Читать книгу String Theory For Dummies - Andrew Zimmerman Jones - Страница 12

String theory is a physics theory that models the fundamental particles and interactions in the universe by representing everything in terms of vibrating filaments of energy, called strings. Like all modern physical theories, this image is actually expressed in a precise mathematical language that eventually results in quantitative as well as qualitative predictions.

In this theory, strings of energy represent the most fundamental aspect of nature. String theory also predicts other fundamental objects, called branes, which emerge as a natural generalization of the strings. All the matter in our universe consists of the vibrations of these strings (and branes). One important result of string theory is that gravity is a natural consequence of the theory, which is why scientists believe that string theory may hold the answer to possibly uniting gravity with the other forces that affect matter.

We want to reiterate something important: String theory is a mathematical theory. It’s based on mathematical equations that can be interpreted in certain ways. If you’ve never studied physics before, this may seem odd, but all physical theories are expressed in the language of mathematics. In this book, we avoid the mathematics and try to get to the heart of what the theory is telling us about the physical universe.

At present, no one knows exactly what the “final” version of string theory, which will precisely reproduce the universe as we know it, should look like. Scientists have some vague notions about the general elements that will exist within the theory, but no one has come up with the final list of equations that represents all of string theory in our universe, and experiments haven’t yet been able to confirm it (though they haven’t successfully refuted it, either). Physicists have created simplified versions of a stringy universe, but none quite describes our universe … yet.