I always wanted to know about newer modern physics, so I
got Hawkings books, including "universe in a nutshell",
and Greens book, The elegant universe. These concepts are
very difficult for nonmathematicians or maths which don't
specify "topology'...
What is fascinating to me is that strings are suppposedly
these tiny (like 10 to the minus 33) meters size vibrating
loops of energy...but can't there be 1/2 strings, or left
strings, right string? substring areas???..and by the way,
what is energy? Can it be detected by what it does, or
does it exist without our ability to dectect it?
Does energy move material objects? Since material objects
according to string theory are only manifestations of the
vibrational patterns of strings, does that mean energy is
what moves its own species??? It sounds very reminiscent
of it being self-existing on its own without beginning and
without end.....but it is impersonal...hmmmmm....
Finally, some of the maths used to explain these subatomic
physical oddities are accessible only to mathematicians.
They incorporate ideas such as "imaginary time", the
sum of paths mentioned earlier, things existing only because
they are "detected" , fabric of space changing or opening and
closing, multiple universes undetectable by us (as our
physics is different)...and somethings (is that a good wor
to describe it?) called Calabi-Yau spaces which explain in a
spatial way how the extra 7-8 dimension curl up. Like I
said, you gotta he heavy into math to even understand what
they be talk'n 'bout, never mind prove or disprove it...
It is interesting however. We may find that we are trying
to make up "just so" stories to explain that we cannot
really "get at" the core bits of matter/strings cause the
energy requirements to control them or blast them out of
their "comfy" homes are too great. Example, it may take
a supercollider the size of our solar system to generate the
energy to accelerate these "particles" very close to the
speed of light....
Alright, enough of this. Time to watch the 3 stooges.Nyuk,
Nyuk, Nyuk.
I do not pretend to understand string theory beyond the popular descriptions of it, and even those I don't have a good feeling for. But there is no doubt that every explanation posts up a whole new bunch of questions. Strings, I guess, are made of energy. What is the energy made of? What is stuff that energy is made of made of? And so on. When do we know that we have the final theory? When it explains everything except itself? Or including itself (a recursive definition, I guess)? Or equals 42?