String Theory

by Jon Schiller

Several times each year I receive Engineering and Science, a magazine published at Caltech where I was awarded the BS in Physics in 1951. I learn all of the new areas of research being done at my alma mater. I am especially interested in Physics. This year I leaned that research is taking place in String Theory. In Physics, string theory is a theoretical framework in which the point-like particles of particle physics are replaced by one-dimensional objects called strings. It describes how these strings propagate through space and interact with each other. On distance scales larger than the string scale, a string looks just like an ordinary particle, with its mass, charge, and other properties determined by the vibrational state of the string. In string theory, one of the many vibrational states of the string corresponds to the graviton, a quantum mechanical particle that carries gravitational force. Thus string theory is a theory of quantum gravity.String theory is a broad and varied subject that attempts to address a number of deep questions of fundamental physics. String theory has been applied to a variety of problems in black hole physics, early universe cosmology, nuclear physics, and condensed matter physics, and it has stimulated a number of major developments in pure mathematics. Because string theory potentially provides a unified description of gravity and particle physics, it is a candidate for a theory of everything, a self-contained mathematical model that describes all fundamental forces and forms of matter. Despite much work on these problems, it is not known to what extent string theory describes the real world or how much freedom the theory allows to choose the details.

115 pages, Kindle Edition

Published April 21, 2016

About the author

Dr. Jon Schiller, Phd

Reviews

[Anthony O'Connor · Rating 2 out of 5]

pugnaciously short and thereby opportunistic

This is not a bad intro in places but it is too brief and in places scattered and repetitious. Pieces patched together by different authors or the same author who couldn’t be bothered unifying the pieces. In short lazy and opportunistic. I paid real money for this at times hysterical and bombastic slop.
There is a bizarre and lengthy diversion into femtotech. This is not uninteresting. But has very little to do with the claimed subject at hand. At least there is no feeble attempt to even claim that there is. Cut and paste job. Why.
This is my fourth attempt. Are there any halfway decent introductions to string theory out there? This isn’t one of them.