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| At Amazon.com |
This week, I just want to go over the basics, some of which
I’ve discussed before.
Back in the day, when I studied science in school, the
theory was that the basic building blocks of matter were atoms, and atoms were composed
of protons, electrons and neutrons, held together by various electro-magnetic,
inertial and gravitational forces. This is, more or less, the classical theory
of physics, fully supported by the general theory of relativity.
But there was a, shall we say, “companion” theory of
physics called quantum mechanics; however, when I was in school, it was not
popular enough to make it into the general science textbooks. Even so, quantum
mechanics was a serious field of study limited only by the problem that many of
its theories could not be tested given the technology of the day.
Over time, though, technology began to catch up and quantum
theories became more and more accepted.
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| Deconstruction of matter: 1. Macroscopic, e.g., diamonds 2. Molecular, diamond allotrope 3. Atomic, carbon 4. Subatomic - Electron 5. Subatomic - Quarks 6. Strings (Image**) |
The problem remains, however, that some of the basic tenets
of quantum theory and classical theory, while provable, are not, apparently,
compatible. This led to a quest for a “unified theory” that would explain those
incongruent notions. String theory is the most popular hypothesis to date,
though it is neither complete nor unanimously acclaimed. String theory is based
on the work of Italian theoretical physicist Gabriele Veneziano and was first described in 1969.
Very, very simply, string theory proposes that the atomic
particles we called protons, electrons and neutrons are made up of even smaller
stuff and that this stuff is in the form of both looped and open-ended one-dimensional
strings. It is the nature and behavior of these strings which, so to speak, ties
together quantum theory and classical (general relativity) theory.
Then it gets interesting.
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