Science is an immense field and a huge amount of research and discovery is carried out daily, while it is worth noting that some theories seem to be interesting, but at the same time they do not have real evidence and seem to be “hanging in the air”.
What is string theory?
The physical theory that represents particles in the form of vibration is called string theory. These waves have only one parameter - longitude, and the height and width are missing. In figuring out that this is string theory, you should consider the main hypotheses that it describes.
- It is assumed that everything around is made up of filaments that vibrate and membranes of energy.
- Tries to put together general theory relativity and quantum physics.
- String theory offers a chance to unify all the fundamental forces of the universe.
- Predicts a symmetrical relationship between different types particles: bosons and fermions.
- Gives a chance to describe and present dimensions of the Universe that have not been observed before.
String theory - who discovered it?
- For the first time in 1960, quantum string theory was created to explain a phenomenon in hadron physics. At that time, it was developed by G. Veneziano, L. Susskind, T. Goto and others.
- He told what string theory is, the scientist D. Schwartz, J. Sherk and T. Yene, since they developed the hypothesis of bosonic strings, and this happened 10 years later.
- In 1980, two scientists: M. Green and D. Schwartz identified the theory of superstrings, which had unique symmetries.
- Studies of the proposed hypothesis are being carried out to this day, but so far it has not been possible to prove it.
String Theory - Philosophy
There is a philosophical direction that has a connection with string theory, and they call it a monad. It involves the use of symbols in order to compactify any amount of information. Monad and string theory in philosophy use opposites and dualities. The most popular simple monad symbol is Yin-Yang. Experts proposed to depict string theory on a three-dimensional rather than on a flat monad, and then the strings will be a reality, even though they are long and scanty.
If a volumetric monad is used, then the line separating Yin-Yang will be a plane, and using a multidimensional monad, a spiralized volume is obtained. While there is no work in philosophy concerning multidimensional monads - this is an area for study in the future. Philosophers believe that cognition is an endless process and when trying to create a single model of the universe, a person will be surprised more than once and change his basic concepts.
Drawbacks of String Theory
Since the hypothesis proposed by a number of scientists is unconfirmed, it is quite understandable that there are a number of problems that indicate the need for its refinement.
- String theory has misconceptions, for example, a new type of particles, tachyons, was discovered during calculations, but they cannot exist in nature, since the square of their mass less than zero, and the speed of movement is greater than the speed of light.
- String theory can only exist in a ten-dimensional space, but then the question is relevant - why does a person not perceive other dimensions?
String theory - proof
The two main physical conventions on which scientific evidence is built are actually opposed to each other, because they represent the structure of the universe at the micro level in different ways. To try them on, the theory of cosmic strings was proposed. In many respects, it looks reliable, and not only in words, but also in mathematical calculations, but today a person does not have the opportunity to practically prove it. If strings exist, that they are at the microscopic level, and not yet technical capabilities to recognize them.
String Theory and God
The famous theoretical physicist M. Kaku proposed a theory in which he proves the existence of the Lord with the help of the string hypothesis. He came to the conclusion that everything in the world operates according to certain laws and rules established by a single Mind. According to Kaku, string theory and the hidden dimensions of the universe will help create an equation that combines all the forces of nature and allows you to understand the mind of God. He emphasizes his hypothesis on tachyon particles, which move faster than light. Even Einstein said that if you find such parts, it will be possible to move time back.
After conducting a series of experiments, Kaku concluded that human life is governed by stable laws, and does not respond to cosmic accidents. String theory in life exists, and it is associated with an unknown force that controls life and makes it whole. In his opinion, this is what it is. Kaku is sure that the universe is vibrating strings that come from the mind of the Supreme.
Physicists are accustomed to working with particles: the theory has been worked out, experiments converge. nuclear reactors and atomic bombs are calculated using particles. With one caveat - gravity is not taken into account in all calculations.
Gravity is the attraction of bodies. When we talk about gravity, we represent the earth's attraction. The phone falls from the hands onto the asphalt under the influence of gravity. In space, the Moon is attracted to the Earth, the Earth to the Sun. Everything in the world is attracted to each other, but to feel it, you need very heavy objects. We feel the attraction of the Earth, which is 7.5 × 10 22 times heavier than a person, and we do not notice the attraction of a skyscraper, which is 4 × 10 6 times heavier.
7.5×10 22 = 75,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
4×10 6 = 4,000,000
Gravity is described by Einstein's general theory of relativity. In theory, massive objects bend space. To understand, go to the children's park and put a heavy stone on the trampoline. A funnel will appear on the rubber of the trampoline. If you put a small ball on a trampoline, it will roll down the funnel to the stone. Something like this, the planets form a funnel in space, and we, like balls, fall on them.
Planets so massive they warp space
In order to describe everything at the level of elementary particles, gravity is not needed. Compared to other forces, gravity is so small that it was simply thrown out of quantum calculations. The force of the earth's gravity is less than the force that holds the particles of the atomic nucleus, 10 38 times. This is true for almost the entire universe.
10 38 = 100 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000
The only place where gravity is as strong as other forces is inside a black hole. This is a giant funnel in which gravity collapses space itself and draws in everything that is nearby. Even light enters a black hole and never comes back.
To work with gravity as with other particles, physicists came up with a quantum of gravity - the graviton. We did some calculations, but they didn't match. Calculations showed that the energy of the graviton grows to infinity. And this should not be.
Physicists first invent, then search. The Higgs boson was invented 50 years before the discovery.
Problems with divergences in the calculations disappeared when the graviton was considered not as a particle, but as a string. Strings have a finite length and energy, so the energy of a graviton can only grow up to a certain limit. So scientists have a working tool with which they study black holes.
Advances in the study of black holes help to understand how the universe came into existence. According to the Big Bang theory, the world grew from a microscopic point. In the first moments of life, the universe was very dense - all modern stars and planets gathered in a small volume. Gravity was as strong as other forces, so knowing the effects of gravity is important to understanding the early universe.
Advances in the description of quantum gravity are a step towards the creation of a theory that will describe everything in the world. Such a theory will explain how the universe was born, what is happening in it now, and how its end will be.
The theory of relativity presents the Universe as “flat”, but quantum mechanics says that at the micro level there is an infinite movement that bends space. String theory combines these ideas and presents microparticles as a consequence of the union of the thinnest one-dimensional strings, which will look like point microparticles, therefore, cannot be observed experimentally.
This hypothesis allows us to imagine the elementary particles that make up the atom from ultramicroscopic fibers called strings.
All properties of elementary particles are explained by the resonant vibration of the fibers that form them. These fibers can make an infinite number of vibrations. This theory involves the unification of the ideas of quantum mechanics and the theory of relativity. But due to the presence of many problems in confirming the thoughts underlying it, most modern scientists believe that the proposed ideas are nothing more than the most common profanity, or in other words, string theory for dummies, that is, for people who are completely ignorant of science and structure of the environment.
Properties of ultramicroscopic fibers
To understand their essence, you can imagine the strings of musical instruments - they can vibrate, bend, fold. The same thing happens with these threads, which, emitting certain vibrations, interact with each other, fold into loops and form larger particles (electrons, quarks), the mass of which depends on the vibration frequency of the fibers and their tension - these indicators determine the energy of the strings. The greater the radiated energy, the higher the mass of the elementary particle.
Inflation theory and strings
According to the inflationary hypothesis, the Universe was created due to the expansion of micro space, the size of a string (Planck length). As this region grew, the so-called ultramicroscopic filaments also stretched, now their length is commensurate with the size of the Universe. They interact with each other in the same way and produce the same vibrations and vibrations. It looks like the effect of gravitational lenses produced by them, distorting the rays of light from distant galaxies. BUT pitching generate gravitational radiation.
Mathematical failure and other problems
One of the problems is the mathematical inconsistency of the theory - the physicists studying it do not have enough formulas to bring it to a complete form. And the second is that this theory believes that there are 10 dimensions, but we feel only 4 - height, width, length and time. Scientists suggest that the remaining 6 are in a twisted state, the presence of which is not felt in real time. Also, the problem is not the possibility of experimental confirmation of this theory, but no one can refute it either.
String theory is a thin thread that connects the theory of relativity (or General Theory of Relativity - GR) and quantum physics. Both of these branches appeared quite recently on the scale of science, so there is not even too much scientific literature on these branches yet. And, if the theory of relativity still has some kind of time-tested base, then the quantum branch of physics in this regard is still very young. Let's take a look at these two industries first.
Surely many of you have heard about the theory of relativity, even a little familiar with some of its postulates, but the question is: why can't it be connected with quantum physics, which works at the micro level?
Share common and special theory relativity (abbreviated as GRT and SRT, further will be used as abbreviations). In short, GR postulates about outer space and its curvature, and SRT about the relativity of space-time from the side of man. When we talk about string theory, we are specifically talking about general relativity. The General Theory of Relativity says that in space, under the influence of massive objects, space is curved around it (and along with it, time, because space and time are completely inseparable concepts). To understand how this happens, an example from the life of scientists will help. A similar case was recently recorded, so everything told can be considered “based on real events". A scientist looks through a telescope and sees two stars, one in front and one behind her. How could we understand this? It is very simple, because that star, the center of which we do not see, but only the edges are visible, is the largest of these two, and the other star, which is visible in its full form, is the smaller one. However, thanks to general relativity, it can also be that the star in front is larger than the one behind. But is it possible?
It turns out yes. If the front star turns out to be a supermassive object that will strongly bend the space around it, then the image of the star behind it will simply go around the supermassive star in curvature and we will see the picture that was mentioned at the very beginning. You can see in more detail what is said in Fig. one.
Quantum physics is much harder to ordinary person than TO. If we generalize all its provisions, we get the following: micro-objects exist only when we look at them. In addition, quantum physics also says that if a microparticle is broken into two parts, then these two parts will continue to rotate along their axis in the same direction. And also any influences on the first particle will undoubtedly be transmitted to the second, and instantly and completely regardless of the distance of these particles. 
So what is the difficulty in combining the concepts of these two theories? The fact is that GR considers objects in the macrocosm, and when we talk about the distortion/curvature of space, we mean a perfectly smooth space, which is completely inconsistent with the provisions of the microworld. According to the theory of quantum physics, the microcosm is completely uneven, has ubiquitous roughness. This is in layman's terms. And mathematicians and physicists have drawn their theories into formulas. And so, when they tried to combine the formulas of quantum physics and general relativity, the answer turned out to be infinity. Infinity in physics is tantamount to saying that the equation is wrong. The resulting equality was rechecked many times, but the answer was still infinity.
String theory has revolutionized the everyday world of science. It is a ruling that all microparticles are not spherical, but the shape of elongated strings that permeate our entire universe. Quantities such as mass, particle speed, etc. are set by the vibrations of these strings. Each such string is theoretically in a Calabi-Yau manifold. These manifolds represent a very curved space. According to the theory of manifolds, they are not connected in space by anything and are located separately in small balls. String theory literally erases the clear boundaries of the process of connecting two microparticles. When microparticles are represented by balls, we can clearly trace the boundary in space-time when they connect. However, if two strings are connected, then the place of their “gluing” can be viewed from different angles. And from different angles we get completely different results the boundaries of their connection, that is, there is simply no exact concept of such a boundary!
At the first stage of the study, string theory, told even in simple words seems mysterious, strange, and even simply fictional, but not unfounded words speak for it, but studies that, by many equations and parameters, confirm the probability of the existence of particle-strings.
And finally, another video explaining string theory plain language from the online magazine QWRT.
Have you ever thought that the universe is like a cello? That's right, it didn't come. Because the universe is not like a cello. But that doesn't mean she doesn't have strings. Of course, the strings of the universe are hardly similar to those that we imagine. In string theory, they are incredibly small vibrating filaments of energy. These threads are rather like tiny "elastic bands" that can wriggle, stretch and shrink in every way. All this, however, does not mean that the symphony of the Universe cannot be “played” on them, because, according to string theorists, everything that exists consists of these “threads”.
©depositphotos.com
Physics controversy
In the second half of the 19th century, it seemed to physicists that nothing serious could be discovered in their science anymore. Classical physics believed that there were no serious problems left in it, and the whole structure of the world looked like a perfectly tuned and predictable machine. The trouble, as usual, happened because of nonsense - one of the small "clouds" that still remained in the clear, understandable sky of science. Namely, when calculating the radiation energy of a completely black body (a hypothetical body that at any temperature completely absorbs the radiation incident on it, regardless of the wavelength). Calculations showed that the total radiation energy of any absolutely black body should be infinitely large. To avoid such obvious absurdity, the German scientist Max Planck suggested in 1900 that visible light, X-rays, and other electromagnetic waves could only be emitted by certain discrete portions of energy, which he called quanta. With their help, it was possible to solve particular problem absolutely black body. However, the consequences of the quantum hypothesis for determinism were not yet realized at that time. Until, in 1926, another German scientist, Werner Heisenberg, formulated the famous uncertainty principle.
Its essence boils down to the fact that, contrary to all the statements prevailing before, nature limits our ability to predict the future on the basis of physical laws. This, of course, is about the future and present of subatomic particles. It turned out that they behave completely differently than any other things in the macrocosm around us do. At the subatomic level, the fabric of space becomes uneven and chaotic. The world of tiny particles is so turbulent and incomprehensible that it is contrary to common sense. Space and time in it are so twisted and intertwined that there are no ordinary concepts of left and right, up and down, and even before and after. There is no way to tell for sure at what point in space the this moment this or that particle, and what is the moment of its momentum. There is only a certain probability of finding a particle in many regions of space-time. Particles at the subatomic level seem to be "smeared" over space. Not only that, the “status” of the particles itself is not defined: in some cases they behave like waves, in others they exhibit the properties of particles. This is what physicists call the wave-particle duality of quantum mechanics.
Levels of the structure of the world: 1. Macroscopic level - substance
2. Molecular level 3. Atomic level - protons, neutrons and electrons
4. Subatomic level - electron 5. Subatomic level - quarks 6. String level
©Bruno P. Ramos
In the General Theory of Relativity, as if in a state with opposite laws, things are fundamentally different. Space appears to be like a trampoline - a smooth fabric that can be bent and stretched by objects that have mass. They create deformations of space-time - what we experience as gravity. Needless to say, the coherent, correct and predictable General Theory of Relativity is in irresolvable conflict with the "wacky hooligan" - quantum mechanics, and, as a result, the macrocosm cannot "reconcile" with the microcosm. This is where string theory comes in.
©John Stembridge/Atlas of Lie Groups Project
Theory of Everything
String theory embodies the dream of all physicists to unite two fundamentally contradictory general relativity and quantum mechanics, a dream that haunted the greatest "gypsy and vagabond" Albert Einstein until the end of his days.
Many scientists believe that everything from the exquisite dance of galaxies to the frenzied dance of subatomic particles can ultimately be explained by just one fundamental physical principle. Maybe even a single law that combines all types of energy, particles and interactions in some elegant formula.
General relativity describes one of the most famous forces in the universe - gravity. Quantum mechanics describes three other forces: the strong nuclear force, which sticks protons and neutrons together in atoms, electromagnetism, and the weak force, which is involved in radioactive decay. Any event in the universe, from the ionization of an atom to the birth of a star, is described by the interactions of matter through these four forces. Using the most complex mathematics, it was possible to show that the electromagnetic and weak interactions have common nature, combining them into a single electroweak. Subsequently, the strong nuclear interaction was added to them - but gravity does not join them in any way. String theory is one of the most serious candidates for connecting all four forces, and, therefore, embracing all phenomena in the Universe - it is not without reason that it is also called the “Theory of Everything”.
©Wikimedia Commons
In the beginning there was a myth
Until now, not all physicists are enthusiastic about string theory. And at the dawn of its appearance, it did seem infinitely far from reality. Her very birth is a legend.
In the late 1960s, a young Italian theoretical physicist, Gabriele Veneziano, was looking for equations that could explain the strong nuclear forces, the extremely powerful "glue" that holds the nuclei of atoms together by binding protons and neutrons together. According to legend, he once stumbled upon a dusty book on the history of mathematics, in which he found a 200-year-old equation first written by the Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler. What was Veneziano's surprise when he discovered that Euler's equation, which for a long time was considered nothing more than a mathematical curiosity, describes this strong force.
How was it really? The equation is probably the result years work of Veneziano, and the case only helped to take the first step towards the discovery of string theory. Euler's equation, miraculously explaining the strong force, has found a new life.
Eventually, it caught the eye of a young American theoretical physicist, Leonard Susskind, who saw that the formula primarily described particles that had no internal structure and could vibrate. These particles behaved in such a way that they could not just be point particles. Susskind understood - the formula describes a thread that is like an elastic band. She could not only stretch and shrink, but also oscillate, writhe. After describing his discovery, Susskind introduced the revolutionary idea of strings.
Unfortunately, the overwhelming majority of his colleagues received the theory rather coolly.
standard model
At the time, mainstream science represented particles as points, not strings. For years, physicists have been investigating the behavior of subatomic particles, colliding them at high speeds and studying the consequences of these collisions. It turned out that the universe is much richer than one could imagine. It was a real "population explosion" of elementary particles. Graduate students of physics universities ran through the corridors shouting that they had discovered a new particle - there were not even enough letters to designate them.
But, alas, in maternity hospital» new particles, scientists have not been able to find the answer to the question - why are there so many of them and where do they come from?
This prompted physicists to make an unusual and startling prediction - they realized that the forces acting in nature can also be explained using particles. That is, there are particles of matter, and there are particles-carriers of interactions. Such, for example, is a photon - a particle of light. The more of these carrier particles - the same photons that matter particles exchange, the brighter the light. Scientists have predicted that this particular exchange of carrier particles is nothing more than what we perceive as force. This was confirmed by experiments. So physicists managed to get closer to Einstein's dream of joining forces.
©Wikimedia Commons
Scientists believe that if we fast-forward to just after the Big Bang, when the universe was trillions of degrees hotter, the particles that carry electromagnetism and the weak force would become indistinguishable and coalesce into a single force called the electroweak. And if we go back in time even further, then the electroweak interaction would combine with the strong one into one total “superforce”.
Despite the fact that all this is still waiting to be proven, quantum mechanics has suddenly explained how three of the four forces interact at the subatomic level. And she explained it beautifully and consistently. This harmonious pattern of interactions was eventually called standard model. But, alas, even in this perfect theory there was one a big problem- it did not include the most famous force of the macro level - gravity.
©Wikimedia Commons
graviton
For string theory, which did not have time to "bloom", "autumn" came, it contained too many problems from its very birth. For example, the calculations of the theory predicted the existence of particles, which, as it was soon established precisely, did not exist. This is the so-called tachyon - a particle that moves faster than light in vacuum. Among other things, it turned out that the theory requires as many as 10 dimensions. It is not surprising that this was very embarrassing for physicists, because it is obviously more than what we see.
By 1973, only a few young physicists were still struggling with the mysteries of string theory. One of them was the American theoretical physicist John Schwartz. For four years, Schwartz tried to tame the naughty equations, but to no avail. Among other problems, one of these equations stubbornly described a mysterious particle that had no mass and was not observed in nature.
The scientist had already decided to abandon his disastrous business, and then it dawned on him - maybe the equations of string theory describe, among other things, gravity? However, this implied a revision of the dimensions of the main "heroes" of the theory - the strings. By assuming that strings are billions and billions of times smaller than an atom, the "stringers" turned the flaw of the theory into its virtue. The mysterious particle that John Schwartz had so persistently tried to get rid of now acted as a graviton - a particle that had been searched for for a long time and which would allow gravity to be transferred to the quantum level. This is how string theory has added gravity to the puzzle, which is missing from the Standard Model. But, alas, even the scientific community did not react to this discovery. String theory remained on the brink of survival. But this did not stop Schwartz. Only one scientist who was willing to risk his career for the sake of mysterious strings wanted to join his search - Michael Green.
American theoretical physicist John Schwartz (top) and Michael Green
©California Institute of Technology/elementy.ru
What reason is there to think that gravity obeys the laws of quantum mechanics? For the discovery of these "grounds" in 2011 was awarded Nobel Prize in physics. It consisted in the fact that the expansion of the Universe is not slowing down, as was once thought, but, on the contrary, is accelerating. This acceleration is explained by the action of a special “anti-gravity”, which is somehow characteristic of the empty space of cosmic vacuum. On the other hand, at the quantum level, there can be nothing absolutely “empty” – subatomic particles constantly appear and immediately disappear in vacuum. This “flashing” of particles is believed to be responsible for the existence of “anti-gravity” dark energy that fills empty space.
At one time, it was Albert Einstein, who until the end of his life did not accept the paradoxical principles of quantum mechanics (which he himself predicted), suggested the existence of this form of energy. Following the tradition of Aristotle's classical Greek philosophy with its belief in the eternity of the world, Einstein refused to believe what his own theory predicted, namely that the universe had a beginning. To "perpetuate" the universe, Einstein even introduced a certain cosmological constant into his theory, and thus described the energy of empty space. Fortunately, a few years later it turned out that the Universe is not a frozen form at all, that it is expanding. Then Einstein abandoned the cosmological constant, calling it "the greatest miscalculation of his life."
Today, science knows that dark energy still exists, although its density is much less than that suggested by Einstein (the problem of dark energy density, by the way, is one of the greatest mysteries modern physics). But no matter how small the value of the cosmological constant, it is quite enough to make sure that quantum effects in gravity exist.
Subatomic nesting dolls
Despite everything, in the early 1980s, string theory still had unresolvable contradictions, known in science as anomalies. Schwartz and Green set about eliminating them. And their efforts were not in vain: scientists managed to eliminate some of the contradictions of the theory. Imagine the amazement of these two, already accustomed to the fact that their theory is ignored, when the reaction of the scientific community blew up the scientific world. In less than a year, the number of string theorists jumped to hundreds. It was then that string theory was awarded the title of The Theory of Everything. The new theory seemed capable of describing all the components of the universe. And here are the ingredients.
Each atom, as we know, consists of even smaller particles - electrons, which circle around the nucleus, which consists of protons and neutrons. Protons and neutrons, in turn, are made up of even smaller particles called quarks. But string theory says it doesn't end with quarks. Quarks are made up of tiny snaking filaments of energy that resemble strings. Each of these strings is unimaginably small. So small that if the atom were enlarged to the size solar system, the string would be the size of a tree. Just as the different vibrations of a cello string create what we hear as different musical notes, various ways(modes) the vibrations of the string give the particles their unique properties mass, charge, etc. Do you know how, relatively speaking, the protons in the tip of your nail differ from the graviton that has not yet been discovered? Just the set of tiny strings that make them up and how those strings vibrate.
Of course, all this is more than amazing. Ever since the time Ancient Greece physicists are accustomed to the fact that everything in this world consists of something like balls, tiny particles. And now, not having time to get used to the illogical behavior of these balls, which follows from quantum mechanics, they are invited to leave the paradigm altogether and operate with some kind of spaghetti trimmings...
Fifth Dimension
Although many scientists call string theory the triumph of mathematics, some problems still remain - most notably, the lack of any opportunity to test it experimentally in the near future. Not a single instrument in the world, either existing or capable of appearing in perspective, is incapable of "seeing" the strings. Therefore, some scientists, by the way, even ask the question: is string theory a theory of physics or philosophy?.. True, it is not at all necessary to see strings “with your own eyes”. What is required to prove string theory is rather something else - what sounds like science fiction - confirmation of the existence of extra dimensions of space.
What is this about? We are all accustomed to three dimensions of space and one - time. But string theory predicts the presence of other - additional - dimensions. But let's start in order.
In fact, the idea of the existence of other dimensions arose almost a hundred years ago. It came to the head of the then unknown German mathematician Theodor Kalutz in 1919. He suggested the possibility of the presence in our universe of another dimension that we do not see. Albert Einstein heard about this idea, and at first he liked it very much. Later, however, he doubted its correctness, and delayed Kaluza's publication by as much as two years. Ultimately, however, the article was nevertheless published, and the extra dimension became a kind of passion for the genius of physics.
As you know, Einstein showed that gravity is nothing but a deformation of space-time measurements. Kaluza suggested that electromagnetism could also be ripples. Why don't we see it? Kaluza found the answer to this question - the ripples of electromagnetism can exist in an additional, hidden dimension. But where is it?
The answer to this question was given by the Swedish physicist Oscar Klein, who suggested that the fifth dimension of Kaluza is curled up billions of times more than the size of a single atom, so we cannot see it. The idea that this tiny dimension exists all around us is at the heart of string theory.
Inside each of these forms, a string vibrates and moves - the main component of the Universe.
Each shape is six-dimensional - according to the number of six additional dimensions
©Wikimedia Commons
ten dimensions
But in fact, the equations of string theory require not even one, but six additional dimensions (in total, with four known to us, there are exactly 10 of them). All of them have a very twisted and twisted complex shape. And everything is unimaginably small.
How can these tiny dimensions affect our Big world? According to string theory, decisive: for it, everything is determined by the form. When you play different keys on the saxophone, you get and different sounds. This is because when you press one or another key or a combination of them, you change the shape of the space in musical instrument where air circulates. Because of this, different sounds are born.
String theory suggests that the extra twisted and twisted dimensions of space show up in a similar way. The forms of these additional dimensions are complex and varied, and each causes the string inside such dimensions to vibrate in a different way precisely because of its forms. After all, if we assume, for example, that one string vibrates inside a jug, and the other inside a curved post horn, these will be completely different vibrations. However, if string theory is to be believed, in reality, the shapes of extra dimensions look much more complicated than a jar.
How the world works
Science today knows a set of numbers that are the fundamental constants of the universe. They determine the properties and characteristics of everything around us. Among such constants, for example, the charge of an electron, the gravitational constant, the speed of light in vacuum... And if we change these numbers even by a small number of times, the consequences will be catastrophic. Suppose we have increased the strength of the electromagnetic interaction. What happened? We may suddenly find that the ions have become more repulsive from each other, and thermonuclear fusion, which makes stars shine and radiate heat, has suddenly failed. All stars will go out.
But what about string theory with its extra dimensions? The fact is that, according to it, it is the additional dimensions that determine exact value fundamental constants. Some forms of measurement cause one string to vibrate in a certain way, and give rise to what we see as a photon. In other forms, the strings vibrate differently and produce an electron. Truly God lies in the "little things" - it is these tiny forms that determine all the fundamental constants of this world.
superstring theory
In the mid-1980s, string theory took on a majestic and slender air, but within that monument, confusion reigned. In just a few years, as many as five versions of string theory have emerged. And although each of them is built on strings and extra dimensions (all five versions are united in the general theory of superstrings), in details these versions diverged significantly.
So, in some versions, the strings had open ends, in others they looked like rings. And in some versions, the theory even required not 10, but as many as 26 measurements. The paradox is that all five versions today can be called equally true. But which one really describes our universe? This is another mystery of string theory. That is why many physicists again waved their hand at the "crazy" theory.
But the main problem of strings, as already mentioned, is the impossibility (at least for now) to prove their presence experimentally.
Some scientists, however, still say that on the next generation of accelerators there is a very minimal, but still, opportunity to test the hypothesis of extra dimensions. Although the majority, of course, is sure that if this is possible, then, alas, it should not happen very soon - at least in decades, as a maximum - even in a hundred years.
