-- 85 --

of the crowning theoretical achievements of these pursuits; we now see that, through historical twists and turns, even this point-
particle theory owes a great debt to string theory.

With the resurgence of superstring theory in the mid-1980s, supersymmetry has re-emerged in the context of its original discovery.
And in this framework, the case for supersymmetry goes well beyond that presented in the preceding section. String theory is the
only way we know of to merge general relativity and quantum mechanics. But it's only the supersymmetric version of string theory
that avoids the pernicious tachyon problem and that has fermionic vibrational patterns that can account for the matter particles
constituting the world around us. Supersymmetry therefore comes hand-in-hand with string theory's proposal for a quantum theory
of gravity, as well as with its grand claim of uniting all forces and all of matter. If string theory is right, physicists expect that so is
supersymmetry.

Until the mid-1990s, however, one particularly troublesome aspect plagued supersymmetric string theory.

A Super-Embarrassment of Riches

If someone tells you that they have solved the mystery of Amelia Earhart's fate, you might be skeptical at first, but if they have a
well-documented, thoroughly pondered explanation, you would probably hear them out and, who knows, you might even be
convinced. But what if, in the next breath, they tell you that they actually have a second explanation as well. You listen patiently
and are surprised to find the alternate explanation to be as well documented and thought through as the first. And after finishing the
second explanation, you are presented with a third, a fourth, and even a fifth explanation—each different from the others and yet
equally convincing. No doubt, by the end of the experience you would feel no closer to Amelia Earhart's true fate than you did at
the outset. In the arena of fundamental explanations, more is definitely less.

By 1985, string theory—notwithstanding the justified excitement it was engendering—was starting to sound like our overzealous
Earhart expert. The reason is that by 1985 physicists realized that supersymmetry by then a central element in the structure of
string theory, could actually be incorporated into string theory in not one but five different ways. Each method results in a pairing
of bosonic and fermionic vibrational patterns, but the details of this pairing as well as numerous other properties of the resulting
theories differ substantially. Although their names are not all that important, it's worth recording that these five supersymmetric
string theories are called the Type I theory, the Type IIA theory, the Type IIB theory, the Heterotic type O(32) theory (pronounced
"oh-thirty-two"), and the Heterotic type E8 × E8 theory (pronounced "e-eight times e-eight"). All the features of string theory that
we have discussed to this point are valid for each of these theories—they differ only in the finer details.

Having five different versions of what is supposedly the T.O.E.—possibly the ultimate unified theory—was quite an
embarrassment for string theorists. Just as there is only one true explanation for whatever happened to Amelia Earhart (regardless
of whether we will ever find it), we expect the same to be true regarding the deepest, most fundamental understanding of how the
world works. We live in one universe; we expect one explanation.

One suggestion for resolving this problem might be that although there are five different superstring theories, four might be ruled
out simply by experiment, leaving one true and relevant explanatory framework. But even if this were the case, we would still be
left with the nagging question of why the other theories exist in the first place. In the wry words of Witten, "If one of the five
theories describes our universe, who lives in the other four worlds?"55 A physicist's dream is that the search for the ultimate
answers will lead to a single, unique, absolutely inevitable conclusion. Ideally, the final theory—whether string theory or
something else—should be the way it is because there simply is no other possibility. If we were to discover that there is only one
logically sound theory incorporating the basic ingredients of relativity and quantum mechanics, many feel that we would have
reached the deepest understanding of why the universe has the properties it does. In short, this would be unified-theory paradise.56

As we will see in Chapter 12, recent research has taken superstring theory one giant step closer to this unified utopia by showing
that the five different theories are, remarkably, actually five different ways of describing one and the same overarching theory.
Superstring theory has the uniqueness pedigree.

Things seem to be falling into place, but, as we will discuss in the next chapter, unification through string theory does require one
more significant departure from conventional wisdom.

55
Edward Witten, lecture at the Heinz Pagels Memorial Lecture Series, Aspen, Colorado, 1997.
56
For an in-depth discussion of these and related ideas, see Steven Weinberg, Dreams of a Final Theory.