Edward Witten
Edward Witten
Edward Wittenis an American theoretical physicist and professor of mathematical physics at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionMathematician
Date of Birth26 August 1951
CountryUnited States of America
giving shapes different
One of the basic things about a string is that it can vibrate in many different shapes or forms, which gives music its beauty.
moon nasty newton
1/r^2 has a nasty singularity at r=0, but it did not bother Newton-the Moon is far enough.
physics strings theory
String theory is 21 st century physics that fell accidentally into the 20th century.
world used new-world
You enter a completely new world where things aren't at all what you're used to.
change introducing bigs
It's indeed surprising that replacing the elementary particle with a string leads to such a big change in things. I'm tempted to say that it has to do with the fuzziness it introduces.
nature way dimensions
If I take the theory as we have it now, literally, I would conclude that extra dimensions really exist. They're part of nature. We don't really know how big they are yet, but we hope to explore that in various ways.
thinking littles strings
String theory is an attempt at a deeper description of nature by thinking of an elementary particle not as a little point but as a little loop of vibrating string.
teamwork everyday together
As far as extra dimensions are concerned, very tiny extra dimensions wouldn't be perceived in everyday life, just as atoms aren't: we see many atoms together but we don't see atoms individually.
strong cousin progress
Superstring theories provide a framework in which the force of gravity may be united with the other three forces in nature: the weak, electromagnetic and strong forces. Recent progress has shown that the most promising superstring theories follow from a single theory. For the last generation, physicists have studied five string theories and one close cousin. Recently it has become clear that these five or six theories are different limiting cases of one theory which, though still scarcely understood, is the candidate for superunification of the forces of nature.
might strings theory
So when you ask me how string theory might be tested, I can tell you what's likely to happen at accelerators or some parts of the theory that are likely to be tested.
agnostic
Im actually, for the most part, a complete agnostic politically.
knows
We know a lot of things, but what we don't know is a lot more.
nature simplicity physics
Even before string theory, especially as physics developed in the 20th century, it turned out that the equations that really work in describing nature with the most generality and the greatest simplicity are very elegant and subtle.
uncertainty-principle doe principles
Quantum mechanics brought an unexpected fuzziness into physics because of quantum uncertainty, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. String theory does so again because a point particle is replaced by a string, which is more spread out.