Читать книгу String Theory For Dummies - Andrew Zimmerman Jones - Страница 64

The current version of string theory is called M-theory. Introduced in 1995, M-theory is a comprehensive theory that includes the five supersymmetric string theories and exists in 11 dimensions. There’s just one problem: By and large, M-theory remains a mystery.

Scientists are searching for a complete string theory, but they don’t have one yet. And until they do, there’s no way of knowing that they’ll be successful. Until string theorists have a complete theory that describes our universe, the theory could be all smoke and mirrors. Although some aspects of string theory may be shown to be true, it may be that these are only approximations of some more fundamental theory — or it may be that string theory is actually that fundamental theory itself.

String theory, the driving force of 21st-century theoretical physics, could prove to be nothing more than a mathematical illusion that provides some approximate insights into science but isn’t actually the theory that drives the forces of nature.

It’s unclear how long the search for a theory can last without some specific breakthrough. There’s a sense (among some) that the most brilliant physicists on the planet have been spinning their wheels for decades, with only a handful of significant insights, and even those discoveries don’t seem to lead anywhere specific.

The theoretical implications of string theory are addressed in Chapters 10 and 11, while the criticism of the theory rears its ugly head in Chapter 18.