A 9.

9 Media Publication The Small Book of Big thoughts

String
Theory
Just super complex mumbo jumbo,
or the answer to how the universe works?
 The Small Book of Big thoughts

String Theory
On the frontier of theoretical physics
is a concept that the universe is
made up of tiny vibrating strings!

Powered by
2 Chapter 01

JULY 2015

A concept that says the universe

is a composition played on tiny
vibrating strings.
 Credits
The people behind this book:
INSIDE Executive Editor:
Robert Sovereign-Smith
07 The basics Associate Editor:
30 String Theory Siddharth Parwatay
Writer: Robert Sovereign-Smith
42 10 dimensions?
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50 M-Theory? Sr. Creative Director:
56 Experimentation Jayan K Narayanan
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4 Introduction

Introduction
We’re going to walk you through the basics of
quantum mechanics, string theory, super-
string theory, M-theory and the works...
 Introduction 5

L
ast time we covered Einstein and his most famous equa-
tion, e=MC2. What Einstein did, through his special and
general theories of relativity, was open people’s minds
to new possibilities. The feedback we got was mostly
positive, but a few people who hadn’t taken science requested
it be simplified even further, and to not use intimidating math
equations. We’re going to try and do that, though perhaps we
couldn’t have chosen a more complex topic to try that with. Since
we love trial by fire, we’re going to attempt to dmystify what is
perhaps the life’s work of the smartest humans on the planet for
the last 40 years. Our sincere apologies to them in advance for
any oversimplifications that may not be accurate. Remember
to send feedback to editor@digit.in to let us know how we did.
At the beginning of the 20th century, we thought that atoms
were the smallest possible particles. And the Hydrogen atom to
be the most basic element in the universe. While it’s true that an
atom is the smallest unit of any chemical element (and yes, the
hydrogen atom is the smallest unit of all), it’s by no means the
smallest possible particle.
As time passed, we discovered electrons, protons and
neutrons. We called them sub-atomic particles. All atoms of all
chemical elements contain them, and yes, for a while, we thought
those to be the smallest particles possible.
6 Introduction

Then we decided to invent the field of research known as

Quantum Mechanics (which some also call Quantum Physics or
Quantum Theory), to basically study the universe of the very, very
small. Quantum Mechanics deals with the studies of matter and
energy at the atomic and sub-atomic levels.
Classical Newtonian Physics was perfect for describing the
world as we saw it. Newton was very meticulous and did many
experiments to prove his theories. However, even though he cal-
culated the effects of gravity, and correctly predicted the effects at
as large a level as the solar system, there were still errors. Einstein
came along and explained how mass warped space-time, and
thus explained gravity (Newton discovered it and measured it, but
never explained why it existed). However, the General Theory of
Relativity didn’t explain things at the quantum mechanics scale.
Thus, the search for a unified theory of everything was sought.
This is where String Theory has its roots.
To be honest, even String Theory is old, and in fact it was later
called Superstring Theory, and more recently M-Theory... but would
you pick up this book if it was titled M-Theory? Thus we’ve taken
a few creative liberties and stuck to calling it String Theory, and
hope the PhDs out there won’t send in angry feedback and will
forgive our presumptuousness.
 The basics 7
Chapter #01

The basics
This is a primer to all you need to know to be
able to wrap your brain around understanding
what (perhaps) makes our universe tick

E
ver since we came down from the trees, the many species
that eventually became Homo Sapiens have progressed
forwards in evolution mainly because of one trait – Curi-
osity – it is the mainstay of what it means to be human.
From the ancient civilisations accomplishing seemingly
impossible tasks (given their lack of technology), to the darker
ages where religions tried to stamp out the questioning char-
acteristic of mankind, to the last 500 years where most of our
advancements have happened, we’ve come a long, long way
from our days in the trees or the caves.
Let’s take a quick sojourn down memory lane to understand
what achievements by which great minds led us to where we are.
8 The basics

Sir Isaac Newton, perhaps the greatest scientist to

have ever lived, some would certainly say...
 The basics 9

Calculus
We can almost hear the groans of despair from the casual math
students out there. Don’t worry we’re only giving you a little
history lesson here, not trying to drill differential equations into
your brain (maybe later?).
For hundreds of years, geometry and algebra were able to
describe the world at large. We viewed everything in a static
environment, from a static perspective. All we wanted to really
explore was questions about how tall is that mountain, how wide
does the base need to be if I want to build a 100 meter tall tower,
etc. Don’t get us wrong, most of the marvels you see from the
ancient world were built using geometry and algebra – they’re
wonderful. If you ever visit the Sistine Chapel, the Taj Mahal, the
Pyramids, or any ancient wonder, you will be awed by the use
of geometry and algebra and how wonderful structures were
accomplished using that and simple mechanics.
However, when we shifted our focus to the heavens, and tried
to understand the physics of bodies in motion with respect to one
another, we needed something more than that. It was from this need
that Isaac Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz started work on
a new branch of mathematics that went on to be called Calculus.
Both of them built upon ideas that mankind had pondered
for ages, as far back as the ancient Egyptians, Greeks, Indians,
10 The basics

Chinese, and more. The idea was to study change mathemati-

cally (thus, objects in motion, not static objects). The two basic
branches of Calculus are Differential Calculus and Integral Cal-
culus. Differential deals with rates of change (the slopes of curves
on a plotted graph), while Integral deals with the areas under
the aforementioned curves on a graph. To oversimplify, think of
Differential Calculus as measuring change by cutting it down into
tiny pieces, while Integral Calculus takes those same small pieces
and joins them all together to measure the amount of change.
There was a lot of controversy between Newton and Leibniz,
as both arrived at Calculus, but many accused Leibniz of plagia-
rism of Newton’s work. After much research, which continued
well after the deaths of both scientists, the scientific community
is satisfied that both of them deserve the credit, as they both
arrived at it in very different ways.
Anyway, it was Calculus that enabled us to calculate the
paths of not just the stars, sun, planets and our moon, but also
simpler things such as the trajectory of a cannonball, an arrow, a
pendulum. In fact, Einstein’s much later corrections of Newton’s
equations really don’t matter at the fractions of light speeds that
we’re used to dealing with. Even today, rockets are launched using
Newton’s much simpler equations, because the differences are
just too miniscule to really bother changing. It’s why you still learn
 The basics 11

Let’s not forget Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz, who also

invented Calculus, as Newton did, but arrived at it differently
12 The basics

From launching rockets to throwing a ball, it can all be calculated

using Calculus, and is actually how it’s still done today
 The basics 13

Newton’s math from the 17th century even today in school, and
college. It’s only when you get into serious physics do you start
learning more than classical Newtonian physics.

Theoretical Physics
To put it simply, a theoretical physicist tries to solve the riddles
of nature using mathematics. Of course the observations of
experimentation are considered, but really, theoretical physics
is all about mathematics. Very, very advanced mathematics that
only a miniscule fraction of a percentage of us can understand.
This lack of understanding often leads lay people to club
theoretical physics with science fiction, or “guesswork”. Newton
knows how many arguments this writer has had on the Digit
forum (digit.in/forum) with aforementioned people who think
this way, but let’s not digress too much.
The fact of the matter is that the world’s smartest people com-
pete with each other, and also work in groups together, with one
aim in mind – to better understand the universe. Needless to say,
theoretical physicists are human too, and not only do they make
mistakes, but you can also count on their counterparts to try and
find as many holes as possible in every theory that is suggested.
This process is known as peer review, and every published paper
has to undergo this scrutiny. Once a theory is peer reviewed and
14 The basics

Neptune was the first planet to be discovered using mathematics,

and was a huge shot in the arm for theoretical physics and math

found to be mathematically consistent, we start looking for the

predictions it makes. Much experimentation is done to try and
find evidence to either prove or disprove the theory.
 The basics 15

In our previous dmystify book we told you of the discovery of

Neptune, and how it was the first planet to be discovered using
mathematics alone, rather than observing it through a telescope.
The same has happened not just for stars, asteroids, moons
of the planets and entire universes, but also at the quantum
scale. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) built by CERN and all
the other smaller particle accelerators built before it, cost the
world billions of dollars, based solely on a mathematical predic-
tion that there were more sub-atomic particles still to be found.
And find them we did.
Interestingly, since the LHC cost about $9 billion to build,
and costs billions of dollars a year to keep operational, the cost
of finding the Higgs Boson worked out to somewhere around
$14 billion (about Rs 90,000 crore). And even then it’s totally
worth it, because discovering the Higgs Boson means that the
Standard Model of Particle Physics (which was arrived at mostly
mathematically before experiments proved the particles to actu-
ally exist) is essentially correct. The Higgs Boson is one of the
most important finds because it’s this little particle that gives
every other particle their mass – or to put it simply, the universe
exists because of this particle! Now you know why they called
it the “God Particle”.
16 The basics
 The basics 17

The actual size of the Large Hadron Collider

18 The basics

A typical output of data from the Large Hadron Collider

Electro-magnetism
Both electricity and magnetism have been experienced for
a really long time. Electricity in particular, has been around
about as long as the universe. Lightning is the most common
form we see of course, but also some animals such as electric
eels were feared by ancient civilisations. The Egyptians called
them “thunderers of the Nile”, and wove a story of how eels were
the protectors of all fish to explain why they had the power of
the heavens. Even static electricity was observed thousands
of years ago.
 The basics 19

The electric eel: producing electricity for far longer than man

Magnetism was rarer, as you had to find just the right stone
with enough iron oxide in it, and then that would attract other
things made of iron. Magic at the time, of course, but simple
magnetism as we know it now.
It wasn’t until the end of the 18th century that people started
playing around with electricity, and it wasn’t until the end of the
19th century that mankind finally figured out that electricity and
magnetism were essentially the same force. Until then, they were
believed to be two very different forces.
20 The basics

Michael Faraday was obsessed with electromagnetism

 The basics 21

Michael Faraday started working on experiments in 1831, and

many believe, had he been a better mathematician, he’d have
come up with almost all of the findings in terms of electricity of
the next 50 years on his own. Sadly his amazing mind was geared
towards experimentation and not mathematics. He discovered
electromagnetic induction, which is basically the production of
electricity using magnets. He tried to explain it as best he could,
but no one really took him seriously because he hadn’t proven
anything mathematically.
It wasn’t until 1864, when James Clerk Maxwell took up the
challenge to explain Faraday’s findings, and came up with nice
and neat balanced and complex mathematical equations that
the electromagnetic theory of light was born.
Then in 1887 Heinrich Hertz proved the existence of electro-
magnetic waves, and we were on our way to realising that all light
and radiation was in fact electromagnetic in nature.

Four Forces
In order to understand anything further in this book you need
to be aware of the principle of the four types of forces. The
electromagnetic force is one of the four fundamental forces
of nature. Gravity is the second, and then come the strong and
weak nuclear forces.
22 The basics

This is what we’re traditionally taught is the structure of the

atom, and in terms of scale we couldn’t be more wrong
 The basics 23

The weak nuclear force is what causes radioactivity, and is

why nuclear fission is possible. It’s how we can do carbon dating,
as Carbon-14 decays radioactively into Nitrogen-14 over (a very,
very long) time.
The strong nuclear force is the force that binds quarks
together to form nucleons. Don’t worry if that made no sense
to you, it will soon enough, but all you need to know about the
strong nuclear force is that nothing would ever bind together or
exist if it wasn’t for this force. Matter in our universe is stable
because of this force. If you suddenly entered a universe where
the strong force wasn’t as strong, you’d probably fall through
the floor, and then the Earth itself as it broke apart.
To illustrate with a little less melodrama, think of the strong
nuclear force as the strongest force that we know at tiny distances
in the femtometre scale (10-15 metres). At the femtometre scale,
it’s about 1038 times stronger than gravity, 106 times stronger
than the weak nuclear force and about 100 times stronger than
electromagnetism.

Think tiny
When most of us think matter, we think dense, heavy and solid. A
lot of us think of matter primarily as metals, or concrete, or hard,
solid objects. A car, a building, a bowling ball, etc., are typical
24 The basics

The current understanding of the shape of an atom is one with

a small dense nucleus and a cloud of probability, which is where
the electrons can be found. In this image, the darker parts of the
cloud mean more probability of finding an electron at this position
 The basics 25

examples kids will give you of matter. So how small are atoms
then? What about protons or electrons? It’s easy to say, a proton
has a radius of about 10-15 metres (a fermi, or a femtometre).
What does that really mean?
Make a fist. Look at it. Let’s imagine that your fist is only
made up of Nitrogen atoms (it isn’t, but let’s pretend you’re
nitro-boy or nitro-girl, or something). Since we’re traditionally
handicapped at thinking small, and can think big more easily.
Imagine the nitrogen atoms to be the size of small marbles. So
how big would this make your fist?
About the size of the Earth, actually.
If you think that’s freaky, how big do you think the nucleus
inside the atom is? You’ve all probably seen the traditional
image of the atom, or seen models in physics class. Some
might be tempted to make a guess… about half the marble’s
size? One tenth? One hundredth? One millionth? Closer to
a billionth, actually. Imagine the marble (the atom from the
previous example) is blown up to a size as big as a football
stadium… the nucleus would then be about the size of marble
inside that football stadium.

Confused?
OK, let’s try this another way. Look at the tip of your finger. This is
26 The basics

an approximation, so any finger will do. For those of you holding

up the middle one… grow up!
Now imagine the tip of your finger was blown up to be as
big as your living room, and you filled the room full of rice. Each
grain of rice is one cell in the tip of your finger. Now, imagine one
cell (one rice grain) is blown up to be the size of the same room,
and you fill it with rice grains again. Each grain of rice is now a
protein. So how big is an atom as compared to a protein? The
atom at this scale (where a protein is as big as a grain of rice)
would be about the size of one grain of fine sand!
So… now you’re thinking small… yes? Good.

Time to think even smaller

Almost all of the mass of an atom is the nucleus. The neutron
and proton have almost all the mass, and although electrons also
carry some mass, they’re really almost massless in comparison.
So let’s blow up an atom to the size of your living room now.
How big do you think the nucleus is? Abo ut one grain of sand small!
One trillionth the size of your room if you really want to calculate
exact sizes. What this means is that 99.999999999999 per cent
of the volume of an atom is just empty space (contains no matter).
So what if you could do away with all this empty space and
force electrons and nucleii to touch one another and waste as
 The basics 27

An artist’s impression of a neutron star

28 The basics

little space as possible? Basically, let’s imagine we could distort

the laws of physics and make things really dense… How small
could we make things? Take the Empire State Building, or even
the Burj Khalifa Dubai, or any large concrete building you can
think of. You’d think of them as huge sturdy structures, yes? If
we removed all the empty space in the atoms and molecules that
make up the building of your choice, we’d get something about
as big as one or two grains of rice, but as heavy as the building!
If you could use this same method and shrink down the entire
human race (all 7+ billion of us – fat ones, skinny ones, tall, short,
men, women, the elderly, children, everyone) we’d only take up
as much volume as a sugar cube! It would be the heaviest sugar
cube-sized thing anyone on this Earth would have ever seen,
thanks to all that fast food we eat...Hopefully, this illustrates
how small things are at the quantum level. And no, we’re not just
making crap up, there are places in the universe where matter
really is that dense. Inside Neutron Stars for example, and even
denser in Black Holes!

Still smaller?
Thanks to the standard model, we know that there are hundreds
of particles at the sub-atomic scale. A neutron, for example, is
made up of smaller particles called Quarks (of which there are
 The basics 29

several types) and are held together by particles called Gluons.

Quarks and Electrons are thought to be point particles. As in,
they’re literally just points, and are zero dimensional. Or so
we thought...
Theoretical physics has gone beyond all of the experiments
again, and is going even smaller, and is thinking of all of these
particles, including the recently discovered Higgs Boson as just
strings that are vibrating.
Imagine the strings to be like those on a guitar. If you twang
them, you get vibrations, and in theory, just as the frequency
of vibration gives you different sounds from a guitar string, dif-
ferent vibrations might make the string appear to be a quark,
or a boson, or an electron… at least that’s the most simplistic
way of explaining string theory.
30 String theory
Chapter #02

String Theory
We assume you’ve digested the appetizer, and
have now whetted your appetite for some of
the main course...

T
he first question that springs to mind is why strings? What
made us transition from the general, spherical particle
view to something as random as strings?
The answer is that string theory began as a way to
explain something totally different. In the 1960s, string theory
actually began as a way of explaining particles called mesons.
We now know that mesons are made up of one quark and one
anti-quark that are held together by the strong nuclear force.
However, before the strong force was discovered, it was theorised
that quarks inside mesons were held together by strings. Think of
this as two tennis balls with a rubber band tying them together.
Now, the faster they spin, the more the force on the rubber band
 String theory 31

This is a meson as we know it now, made up

of a quark with spin S2 and an antiquark with
spin S1, with a total angular momentum of L

as they try to pull away from one another. At the time it was
theorised that the mass of the meson was determined by how
fast the quarks were spinning and how much force was on the
string connecting them.
32 String theory

Soon, this theory was replaced with QCD (Quantum Chro-

modynamics), which is basically where the Standard Model of
particle physics comes in. More on this later – perhaps in another
book – because that’s a whole new theory unto itself.
Most people started giving up on string theory when the
strong force was theorised and we found Quarks and Gluons
inside hadrons such as the proton or neutron. However, what
string theory had was something people had been looking for,
for decades. Einstein had theorised that gravity travelled at the
speed of light. This meant that like light, which is both an elec-
tromagnetic wave and particles (photons), gravity should also
have some force carrier.

Force carrier?
Let’s take a break here to explain force carriers. According to
quantum mechanics, every force has a force carrier. These are
particles that cause other particles to exert forces between them-
selves. Thus, in an atom, the electron field has a force particle
whose quanta (small bundles of energy) is an electron. The elec-
tromagnetic force has photons, and the strong force has Gluons,
the weak force has photons, W and Z bosons, the Higgs Field
has Higgs Bosons (recently discovered) which gives everything
its mass, etc.
 String theory 33

Electrons emitting a virtual photon to repel one another

If you’re confused right now, that’s OK, because we’ve kind

of drifted into Gauge Theory for a bit. all of these theories are
tied in to one another, so really, we can’t avoid these little skips.
The most simplistic explanation we can possibly offer is that
while you have probably studied in school that there are force
“fields” that exist around objects that can exert a force – say, a
gravitational field that exists around the sun, or a magnetic field
around a magnet, etc.
34 String theory

What Gauge Theory does is think of the “field” not as a field

but as emitted particles. Let’s say we know that two electrons
moving towards each other will repel each other (both are nega-
tive, opposites attract, like charges repel, etc), Gauge Theory
says that when the electrons approach one another, one of them
spontaneously emits a “virtual photon” towards the other, which
changes the direction of both electrons. Force fields are kind of
abstract, but with this theory, it makes it easier for mathemati-
cians to accurately calculate at the quantum level, and that’s
always a good thing.

Back to Einstein
Einstein theorised that the force carrier for gravity is a graviton,
and he also theorised that these would be massless particles,
moving at the speed of light, and with a spin of 2. Photons are
also massless, as are Gluons.
This brings us back to the original string theory, which
although was eventually rendered useless when trying to explain
muons, did allow for a state of strings that would account for a
massless particle with spin 2. Thus, with renewed interest, many
scientists took to string theory hoping it had the ability to finally
unify gravity with the other three forces at the quantum mechanics
scale – something the world has been trying to do for ages.
 String theory 35

Albert Einstein tried very hard to make a unified

theory of everything, and failed, sadly
36 String theory

How big are these “Strings”

The theory is that strings are floating in space-time, and based on
their vibration, they’re either perceived as electrons, or photons,
or quarks, or gluons, etc.
Since we’re dealing with quantum mechanics, another way of
looking at strings is the quanta (smallest possible) length in one
dimension which in this case happens to be the Planck length – 1.6
x 10-35 m. Now if strings are that small, it’s going to be a long, long
time, (if ever) before we can ever detect them directly.
To really understand the sizes we’re talking
about here, consider that the Planck length is about
100,000,000,000,000,000,000 times (10 -20) smaller than
protons or neutrons! To get a nice visu alisation of this that
will give you a better idea of how small is small, go to http://
htwins.net/scale2/ – trust us, it’s worth it.
To illustrate it in our own way. Imagine you took an atom,
and expanded it to the size of the universe (mind you, we mean
the Universe – not our Milky Way galaxy, but all of the billions of
galaxies, about 14 billion light years across, or 1.32 x 1026 m), then
a Planck length at this scale would be about 10 metres (or about
as tall as a tree). Think about that, the size ratio of a hydrogen
atom to a Planck length is the ratio of the size of the universe to
the size of a tree!
 String theory 37

Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck: The man behind the Planck
Length which is the scale at which we think strings exist
38 String theory

Strings are also one dimensional, but can vibrate along many
more dimensions. Since we can’t detect them directly with current
technologies, scientists are looking instead for supersymmetry
to be proven at the LHC.

Supersymmetry?
Supersymmetry is a theory that relates two elementary particles
– bosons and fermions – and theorizes that every particle has
a super-partner. What differentiates each particle is “spin” and
fermions have a half integer spin (1/2, 3/2, 5/2), and bosons
have spins of full integers (0, 1, 2).
Note: All of a certain type of particle have the same spin – so
all electrons in the universe have the same spin value, and thus
it’s one of the ways of identifying them. Kind of how we mentioned
Gravitons earlier, as zero mass particles with a spin of 2 (thus
making gravitons bosons and not fermions). Similarly, electrons
have a spin of 1/2 and thus are fermions.
Supersymmetry says that every boson has a super-partner
fermion. Thus every electron (a fermion) has a “selectron” (super-
electron – a boson version of an electron) partner. In theory
each superpartner only differs from the other in terms of spin,
so mass should be equal, and we should have detected these
super-partners by now. This has prompted many physicists to
 String theory 39

suggest that an alternate theory should be sought, but many

more believe that we will eventually figure out how to detect these
super-partners, perhaps as early as the next decade.
The LHC is currently actively searching for indications that
supersymmetry exists.

Types of strings
There are two types of strings – open and closed. A closed string is
not necessarily in the shape of a circle, but it has some properties
of one, such as having no end points. Open strings on the other

Closed and open strings

40 String theory

hand have end points, either way, all variations of string theory
– and there are a few – must provide for closed strings. This is
easy because all open ended strings can in some configurations
be closed strings – the two end points could be joined to form
a closed string.

Many String Theories?

Yes, there were many theories until 1995. In total six were followed.
None of them could really get the math right until they started
accounting for higher dimensions. First it was one additional
dimension of spacetime (3 + time + 1 extra proposed = 5), and
the math seemed to fit a little better, then it was more. The first
theory – Bosonic String theory – predicted as many as 25 dimen-
sions (plus one for time, so 26 spacetime dimensions). It was
flawed as it worked out to the universe containing only bosons
and no fermions (so no matter), and also predicted tachyons,
which are theoretical particles that always travel faster than the
speed of light – illegal in Einstein’s universe, at least.
Then came what was called superstring theory, which brought
along with it the idea of supersymmetry (described earlier).
Superstring Theory also brought the number of spacetime
dimensions down to 10 (9 space dimensions and one time). Of
course, as the popularity of superstring theory grew amongst
 String theory 41

theoretical physicists, there were splits in the approaches. As

many as five theories came about. Then in 1995, things changed.
Hold on, we’ll keep you in suspense just a little longer about
1995, as we’re now going to take a break and understand these
extra dimensions.
42 10 dimensions?
Chapter #03

10 dimensions?
Before you wonder what illegal substance
we’ve been misusing, read this chapter, maybe
we can get you thinking higher dimensions

I
t’s not easy to wrap your brain around a concept that involves
higher dimensions. If you can find a short film called Flatland:
The Movie, watch it. It will get you thinking extra dimensions
in no time. Here’s the IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/
tt0814106/ – important because you will find many terrible clones
of it, and they’re not as good. If you prefer reading to movies, and
we certainly think you’re the type (you’re reading this aren’t you?),
get the original book, Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions, by
Edwin Abbott Abbott as a free ebook instead: http://www.gutenberg.
org/ebooks/201 – this is the version with illustrations. It’s a great
satirical novel, published in 1884, believe it or not, and is still one of
the most entertaining reads to understand dimensions. If you read
 10 dimensions? 43

Flatland the movie, a must watch

44 10 dimensions?

it, don’t miss the digs he takes at the Victorian culture of the time.
We’re of course going to try and get you to understand extra
dimensions on our own also. So here goes.
If you look around you, you see left, right, forwards, backwards,
up and down as the space dimensions that you can observe. Yet,
everything you’ve ever seen of the Earth, and everything you haven’t
seen of the Earth, is nothing more than a pale blue dot in empty
space when viewed from 6 billion kilometres away.
The famous pale blue dot picture was clicked by Voyager as it
left the solar system, on February 14, 1990. NASA commanded it
to do so at the request of the famous astronomer and author, Carl
Sagan. Yes, the vastness of the universe could turn Carl Sagan into
a hopeless romantic (as it should anyone), and in case you were
born and have lived under a rock for your whole life and haven’t
read or heard these words by him, here goes:
From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not
seem of any particular interest. But for us, it’s different.
Consider again that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s
us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone
you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived
out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thou-
sands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic
doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward,
 10 dimensions? 45

The pale blue dot

46 10 dimensions?

every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and

peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and
father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher
of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every
“supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of
our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in
a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena.
Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and
emperors so that in glory and triumph they could become
the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the
endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner
of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of
some other corner. How frequent their misunderstandings,
how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their
hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance,
the delusion that we have some privileged position in the
universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our
planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark.
In our obscurity – in all this vastness – there is no hint that
help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known, so far, to harbor life.
There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which
 10 dimensions? 47

Carl Sagan, the famous astrophysicist. Don’t miss the

original Cosmos TV series that he starred in
48 10 dimensions?

our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like
it or not, for the moment, the Earth is where we make our
stand. It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and
character-building experience. There is perhaps no better
demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this
distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our
responsibility to deal more kindly with one another and
to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home
we’ve ever known.
It’s a lot better to hear him say it himself with passion,
than read it here, so head to https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=p86BPM1GV8M when you find the time. If that doesn’t
stir up a few feelings or cause a tear to well up, nothing will.
So why the Pale Blue Dot example? Because in order to under-
stand these predicted extra dimensions in String Theory, you have
to see things at varying scales. When far enough, (or small enough)
the three-dimensional Earth we know is nothing more than a pixel!
That’s zero dimensions, effectively!
Think of it another way. Look outside your house. If you’re living
somewhere in India that’s populated, you will definitely see a lot
of wires – our cable-wallahs ensure this is so. So you see a three
dimensional scene, but a distant wire looks two dimensional to
you. If you were to take out a pair of binoculars, you could zoom in
 10 dimensions? 49

on the wire, and make out that it isn’t a one dimensional line in the
distance, it’s actually a three-dimensional, cylindrical wire. If you had
a really powerful set of binoculars, or a telescope maybe, you might
spot an ant walking on this wire. Zoom in some more, and you will
see the ant’s legs aren’t one dimensional, but three dimensional.
Zoom in further and the minute hairs on the ant’s legs will be visible
as three dimensional. Even further and you will see 3D cells of the
ant; even more and the atoms will be visible. As you keep looking,
you will keep finding more dimensions that you couldn’t experi-
ence before. Thus, string theory (technically superstring theory)
says there are six more dimensions wrapped up in the universe of
quantum mechanics, and they’re all at the super-miniscule levels
of strings, so obviously we cannot experience them.
As you increase in size from a Planck length, imagine yourself
zooming out from the hair of the ant’s legs to the ant, to the wire
and back to your normal view – you keep losing dimensions as
you grow in size!
Actually, technically, scientists now believe that superstring
theory isn’t really correct, and that’s why we have M-Theory now.
50 M-Theory?
Chapter #04

M-Theory?
No one knows what M-theory stands for.
Some say it’s the Magic-Theory, or the
Mother-theory (as in the Mother-of-all-
theories), but no one is really sure of anything

A
t last we get to 1995. String theorists from all over the
globe headed to the University of Southern California,
for an event titled Strings ’95 in March 1995. One of the
people scheduled to speak was a man called Edward
Witten, a theoretical physicist, of course, who many theoretical
physicists regard as the most intelligent of them all. Some go as
far as comparing him to Einstein. Basically, Ed Witten is a rock-
star in the physics world, and rockstars need to do something
crazy to live up to their names.
 M-Theory? 51

Edward Witten: some call him Einstein’s successor

52 M-Theory?

Especially for Strings ’95, Ed Witten started working on a

new way of looking at the various string theories. He started his
lecture by claiming that he had solved it, and that there wasn’t
any problem with the five existing Superstring theories, except
that they were all right, and also all wrong.
We’re over-simplifying, obviously, but basically what Ed
Witten did at the event was tell everyone that they were just
one dimension short of the actual answer, and what they had
all been doing was looking at the same theory, but in a 5-way
mirror. By raising the number of spacetime dimensions to 11
(10 space and 1 time), he was able to rise above and find that
all five theories were pointing to the same answers.
It’s sort of like Flatland, where if you were a two dimensional
being, everyone would look like a line to you, and you’d have to
go around them to be able to see what shape they were, and
there would only be left, right, forwards and backwards. there
would be no up or down, and the world would be totally flat.
Now if you were somehow able to rise in the up direction, you
would see the flat, two-dimensional world below and go, “Ahh!
So that’s what an extra dimension can do!”
Ed Witten blew their minds by literally showing them the
extra dimension. Of course, all this was done mathematically
with complex equations being written out that only a handful
 M-Theory? 53

Two branes shown here with strings on each, and

one string with end points on different branes

of people in the world can understand (and most were in that

room that day).

Branes
Now comes the crazy bit about M-theory. remember, all of this
is from mathematics, and not anything that’s been observed
(yet), so it could very well be hogwash, but the smartest minds
54 M-Theory?

on the planet don’t think so. Even Stephen Hawking has said
that “M-Theory is the only candidate for a complete theory of
the universe.”
What Witten and others found was that strings in 10 dimen-
sions of spacetime, could very well be membranes in 11 dimen-
sions of space time.
Spoiler Alert: This is kind of like how in Flatland, a square is
visited by a sphere, but because the square lives in flatland, he
only sees the sphere magically appear as a circle, get larger, and
then get smaller and disappear, as the sphere passes through
the two dimensional world.
Because of this membrane idea some have suggested that
the M in M-Theory perhaps stands for Membrane. Others have
suggested that the M is just an upside down W (for Witten), while
some insist it stands for either “Magic”, “Murky”, “Mystery”, “Mother”,
“Matrix” and even “Monster”! Physicists have decided to call them
just Branes, though, and no, physicists are not too lazy to type the
extra “mem”. They dropped the “mem” because the word membrane
makes you visualise a two dimensional surface, whereas they prefer
it if you looked at them as P-branes (who said physicists don’t have
a sense of humour; p-brane = peabrains, get it?)
According to string theory, a p-brane is a brane that has p
amount of dimensions. So a 0-brane is a point. 1-brane is a line,
 M-Theory? 55

2-brane is a membrane, 3-brane could be space as we know it,

and then we’re lost again.
Then there are D-branes. The letter D comes from the Dir-
ichlet Boundary Condition, named after Peter Gustav Lejeune
Dirichlet, a German Mathematician (1805 - 1859). Remember we
spoke of open ended and closed strings? In superstring theory,
when you use open ended strings, and use the mathematics of
the Dirichlet boundary condition, you can theorise that both
ends of the open ended string lie on a D-brane.
This is where we’re going to leave M-Theory for now. When
someone as smart as Edward Witten says “M stands for Murky,
because that’s our understanding of the theory so far.” We
think lesser minds like ours should stop trying to make any
more sense of it.
56 Experimentation
Chapter #05

Experimentation
Let’s take a look at how scientists are hoping
to prove or disprove string theory, once and
for all

T
here’s a field of study under string theory called String Phe-
nomenology, which is a field that tries to connect all that
is currently theoretical in string theory to particle physics
and cosmology. the idea is to create realistic models of the
universe as explained in string theory, however, since most of the
theories would need unattainably high energy levels in order to be
able to be tested, many scientists feel this field is a waste of time.
In cosmology, however, there have been some promising
theories that try and explain all that conventional physics and
quantum mechanics cannot, such as black holes, dark energy
and dark matter.
 Experimentation 57

String theory also attempts to try and solve some problems with
the Big Bang Theory. Actually another theory called Inflation Theory
has taken care of some of the problems with the Big bang Theory,
and is now mathematically using some of the particles suggested
in string theory to arrive at clearer answers about the Big Bang.
It’s widely accepted that within the first second after the Big
Bang (actually trillionths of a trillionth of a second after the Big
Bang, the universe started off tiny, but was expanding faster than
the speed of light. Using the standard model of particle physics, we
know that Photons carry heat and Einstein tells us that interactions
of particles can only happen at the speed of light. Thus, from our
perspective, the opposite ends of the universe should throw up very
different values for heat and radiation. There should be chaos, but
in fact there is order wherever we look. The universe is statistically
homogenous in nature, and everywhere we look, in every direction,
seems almost boringly similar. The Inflation Theory has explained
this by suggesting that all areas of the universe originated from an
earlier era of a cosmological constant. To oversimplify, this means
that there was an inflation field that was constant all over, and thus
imprinted the same characteristics on all parts of the universe when
it was much much smaller. (Inflation is theorised to have occurred
between 10-36 to 10-32 seconds after the Big Bang).
Then there’s the flatness problem. Think of a triangle drawn
58 Experimentation

on a flat plane, then think of the same drawn on a sphere. The

relative density of the triangle drawn on a plane is 1, and on
a sphere is greater than 1. However, calculations of relative
density of our universe seems to mimic a relative density of
closer to 1, although we think of the universe as more like a
sphere (3 dimensional) rather than a plane (2 dimensional).
Although there’s some complex math done in inflation theory
to explain this, we prefer the Anthropic Principle being applied
here. Put simply, the Anthropic Principle says that if two types
of universes A and B are possible, but only one of them (B) is
suitable for the conditions for intelligent life to evolve, it’s kind
of stupid to question why the universe opted for B and not A,
because had the universe been the A type, there wouldn’t be
anyone to ponder over the question to begin with. Sort of, we
are, because we are, and the universe allowed it. Had it been
any different, we wouldn’t even be here wondering about what
we are and why we’re here…
A lot of scientists are a little worried about string theory. The
problem with string theory is that despite colliders running for
decades now, none of the supersymmetry particles have been
found. It’s one thing for everything to make total mathematical
sense, but quite another to see experimentation yield results that
say, “Well done, you were quite right about that.”
 Experimentation 59

Going back to the discovery of Neptune, Urbain Le Verrier used

Newtonian equations and mathematics to pinpoint not just the
fact that Neptune should exist, but exactly where in the night sky
astronomers should look. He basically discovered a planet with the
tip of his pen! That’s what we need from string theory. We get a lot
of ink from pens, but no real-world discoveries are being made yet.
It’s all well and good to predict 11 dimensions and branes and
strings so small that no one can ever test for them, but we now
need some proof. Some scientists have criticised the popularity
of string theory, citing that it’s rather worrisome that there are no
good alternative theories that can attract young physics students.
If everyone is working on and assuming one thing, what happens if
we can never prove it either right or wrong? Scientists get grants
a lot easier if they’re working on more accepted fields, and string
theory is popular.
It’s kind of similar to the typical Indian parents’ obsession with
coaxing their kids to become doctors or engineers – except in the
theoretical physics world, everyone actually can become a string
theorist, because it’s that popular. Success may come to a few,
but for the most part everyone is sitting around scratching their
heads trying to solve a problem with exactly the same approach,
when perhaps a little creative thinking in a different direction isn’t
the worst thing for physics.
Black holes, the real monsters of space!
62 Experimentation

Looking at the universe and understanding the sheer size of

the thing is a sure fire way to lose any conceit and ideas of
self-importance one may have.
 Experimentation 63

On the grand scale of things, we’re about as

important to the universe as a single atom
of you is to the entire planet Earth!
64 Experimentation

Of course, when someone like Stephen Hawking first starts

with String Theory, then gets disillusioned with it and goes off to
try and find answers elsewhere, and then comes back saying that
it looks like M-Theory is the one! You can’t really blame graduate
students for following his lead and jumping on the Superstring- and
M-theory bandwagon.
Let’s just hope that with increasingly sensitive detection equip-
ment, not to forget the ever increasing number of people working on
String- and M-theory, we finally start getting some positive results
and at least some confirmation of supersymmetry or the discovery
of the graviton, so we can finally be on our way to understanding
the universe.
We just can’t wait for sci-fi inspired tech. Put the extra dimen-
sions to work already and invent a teleporter so we can finally do
away with traffic jams. That alone would make all of us love String
theory. Wouldn’t it?
Remember to drop us a line and tell us if we were able to dmys-
tify String theory at least to some extent for you. Also remember to
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