• Question: what is your opinion on string theory?

    Asked by Gus-the-corgi to Greg, Jen, Laura, Mobeen, Paul on 14 Mar 2016.
    • Photo: Paul O'Mahoney

      Paul O'Mahoney answered on 14 Mar 2016:

      Since I am not a particle physicist I sometimes find it a bit confusing, mostly because of the name! From what I have read though, it seems like a decent theory, and like most theories it is an idea based upon the best evidence we have available. It is being tested a lot and worked on by many people and time will tell whether or not it is ‘right’ or not.

    • Photo: Jen Lowe

      Jen Lowe answered on 14 Mar 2016:

      Tricky – it always get tangled…

      I didn’t cover this in my physics degree – I think a lot has happened in this area since then. I think I would need to read a few textbooks, journal articles and editorials to have a opinion worth listening to. Maybe you know more than me in this area Gus.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/String_theory

    • Photo: Laura Haworth

      Laura Haworth answered on 14 Mar 2016:

      This looks very confusing…

    • Photo: Greg Melia

      Greg Melia answered on 15 Mar 2016:

      I’m not a specialist, but here’s my understanding:

      String theory is still speculative. It explains a lot of things that people want explaining so a lot of people want it to be true, but there area also other theories that might explain the same things. The problem with string theory is that there’s no hard evidence for it, and for it to be true, a lot of different kinds of particles exist, none of which have been found yet.

      If you’re really interested, here’s a slightly more detailed explanation:

      String theory is an attempt to unify our two main theories that describe the universe: quantum theory and relativity. There are four fundamental forces of nature: the weak force, the strong force, electromagnetism and gravity. The first three are described by quantum theory whereas gravity is described by general relativity. The problem is that general relativity is mathematically completely different from quantum theory, so we have two incompatible theories describing the universe. They can’t both be right, can they?

      What string theory does is it attempts to describe gravity in a way that is particle-based, and hence is consistent with quantum theory. ‘Quantum gravity’ is a big prize in science, as if somebody explains it, they will have found one overarching scientific theory that can explain the entire universe (a ‘theory of everything’).

      String theory is one potential attempt to explain quantum gravity. It explains a lot of things. The problem with it is that in order to do this, it also predicts a lot of things (ten dimensions and lots of new types of particles too), which we haven’t found yet. It’s a speculative theory, which hasn’t yet been proved. There are also a number of other theories out there, which are trying to explain the same things.

      Basically, string theory is one possible solution to the quantum gravity problem but it’s still a hypothesis, which could be right or wrong. If someone finds one of the extra particles that it predicts, it would be a lot more believable – and that person’s name will go down in the history books. It could be you!

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