Universe of Strings

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"The quest for a theory linking all matter and all forces led physicists deep into hyperspace, where they got horribly lost. But suddenly the way ahead has become clear",
-- says superstring theorist.

But what are these extra dimensions? see cosmicvariance:

"Imagine a tightrope stretched between skyscrapers," says JoAnne Hewett from SLAC. "If you are watching an acrobat walk across it - the tightrope looks like a line. But if you are watching an ant walk on the tightrope, you can see that the tightrope is thick and round." - The extra dimensions postulated in string theory are like the tightrope with an ant on it; they are too small to see unless you get really, really close.



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For further reading visit:

An ant's perspective
How particles came to be

Plato [Homepage]

Three dimensions are all we see -- how could there be any more? Einstein's general theory of relativity tells us that space can expand, contract, and bend. If one direction were to contract down to an extremely tiny size, much smaller than an atom, it would be hidden from our view. If we could see on small enough scales, that hidden dimension might become visible.

For further reading see Plato on dimensional-referencing

The earlier concept of a universe made of physical particles interacting according to fixed laws is no longer tenable. It is implicit in present findings that action rather than matter is basic ...

This good news, for it is no longer appropriate to think of the universe as a gradually subsiding agitation of billiard balls. The universe far from being a desert of inert particles is a theatre of increasingly complex organization, a stage for developmemt in which man has a definitive place, without an upper limit to his evolution.

Arthur M Young. The Reflexive Universe

For further reading visit: developing character in rhetoric
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