Last night I found myself standing next to Ashok Das at a high school graduation party for the daughter of a mutual friend. Prof. Das, a leading thinker in the field of string theory and a member of the Royal Society, let me pump him with dumbass questions, even though it was obvious that I couldn’t possibly understand any answer that wouldn’t require a cab ride to get within hailing distance of an approximation. It’s tough grasping string theory if you took your last math class in 11th grade, even if you did read half of Elegant Universe two summers ago before it was stolen along with the rest of your luggage on the first day of your vacation. Nevertheless, he was totally gracious.

I said something like: “String theory is a model. Some models are useful because of their explanatory power without any claim being made that they are essentially like that which they’re modeling. Is string theory like that? Do string theorists believe that there are actually strings extended in space, or is that merely a convenient way to talk about the math?” Prof. Das said yes, it’s not as if there are strings, there actually are strings that actually vibrate.

“Actual strings extended in space?” I asked, since I hadn’t expected that answer. Yes, he replied, although of course it’s 9-dimensional space. (Well, obviously!)

“Is string theory believed because of its explanatory power, or is there – or could there be – experimental evidence?” Dr. Das said that there are ongoing experiments in gravitational effects at extremely short distances that could help confirm that matter/energy becomes 9-dimensional, which would help confirm the theory.

“So, strings actually vibrate, back and forth. Which means they’re in time,” I said, not meaning that they vibrate synchronously. “It seems that as we reduce space and matter in scale,” I said, “we get discontinuities: quanta are really really unlike Newtonian bodies. But do we get the same sort of discontinuity in time? At some small interval, does time become as weird as space does at a similar scale?” Dr. Das said that the time in which strings vibrate is so small that it does become unlike macro time. But then dessert was being served. Besides, I’d left my 60 extra IQ points add-on (I got it at eBay) in the pocket of my other pants.

There’s a really good chance that I got part or all of the above wrong.

Categories: misc dw