Can anyone explain to me the basic idea of String Theory and why it is important? I've looked it up on Wikipedia and multiple sites but I can't understand any of it.
something like everything is made up of super small strings i only read one book on string theory so i dont know alot bump
I'm not positive but I think that the basic jist of it is that everything is made up of super small stings vibrating in the 10th dimention. The way that these strings vibrate change things.
String Theory has been around for around 20 years with no success thus far. It's awfully ironic to think that so many scientists are atheist/agnostic because the existence of gods cannot be proven. Yet, so many physicists believe in string theory because it's the latest fad, and talk about how their heroes broke the mold of the current paradigm yet they all blindly believe in string theory. Physics will never go anywhere until they stop trying to connect discrete particles together, instead of connecting them together. It's no new news that the universe is interconnected, hence the uni prefix. The basis of physics being quantum mechanics is correct in that it's consistent, although, I think it only exposes so much of the quantum world.
I thought they touched on string theory way way back they just didn't really follow it as they didn't have the understanding they have today.
Everything ultimately is composed of insanely small strings made up of energy existing in a higher dimension and the way these strings vibrate is what makes up the universe
String theory as most people said is the basic belief that there are small vibrating strings in a higher dimension that make up everything. However it hasn't gotten far because it is supposed to be one universal theory to prove everything, but many different versions of the the main string theory arose and none have been proven to be right.
What do you mean string theory has been unsuccesful? String theorists have had many breakthroughs in explaining the universe like gravity at quantum levels, the creation of the universe. And to the post above me, those string theories can be related using dualities into one string thing- super string theory
First off what they choose to believe is their choice when it comes to god. people expect science to be right all the time and if science isn't right then people start to distrust science. Science works differently than that. Science will provide its best theories, hypotheses and conjectures to the world while science looks for the next best thing. String theory is not a fad. it was the best theory at the time that science had to explain the universe. now science has a better one that science shows to the world. M-theory is the next best way that science fills that human need to understand why we are here. and even quantum mechanics is still a theory. Science has as little evidence of quantum theory as it does string theory but you seem to so blindly believe in quantum mechanics going so far as saying that it's consistent... which it is far from consistent.
If by success you mean that it has yet to be proved, consider that Christianity has existed for 2000+ years without "success". Science has room for updates, where the Bible was finalized many, many years ago. Science is open and religion is closed until the day Jesus comes back, which has still yet to happen.
I'm not saying I believe in god or anything about religion really other than it's just ironic so many scientists are vehemently against it because it simply cannot be proven. String theory has not really discovered anything, it's all theoritical discoveries that are based on a faulty foundation (quantum mechanics). Just to make so much of modern phyiscs work today, it rests on so many variables and forces/fields, etc. Often making things too complex. Many physicists, notably Feynmann always said that he things the theory of everything will be so simple that it will be able to fit on a t shirt.
What i'm saying about quantum mechanics is that it's consistent about the principes of the quantum, the wave function, etc. Not the actual results that it produces because that's just absurd. Especially when the principles of quantum mechanics and all the possiblities of it are applied to the macro world, for example, you could put your hand through a table just on probablity. That just goes against common sense and out of all the humans in history and their innumberable experiences in life, no one has ever said anything like that has happened to them. Hope that clarifies what I mean by consistent.
All of you should watch the TED video posted earlier by futhamucka, and you'll see that the scientists want proof of the theories just as much as skeptics do.
Well, if you consider the fact that string theory talks about the relationship between the universe as we know it and the frequency of their vibrations then right there and then you have a relatively simple solution so maybe everyone is right I think the intriguing aspect is the number of dimensions required to make the math work. I'd also like to point out 'Dark Matter'. DM is impossible as of yet to detect but we 'know' it's there due to the gravitational influences it causes. Does that previous sentence hint that there is the possibility that we can mathematically prove something yet be unable to physically detect it? In respect to quantum mechanics being faulty, perhaps you were thinking of this: Uncertainty principle - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. As far as I know, and I admit I am not a physicist, quantum mechanics is a required path for us to take in order to understand our universe. How else can we determine and calculate the beginnings of the universe without a clear understanding of the very small? I think you will find a lot of other physicists will take this view to, part of the Hadron Collider's job is to detect and examine particle collisions at near speed of light (ie: a LOT of energy). Lots more info here: Large Hadron Collider - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia and a great read if you're in the right mood
This theoretical science...is NO different than religion. Religion has "God" who does everything. Science has "Theory" requiring "fudging" which does everything. There may well BE a "God" who created us and our universe. But that begs the question...who created "God" then? If you can have one "all mighty creator", why not two? Or three? The belief that "God" just appeared out of nothing with all the power and knowledge to create everything we know...is to put it mildly...a little insane. If anything..."God"...is the laws of physics. The happenstance that allowed our universe to created life that could question it's own existence. Our science is trying to figure things out...and that's commendable. I just don't think they realize how SMALL and how BIG the universe really is. I think that the really small and really big affect us but we'll never be able to "see" them. That's why the theories all have holes in them where a really small or big "thing" is what's doing it. I call it the "Scale Theory" (that would fit on a t-shirt). As an example... Your chair. It's "solid" enough to hold you up. Yet when you look closely, it's 99.9% empty space. Very small things you can't see, have an effect on things our size. But yet, at their scale, you wouldn't be able to see it. Sitting on a chair's single atom would be like looking out into the stars at night. At that scale you can't see the chair's structure. But at the chair's scale...you can't see the atoms. I think light DOES flow through an aether. It's a wave traveling through a medium. A VERY small medium that doesn't effect ANYTHING but the very small. A photon IS very small...a point actually. There is no drag on matter because matter passes through it (actually "it" passes through matter) with no friction because they don't actually ever touch...it's that small. Like a neutrino passing through the earth. So small that the odds of a "hit" are trillions to one. Light wouldn't hit anything either if it didn't travel as a wave. A point traveling perfectly straight is too small to contact anything. It's the wave structure that gives it it's "realness"...it's ability to interact with matter. I think graviy is just a scaling of the other forces, the weak and strong. They're the "same" at different scales. There are probably forces beyong them too...smaller than the strong force and bigger than gravity. They have an "effect" on things and have to be put into the mathematics...but we'll NEVER know what they are. Because they're too small or large to "see". We're limited by our machines. We're limited by what we can detect. I think smashing things together will end at a wall...a dead end. I think there are all kinds of things coming out of those collisions that we're simply not detecting because we can't. But those things DO play a part in our world, and are the "fudge factors" in the theories. Science tries...but I don't think they have a chance getting to the "end". Knowing how everything works.
theres a random facts pulled out of your ass... the uni- prefix is one that stands for "all" or "every" as in it contains all that we know. yes you are right, but you facts are in fact not facts at all, rather theyre opnions and fallacies. with some truth sprinkled in. im no fan of the string theory, but every theory should get a scientific process before it is disregarded as false.
uni- a combining form occurring in loanwords from Latin (universe), used, with the meaning “one,†in the formation of compound words (unicycle).