• Question: What is your opinion on string theory?

    Asked by babaksarani to Alan, Caspar, Diana, Murray, Sarah on 15 Mar 2011 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Caspar Addyman

      Caspar Addyman answered on 14 Mar 2011:

      It’s a tangled complicated mess that I don’t really understand… in fact neither do most physicists.. the maths behind quantum mechanics and general relativity is quite ‘easy’ in comparison. it’s also not yet possible to test any predictions from string theory and that makes scientists uneasy…. you have to be able to run experiments to test your theories.

    • Photo: Sarah Thomas

      Sarah Thomas answered on 14 Mar 2011:

      Ok everything I know about string theory, I learned from the big bang theory! And it is the idea that matter consists of tiny strings!

      In the words of Sheldon Cooper, “Bazinga!!”

      (Ps sorry, physics is not my best subject!)

    • Photo: Murray Collins

      Murray Collins answered on 14 Mar 2011:

      Hi – going to skip this question. I honestly don’t know enough about string theory to give you a sensible answer on this. Sorry!

    • Photo: Diana Drennan

      Diana Drennan answered on 15 Mar 2011:

      I think it’s great stuff. I prefer cotton to synthetic – it’s hard to make the synthetic stuff keep really good knots. I usually use it for quick fixes like chasing the dog after he breaks through the fence. Then I use it to fix the fence….

      …yeah, ok, I’m ok with physicists saying light has properties of a particle and a wave, but I have a hard time thinking of light as a string. That part of physics class went kind of over my head…..

    • Photo: Alan Winfield

      Alan Winfield answered on 15 Mar 2011:

      Well I’m sorry to say that I don’t know enough about string theory to have an opinion.

      All I know is that it’s very hard maths – that involves lots of dimensions (13 I think) as opposed to the usual 4 (space is 3 dimensions, and time is 1). Like dark matter (see my other answer on that) I’m very sceptical about very very complicated theories that no-one can understand. I think that a theory that complicated is probably wrong!

Comments