help an idiot

[chillipepper]

Please explain string theory in the absolute simplestost basic terms. i mean really, really easy. pppllleeeaaassseee

[beso]

Don't bother. String Theory has already had its day. It sought to simplify the plethora of fundamental particles by introducing another six hidden dimensions for which there is not the faintest shred of evidence beyond being required to make String Theory formulae work.

Watch for the name Garrett Lisi who is set to become as famous as Albert Einstein and Max Planck.

Last month he published a geometrical unification of all that is known in the field using only the four observed dimensions.

His theory predicts another 20 undiscovered particles and he is now calculating their masses in preparation for a search for them in the new generation of atom smashers that come on line next year.

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/fundamenta ls/dn12891-is-mathematical-pattern-the-theory- of-everything.html

[jake-the-peg]

When scientists were first examining the knon elements there were so many and it seemed complicated and without meaning. Then a guy called Menedelev found a pattern and we got the periodic table. We started to understand that atoms had structure and that structure explained all the elements with just protons Electrons and neutrons.

Then we looked deepre there and found a whole pletora of subatomic particles. Pions, muons , lambdas the list seemed endless.

Then someone (principly Murray Gell-Mann) came up with the standard model and all the particles could be explained with a handful of quarks and leptons.

But that's still too many, when we see sets of particles that show patterns of behaviour like the standard model does we expect to see somthing simpler underlying it like we have in the past.

String theory attempts to explain this by proposing incredibly tiny strings (ie not points) that vibrate in different ways, different vibration modes being associated with different forms of matter.


The "Extremely Simple Theory of Everything" Beso refers to is interesting especially as it makes predictions but unless he's particularly conversant with Lie Algebra he's in much of a position to make a judgement.

He's certainly rather split the physics community right now - bizarrely he's been heavily supported by the Daily Telegraph ( what they know about it I've no idea).

However as beso says we all rather live in hope that CERN's latest toy will give us a good punt in the right direction, after 20 year of planning it comes on line next year.

It should be an interesting few years in fundamental physics