [Figure curled space and James & Qued on it
, drawing]
This is actually the curled up dimensions of your universe.
But Qued, that means either it s expanded to a very large size or we are very, very
small!
Don t worry. I will take care of that later. Now watch and listen as I play at the
entrance to this hole. One song of your world, Merry Had a Little Fuzzy White Qua
druped is popular in my world.
James smiles and says, It s not Little Fuzzy White Quadruped. It s Mary Had a Little Lam
b .
Well that makes it simpler. I will play the start. Here goes. I hope I do not pla
y wrong notes. No telling what would happen. Ma ? ry ? had ? a ? little ? lamb ?
little ? lamb ? little ? lamb ? .
Wow. With every note you played, I saw a vibrating string at the cave. They were
different lengths, different colors, and had different numbers of waves. I think
they went all the way through this cave to the other side. Some even wound arou
nd the lumpy ball.
Qued replies, Right. Thirteen notes produced thirteen strings. Only four notes we
re distinct therefore we saw only four different strings. The low notes were neu
trino and electron, lightweight particles. The higher notes were the heavier up
quark and down quark. These are the family of elementary particles occurring nat
urally. The notes I played caused the curled up dimensions to ring or resonate i
n a particular way. That ringing of the space created the particle. Let us move
to another hole. I ll play it again.
James listens then says, Okay, we got the same looking strings but the notes soun
ded like they were off key, at a higher pitch.
Look closely. I ll play it again.
Now I see. These strings changed length and may have an extra wiggle.
Right again, more wiggles make them higher pitch. Being higher pitch means more e
nergy and more mass. From this hole, we got the second family of strings, the mu
strings: mu neutrino, mu, and the charm and strange quarks. In the third hole,
we could make the tau family. High energy scattering experiments can produce the
tau and mu families, but they quickly change into the first family particles. T
hree holes give three families of particles. Do you see that big bump to the rig
ht of you? Sit on it.
James says, There are all kinds of bumps here. You must mean this one. I must be
gaining weight. It squashed right down under me.
Good, hold it down while I play the notes again. Eyes and ears at attention.
Now the song is different. The notes shifted both up and down compared to the fir
st time. It is really a new melody. It is kind of like the Beatles Maxwell s Silver
Hammer. There are more distinct notes.
Excellent James. This shows how sensitive strings are to small details of the sha
pe of the curled space. When you squashed that bump, you made the hidden curled
dimensions for a different universe. The extra notes are elementary strings or p
articles that do not exist in your universe. It sings a different song than your
s. The elementary particles and even the physics are different.
Wow, I did all that. Awesome.
Changes in the hidden dimensions can completely change the universe.
James asks, What makes strings have different charges and behave differently with
the strong or weak force?
Good question. Explaining is hard to do without math, but the details of the vibr
ations and the curled space they are in or wind around determine all the propert
ies of the strings. That determines all the elementary particles and their prope
rties. They, in turn, determine all the properties of the universe.
Well, what about force strings?
This is one of the most amazing things about strings. String explains force and m
atter in the same way. Even though they seem very different to us, string theory
explains everything as vibrations of string. The mode of vibration gives mass s
trings their charge, spin, and mass. Force strings are the same string but vibra
ting in a different way, in different dimensions. Climb down and I will try to m
ake a force string. Here s a good spot, I ll try to make a graviton. [Figure make gra
viton, drawing]
Qued produced four things that looked like glittery golden bowling pins. He star
ted spinning, striking repeatedly at four places on the lumpy shape.
Wow, you made a totally different thing, a vibrating loop like a hula-hoop. Waves
are moving rapidly around the loop.
Yes, this is the graviton, a closed string.
LOST IN THE HIDDEN DIMENSIONS
Goofer greets Qued in his unique way, Quedball, my alien bro.
Qued replies, May greetings fall over you, Goofer.
I want something from you. James told me there are ten dimensions. I want to kno
w where they are. I ll go see if the kids there are as cool as me.
The extra dimensions are everywhere, at every point in space. You will find, howe
ver, no kids. These dimensions are unimaginably small, and all wrapped up around
each other.
So the extra dimensions are everywhere but they re nowhere.
Exactly.
I need a little spaced time. If the extra dimensions are so small, then how do th
ey affect us in our three dimensions? says Goofer.
They don t and that s the problem. They are small enough that there may never be any
way to detect them. The extra dimensions give strings more ways to wiggle and th
at solves the problem that they could not move through the big dimensions of spa
ce. Wiggling in the hidden dimensions releases the strings from the requirements
that kept strings from moving.
So the tiny dimensions don t have any effect but they affect everything.
Goofer, you have the unique ability to cut right to the point in an obscure way.
You may be a Zen master.
Zen I ll see you later.
Qued leaves Goofer to meet with James. Meet isn t quite the word because {James fi
nds himself and Qued looking at a large lumpy ball. Qued has a stringed instrume
nt like a guitar-harp floating over his head.
Qued yells James, come hear in this cave. I want to play you a song on my strinya
r.
This isn t a cave. We re at some kind of giant ball of cookie dough. Oh, here is a ho
le that s something like a cave. [Figure curled space and James & Qued on it, draw
ing]
This is actually the curled up dimensions of your universe.
But Qued, that means either it s expanded to a very large size or we are very, very
small!
Don t worry. I ll take care of that. Now watch and listen as I play at the entrance t
o this hole. One song of your world, Merry had a Little Fuzzy White Quadruped is p
opular in my world.
James smiles and says, It s not Little Fuzzy White Quadruped. It s Mary Had a Little Lam
b .
Well that makes it simpler. I ll play the start. Here goes. I hope I don t play wrong
notes. No telling what would happen. Ma ? ry ? had ? a ? little ? lamb ? little
? lamb ? little ? lamb ?
Wow. With every note you played, I saw a vibrating string at the cave. They were
different lengths, different colors, and had different numbers of waves. I think
they went all the way through this cave to the other side. Some even wound arou
nd the lumpy ball.
Qued replies, Right. Thirteen notes produced thirteen strings. Only four notes we
re distinct therefore we saw only four different strings. The low notes were neu
trino and electron, lightweight particles. The higher notes were the heavier up
quark and down quark. These are the family of elementary particles occurring nat
urally. The notes I played caused the curled up dimensions to ring or resonate i
n a particular way. That ringing of the space created the particle. Let s move to
another hole. I ll play it again.
James listens then says, Okay, we got the same looking strings but the notes soun
ded like they were off key, at a higher pitch.
Look closely. I ll play it again.
Now I see. These strings changed length and may have an extra wiggle.
Right again, more wiggles make them higher pitch. Being higher pitch means more e
nergy and more mass. From this hole, we got the second family of strings, the mu
strings: mu neutrino, mu, and the charm and strange quarks. In the third hole,
we could make the tau family. High energy scattering experiments can produce the
tau and mu families, but they quickly change into the first family particles. T
hree holes give three families of particles. Do you see that big bump to the rig
ht of you? Sit on it.
James says, There are all kinds of bumps here. You must mean this one. I must be
gaining weight. It squashed right down under me.
Good, hold it down while I play the notes again. Eyes and ears at attention.
Now the song is different. The notes shifted both up and down compared to the fir
st time. It s really a new melody. It is kind of like the Beatles Hey Jude. There are
also more distinct notes.
Excellent James. This shows how sensitive strings are to small details of the sha
pe of the curled space. We just made the hidden curled dimensions for a differen
t universe. The extra notes are elementary strings or particles that don t exist i
n our universe. It sings a different song than yours. The elementary particles a
nd even the physics are different.
Wow, my butt did all that. Awesome.
Changes in the hidden dimensions can completely change the universe.
James asks, What makes strings have different charges and behave differently with
the strong or weak force?
Good question. Explaining is hard to do without math, but the details of the vibr
ations and the curled space they are in or wind around determine all the propert
ies of the strings. That determines all the elementary particles and their prope
rties. They, in turn, determine all the properties of the universe.
 Well, what about force strings?
This is one of the most amazing things about strings. String explains force and m
atter in the same way. Even though they seem very different to us, string theory
explains everything as vibrations of string. Force strings are the same string
but vibrating in a different way, in different dimensions. That in turn gives th
em their charge, spin, and mass. Climb down and I ll try to make a force string. H
ere s a good spot, I ll try to make a graviton. [Figure make graviton, drawing]
Qued produced four things that looked like glittery golden bowling pins. He star
ted spinning, striking repeatedly at four places on the lumpy shape.
Wow, you made a totally different thing, a vibrating loop like a hula-hoop. Waves
are moving rapidly around the loop.
Yes, this is the graviton, a closed string. }}
Do closed strings move differently than open strings?
Yes, closed strings move easily and could even cross from our universe to another
. Strings with mass have to stay in our universe.
So are there other universes?
Do you remember the Prime Directive from Star Trek? I must follow it. I am not to
interfere with the natural development of intelligent life.
Well, that can t apply to Goofer. I ll ask him to ask you.
How Is Space Shaping Up?
In order to allow strings to move, space has to have more dimensions. Now that s
trings can satisfy the restrictions on their motion, some truly amazing things h
appen. The strings can now vibrate in many new ways. Some of the vibration modes
produce the elementary particles. Happily, other vibration modes correspond to
the four forces of nature. Especially wonderful is that the gravitational force
has a mode just as the other forces do. This means that gravity will no longer b
e the oddball force that cannot fit into quantum mechanics. The equations that p
redict the motion of strings under the four forces are just the same as the ones
physicists used for the last century. Therefore, if a charged string interacts
with an electromagnetic force string, the photon, Maxwell s equations still give t
he correct results. Similarly, string theory reproduces the equations for the st
rong, weak, and gravitational forces. The forces were also united in a profound
way since they were all due to vibrations of strings. All of this eluded physici
sts, even Einstein, for a century.
In string theory, the energy of the string and the details of the tiny curled sp
ace determine the elementary particles and forces and that determines everything
about the universe. Just look out your window and think about that. ? String th
eory derives all of physics for the last 100 years from the geometry of strings
and spacetime. Everything depends on the geometry of our universe. It should not
be surprising that for string theory to accomplish all this requires space to b
e more complex and have hidden dimensions.
Physicists, programmers, and mathematicians have constructed drawings that sugge
st the look of these spaces. No one knows which arrangement is correct. The curl
ed space can have holes. Every hole produces a unique family of particles. The v
ibration of strings in the curled space defines the all of the properties of the
particles.
These are attempts to show what the curled up dimensions look like,
however, these are 2-dimensional views of a 7-dimensional space.
This is a big problem in string theory. Like all theories, string theory has to
prove itself by giving correct results for known data, the elementary particles,
and by correctly predicting something new. Since the properties of the elementa
ry particles depend on the shape of the space, you first have to know the geomet
ry of the curled space. This is especially hard. You cannot sit outside a tiny k
not and look it over like Qued and James did. Therefore, we have to look at the
results, the elementary particles. To understand the space you must understand t
he elementary particles but to understand the elementary particles you have to u
nderstand the hidden curled space. This is where physicists have been stuck for
thirty years.
Before strings, experimenters were the heroes in physics. Relativity and quantum
mechanics both came from experiments that did not fit classical physics. String
theory started with the thoughts of theorists. Experimenters had no evidence of
extra dimensions or strings and still do not. Some physicists have been able to
work backwards from the properties of the elementary particles to what types of
curled shapes could produce them. They got fair agreement but this is not very
satisfying because the big promise of string theory is to match nature without h
aving to fit physical constants or hidden dimensions?
Use Your Brain s Branes
While investigating the dimensions of spacetime in string theory, something unex
pected popped up: branes. Branes, short for membranes, are lower-dimension space
s lying in a higher dimension space. We are familiar with some branes in our wor
ld. For example, a two brane is a surface, like a parking lot surface. You can c
all your homework a 2-brane. A zero-brane, a no-braner, is a point. A 1-brane is
a string. A 3-brane is a volume. A 4-brane is a 4-brane. Well, it is a four-dim
ensional space that is hard to visualize or sense. Branes covers them all. Our u
niverse could be inside a brane just as we have 1-, 2-, and 3-branes inside our
space.
Imagine a soda straw with a fat orange bug inside. It does not have enough room
to turn around. All it can do is go forwards and back. It lives in a one-dimensi
onal world. The only dimension is how far it is in the straw. The bug s universe i
s also finite; it has a measurable size. It also has ends. If he goes beyond an
end, he falls out of his universe into one with more dimensions.
A soda straw is an example of one brane inside another. If we put the bug on the
outside of the straw, do not worry. The bug has very sticky feet. We have moved
it into a two dimensional world. It can go back and forth as before but now it
can also go around. This bug universe is also finite. However, in the round dire
ction, it has no ends, no boundary. If the bug goes far enough in the round dime
nsion, it gets back to where it started. There is no boundary but that direction
in space is not infinite. This is like our universe. It is finite but has no bo
undaries. A rocket launched in any direction would come back in about one hundre
d billion years from the opposite direction.
The bug s universe illustrates again the idea of large dimensions and small curled
dimensions. If our straw was miles long and we stood back from it, we would thi
nk the bug is in a world with one large dimension. We would not be able to see t
he tightly curled circular dimension around the straw. Note that at every point
along the large dimension we have a curled dimension. This is similar to our spa
ce. We have four large dimensions of spacetime, and at every point, we also have
seven curled dimensions.
We can make the long soda straw more like our universe by bending it so that the
two ends come together. Then the ant would be in a universe that is finite but
without ends in all directions, having one large and one small curled dimension.
The bug s large dimension curves so slightly that the bug never knows. Our four-d
imensional spacetime is similar to the bug s two-dimensional space. Gravity from a
ll the mass in our universe warps our space into a curve. Our universe is finite
and has no boundaries like the bug s straw.
Other branes may share our space but not be detectable. The rule for strings in
a brane is that open strings, strings with their ends free, cannot escape that b
rane. All strings with mass and all force strings, except the graviton, are open
. They are stuck inside their brane. There could be another brane, another unive
rse, just one mm from your nose and you would not know it. [Figure James and Que
d, photos] How can that be true?
We see and feel by receiving photons. However, their photons stick to their bran
e and ours stick on ours. Weak and strong forces are stuck in the same way. Sinc
e all the strings with mass are also stuck, we cannot signal them by throwing a
brick with a note tied on it. The only particle that crosses brane boundaries is
the graviton. Therefore, a nearby brane is invisible, undetectable, and intangi
ble. It may be as hard to prove there are other branes as it is to detect that a
ngry duck on your head.
Gravitons, the closed gravitational force strings, are different. They can leak
out of their brane. Some think this may be the reason that gravity is so much we
aker than the other forces. Our graviton particles leak away. Gravity is not onl
y weak. When masses are billions of light-years apart, gravity is even weaker th
an classical theory calculates. What could overcome the gravitational pull of ou
r universe? If there were another universe (brane) next to ours, then the mass i
n the nearby brane would attract our galaxies. Their gravitons leak into our bra
ne and pull on our galaxies. If gravitational waves exist and we knew how to mak
e them, they could be a signal. They are so weak, however, that many experiments
have failed to detect gravitational waves or gravitons from events as dramatic
as supernovas and colliding galaxies. Another explanation would be a force worki
ng opposite to gravity. This is the favored explanation. This is dark energy.
One possible way to start the Big Bang, the start of the universe, is by branes
colliding. String theorists struggle to understand branes because of these inter
esting possibilities.
String Break! With your thumb and finger, hold both ends of a whole, raw piece o
f spaghetti. This is a stiff string like the ones in string theory. Holding the
ends, slowly bend the spaghetti until it breaks. It almost always breaks into th
ree pieces not two. Try it again. Weird?
Look Through Walls with Axions
Axions are predicted uncharged strings, many times heavier than a proton. Axions
and photons of light convert into each other when they pass through a magnetic
field. To see [Figure axions magnets wall, illustration] through a wall, you nee
d a magnet on each side of the wall. Let light from an object shine through the
first magnetic field. Some of the photons convert to axions. Axions pass easily
through the wall in fact they can pass through miles of walls. As the axions go
through the magnet on the other side, some become light again allowing you to se
e an object through the wall. Several experimenters have tried this, but results
were not conclusive. Another experiment will use the Earth s magnetic field to se
e if sunlight converts to axions that then pass through the Earth and convert to
light again on the dark side. In other words, the experiment will try to see th
e sun through the Earth.
Supersymmetry
Many things have symmetry. Symmetry means you manipulate an object and what you
get is an object very similar to what you started with. If you look at a right-h
anded glove in a mirror, you see a left-handed glove. If you look at that image
in another mirror, it is back to looking right-handed. There is symmetry in natu
re, music, art, and mathematics. The universe is very symmetric. In fact, all ph
ysical symmetries that physicists can imagine do exist. In other words, the univ
erse is as symmetrical as it can be. Each physical symmetry results in a corresp
onding law of physics. This feels right and appeals to our sense of beauty.
Mathematicians discovered a brand new type of physical symmetry involving spinni
ng objects in a higher dimensional space. Physicists noticed that this symmetry
did not have a law. What do you think physicists did? Ignored it since they alre
ady had more math than they could solve? Decided it just did not apply to our un
iverse? Started looking for that symmetry in the world? Decided that the univers
e is still beautiful without that symmetry, so live with it? ? To guess the righ
t answer, you need to know about a strong belief many physicists have if it is not
forbidden, then it is allowed. If it could happen, then it does happen in natur
e. Physicists have found this to be true many times. One example was the predict
ion of anti-matter. Seventy years ago, some nuclear equations gave two answers,
negative electrons and positive electrons. Five years later, positrons, positive
electrons, appeared in tracks of cosmic rays. They were the first anti-matter d
iscovered. For the new spin symmetry, the argument is even stronger. The math of
spins allows this symmetry. To a physicist this symmetry must be real and exist
in nature. This is supersymmetry. Strings are now often called superstrings.
You have to be very confident in your theories and the order in the universe to
believe, that If it is not forbidden, it s allowed. Do not try to apply this belief
at home or school. It is a sure way to get into trouble.
Mom, can I have a candy bar?
No, dinner is in an hour.
She didn t say I couldn t have a chocolate cake. Yummy.
String theory first modeled strings that carry forces. To include strings with m
ass requires supersymmetry. This symmetry involves spin. Spin is a quantum prope
rty of elementary particles that resembles ordinary spin. Force strings have a w
hole number spin of 0, 1, or 2. Matter strings have spin . The halves are the jea
lous strings that will not allow another string of their kind in their energy le
vel. Supersymmetry means that every whole spin string has a half spin partner wi
th the same mass. If you do the supersymmetry spin transformation, you change th
e spin and a force string becomes a mass string or vice versa. The mass of the p
artners should be the same, but there are no elementary strings with the same ma
ss. If we were discussing the mirror reversal symmetry, this is as if we used a
mirror to change a left-handed glove to right handed, and instead it turned into
a shoe.
This is the problem with supersymmetry. The spins of the partner particles will
differ but their masses should be equal. However, no strings have the same mass.
None of the twelve elementary strings has a partner. What do you think physicis
ts did? Give up on the idea? Decide the supersymmetric strings exist but somethi
ng made them turn out heavy? Start working on super-duper-symmetry? ? You are ge
tting used to these questions. Somehow, one partner has become heavy. They are s
o heavy that we have not seen them because we do not have accelerators with high
enough energy to make them. Making heavy strings requires an accelerator with v
ery high energy. A particle accelerator, the LHC, in Switzerland may produce the
m. Experimental evidence for supersymmetry at this high-energy accelerator would
convince most physicists that string theory is the best model for nature.
String Break! Did you ever try to walk through a wall? Atoms are mostly empty sp
ace. Why can you not go through all that mostly empty space with your mostly emp
ty space? Electrons are jealous and do not allow another electron in their energ
y level. The wall electrons were there first and they have filled all available
energy levels. When you push on a wall, the solidness is because your electrons
cannot find an empty energy level. Your electrons are why you cannot get through
a wall. Wolfgang Pauli explained this behavior. He also once told one of his st
udents that his work was so bad that it s not even wrong.
DUALITY
Duality is a very peculiar symmetry of string theory equations. You thought supe
rsymmetry was strange enough. Here is a simple equation: R + B = C. Let us prete
nd C is some constant of the universe, like the speed of light. If R = 100 and B
= 2 , then C = 102. Now comes the mysterious part. If this was one of the funda
mental equations of string theory and R was a length (for example the size of th
e universe), then the string theory equation would still be true if we replace R
with 1/R. R is huge so 1/R, the reciprocal, is very small but the equation is s
till correct.
Do not try this substitution in algebra class because you will be wrong. Using o
ur original numerical values should convince you that our little equation does n
ot have duality symmetry. To do this with the numerical values replace R = 100 w
ith 1/R = 0.01, the equation is no longer true because C our constant of the uni
verse changes from 102 and becomes 2.01.
Duality means there is a newly discovered connection between the universe as a w
hole and the size scale of strings. The same equations hold. The string theory e
quations show this same behavior with the force strength constant. Duality symme
try may lead us to deeper levels of understanding. The universe is trying to tel
l us something. Large is like small and weak is like strong. The universe begins
small and strong, energy concentrated in a tiny point. Then comes the Big Bang
and the universe moves toward large and energy becomes dilute. Strangely, unders
tanding one extreme helps us understand the other.
All theories are a mix of facts that we use to make the theory fit reality, and
facts we find by using the theory. Which way is more impressive, changing the th
eory to fit many facts, or finding many facts by applying the theory? ? James an
d Courtney are doing two jigsaw puzzles of the universe. They both have an idea
of how the universe looks. She watches Star Trek and James watches the Hubble te
lescope. The puzzle pieces are facts and ideas about the universe. Both begin, a
nd soon Courtney is ahead. James notices that she is using scissors to trim the
pieces of the puzzle to make the pieces fit. James works the old-fashioned way.
James says, Courtney you re cheating.
I m not cheating. These scissors were with my puzzle. Qued left a note telling me I
wouldn t get far without them, says Courtney.
Courtney s puzzle looks messy with some big holes. The red pieces that represent r
elativity hardly ever touch the blue pieces of quantum mechanics. After a slow s
tart, James puzzle goes together faster, getting complex, more beautiful, and big
ger. There are only small holes. It roughly looks like a ying-yang symbol. Which
puzzle would you like to work? ?
Quantum mechanics works much like Courtney and her puzzle. It needs nineteen too
ls to trim the theory into a good fit. These are the nineteen constants needed t
o match mass, charge, force strengths and so on of the elementary particles. Str
ing theory needs only one constant, the stiffness of the string. Courtney s puzzle
gives a picture of the 20th century universe, and she has a big hole in the cen
ter. One side has something to do with relativity, the other quantum mechanics.
There are other holes. In James puzzle, quantum mechanics and relativity wrap aro
und each other and string theory wraps around both. String theory fills the hole
in the center. James has fewer, smaller holes. Courtney agrees that James pictur
e of the universe is more beautiful than hers is.
String theory can solve the puzzle of the universe. It has only one number to fi
t, yet relativity and quantum mechanics are part of it. That is amazing. It took
50 years to develop quantum mechanics and here string theory gives it free. Tha
t is one of string theory s greatest accomplishments. A theory has to agree with a
ll the old data of previous theories. Since relativity and quantum mechanics bot
h follow from string theory, agreement is certain. If we lived in weightlessness
, we would not know from experience that there was gravity, but using string the
ory we could conclude that there is a force of gravity and derive all of its pro
perties. This is true of all the other forces. That is a big part of the evidenc
e that string theory is a correct theory of everything.
String theory can do everything and explain everything that physicists have lear
ned in the last hundred years. Should we burn all physics books and cancel our s
ubscriptions to Scientific American? Do we stop putting billions of Euros into t
unnels in Switzerland? Do we re-train physicists as school bus drivers? ? Workin
g out the details and applications of string theory could take hundreds of years
. Maxwell s equations are 150 years old, and they still provide many new practical
applications. You are stuck with your school bus driver.
The whole of relativity and 20th century physics follows naturally from string t
heory. Do you remember Courtney and the missing paper? Explaining the universe w
ith only one constant is harder than getting a one-sentence explanation from Cou
rtney. The agreement of string theory with previous work is only a start. Physic
ists require a theory to predict new phenomena. Otherwise, it is only making exp
lanations after the fact. Courtney was very good at that. String theory will som
etimes be confusing, like quantum mechanics. It still has all the craziness of q
uantum mechanics chunkiness, fuzziness, and the observer affecting reality. It i
s still controversial. It does a lot, but you have to accept a lot on faith. Wha
t you must accept does not make sense and has not been tested.
Problems with String Theory
Explaining gravity and the whole mess of elementary particles was great. Further
progress for the last 20 years has been difficult. If you are beginning to unde
rstand science, you must be wondering where the predictions are. What experiment
s confirm string theory? For example, how closely can string theory calculate th
e mass of the electron from properties of the hidden spaces and the equations of
string theory? That is the problem. String theory is the way to determine eleme
ntary particles properties, but there are several hard problems to solve. First,
physicists do not even know the complete set of equations. Second, some of the
equations have not been solved except approximately. Third, we do not know the e
xact shape of the hidden dimensions.
To calculate the properties of elementary particles, you need to know which of t
he possible curled hidden dimensional spaces our space is. If you know the corre
ct space, you next have to find all the different ways that vibrating strings ca
n wind around and through it. The curled space will have three holes, since we h
ave three families of strings. Finally, you calculate all the different ways str
ings can vibrate. There are actually an infinite number of ways, but only the lo
west energy modes will be stable and have low enough mass to exist in the world.
Some interpret the fact that we do not know the shape of the hidden dimensions t
o mean string theory is too generous. It can predict almost any kind of universe
. If atoms were ten times as big as they are, you could make a few changes in th
e curled dimensions and string theory would agree. If you wanted the elementary
particles to have only 1% of the weight they have, again a few changes in the hi
dden dimensions and string theory would agree. Physicists need something that ca
n correct string theory s ability to agree with crazy versions of the universe tha
t do not exist. They want it to agree with our crazy universe.
It will take years to derive and solve the correct equations but then the crucia
l missing information is the size and shape of our curled dimensions. It is not
clear how to solve that problem.
WHAT S IN YOUR VACUUM?
Atoms, the solar system, the Milky Way, and even the universe are mostly empty s
pace, vacuum. The vacuum is a problem for string theory. Quantum mechanics found
that the vacuum is no longer a lot of nothing. It s more like a mosh pit where ki
ds throw each other up in the air. There is a better example. It is like a pot o
f oatmeal with raisins and split peas boiling on the stove. Splat! A raison anti
-raison pair jumps out. Blop! Pea pairs fly up in a puff of steam. Then they fal
l back in. [Figure James vacuum oatmeal, drawing/illustration] This food flying o
ut of the pot is like the virtual strings popping out of the vacuum. If you coul
d see strings, you would see string anti-string pairs constantly appearing and d
isappearing back into the vacuum. The virtual strings popping out of the vacuum
are real. They strongly affect particle behavior. Strings pop out of the vacuum
because the vacuum contains energy. Quantum fluctuations of the energy in small
regions of space produce virtual particles.
Quantum mechanics deals with probabilities. When strings interact, all sorts of
variations are possible involving one or more virtual strings appearing during t
he interaction. To get the right answer you must consider all possible interacti
ons and add them together. Those with many virtual strings are less likely than
the simpler ones. The answer gets better as more complications are included. Vir
tual strings change the interactions between real strings. The real strings can
pass them back and forth. A string might decay into other strings or produce sev
eral virtual strings. Considering more variations makes the quantum mechanics ca
lculations more accurate.
A very simple experiment verified that the vacuum is gushing with particle anti-
particle pairs. When two metal plates are moved close together, there is an unex
plained force trying to move the plates even closer. The force happens because e
ach plate s inner surface is partially shielded from the virtual particles. The st
rength of the force by quantum mechanics is correct when including virtual parti
cles.
String theory allows many different energies for the vacuum. A real fundamental
theory of everything should predict the vacuum energy. Higher energy is like tur
ning up the heat under our oatmeal. Depending on the setting, our kitchen and th
e universe can be very different. Vacuum energy and shape of the hidden dimensio
ns are connected. You do not want to have to scrape oatmeal off the ceiling. Str
ing theory does not give a clue to what vacuum energy is correct. The result is
that string theory can describe many very strange universes besides our own.
PHYSICISTS DISAGREE
Another problem is that no one can ever observe strings. An accelerator would ha
ve to be the size of the Milky Way to slam things together hard enough to make s
trings. The Klingons would never let it cross their territory.
It gets worse. So far, physicist cannot test any prediction of string theory. Th
ousands of physicists work hard on this problem. One important prediction is sup
ersymmetry, which pairs up force and mass particles. New particles are required
to do this, but none has been found.
Physicists often disagree. They check the assumptions, techniques, and conclusio
ns of every new theory. They repeat experiments and math. String theory has not
made a testable prediction. It requires belief in strange ideas: seven hidden di
mensions, a doubling of the number of strings by supersymmetry, and almost an in
finite number of bizarre universes. This is because there is no handle on the sh
ape of our curly dimensions and the energy of the vacuum. There is a barrage of
books, lectures, and blogs for and against string theory and string theorists. S
ome bloggers think string theory has religious significance. Compared to other p
hysics controversies, this is like the War of the Worlds. Here are some excerpts
from the Not Even Wrong blog of Peter Woit along with some [explanations in bra
ckets].
From the Not Even Wrong Blog of Peter Woit
? String theorists try to solve non-existent problems and propose absurd scenarios
. They are wasting their time and ours by working on made up problems instead of
the real ones.
? It s difficult to figure out whether certain ideas in these papers were proposed s
eriously or as a satire [mean kind of humor]. The papers usually disagree with e
ach other in details because they draw different boundaries between serious stat
ements and jokes [Your papers are a joke and string theorists cannot even agree
on what is funny].
? Most farmers, drivers, and supermodels realize that there is a difference betwee
n the future and the past. [Implying string theorists do not and that they are n
ot as smart as supermodels].
These comments are funny, but show there are loud opponents to string theory. Th
ere is more emotion around string theory than other theory. The arguments are lo
uder. Because of the Internet, they are more public than before. At school, ther
e are the cool kids and everyone else. In physics, it has been cool to be a stri
ng theorist.
Get Down Look Around String Theory
We have been looking at string theory the way someone in a skyscraper looks over
a city. We ve seen some of the big buildings and highways, but none of the detail
s. You cannot know a city very well from 100 stories up. To know string theory r
eally well takes six years of studying math after high school. Much of string th
eory is hard to explain in words but easy to explain in math, if you do not coun
t the six years. We can look at a small piece of real, current string theory res
earch. Below is an excerpt from a current research article. It gives an idea of
how complicated string theory is. The article discusses long, heavy cosmic strin
gs that may have formed during the Big Bang. Cosmic strings are the opposite of
the tiny almost massless strings that replace elementary particles. They would b
e light-years long, and contain the mass of many stars. If cosmic strings intera
ct, they emit radiation, other kinds of strings. The paper calculates what this
radiation might be like.
We know many physicists disagree with string theory, and cosmic strings are only
a possibility if string theory is correct. So why would these three Russian phy
sicists figure out how these maybe strings interact and maybe make radiation? ?
This is an important part of science, filling in all the details. Physicists dig
through all aspects of possible ideas to see if they can find something that de
finitely says strings exist and have these properties or they do not. The box be
low is a part of a paper published electronically at the end of 2006. Look it ov
er and you will agree that string theory is complicated.
Even the title, Dilaton and Axion Bremsstrahlung from Collisions of Cosmic (Super
) Strings needs some explanation. Axions and dilatons are unverified string vibra
tions. Both relate to gravity. Axions are heavy strings without charge that may
be important in cosmology. Bremsstrahlung is German for braking radiation produc
ed if cosmic strings collide. Your brakes get hot when you slow down. Therefore,
bremsstrahlung for your bicycle or car is heat, infrared radiation. The article
is typical, showing that mathematics and English are the universal languages of
scientists. The last equation is the equation of motion for strings. In our hum
an sized world, the equation of motion is just F = ma; force equals mass times a
cceleration.
Dilaton and Axion Bremsstrahlung from Collisions of Cosmic (Super) Strings
arXiv: hep-th (0612271v1 26 Dec 2006 E Yu Melkumova1, D V Gal tsov2 and K Salehi3
Department of Physics, Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia. Full article at
arxiv.org/pdf/hep-th/0612271
String Theory Summary
In string theory, all elementary particles are tiny vibrating strings. They vibr
ate in ten spatial dimensions instead of the three we know. Each elementary part
icle including force particles are a particular mode of vibration of a string in
this space. Consequently, string makes everything. Since strings are as small a
s anything can be, they cannot have any internal parts and we have found the mos
t basic thing in the universe.
If you start with string theory, you can derive quantum mechanics and relativity
. After 100 years, quantum mechanics and relativity are compatible. Strings are
small but not zero sized so string theory does not give the infinite results fou
nd in quantum mechanics. Quantum mechanics calculations say the mass of a partic
le is as much as that of a Buick. String theory also solves the problem quantum
mechanics has with gravity. It naturally has the graviton, force particle for gr
avity. Gravity becomes just another force and the forces are united (explained i
n one way) as vibrations of strings. Supersymmetry predicts that there are heavy
partner strings to all the twelve strings we know. The Large Hadron Collider ma
y have enough energy to make them.
String theorists are working to define the shape of the hidden dimensions, and d
etermine the energy of the vacuum. Without this information, string theory can d
escribes all kinds of crazy universes. Some have more forces; others turn quickl
y to black holes. Probing the hidden dimensions with elementary particles requir
es higher energies than we can imagine. Nothing yet points to one set of curly d
imension or universe being ours. This makes some physicists speculate that there
actually are many universes. Remember if it is not forbidden, it s allowed.
Physicists and mathematicians are making progress in discovering and solving the
string equations. A possible source of confirmation of string theory is the fie
ld of cosmology, study of the universe.
Cosmology Mom, Where d You Put My Universe
Cosmology is the study of the universe, not a small part like an atom, or a big
piece like the Earth, but the whole thing. The most striking thing about the uni
verse is that it is mostly empty space. There is a lot of space between the star
s and even more between galaxies. Even on the atomic and sub-atomic scales, we f
ound next to nothing and a whole lot of empty space. The only size scale where t
he universe looks full is our size scale. Our size scale is full of ants, rocks,
trees, buildings, cars and so on. We are at the best size to enjoy a complex, i
nteresting local environment. Being human sized does, however, make it hard to s
tudy the universe since it is 10+26 times bigger than we are. It also makes it h
ard to study strings, which are 10-35 times smaller than we are.
The most basic question about the universe is why there is anything. That answer
is beyond our understanding and may always be. Cosmology does answer related qu
estions. Does the universe change? If it does, is there a beginning and an end?
Fifty years ago, many astronomers thought the universe was unchanging, always wa
s, and always will be. Now we know that 13.7 billion years ago there was no univ
erse, as we know it. Then tremendous energy and matter was concentrated in a poi
nt. We know there was a gigantic explosion called the Big Bang. It shot out all
of the matter and energy at high speed. The universe is expanding still. Even th
ough the Big Bang was a unique event at the far beginning of time, nuclear physi
cs correctly calculates the mix of elements found in the early universe.
Cosmology has discovered two new puzzles, dark energy, and dark matter. String t
heory may solve these puzzles. It affects cosmology in other ways and cosmology
may verify string theory.
Scientific Creation Story The Big Bang
It began 13.7 billion years ago. That we know for sure. The usual assumption is
that the universe was just vacuum. Maybe all that existed was a single point. Al
l eleven dimensions were tightly curled up. All of space was the size of the tin
y curled dimensions. Matter did not exist. Then this tiny region of vacuum fille
d with massive amounts of energy and about a bowling ball weight of matter. It e
xploded. This was the Big Bang.
There is no agreement on where the initial matter and energy came from. One idea
is that we are experiencing part of an everlasting cycle in a universe that exi
sted before the Big Bang. We do know that it starts at a super high temperature
of 10+32 or one hundred quadrillion quadrillion degrees. The forces we know blen
ded into one single force.
At 10-45 seconds, an almost unimaginably short time, the eleven dimensions split
into two groups. A group of four expanded rapidly becoming spacetime. The other
seven stayed curled up as the miniature extra dimensions of string theory. Ther
e were small density and temperature fluctuations caused by quantum uncertainty.
These froze in place while the universe grew rapidly to the size of a ball. Thi
s was the big burp, called inflation. Space expanded so rapidly that the speed w
as greater than the speed of light. This is not a violation of relativity becaus
e relativity does not set limits on how fast space expands. It limits how fast m
atter can move.
The fireball cooled and expanded as energy converted to super heavy exotic strin
gs, which we will never see on Earth. It then became a soup of gluons and quarks
. It was not until 10-6 seconds, a millionth of a second, that protons and neutr
ons formed. By one second, neutrons and protons were able to start sticking toge
ther by nuclear fusion producing deuterium, helium, and lithium, the lightest el
ements. Even though the universe was hotter than the interior of a star, it was
pitch black everywhere. Electrons changing orbit produce light, but it was still
too hot for electrons to stay in orbit around atoms. Other particles would knoc
k them free. Whew, that was a lot happening in one second.
At three minutes, the amounts of the lightest elements stopped increasing becaus
e the universe had cooled too much for fusion to continue. The calculated concen
tration of the lightweight elements matches that observed in the early universe.
The universe kept cooling and expanding. The next big event was at 300,000 year
s. The temperature dropped below 3000 degrees K. This is cool enough for electro
ns to start circling atoms. When that happened, the universe was no longer dark.
The electrons jumped into different orbits and emitted light.
Evolution of the Universe after the Big Bang
Event Description Time
Start A point containing matter and vast amounts of energy 0.0
Inflation Nearly instantaneous expansion to golf ball size 10-37 seconds
Gluons Gluon and quark soup forms < 10-6 seconds
Nucleons Cool enough for protons and neutrons to form 10-6 seconds
Fusion Nucleons stick together making heavier elements 1 second
Fusion ends The fireball temperature is less than the sun s temperature 3 minutes
Light Electrons attach to nuclei and emit first light 300,000 years
Stars Gravity concentrates matter to form stars 10+8 years
Galaxies Stars attract each other into galaxies 10+9 years
Earth Dust and gases in the solar system form the Earth 4.5 billion years ago
Life on Earth Very primitive organisms form 3.5 billion years ago
Humans Our ancestors appear in Africa 100,000 years ago
The material from the Big Bang kept expanding. The combination of quantum fluctu
ation lumps and inflation work to give the distribution of matter that we observ
e in the universe. Gravity made the lumps get bigger, forming stars, galaxies, a
nd superclusters of galaxies.
Fusion in stars produced the heavier elements like silicon, oxygen, nitrogen, an
d iron. These elements were then available to make rocky iron cored planets foun
d around later generations of stars. Our sun is one of those stars. Earth formed
4.5 billion years ago. The first life developed after a billion years. Life con
tinued to evolve. Now it is incredibly diverse and found almost everywhere. Huma
ns have been around for only 100,000 years.
This is very different from the creation stories at the start of this book. It f
ollows from observations. Thousands of scientists participated. Scientists check
ed and criticized results of other scientists. Who was taking data 13.7 billion
years ago? We are. Can you guess how we are seeing the early universe? ? The lig
ht we see from the most distant galaxies started on the way to us 13 billion yea
rs ago and shows us what things were like then. The cosmic microwave background
tells us what the universe was like 300,000 years after the Big Bang when light
first was able to escape from the fireball. The ancient creation stories filled
our need for answers when no other answers were available.
Goofer says to Qued, What up, Quedman? I ve been wondering. Where did the Big Bang
happen? I want to go there to see if there s any rad stuff left hanging on the tre
es. You know, stuff I can sell to buy a motorcycle.
Goofer, the Big Bang happened everywhere. It even happened in your toilet.
That s soooo far out. Who was sitting on it?
Qued replied, At the Big Bang all of space, the whole universe, was a tiny ball s
maller than an electron. That space expanded explosively and is still expanding.
 Therefore, every bit of space, matter, and energy in your universe was in the B
ig Bang. Since everything was this point, the Big Bang happened everywhere. This
is similar to why the universe seems to be expanding from every point in space.
Space itself expands as the universe grows.
Whoa Quedball, too much info. You re always good for a couple of Gigs more than my
input buffer can hold. All I know is I m going to sit on the pot very carefully.
You can still listen to and even see the Big Bang on TV. The Big Bang filled the
universe with bright light. Most of the light kept flying across space. Since t
hen, the universe has expanded many, many times and that visible light stretched
with the universe to longer wavelengths, becoming microwaves. TV s detect microwa
ves. If you turn on your analog TV in between stations, you hear static. Some st
atic is from our machines and electronics but most is from outer space from the
Big Bang. If you do not have an analog TV, listen to the Big Bang on your AM rad
io. The static comes from all directions.
This is the cosmic microwave background. It is what is left of the flash from th
e Big Bang. Several satellites have accurately mapped the microwave background.
At first, it looked uniform. With better detectors, the satellites found small c
hanges in intensity corresponding to the quantum fluctuations.
Tools of Astronomy
How do we know there was a Big Bang? All astronomers have to work with is the fe
eble light from the stars. They have great tools to measure and analyze it. Ther
e are huge telescopes, including the orbiting Hubble telescope. They found that
supernovas, stars blowing up, are all about the same brightness. Now if they fin
d a distant supernova in another galaxy, from its brightness, they can tell how
far away its galaxy is. You do the same thing when you guess how far away a fire
fly is by how bright it is. Dim ones are far away. Astronomers can map much of t
he universe because supernovas are bright and happen often. To go further, to th
e edge of the universe, they needed something brighter, quasars. Quasars are you
ng galaxies wrapped around super-sized black holes. Would you like a super-sized
black hole with that order of fries? Quasars also have nearly equal brightness.
They are the brightest objects in the universe since the Big Bang. If a quasar
were 30 light-years away from us, it would be brighter than the sun. The sun is
light-minutes away. By comparison, Sirius, the brightest star is only nine light
years away.
Supernovas and quasars are the astronomer s fireflies. They carefully measure thei
r brightness to find the distances to everything they see. Even though light tra
vels very fast, the universe is so big that it takes nine years for light to rea
ch us from Sirius. The distance light travels in a year is a light year. When we
observe that star, we are looking nine years into the past. Some quasars are 13
billion light-years away. The light getting to us now, left soon after the Big
Bang.
Besides brightness, it is easy to check the color of star light. Remember from r
elativity that if a star is moving toward you it looks bluer. If it is moving aw
ay, it is redder. Astronomers determine the color very accurately by spreading t
he light into all its colors, as a prism does. The amount of the color change gi
ves the speed of the star. The result of looking at millions of galaxies is that
all of the galaxies are red shifted. They are moving away from us. The further
away they are, the faster they are moving away.
Oh no! Does this mean we are back at the center of the universe? No. If you blow
up a spotted balloon, every spot moves away from every other. The distance a sp
ot moves away is larger if it starts further away. If you do not have a balloon,
you can put equal spaced spots on a rubber band. Take a piece of lined paper. M
ark the locations of the spots onto the paper. Stretch the rubber band perpendic
ular to the lines so the lines can tell you how much a spot moved and its separa
tion. You will find that the separation between spots has increased. Space, the
rubber band, has expanded. The amount spots move away from one end of the rubber
band is most for the spots furthest away from that end. If you cannot imagine t
his kind of expansion of a three-dimensional space, you are not alone. Space is
expanding in three directions, like the rubber band expands in one direction. Al
l parts of space are moving away from all other parts. There is no center of the
expansion. The expansion of the universe is the best evidence for the Big Bang.
Astronomers on another galaxy are also seeing red shifts. They find we are movi
ng away from them at the same speed as they are moving away from us. Confused? ?
You may have to take a good look at your polka dot balloon or rubber band.
Another piece of evidence for the Big Bang is deuterium. The hydrogen atom is an
electron circling around a proton. The strong force can bind a neutron to a pro
ton by gluons carrier of the strong force. With an electron orbiting the pair, w
e get a deuterium atom. Deuterium is all over the universe, but stars are not ho
t enough to make deuterium. Only the Big Bang can.
The Hubble telescope has produced enough scans to put together a picture of the
whole universe. A good model of the universe is a pile of soap bubbles, all diff
erent sizes. The air in the bubbles represents empty space. The stars, galaxies,
and galactic clusters are the soapy liquid. The soapy liquid wiggles through th
e empty space sometimes thick and sometimes thin. Some of the bubble walls are t
hick like the occasional walls of galaxies in the universe. The Milky Way is par
t of the Virgo cluster. The largest super cluster is the Great Wall, which reach
es one-tenth the way across the universe. That is also the size of the largest h
ole, nearly empty region, of the universe.
Black Holes
Relativity predicted black holes. They happen whenever a heavy sun runs out of n
uclear fuel. Then there is nothing to prevent gravity from squashing all of the
sun into a small space, a black hole. They are black because gravity near the ho
le is so strong that nothing can escape, not even light. The escape velocity fro
m a black hole is greater than the speed of light. Black holes are invisible. As
tronomers detect black holes by the emissions of matter pulled into the hole. It
is superheated and shines brightly.
At first, people thought this was a just a mathematical mistake. Now, we know th
at most galaxies have black holes. The center of the Milky Way has a very large
black hole. Intense black hole gravity sucks in any nearby matter making the bla
ck hole larger and its gravity even stronger. In billions of years, most of the
Milky Way will end up in the black hole. Growing larger is what black holes do b
est. Their gravity sucks nearby mass into the hole making its gravity and size i
ncrease.
Black holes can also be lightweight and very small, the size of an atom. Maybe t
he new LHC accelerator will have enough energy to make miniature black holes. Wo
uld the Earth end up sucked into the miniature black hole? Should we stop work o
n the large LHC accelerator? Stephen Hawking, a physicist paralyzed with ALS, wo
rks on black hole theory. He found that black holes are not totally black. Remem
ber virtual strings? They form everywhere including at the edge of black holes.
Sometimes only one string of the pair falls back into the hole and the other esc
apes. This makes black holes hairy. These escaping strings of weak radiation, th
e hair, make black holes directly visible. Large black holes radiate very weakly
but subatomic black holes radiate intensely. This radiation energy has to come
from the black hole by converting its mass into energy. Therefore, a subatomic b
lack hole evaporates quickly. The LHC will not create a black hole that can gobb
le the Earth, if Hawking s theory is correct.
If a black hole is rapidly spinning, then instead of a hole, it can form a black
ring. This can only happen if there are hidden dimensions. Finding a black ring
would confirm string theory. Astronomers have not found one.
Black holes challenge theory because mass in a black hole should compress into a
point at their center. That point would have infinite density. Infinity means a
big mistake. String theory to the rescue. Most physicists believe calculations
that show a string is the smallest possible object in the universe. So one massi
ve string could be at the center of every black hole. It would be very dense, bu
t it not infinite.
In some ways, black holes behave like elementary particles. The characteristics
of both are their mass, spin, and charge. There is a deeper connection through s
tring theory. String theory can model certain kinds of black holes. String theor
y shows that combining branes in the right way creates a black hole. String theo
ry implies that black hole centers do not get smaller than a string. The extreme
conditions in the center of a black hole drastically affect the curled dimensio
ns. In fact, some believe that if the curled up dimensions compressed to a point
in a black hole, the universe would end. It was not hard to decide that string
theory is correct that black holes do not collapse to a point. We are all still
here and the universe has many black holes.
Ice, water, and steam are the three phases of water. Some theorists propose that
black holes are related to elementary particles in the same way ice is related
to water, a change of phase. Temperature determines the phase of water. The shap
e of the curled dimensions inside an object determines if it is a black hole or
an elementary particle.
The biggest accomplishment of string theory of black holes is that it correctly
gives their entropy and the change in entropy caused by matter falling into a bl
ack hole. Entropy is a mathematical way to measure randomness. Entropy always in
creases. This was puzzling applied to black holes because they seem very non-mes
sy, non-random. Our mental picture of a black hole is a neat blacker than black
sphere. If black holes were all that neat then a basic law of physics would be v
iolated. The entropy of the universe would go down whenever anything fell into a
black hole. All processes have to make the universe more random and messier. Th
is makes the universe have higher entropy. An analysis of black holes using stri
ng theory gave the correct entropy and verified that the entropy of the whole un
iverse always goes up.
Dark Matter
If the universe is heavy enough, gravity will eventually slow the galaxies, stop
them, and pull them back together. This is just like throwing a ball straight u
p. Earth s gravity pulls down any object moving up at less than the escape velocit
y, 25,000 mph. If we could throw that fast, the ball would continue rising and l
eave the Earth. If we were in space, standing on a small meteor, a boulder, we w
ould not have to throw so hard. The boulder would not have enough mass to pull t
he ball back after we throw it. The escape velocity of a boulder is low.
The universe also has an escape velocity. The escape velocity for the universe d
epends on how heavy it is. If the universe is heavy enough, the galaxies will sl
ow and reverse. The movement back together would continue until all matter is ba
ck again in a gigantic black hole. It is the big crunch. This made astronomers e
stimate the weight of all the matter in the universe to see if there was enough
to turn around the galaxies. They calculated the weight using Newton s equations.
Thirty years ago, the calculated weight of the universe was not enough to pull t
he galaxies back in. The galaxies would continue moving away from each other for
ever. That result has changed.
Astronomers have known for thirty years that there was something wrong with our
Milky Way galaxy. Big telescopes located the stars, dust clouds, and even the bl
ack hole at the center. They knew the stars far from the center would move much
slower than the ones closer to the center. The planets move this same way. Howev
er, they found that the distant stars in the Milky Way are moving faster. This i
s a major embarrassment. From these results, galaxies could never form, and the
Milky Way should fly apart. They then looked at the behavior of clusters of gala
xies. Astronomers measured their motions and positions. They also were moving to
o fast. This was a calculation that even a freshman college student could make.
The only explanation is that there is a lot more matter that we cannot see in th
e galaxies and clusters of galaxies. That matter does not emit light. To us it i
s invisible dark matter. Yes, this sounds silly, but remember, astronomers have
been thinking about this for 30 years. Sometimes when the good explanations do n
ot work, you have to get silly.
With this idea, astronomers analyzed how much dark matter would make the galaxie
s behave as they do. They conclude that there is five times as much dark matter
as normal matter. It seems to collect in the outer edges of galaxies. Most is in
the largest structures in the universe, the clusters of galaxies. Normal dark t
hings like black holes, neutron stars, rocks, dust, burned out stars, and lost p
lanets may account for a few percent of the dark matter. Astronomers started tal
king about WIMPS, Weakly Interacting Massive Particles that no one has seen. No
joke, WIMPS. (You cannot make this stuff up.) Radioactive decay produces neutrin
os. They appear to have no mass. Maybe they have just a little and collect aroun
d the galaxies. Other possible sources of dark matter come from string theory. S
upersymmetry predicts heavy versions of all the strings we already know. The hea
vy neutralinos, the supersymmetric partner of the neutrino, should behave like a
heavy neutrino and could make up dark matter. Another particle from string theo
ry, axions, might make up part of dark matter. The LHC accelerator may be able t
o produce both. Cosmic strings, heavy strings from the Big Bang, are also a poss
ibility. We can only guess what dark matter is. What do you guess? ? Maybe it is
that stack of turtles.
Dark Energy
With dark matter, the universe has enough gravitational pull to slow and turn ar
ound the galaxies. Before you go outside to look for blue, falling galaxies, the
re is one more thing. A strange new thing, first suspected in the 1990s, is dark
energy. After the Big Bang, matter exploded into the universe. Adding in the da
rk matter makes the universe heavy enough to turn around the galaxies. Therefore
, distant galaxies, right now, should be slowing down. Surprise. Galaxies are sp
eeding up. Physicists are guessing how this can happen. ? Gravity could become r
epulsive at great distances. Maybe some other unknown repulsive force, like a pr
essure, pushes matter away, expanding the universe. Since the electromagnetic fo
rce is so much stronger than gravity, it would not take much charge to push the
galaxies apart. The equations of physics are symmetrical to sign of charge. Ther
efore, the universe should be electrically neutral. Einstein had a constant in h
is equation for gravity that produces a repulsive force. He put it in because ev
eryone at that time thought that the universe was eternal. He adjusted the const
ant so that the universe would continue expanding slowly forever.
This is dark energy. None of these explanations makes astronomers happy. They ar
e embarrassed to realize that all these years they only were aware of 5% of the
universe. If the dark energy were converted to matter using E = mc2, then there
would be three times as much matter from dark energy than from normal matter. Da
rk energy connects with string theory. It comes from the energy of the vacuum. I
f string theory is to become the theory of everything, it should predict the amo
unt of dark energy and dark matter, and explain why it is there. The dark energy
appears to be very small and positive.
A nice property of supersymmetry is that it predicts near zero vacuum energy. Th
at agrees with our universe. If string theory calculates the correct vacuum ener
gy and supersymmetric strings appear, it would be a strong confirmation of strin
g theory. This would explain dark energy and dark matter.
Speculations
While most high-energy physicists research and debate string theory, some have g
one on to ideas that are more controversial. Some of these ideas are at the fron
tiers of scientific thought. They are partly philosophical and perhaps outside t
he realm of science. Because of that, many are difficult to understand. These id
eas may or may not end up being accepted.
Cosmic Strings
Besides possibly explaining dark energy and dark matter, string theory can affec
t cosmology in other ways. A cosmic string would be a gigantic, super heavy stri
ng that may be light-years long but only the width of a proton. They may have fo
rmed at the beginning of the Big Bang, when the state of the fireball was rapidl
y changing. They arise from a kind of phase change similar to the cracks made wh
en water freezes. Cosmic strings would form when the Big Bang cools.
The sun s gravity bends light rays if their path lies close to the sun. This was t
he discovery that confirmed relativity. The same bending happens in deep space i
f a light ray from a distant star passes near a heavy galaxy. The star light ben
ds slightly blurring or even doubling the image of the star. A cosmic string wou
ld be heavy enough to bend the light of distant stars if the light passes near t
he cosmic string. This is a gravitational lens. Astronomers know many. If a dist
ant galaxy, a cosmic string, and Earth were exactly in a line, the cosmic string s
gravity would also split the image of the distant galaxy into what would look l
ike two blurry galaxies. [Figure cosmic line up, illustration] These distorted i
mages do not last forever because the stars, galaxies, and cosmic strings are mo
ving relative to each other and get out of alignment. Since cosmic strings would
be so thin, the distorted images they would produce will last for a very short
time. If a double image quickly disappears, that would be proof that a thin cosm
ic string passed between Earth and the distant galaxy. When galaxies cause lensi
ng, the lens is long lasting since galaxies are much wider. Several astronomers
report examples of this kind of cosmic string lensing. They have to be confirmed
by other observers.
Cosmic strings would look like irregular lace covering the fireball just after t
he Big Bang. Super clusters of galaxies also look a lot like lace. The lace of c
osmic strings, soon after the Big Bang, may have provided the starting point for
today s super clusters.
What Is Space?
This is the first time in history that we can ask such a fundamental question. W
e tend to believe space is constant. In classical physics, space and time never
changed. They were the frame in which we hung our picture of reality. When a pic
ture is interesting, no one notices the frame. Scientists did not notice space a
nd time. We cannot ignore space and time anymore. Spacetime now is complicated.
Einstein joined space and time together by special relativity. General relativit
y showed that mass warps spacetime. Quantum mechanics showed that empty space is
not empty; virtual strings continuously pop into and out of existence. Empty sp
ace is full of energy.
In addition, string theory says space has seven tightly curled hidden dimensions
. Having more dimensions makes for more questions. Why did only three space dime
nsions and time become large? What would the world be like with more large dimen
sions?
Some physicists speculate that empty space may be full of strings. In quantum me
chanics, the theoretical Higgs particle gives elementary particles their mass. P
ushing through strings could be the reason elementary strings have mass. It take
s some force to push the space strings out of the way just as it also takes some
force to move through a crowd.
Our ideas about space could also be out of date because of quantum entanglement.
Entangled particles respond to each other as if there were no space in between.
We now know that matter bends space. Can space distort in ways that are more dr
amatic? Can it tear, form holes and reattach?
Theoretical physicists are studying all of these ideas. There is no agreement on
answers to these questions about space. This work is very important and there i
s an expectation that explanations would help the development of string theory.
String theory claims that all the properties of the forces and elementary partic
les are the result of one kind of string vibrating different ways in a ten-dimen
sional space.
Wormholes
Wormholes have moved out of science fiction and into physics. These are distorti
ons and tears of spacetime that could allow for travel faster than light, or eve
n travel through time. Astronomers believe there is intelligent life on thousand
s of stars of the Milky Way. They are likely to be so far away that it would tak
e many lifetimes to travel to their star. The speed of light is the absolute spe
ed limit for anything moving in the universe. Therefore, without wormholes, we p
robably never will meet an alien. Wormholes have been in science fiction for 50
years and now one or two serious physics papers appear every month discussing wo
rmholes.
You can make a model of a wormhole from a large piece of balloon. Fix the corner
s of the balloon then push up from the underside, bend your finger, and touch th
e balloon surface with the tip of your finger. That loop is almost a wormhole. T
he last step, which is nearly impossible, is to cut a hole at your fingertip and
a similar hole in the balloon. Join the edges together and you have a wormhole.
This is similar to a hollow handle of a pitcher. [Figure wormhole, illustration
] To make a real wormhole, the same stretch, distortion, tear, and reconnection
would happen to spacetime itself. No one has shown that this is possible. When y
ou move through a wormhole, you end up suddenly in another part of spacetime. If
wormholes exist, they could be pathways through time as well as space. A black
hole distorts space most powerfully.
Time travel generates possible paradoxes. For example, you could go back in time
and do something that would prevent your using a time machine. Even more dramat
ic you could do something that prevents your ever being born. What would happen
then? ?
Loop Quantum Gravity
Loop quantum gravity is a new theory in competition with string theory. It is no
where near being a theory of everything as is string theory, but it does have so
me interesting features. In the sub-atomic world, everything is chunky and quant
ized. Why not space and time? ? We think both are smooth. However, at a very sma
ll scale, could they be chunky without our knowing it? Physicists have a guess o
f the size of these quanta. To match well to quantum mechanics, space would have
a length quantum of 10-35 meters. You might remember that this is the length of
a string. Time quanta would be 10-47 seconds. One followed by 47 zeros, or put
another way, it would take one hundred quadrillion quadrillion quadrillion time
quanta to make just one second. At the speed of light, it takes a quantum of tim
e to travel a quantum of length.
Like string theory, loop quantum gravity makes quantum mechanics compatible with
gravity. It also solves the black hole shrinking to a point. The conditions in
a black hole are extreme. However, if the radius goes to zero; the gravitational
force and density become infinite. Does that sound familiar? String theory solv
ed problems of zero radius and infinity for quantum mechanics. The solution was
to replace zero radius particles with something incredibly small but not zero, a
string. Loop quantum does a similar thing by replacing continuous space with sp
ace quanta. It also limits the amount of energy and mass that a space quantum ca
n contain. Therefore, chunks of space in a black hole would fill until stuffed a
nd then other space quanta would fill. These space quanta would also generate a
strong repulsive force. This would prevent formation of a point with all the mat
ter of the black hole. It is possible this would result in the big bounce.
What Is Time?
Time may be the biggest mystery. What is time? Why is there time? How can time b
e so different from space dimensions and still be tangled up with them by relati
vity? Why do we know the past but not the future? Did time have a beginning? Wil
l it end? Does time change smoothly or is there a smallest unit of time like the
tick of a clock? Can there be a universe without time? If you have ideas about
these questions, then you are doing better than most physicists are. Physicists
use time in all their work, but infrequently think about these basic questions.
Physics equations are all valid with time running backwards.
String theory gives new ideas about time. String theory and loop quantum gravity
imply there is a smallest unit of time 10-47 seconds, the time it takes light t
o travel the length of a string. Perhaps space and time start with the Big Bang.
Perhaps they did not. If something caused the Big Bang, then there had to be ti
me before the Big Bang. A collision of branes can start the Big Bang.
Maybe the universe endlessly repeats a cycle of Big Bang, and then expansion fol
lowed by contraction resulting in all the galaxies falling inward. They soon wou
ld form a giant black hole. That is the big crunch. This is where we have to spe
culate. What if something reverses the big crunch like gravity reversed the expa
nsion? We then get the big bounce, which could look like another Big Bang, and t
his cycle could repeat forever. String theory can cause the big bounce by limiti
ng the black hole to the size of a string. Calculations then show that a bounce
would happen. Another way to reverse the big crunch is loop quantum gravity. Loo
p quantum gravity claims a volume of space can only hold so much energy. When th
e volume containing the black hole gets full enough, the next Big Bang could hap
pen.
The energy of the Big Bang is so high that no theory knows how to handle it. Big
advances in string theory will likely come from the study of black holes. If th
e Large Hadron Collider has enough energy to make a microscopic black hole, stud
ying it would be a good test of modern theories.
Some versions of string theory predict tachyons. These strings travel faster tha
n the speed of light but backward in time. They have other strange properties. I
f you give them energy, they slow down. They have imaginary mass. Most physicist
s change a theory when it makes tachyons. Some physicists still work with these
theories to investigate tachyon behavior in more detail. Tachyons are a favorite
of science fiction writers.
Many Universes
Imagine James is in a park and Qued comes by. Qued says, Let s go down to the lake.
I have something amazing to show you. A breeze has covered the lake in sparking
wind ripples. This is a nice set of ripples; I ll freeze them. Now help me toss out
the ping-pong balls in this bag. The label on the bag says Universal Balls. No m
atter how many balls Qued throws out, the bag never gets empty. Qued points to t
he lake and says, See how they end up mostly in the low spots of the ripples? Not
ice that not all low spots are the same depth. Some of the ripples have little r
ipples on the side and sometimes a ping-pong ball rests there. A few balls are n
ear the top of a ripple in a little dip. I m tired of tossing ping-pong balls. He s
hakes the sack and a flood of balls comes out. At the same time, the shore disap
pears and it is lake, ripples, and balls in all directions as far as one can see
. [Figure ping pong universe and lake, drawing].
James, Don t touch any of the balls because now they are universes. All together, t
his is the multiverse. The lake surface is the energy level of the vacuum. It is
not a constant. A universe can have a range of vacuum energies. String theory a
llows an enormous number of vacuums. Each state of the vacuum makes a different
kind of universe with different forces, strings, and physical constants. Each un
iverse has a different configuration of the curly dimensions.
The G in Newton s equation for gravity sets the strength of the gravitational fiel
d. In some of these universes, G is 10,000 times bigger. With gravity so strong,
all matter would collapse into a huge black hole. In another universe, the spee
d of light is only 10 mph. Another universe might be a single giant star. Some a
re cold and dark with matter smeared out evenly over the universe. Nearly all un
iverses are too strange for life to evolve. Some may have only two elementary pa
rticles, only three forces, or even six forces. A few may support life weirder t
han we are. One is your universe.
James asks, Why can t we see these other universes?
They may be like a marshmallow in rocky road ice cream. The marshmallow is our el
even-dimensional spacetime, a brane. The ice cream is also a brane, larger and h
aving more dimensions. Other universes would be other marshmallows, nuts, or cho
colate. We see when photons come from an object and enter our eye. Particles fro
m one brane cannot reach or interact in any way with another brane. They cannot
cross the brane gap.
Another variation of the multiverse proposes that, new universes can pop up insi
de other universes. [Figure soap bubble universes, photo] This is similar to eleme
ntary particles leaking through walls. A part of a universe would slip into a di
fferent position, a different vacuum energy with different laws. With this model
, the multiverse would look like a foam of soap bubbles with soap bubbles inside
the bubbles inside of bubbles universes within universes.
Other physicists say this is too much like claiming that an invisible duck is st
omping on your head. The duck is angry, undetectable, weightless, invisible, not
affected by any force, and silent and it is on your head in a different brane.
The duck idea is designed to prevent arguments. There is no way to prove the duc
k is not there. There is no way to prove it is there. Scientists say the duck is
not science but nonsense. The multiverse idea does not have a way to prove it t
rue or false, similar to the invisible duck. However, the idea does come from a
theory that may be the theory of everything. What do you think? Would you care i
f there were other universes? ? Would you care if there were an invisible duck o
n your head? ?
There is much debate about the multiverse. Some physicists claim, that if the eq
uations describe other universes, then they must exist. There is that long histo
ry in physics that if something is not forbidden, then it is allowed or even req
uired. These universes would be separate from us by so much space and time, or b
y some other impenetrable barrier, so that they are impossible to detect.
Does Thinking Affect Reality?
When we see something, there is an interaction between our body and the world. O
ur senses receive energy from the world. We process the data from our senses, an
alyze, and identify what we see, hear, or feel. While our mind does all this, re
ality does not change. In quantum mechanics, the act of observing subatomic part
icles does change reality. All quantum properties are fuzzy. Before a measuremen
t, a property has a range of possible values. For example, electron spin is eith
er spin up, +1/2, or spin down, -1/2. The wave equation gives these two possibil
ities equal probability, fifty-fifty. There are still different opinions about w
hat this means. It does not mean the spin is the average, spin zero. Electrons c
annot have spin zero. It could mean the spin is not valid; the spin does not exi
st; the particle or spin does not exist until we do a measurement; the spin is h
alf up and half down; the spin in one universe is up and in another it is down.
With a measurement, the electron suddenly is either spin up or down 100%. Before
the measurement, the electron spin was vague. What happened? What caused the ch
ange? From the wide range of possible explanations, you can conclude that physic
ists are still debating this question from ninety years ago. Many suspect we are
more than just a passive observer of reality. What do you think? ?
One idea is that the electron follows all possibilities but in parallel universe
s. If a particle takes all possibilities then every spin measurement generates a
parallel universe. These universes are different from the multiverse of string
theory. They have the same hidden dimensions. Each of the universes has the same
laws of physics. With a spin measurement, we make two universes out of one. One
has our electron with spin up and one with spin down. Of course, that means we
become two observers, one who just measured a spin up and the other measured spi
n down. Because of all the observations made in everyday life, copies of us woul
d exist in practically an infinite number of universes.
Other physicists believe a particle does not have a location, spin, or velocity
until we go to measure it. Our measurement creates the reality of the electron a
nd its spin. Some would say the particle does not even exist until measured. All
explanations of measurement of quantum properties and the collapse of the wave
function mix together mind and reality. Though most physicists try to side step
the issue, there is a link between the conscious choice to do a measurement, the
equipment used, and the collapse of the wave function to the result of the meas
urement. We do a measurement and suddenly the ill-defined position of an electro
n becomes right there. In quantum pool, we could detect the pool balls as waves
or as particles. They were waves until we did a measurement of position by havin
g the ball drop into a pocket. Some physicists believe that consciousness itself
has a link to a deeper reality that will help us make more sense of quantum mec
hanics. It appears that our conscious will to measure a particle s properties forc
es it in some unknown way into a well-defined state. We and the universe are col
lections of elementary particles. If the universe has these properties, then so
do we.
Entanglement is another situation where measurement changes reality. If two elec
trons entangle by a simple interaction and then separate, when we observe the st
ate of one, then we also know the state of the other. It is as if each seems ins
tantly to know the state of the other. How? ? Physicists do not know. Entangleme
nt occurs between any two interacting objects. For example, we would entangle wi
th any electron we measure. We do not have a spin to flip, but our wave function
, quantum description of what is knowable about us, is affected in the future by
that electron and we affect it. We entangle with not only with the electron but
also with everything else in the universe. Our entanglements are very weak, but
not zero. As far as we know, these entanglements have no measureable effect.
Those most attached to a link between physics and consciousness believe we are t
he eyes, ears, and brains of the universe trying to understand itself. Through u
s, the universe examines, understands, evolves, and creates a bigger self. We ar
e one with the universe. Mystics feel and believe this and so do some physicists
. For the physicist, entanglement connects us to the universe and to each other.
Science cannot prove mysticism. You either see it or you do not.
There is a recent art movement, post-modernism, which stresses how much our poin
t of view affects our reality. Roughly, it is the idea that we create our own re
ality. Physics is saying a similar thing but in a limited way. This is almost Bu
ddhism. Buddhists emphasize the importance of thought. Some believe all is mind
that we exist as thoughts in a divine mind. Perhaps reality changes us. The real
ity change we see in quantum mechanics is really just a change in our consciousn
ess. Observations leave reality unchanged but change us.
The unanswered questions about quantum mechanics leave the door open to speculat
ion, some of it by esteemed physicists. Science narrows its point of view to wha
t it can verify. Theories show how to calculate the results of measurements. Mea
surements can be repeated and results are very accurate. It appears that the uni
verse is an interconnected whole and that changes are caused by us. Quantum effe
cts are strong for sub-atomic particles, but they exist for even large particles
like us. What do you think? Does an electron somehow know we are measuring so i
t shapes up as either spin up or spin down? Why? ? Are we connected in a meaning
ful way to the entire universe and do we cause different realities to happen? ?
Another explanation of quantum mechanics is that it is only an approximation to
a better theory. This better theory would use hidden variables that are guiding
quantum events. We just are not skillful enough now to detect these hidden varia
bles. Carefully repeated physics experiments with polarized light prove that eit
her everything is interconnected or that observation creates reality. It is amaz
ing that work in a physics lab can say precise things about mysticism and philos
ophy. ?
Intelligent Design
String theory has stirred up the debate about intelligent design. String theory
allows many different universes. These universes can be very different from ours
. Evolution of life requires a very small range of values for some of the physic
al universe s physics constants, the nineteen numbers of quantum mechanics. In str
ing theory, the shape of the curly hidden dimensions sets the values of the cons
tants. Very few universes can support life. Conditions are too hard for life to
evolve there. Some think this means our universe was specially designed for life
, for us. Most scientists change it around. This universe works for us because i
f it did not, we would not be here. Since we are here, the universe has to be on
e that supports life no matter how rare such universes are. This is confusing, b
ut they are two distinct points of view. Either we are here because the universe
is designed for life, or the universe can support life, therefore we are here.
Most scientists would not use intelligent design as an explanation. It is like t
he invisible duck. You cannot prove intelligent design is true, and you cannot p
rove it is false. If you accept intelligent design, it could mean you stop looki
ng for a scientific explanation. Therefore, you will not find a scientific expla
nation. A century ago, no one had a good explanation of why electrons did not fa
ll into a nucleus. One possibility is that the atom was intelligently designed t
hat way. If that was a satisfactory explanation, then we may not have discovered
quantum mechanics and all the marvelous advances it brought to the 20th century
. Other examples are the biological sciences, DNA, evolution, and gene therapy.
Some believers in intelligent design think it is wrong to mess with what has bee
n divinely designed. They will not discover the beautiful complexity of life or
understand how life evolved into the wonderful diversity around us. They will no
t discover the causes and cures of genetic diseases.
One side says that since the world is complicated, and yet fits together so well
, someone had to design it that way. The other side says yes, the world is compl
icated. That is how the world is, and yet, this complicated world follows from a
few simple rules. Great complexity can come from simple rules. Intelligent desi
gn would replace large blocks of research, theory, and experiment. Intelligent d
esign makes no predictions and there is no way to prove it false. What do you th
ink? ?
In debates between fundamentalists and scientist, you often hear the remark that
we don t have to believe that, it s only a theory. Scientists are guilty of using the
word theory in a number of ways, covering many levels of uncertainty. Scientist
s do not use a special word for theories like evolution that they have verified
millions of times. These theories are true and only likely to change by expandin
g over more data and in adjusting small details. Scientists need a word for thes
e well-proven theories.
Scientists, however, always keep an open mind, at least open a crack. For exampl
e, we might discover crews from flying saucers digging holes and burying bones f
rom their planet, creating our fossils. Either look out for saucers or accept th
at evolution is a fact. Other true theories are mechanics, nuclear explosives, h
ydrodynamics, and electromagnetism. [Figure Aliens burying bones, drawing] For the
se areas, theory means the highest level of scientific confidence. It means a gr
oup of related ideas explaining something in nature supported by lots of observa
tions, data, verified predictions, and connections to other verified theories. W
hat would you do if a well-verified theory of science contradicted one of your b
eliefs? ?
Goofer says, Qued, when scientists speculate they get really wild and hard to und
erstand.
You are certainly correct. It is not important to remember the various arguments
but just to know that physicists do more than experiments, solving equations, or
building machines, says Qued. They are trying to understand the most basic things
about the world. There are many exciting problems that the next generation of s
cientists will pursue.
The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious.
A. Einstein
Tying Up Loose Strings
The accomplishments of physics and the other sciences are very impressive. Scien
ce is involved in every manufactured item and affects everything in our lives. I
n the future, it will affect even more. Can science or the scientific method app
ly to everything? ? No, there are large parts of experience like emotions, art,
music, and faith that do not fit the scientific model. There are many other area
s where the scientific method could apply such as politics, advertising, psychol
ogy, and education.
The greatest accomplishment of science will be the theory of everything. String
theory is not yet there. String theory succeeds in ending the 100-year physics p
roblem, the separation of relativity and quantum mechanics. It does this very el
egantly. Right now string theory provides a framework that could become the theo
ry of everything. It can explain the elementary particles and forces, the three
families of strings, the strengths of the forces. It has not done most of this b
ecause the shape of the hidden dimensions is unknown. It is most amazing, that s
tring theory with mathematics, a few laws, and a small bunch of equations, may e
xplain everything. A great deal of theory and experiment is necessary to establi
sh if string theory can do it. This is an exciting time to consider a career in
science. You could become a part of the oldest and most successful effort to und
erstand our world.
Everything and every force is the result of vibrations of strings. Strings vibra
te in more than the four dimensions of spacetime. There are also seven tightly c
urled up dimensions. We may never be able to see these dimensions, unlike the fo
ur dimensions of spacetime. The shape of these dimensions sets the properties of
the forces and particles. It also determines the laws of physics of the univers
e. String theory allows multiple universes.
Particles and forces are bound to branes, higher dimensional objects. The only e
xception is gravity s graviton that moves between branes. Multiple universes can b
e very close but in different branes and not be detectable except by extremely w
eak gravitational effects.
Back to our very first question, do strings hold the world together? Most physic
ists would say yes. String theory does have problems, but it is still under cons
truction. A theory of everything is a gigantic challenge. String theory makes ma
ny predictions. We just cannot accelerate particles to high enough energy to che
ck them. Most important is that string theory pulls together all of physics into
a beautiful consistent whole. String explains many things we know, like black h
oles, quantum gravity, elementary particles, quantum mechanics, relativity, the
unification of forces, and the structure of the universe. It also requires thing
s we may never be able to prove, like the seven extra dimensions and unlimited c
hoices of universes. It is a theory of everything but it is just being discovere
d. That leaves lots of room for heated debate.
Is there a multiverse? Most physicists would say probably not. The big hope is t
hat we will find an arrow saying this is our universe and the shape of our curly
dimensions.
If string holds the universe together, then everything, energy, forces, and matt
er, is made from string. Strings vibrating in different spaces, at different fre
quencies, and interacting cause all the amazing things in our universe. Strings
are always vibrating. The whole universe is always singing. You are part of the
universe. You also are singing, in every little bit of you. Take time to listen
to the music, the music of the spheres. It is the music between your ears.

This is the Sri Yantra.

It is optical art made in India thousands of years ago.
If you stare steadily at the center for five minutes,
You will have an interesting experience.
The lines may change into strings whose dancing makes music.
The music of the spheres.