• Question: What is string theory?

    Asked by Woah Science to Jackie, Michele, Oliver, Vicky, Yelong on 16 Mar 2015.
    • Photo: Michele Faucci Giannelli

      Michele Faucci Giannelli answered on 16 Mar 2015:


      String theory is a theory of Everything, meaning that it tries to incorporate quantum mechanics, and in particular the Standard Model of particle physics, with gravity. As an experimental particle physicists I am not familiar with the details of this theory which, as far as I know, does not provide any actual observable (a quantity that can be measure in an experiment) to demonstrate its validity. My fellow scientists have more theoretical background so they may give you more details. I can only point you to Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/String_theory

    • Photo: Jaclyn Bell

      Jaclyn Bell answered on 17 Mar 2015:


      String theory says that all the different particles in the world are just different manifestations of one basic object: a string. It is like having one string on a violin being able to play lots of different notes depending where you place your finger. Depending how it oscillates we might see and electron or a proton, etc. String theory is a theory which believes the whole world is made up of these strings and not point-particles (the particles are just seen as excitations of the string). It is a grand unified theory which can connect quantum mechanics, relativity and gravity, if string theory is proven to exist it could be the best theory we have to explain the universe!

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