Last week my network had some bitter emails on from physics teachers complaining about string theory. What makes them so angry?
String theory comes from this idea: If a room has 3-dimensions, a flat piece of paper has two dimensions and a line has one dimension, then a point (a spot) will have no dimensions. This makes the maths difficult when we start dealing with atoms and other particles, which are modelled as being points. Inverse proportionality doesn't work because 1/0 comes out as infinity. In black hole, the problem is called a singularity.
So someone suggested that if we said that particles were really one-dimensional vibrating strings, then it would all be all right (except that it would mean that the Universe would be in 11-dimensions). This is all good except that for a theory to be accepted in physics, it has to make predictions that can be tested by experiment. This is difficult for string theory. My email correspondents are angry because a lot of research money is spent on string theory and yet it might not even be real physics. However, some of the greatest brains in modern physics are on board. One of them, Brian Greene, wrote an excellent book on string theory. It's in the school library.
