Word: superstringent
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Multiple universes emerge from so-called superstring theory as well. This still evolving theory is based on the notion that, matter is made, not of particles, but of tiny, vibrating loops of energy called strings. The strings exist in a world of up to 10 spatial dimensions, all but three...
The tall, thin, soft-spoken Witten, 52, didn't even set out to be a scientist. He majored in history at Brandeis and originally planned to be a journalist but ended up getting a Ph.D. in physics instead. By the mid-1980s, some of his colleagues had decided that the...
Theorists have even identified a candidate for a consistent unified theory of gravitation and all the other forces: superstring theory. In some versions, it proposes that what appear to us as particles are really stringlike loops that exist in a space-time with 10 dimensions. But we don't yet...
That doesn't necessarily mean the theory is correct, of course. As Einstein's example makes clear, very smart people sometimes tilt at windmills. And even in the case of his greatest success, the General Theory of Relativity, Einstein had to wait patiently for experimentalists to go out and verify...
But with Witten on the case, superstring theory may well be refined to the point where it can be tested in real-world experiments. Already his work on a related idea known as topological quantum field theory, which allows physicists to find connections between seemingly unrelated equations, has earned Witten...