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String Theory
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As string theorists march on in their quest for the theory of everything, whilst also leaving a trail of mathematical gems along the way, some traditional physicists were outraged: “Is physics no longer rooted in observations of nature? Or is this theology?” I couldn’t help but notice a striking parallel with the way mathematics became detached from physics during the nineteenth century and, in particular, the outrage that accompanied Cantor’s transfinite set theory and Hilbert’s non-constructiv
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(The string is extremely tiny, at the Planck length of 10 ^-33 cm, a billion billion times smaller than a proton, so all subatomic particles appear pointlike.)
If we were to pluck this string, the vibration would change; the electron might turn into a neutrino. Pluck it again and it might turn into a quark. In fact, if you plucked it hard enough, it could turn into any of the known subatomic particles.
Strings can interact by splitting and rejoining, thus creating the interactions we see among
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― Parallel Worlds: A Journey through Creation, Higher Dimensions, and the Future of the Cosmos
― Parallel Worlds: A Journey through Creation, Higher Dimensions, and the Future of the Cosmos
...November 14, 2013 to December 14, 2013...
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