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membrane_theory [2011-02-14 17:04] – FdiywlvrLMtZXEnRU 174.132.220.135 | membrane_theory [2011-10-27 19:46] (current) – [Subject: we have a theory of everything now - we can all relax] 86.147.222.50 | ||
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+ | ==== Subject: we have a theory of everything now - we can all relax ==== | ||
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+ | by Honor Harger (with small edits and transclusions by [[nik gaffney]]) | ||
+ | |||
+ | |||
+ | basically, it appears that thanks to the popularisation of the eleventh dimension, a rock climbing physicist' | ||
+ | ==== The [Latest] Theory of Everything. ==== | ||
+ | |||
+ | Yep, its sorted now. We apparently understand more or less everything | ||
+ | about where the universe began, what started it, and what's in it. It | ||
+ | turns out we live in a lumpy multiversal sea where bubble-like | ||
+ | universes are thrown into each other like tidal waves. | ||
+ | |||
+ | Here is the deal ..... | ||
+ | |||
+ | |||
+ | In the effort to establish a unified theory of everything, a theory of | ||
+ | matter was developed in the 1980s and 90s called String Theory. | ||
+ | |||
+ | |||
+ | For years it had been an article of faith that all the matter in the | ||
+ | Universe was made of tiny, invisible particles. In the 1980s the | ||
+ | particle physicists discovered they'd been studying the wrong thing. | ||
+ | The particles were really tiny, invisible strings. The theory was | ||
+ | called String Theory and it maintained that matter emanated from these | ||
+ | tiny strings like music. | ||
+ | |||
+ | |||
+ | As physicist, Burt Ovrut comments: | ||
+ | string or a guitar string. If you pluck it in a certain way you get a | ||
+ | certain frequency, but if you pluck it a different way you can get more | ||
+ | frequencies on this string and in fact you have different notes. Nature | ||
+ | is made of all the little notes, the musical notes, that are played on | ||
+ | these super-strings." | ||
+ | |||
+ | |||
+ | Another physicist, Michio Kaku reiterates, "All of a sudden we realised | ||
+ | the Universe is a symphony and the laws of physics are harmonies of a | ||
+ | super-string" | ||
+ | |||
+ | |||
+ | String Theory proved provocative. | ||
+ | closest theory to explaining everything which existed in the Universe. | ||
+ | It seemed to neatly summarise the material aspects of the universe. | ||
+ | |||
+ | |||
+ | String Theory utilised additional dimensions in its framework. | ||
+ | extra dimensions were spaces in the Universe which we could not | ||
+ | perceive. | ||
+ | as a ten dimensional, | ||
+ | dimensions. For instance, super gravity, argued by Michael Duff of the | ||
+ | University of Michigan, was a comparatively obscure theory which had | ||
+ | long existed in the shadow of String Theory, as a single unifying | ||
+ | universal theory. | ||
+ | composed of 11 dimensions. | ||
+ | ridiculed by String Theorists. | ||
+ | |||
+ | |||
+ | If String Theory was to become Einstein' | ||
+ | it would have to pass one test. It would have to explain the birth of | ||
+ | the Universe. | ||
+ | of the cosmologists who believed things had started with a giant | ||
+ | explosion - the Big Bang. While initially String Theory and the Big | ||
+ | Bang seemed to work perfectly in tandem as dual explanations for the | ||
+ | Universe (one explained its origins, the other everything which existed | ||
+ | in the Universe), problems soon started to emerge. | ||
+ | |||
+ | |||
+ | In the early 1990s a major problem with String Theory developed. | ||
+ | more people worked in it, competing theories began to be developed, | ||
+ | variants on the original premises of the theory. | ||
+ | separate theories existed, each a subtle variant on the original String | ||
+ | Theory. | ||
+ | this was a major problem. | ||
+ | claim to be a single answer to the universe' | ||
+ | |||
+ | |||
+ | At the same moment, String Theory began to break down, cosmologists | ||
+ | began to have major problems with the Big Bang as a theory of | ||
+ | explaining the origin of the universe. | ||
+ | explains: "In spite of the fact that we call it the Big Bang Theory it | ||
+ | really says absolutely nothing about the Big Bang. It doesn' | ||
+ | what banged, why it banged, what caused it to bang. It doesn' | ||
+ | describe, doesn' | ||
+ | immediately after this bang." | ||
+ | |||
+ | |||
+ | In the early 1990s, with String Theory in tatters, a group of | ||
+ | physicists tried one last variant in their calculations. | ||
+ | desperate move the string theorists tried adding the very thing they | ||
+ | had spent a decade rubbishing: the eleventh dimension. Something almost | ||
+ | magical happened. | ||
+ | addition of the new dimension, all five variants on String Theory | ||
+ | turned out to be the same theory. | ||
+ | to be simply different manifestations of a more fundamental theory. | ||
+ | The additional dimension, had not only solved String Theory' | ||
+ | but also had rehabilitated the work of the super gravitists who had | ||
+ | long been operating in the Eleventh Dimension. | ||
+ | |||
+ | |||
+ | It looked as if a single unifying theory explaining the universe was, | ||
+ | after all, plausible. | ||
+ | |||
+ | |||
+ | The new dimension - the Eleventh - was a strange place. | ||
+ | calculated to be infinitely long, yet extremely narrow in width - an | ||
+ | estimated trillionth of a millimetre wide (and thus imperceptible). The | ||
+ | laws of physics as we know them would likely not operate in this | ||
+ | dimension. | ||
+ | |||
+ | |||
+ | When scientist began to experiment using the Eleventh Dimension, | ||
+ | something very odd began to happen. | ||
+ | their experiments using the additional dimension, they began to | ||
+ | discover that the ' | ||
+ | turning out to be distinctly ' | ||
+ | was composed, in this new theory seemed much more lumpy, more elastic | ||
+ | than a string. | ||
+ | tiny invisible strings were changing. They stretched and they combined. | ||
+ | The astonishing conclusion was that all the matter in the Universe was | ||
+ | connected to one vast structure: a membrane. In effect, our entire | ||
+ | Universe is a membrane. The quest to explain everything in the Universe | ||
+ | could begin again and at its heart would be this new theory. Membrane | ||
+ | Theory, or M-Theory for short. | ||
+ | |||
+ | |||
+ | ( | ||
+ | While all of this took place a rock-climbing physicist from Harvard | ||
+ | University - Lisa Randall - had been greatly troubled by one of our | ||
+ | physical forces: gravity. | ||
+ | comparatively weak, when compared with other physical forces? Though | ||
+ | intuitively gravity seems rather strong - it fixes us to the planet, | ||
+ | for instance - it is in fact surprisingly weak. Despite the force of | ||
+ | the sum of the Earth' | ||
+ | move, for instance. | ||
+ | by using a weak magnet. | ||
+ | out of gravity' | ||
+ | Could it be that its force is being dissipated in some way? Could | ||
+ | gravity be somehow ' | ||
+ | Dimension? | ||
+ | validity of this hypothesis, her calculations wouldn' | ||
+ | she started to consider a bizarre proposition. | ||
+ | leaking from our universe into one of our more unusual dimensions, | ||
+ | could gravity be instead **originate** from a different membrane, | ||
+ | elsewhere, and be leaking into our universe? | ||
+ | come from a parallel universe? | ||
+ | calculations using an alternative membrane as a point of origin for | ||
+ | gravity, she resolved her equations. The weakness of gravity could at | ||
+ | last be explained, but only by introducing the idea of a parallel | ||
+ | universe | ||
+ | |||
+ | |||
+ | The concept of a parallel universe seemed to be hypothetically | ||
+ | plausible, under M-Theory. | ||
+ | piled into the eleventh dimension trying to solve age-old problems and | ||
+ | every time it seemed the perfect explanation was another parallel | ||
+ | universe. Everywhere they looked it seemed they began to find more and | ||
+ | more of them. From every corner of the eleventh dimension parallel | ||
+ | universes came crawling out of the woodwork. Some took the form of | ||
+ | three-dimensional membranes, like our own Universe. Others were merely | ||
+ | sheets of energy. Then there were cylindrical and even looped | ||
+ | membranes. Within no time at all the eleventh dimension seemed to be | ||
+ | jam-packed full of membranes. | ||
+ | occasionally membranes would collide. | ||
+ | dimension would behave in much the same way as massive turbulent waves, | ||
+ | occasionally banging into each other, creating vast disturbances. | ||
+ | |||
+ | |||
+ | M Theory was getting stranger and stranger, but could it really be a | ||
+ | theory which explained everything in our Universe? To have any chance | ||
+ | of that it would have to do something no other rival theory had ever | ||
+ | been able to do. It would have to make sense of the baffling | ||
+ | singularity at the beginning of the Big Bang. | ||
+ | |||
+ | |||
+ | In 2002, Neil Turok, Paul Steinhardt and Burt Ovrut had a crazy | ||
+ | conversation in a train on the way to London. | ||
+ | Bang might be the aftermath of some encounter between two parallel | ||
+ | worlds. | ||
+ | would, in a collision create clumps of energy, some of which could form | ||
+ | into matter. | ||
+ | |||
+ | |||
+ | The singularity had disappeared and it had taken them just under an | ||
+ | hour. If it computed it later experiments, | ||
+ | able to explain everything in the Universe. | ||
+ | |||
+ | |||
+ | Later experiments and calculations seem to have borne out the train | ||
+ | chat. It seems indeed that our universe could be just one bubble | ||
+ | floating in an ocean of other bubbles. | ||
+ | |||
+ | |||
+ | **References: | ||
+ | |||
+ | |||
+ | * M-theory, the theory formerly known as Strings: The Standard Model Cambridge | ||
+ | * Burt Ovrut Dept Physics, University of Pennsylvania | ||
+ | * The Endless Universe: A Brief Introduction to the Cyclic Universe by Paul J. Steinhardt | ||
+ | * Joseph Henry Laboratories, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA http://feynman.princeton.edu/ | ||
+ | * Brane-Storm' | ||
+ | * Connecting Fundamental Physics and Cosmology http:// | ||
+ | * Big Bang's New Rival Debuts With a Splash by Charles Seife http:// | ||
+ | * transcript of BBC interview with Ovrut, Turok and co. http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/ | ||
+ | |||
+ | |||
+ | more (or less related) notes | ||
+ | * http:// | ||
+ | |||
+ | |||
+ | [[Category Physics]] |