PBS series on string theory

[RyanJ]

So it's more like compressing something rubbery like a tire rather than something doughy like a donut. Is that right? A tire's molecules will not bond together by pressing to parts together, unlike other substances like dough or butter or fluids... am I taking the donut analogy to literally?

 

Yea a tire may be better in this case

 

Don't take my word for this though, I'm not an expert - maybe one of the physics experts can confirm or oppose it:)

 

I'm not really shure how this would work but I don;t think space would just bond together in a hole, it would probably bounce back and retain its old shape... list like if you take the relativity view of spacetime, if you remove a heavy object from the "sheet" you get waves sent out as the sheet bounces back to its original "flatness", maybe the same thing happens here with the hole - you try to push it together and it just refuses to join

 

Cheers,

 

Ryan Jones

[gib65]

Chapter 4, hour 3:

 

They talk about our universe being a giant "brane" from which our particles cannot escape. But the way this concept of "branes" is introduced is that they are extensions of strings along a higher dimension. If this is the case, and if the particles that cannot escape from the brane are strings, then how are we to understand this? I mean, at first, they seem to be saying the branes are extensions of the particles, then they seem to be saying the branes are something other than the particles (something the particles are trapped on). What's going on here?

[bascule]

The problem is there's all sorts of different kind of branes that behave in different ways.

 

If you really want to understand string theory, learn the math behind it.