Superstring theories

When I said earlier that superstring theory was mathematically very difficult, I was understating the problem. It is so difficult that, as I write this, no one yet knows what the mathematical equations of the theory are. Only approximate equations are known, and these are so complicated that they can be solved only approximately. The extra dimensions add complications too, because these dimensions can be interwoven in different ways. And because there is not one superstring theory but five, thousands of different versions of the theory are possible. 

However the physicists who do research on superstring theory still face numerous problems. For example, they can t even be sure whether superstrings are entities that exist in space and time, or whether space and time might be made of superstrings. Some progress has been made in determining the ways in which the extra... 

In our own time the quest has been taken to an even deeper level, notably by physicists working in superstring theory. As I write this, no one can say whether the superstring theorists will ultimately be successful. Perhaps some other way of unifying the four forces will be... 

It might turn out that no ultimate theory will ever be discovered, that scientists will find themselves probing the workings of nature at ever deeper levels. After all this is what has always happened before. Scientists originally thought that the chemical elements were the fundamental components of the universe. Then the physicists showed that they were not, by discovering first that atoms were composed of smaller particles and then that some of these particles themselves had components. Then superstring theory introduced the idea that even smaller entities were fundamental. 

As technically advanced as superstring theory sounds, superstring theory could have been developed a long time ago according to string-theory guru Edward Witten, a theoretical physicist at the Institute for Advanced Study in... 

Princeton. For example, he indicates that it is quite likely that other civilizations in the universe discovered superstring theory and then later derived Einstein-like formulations (which in our world predate string theory by more than half a century). Unfortunately for experimentalists, superstrings are so small that they are not likely to ever be detectable by humans. If you consider the ratio of the... 

M. B. Green, J. H. Schwarz, and E. Witten, Superstring Theory, Cambridge, Univ. Press, Cambridge, UK, 1987. 

Polchinslri, J.G. String Theory Superstring Theory> and Beyond, Vol. 2, Cambridge University Press, New York, NY, iyy8. 

It is concluded within the toy model above that the B(3) field, or more likely a pseudofield, is consistent with an extended SU(2) x 51/(2) model of electroweak interactions. A more complete formalism of the 51/(2) x SU 2) theory with fermion masses will yield more general results. A direct measurement of B(3 should have a major impact on the future of unified field theory and superstring theories. The first such measurement was reported in Ref. 14, (see also Refs. 6 and 7). 

Mirror or shadow matter also belongs to the extra-dimension territory. The particles are just like ours (hadrons, leptons, and all), but can interact with us only gravitationally across a slightly extended fifth dimension of a particular sort of superstring theory. The standard early reference is (71), and a recent one, whose authors would like to use the stuff for supemovae is (72). 

Relation between elementary particles and fundamental forces sought. Process of reductionism seeks to find a grand unified theory (GUT) superstring theory, M branes are under active research. 

The perceptible physical world is three dimensional (although additional hidden dimensions have been speculated in superstring theories and the like). The most general mathematical representations of physical laws should, therefore he relations involving three dimensions. Such equations can be, compactly expressed in terms of vectors. Vector analysis is particularly applicable in formulating the laws of mechanics and electromagnetic theory. 

Langlands program A set of conjectures put forward in 1967 by the Canadian mathematician Robert Langlands (1936- ), relating different branches of mathematics. Some of these conjectures have physical realizations in quantum field theory and superstring theory. 

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