Читать книгу String Theory For Dummies - Andrew Zimmerman Jones - Страница 47

After Einstein successfully worked the major kinks out of his theory of general relativity, he turned his attention toward trying to unify this theory of gravity with electromagnetism as well as with quantum physics. In fact, he would spend most of the rest of his life trying to develop this unified theory but would die unsuccessful.

Throughout this quest, Einstein looked at almost any theory he could think of. One of these ideas was to add an extra space dimension and roll it up into a very small size. This approach, called Kaluza-Klein theory after the men who proposed it, is addressed in Chapter 6. This same approach would eventually be used by string theorists to deal with the pesky extra dimensions that arose in their own theories.

Ultimately, none of Einstein’s attempts bore fruit. To the day of his death, he worked feverishly on completing his unified field theory in a manner that many physicists consider a sad end to such a great career.

Today, however, some of the most intense theoretical physics work is in the search for a theory to unify gravity and the rest of physics, mainly in the form of string theory.