Superstring

[Butters]

I'm aware that this question may not have any kind of meaningful answer, but I was looking for conceptual images of superstrings and the results are varied to the point of irrelevance.

 

Of course it is difficult to make a two dimensional image of an entirely theoretical structure, but surely there must be some consensus. Some of them looked like ribbons wrapped around each other like an Escher sketch, and others were nothing more than neon squiggly lines.

 

Aren't superstrings one dimensional? The ribbon would appear to the least likely in that case.

[ajb]

Aren't superstrings one dimensional? The ribbon would appear to the least likely in that case.

 

Yes, they are one dimensional so they sweep out a 2d world-surface, which I expect is where the ribbons come from.

[TonyMcC]

I'm aware that this question may not have any kind of meaningful answer, but I was looking for conceptual images of superstrings and the results are varied to the point of irrelevance.

 

Of course it is difficult to make a two dimensional image of an entirely theoretical structure, but surely there must be some consensus. Some of them looked like ribbons wrapped around each other like an Escher sketch, and others were nothing more than neon squiggly lines.

 

Aren't superstrings one dimensional? The ribbon would appear to the least likely in that case.

 

I know absolutely nothing about string theory but I have this feeling that if strings are to be illustrated as wiggly lines then they should be sinusoidal. The sine wave seems intimately involved in nature, science, mathematics and engineering. Just a little fancy no doubt, don't take it too seriously!

[IM Egdall]

In his book The Elegant Universe, Brian Greene has figures showing what some strings are predicted to look like. They are one-dimensional.