Just like a puppet on a string (theory)

where we learn what string theory might be and why it matters

We're all puppets, Laurie. I'm just a puppet who can see the strings.

-- Alan Moore

Science has many noble causes, but the huge bastard that lumbers over the entire field is THE UNIFIED THEORY OF EVERYTHING. Which basically means what it says. A theory of everything. One set of equations (because at the end of the day everything has to boil down to equations) that explains the forces at work in the universe.

Quantum Physics has comfortably explained 3 of the 4 fields – electromagnetic, weak nuclear, strong nuclear. But the fourth field, and probably the most important, gravity, cannot be explained properly. At the moment we rely on classical physics to explain gravity to us, which is Newtonian shit from centuries ago.

Explaining why it doesn’t work would take a years worth of Substack posts and is beyond my knowledge, which is pretty basic. But if I was to simplify it right down to its base level, I could say this:

Our current theory of gravity works until we get really fucking small, then it stops working.

Adding an extra layer of complexity, which I enjoy doing, gives us this:

At the Planck length, which is 0.000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 016 meters, all the stuff that makes us what we are no longer obeys the laws of gravity. When we calculate it, it just messes up all the equations. So we need a new law to explain that.

Simple right? Well no. The first hurdle is – as you may have noticed – that a Planck length is pretty tiny. How tiny? Well if you inflated a regular balloon to be the size of the entire universe you wouldn’t see the Planck length. Not even close.

So how do we know that things don’t work on such a tiny scale? Well, we don’t. Not for sure. This is all contained in a field called theoretical physics which is a bold way of saying mostly bullshit. But we do know that things have to work at every level for us to be here. If gravity existed at the Planck level the way we know it does on, say, an apple falling from a tree, then literally everything would be black holes.

All that is a long introduction to this weeks topic, which is String Theory.

String theory is best summarized by the cartoon below.

I want to keep this Substack interesting, which means I have to ignore 99% of String Theory. That’s because there are about 5 people on earth who have any fucking idea what String Theory is and I am most certainly not one of them. But here goes…

String Theory posits that everything is made of two things – strings and loops. These strings and loops are far smaller than anything we can see. These strings and loops stick out of things called Branes. I love Branes, because I don’t really understand them. But to me, a brane is like a big flat bastard monolith drifting through space. I talked about branes a bit in HYPNOPONY and again in my new book Quantum Diaper Punks (see below). For the most basic String Theory explanation, you only need to know about one type of Brane – the dBrane. The dBrane is the one with lots of wibbly wobbly strings and loops coming out of them.

Bullshit right? Well, sort of. You see, although this sounds like hard sci-fi, its actually a theory put forward by some incredible clever people, including Michio Kaku who is as close to a Hawking style genius as its possible to get. String Theory’s loops and strings allow us to begin to understand what gravity might be like on a really small level. Because in String Theory these tiny particles are actually caused by vibrations in the strings.

One caveat of string theory is that these strings and loops cannot react the way they do in a three-dimensional space. In fact, they need 26 fucking dimensions to work mathematically. That’s a lot of extra dimensions. To compensate for the fact that we can’t really prove these dimensions exist, String Theorists just sort of ignore them. According to String Theory, the dimensions are probably rolled up like super-fine paper and we are living right next to them every day.

All that is really complicated and honestly if you grasp 1% of String Theory you are doing fine. ‘Tiny strings vibrate and cause everything we see’ is all you need to know.

The point of String Theory, as mentioned right up at the top, is to unify the four forces – thus giving us a Theory of Everything. It might seem like an incredible amount of bullshit effort to go through (string theory is as far away from being provable as I am from getting a book deal) but imagine this. If you know fundamentally how everything works, you can change the very building blocks of life. We have already done this with DNA. When we recently discovered the complete human genome, we opened up countless new ways to treat diseases. See also; stem cell research, Dolly the sheep, quantum computers. The point is this – when we know how something works, we can improve it.

And that up there is just basic shit. Even if our understanding of DNA one day leads to us curing cancer, that will be small-fry compared to what we could achieve if we work out how everything works at every level. Suddenly, the power of God would be at our fingertips. We could grow tiny universes in test tubes. We could travel across galaxies. We could mess with the very fundamental elements of life.

Which is not always a good thing. That would raise so many questions, ethically and morally, that it is probably a good thing that we will never work it out. That’s why this is all part of theoretical physics. Because it is probably never going to be tested.

String Theory. Nonsense, but potentially life-altering nonsense. That’s science folks. What a wonderful world.

***

Quantum Diaper Punks is out in a couple of weeks. As usual I am self-publishing it and selling it only via my Twitter @notstuartbuck

Here is a tiny bit from it, where Eve attempts to explain dBranes (about as successfully as I do)

Later that night I lay with my head on Eve’s chest, feeling the rise and fall of her breath. We had taken a lot of LSD. Eve was explaining Brane theory to me. She said that each brane was a thin slice of life. Of everything. A brane moved through space-time in the same way a jellyfish moved through the sea. It just drifted. And we ALL lived on every single brane. Occasionally they let out these…tendrils. Thin strings that ensnared other branes, and made a sandwich. A super thin sandwich. Of everything.

“So… what is between the branes?” I asked her.

“Something.”

“Something? Like. Does it exist?”

“It exists as a possibility. The possibility that we can move through it.”

“What does a possibility look like?”

“It’s blue. I think.” She whispered.

“Eve I love you” I said.

“I know. I love you too… When you move your hand, that’s a possibility. You move your hand, a real thing, through the space. Which is a possibility. The space is making opportunities for you. It is saying move through me. I’ll allow it.”

if you liked this writing thing or any writing thing i attempt please consider buying me a coffee and if you are the guy who shall remains nameless that buys me a coffee every week stop it and go buy yourself a coffee because you really are too kind. you know who you are.

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