#053 Cosmic Cat's Cradles
Source: https://www.tsukuba.ac.jp/en/tsukuba-future/20160218000101.html Parent: https://www.tsukuba.ac.jp/en/tsukuba-future/index_5.html
TSUKUBA FUTURE
- Home
- TSUKUBA FUTURE
-
053 Cosmic Cat's Cradles
Technology/Materials
053 Cosmic Cat's Cradles
Feb 18, 2016
Assistant Professor ISHIKI Goro, Faculty of Pure and Applied Sciences
What is the universe made of? What was there before the Big Bang? There are probably a lot of people who entertain such questions. Books that explain topics such as the theory of relativity or black holes are certainly selling well. While this may be the heyday of Japanese research on the neutrino, with the recent Nobel Prize in Physics being awarded to a Japanese researcher, there is still quite a bit we do not yet know about elementary particles like the neutrino. That is where string theory comes in, which attempts to provide a unified explanation of the underlying forces behind the elementary particles.
\
It is likely that you have heard the term "string theory." This theory basically states that the universe is made up of incredibly tiny vibrating "strings." The first question you might ask would be "Won't all those strings get tangled up?" Prof. Ishiki, who is himself a string theory researcher, has been kind enough to respond to the natural skepticism and questions that have arisen around this topic.\ \
\
While we can feel like we understand it somewhat, there is still something about string theory that is hard to grasp. We live in a three-dimensional world, one that has length, width, and depth. If we add in one more axis for time, our world becomes four-dimensional. Interestingly enough, string theory makes the hypothesis that (with time included), the world has ten dimensions. Any lower than that number of dimensions and mathematical inconsistencies start to occur, so according to Prof. Ishiki, string theory needs ten dimensions at the very least. So, if we take away time for now, that leaves a nine-dimensional space including the three-dimensional space we live in (and which we are aware of). So how in the world are they related? As we talked about above, string theory considers nine fundamental spatial dimensions to exist. Of those, string theory puts forth the idea that six of the dimensions are small and curled up together due to a special type of motion, leaving only the remaining three dimensions that we can see. Prof. Ishiki talked about the following example. An ant walking across the surface of a sphere floating in the air might perceive the world as two-dimensional. If that sphere were noticeably stretched out as if it were a thin wire, the ant walking on its surface may be aware of the world as having only one dimension. But what would an actual multi-dimensional world be like?
\