String theory’s equations require that the universe has extra dimensions beyond the three of everyday experience—left/right, back/forth and up/down.
That's factually incorrect. We exist in four dimensions. The fourth dimension is time. It's called spacetime.
I love the elegance of string theory. I like the idea that the universe is ultimately constructed of countless indivisible one-dimensional particles, each vibrating at different frequencies, which gives rise to all matter and all energy.
Regardless of how much I enjoy it, a theory isn't provable unless it can be tested. Unfortunately, the "strings" themselves are far too tiny for any human-made device to detect the strings (close to planck length). Difficult formulating how to see one extra dimension, much less 10 (well, 10 for superstring, 26 if you're all hot and bothered by bosonic strings). So, for foreseeable future, it will remain in the domain of chalkboards and scholarly papers.
There's a lot more competing ideas for ToE, if you want to poke around.
If you want to know more about string theory, but would rather look at cats, then Buzzfeed has you covered.
At the speed at which technology is advancing, who knows, maybe we can figure this out in the next 20-30 years. Even if it leads to disproving the theory, the important thing is that we continue to move forward.
That's factually incorrect. We exist in four dimensions. The fourth dimension is time. It's called spacetime.
I love the elegance of string theory. I like the idea that the universe is ultimately constructed of countless indivisible one-dimensional particles, each vibrating at different frequencies, which gives rise to all matter and all energy.
Regardless of how much I enjoy it, a theory isn't provable unless it can be tested. Unfortunately, the "strings" themselves are far too tiny for any human-made device to detect the strings (close to planck length). Difficult formulating how to see one extra dimension, much less 10 (well, 10 for superstring, 26 if you're all hot and bothered by bosonic strings). So, for foreseeable future, it will remain in the domain of chalkboards and scholarly papers.
There's a lot more competing ideas for ToE, if you want to poke around.
If you want to know more about string theory, but would rather look at cats, then Buzzfeed has you covered.
At the speed at which technology is advancing, who knows, maybe we can figure this out in the next 20-30 years. Even if it leads to disproving the theory, the important thing is that we continue to move forward.