String Theory Explained Simply

28 May 2007 09:51 by Mark

When scientists - such as hip and trendy physicist Dr Brian Cox - talk about the universe - and believe me, it's difficult to get a lot of them to stop talking about the universe - then they invariably bring up subjects such as "Dark Matter" and "Hawking Radiation" and "String Theory" and "Space-Time Vortex Marmosets". Is it possible for a dummy like you to understand these complex scientific terms? Why, yes it is!

Today we'll be looking at String Theory, explaining in simple terms just what it is and how it is the cause of the weak and strong gravitational properties in the universe.

One of the core principles of physics is that particles - for example particles of light radiation - behave both as particles (which you'd expect) and as waves (which is just mental). Physicists call this duality of particles: confusing. The confusing properties of particles allows physicists to bamboozle people and get grants.

Imagine a wave of particles streaming out across space. Wouldn't that look like a great, long, wiggly string? You bet your unscientific ass it would! Is that string theory? You bet your unscientific ass it isn't! However, it does demonstrate that particles - any particles - can form long strings. There are long string streams emanating from the Sun right now, washing up against buildings and reflecting colours into your eye holes. There are strings of radiation particles bursting forth from your monitor, crashing up against your face, and running down cracks in your skin to cancerfy your intestines too. There are streams of strings everywhere.

You may be thinking: "all this talk of streams is making me want to pee. Is that string theory?" No, that's your prostate trouble flaring up again. I told you anal sex was dangerous.

Gravity is everywhere in the universe and as such it needs energy to keep it running. As luck would have it there is an awful lot of energy in all those particle strings all over the place. An awful lot. To demonstrate just how much energy is present in strings you can perform a string theory experiment of your own.

String Theory Experiment
You will need:

a string of christmas tree lights
a tree
a bag

Step one: decorate a tree with the christmas tree lights.
String Theory 1

Step two: undecorate the tree.
String Theory 2

Step three: put the lights in the bag.
String Theory 3

Step four: put the bag in your loft.
String Theory 4

Step five: wait one year.
String Theory 5

Step six: retrieve the bag.
String Theory 6

Step seven: untangle the string of lights.
String Theory 7

What you will discover is that a seemingly inoffensive string with plastic bulbs on it somehow stores staggering levels of energy within.

Now imagine if you'd put two strings of lights in those bags. Pretty scary, huh? What about an infinite number of strings? A bit harder to imagine, but I'm sure you're getting the picture.

The universe is like that bag in the loft containing more christmas tree lights than you can imagine. Every planet is a bulb; many of the bulbs are broken. The person trying to unravel all those strings is the Space-Time Vortex Marmoset Queen. The energy expelled by the Space-Time Vortex Marmoset Queen in unravelling the christmas tree lights is what we know as gravity. And that is string theory explained simply.

Next time on Simple Science ... why the Space-Time Vortex Marmoset Queen doesn't like you poking around her black holes.

Penny

Ah, I notice that nowhere in your post do you talk about the Fabric of Spacetime (which everyone knows consists of a 99% cotton-1% spandex blend, wash in cold water with like colors, line dry, cool iron). My only question to you is this: if I wore a pair of jeans made out of the Fabric of Spacetime, would they make my butt look big?

All of your anti-spam questions have been negative numbers recently, btw.

28 May 2007 15:26

Mark

The Fabric of Spacetime is constrained by the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle making the act of observing it directly affect the accuracy with which one is able to definitely say that it makes your butt look big. Sorry.

As for the anti-spam questions: perhaps the anti-spam system is depressed.

28 May 2007 19:22

Job

I'm not so sure that this really does explain string theory. There's something not quite right about it that I can't put my finger on.

29 May 2007 14:20

DrF

What about the cat? There's always a cat. Maybe it's in the attic, maybe it's somehow got tangled up in the fekking Christmas tree lights, maybe it's dead. Maybe not. Maybe it's just moved next door where the food is better and the people less frenetic, maybe it's not. It's in a suspended state of superstringsuspendedness. It is a quantum quat. Strung up. Highly string. Cat gut. See? You won't know until you go up and check. That's the Schrodinger - Marmoset aspect of String theory.

Can I have my grant now?

29 May 2007 19:25

Delboys Daughter

Thank you for the wonderful lesson. The question that's really on everyone's lips however is :
Is that a self portrait of you in the pics?

30 May 2007 13:19

Mark

It's not me DD. One of the little known effects of accepting the Pauli Exclusion Principle is that only a gay biker can be used to demonstrate multidimensional string theories.

30 May 2007 14:01

Delboys Daughter

Doesn't look a million miles away from my boyfriend amusingly.

01 Jun 2007 15:01

Gen

I love String Theory! I'm still not sure if I fully understand it, but I think I now get the general idea. Yay!

06 Jun 2007 03:23

chuk b

nobody has the time to do this experiment, and in your definition of string theory the strings have to be tangled up

19 Jun 2007 05:52

Mark

chuk - you must be busy indeed to not have time to put up a tree, take it down, box it up and climb into the attic, wait a year, then retrieve the box. Christmas must be a hoot at your house. And the strings don't have to be tangled up; they just are tangled up. It's a bit like atoms. They don't have to have protons orbiting the nucleus; they could all be in a queue with every other one shimmying to an internal beat. But they aren't. Weird.

19 Jun 2007 07:37

Nitin

I am understand the string theory , but my qustion is that when this theory put forwed what type of explnation is given?

30 Nov 2007 12:34

rodney

so space itself fragmented and wound up to form matter? the big bang came from an earlier epoch? bounce after bounce until one evolved that was material and lasting enough to support life?

24 Jun 2008 02:22

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