Predictions and theoretical difficulties

String theory was an intuitively attractive proposal, but by the mid-1970s more-
refined measurements of the strong force had deviated from its predictions, leading
most researchers to conclude that string theory had no relevance to the physical
universe, no matter how elegant the mathematical theory. Nevertheless, a small
number of physicists continued to pursue string theory. In 1974 John Schwarz of the
California Institute of Technology and Joel Scherk of the École Normale Supérieure
and, independently, Tamiaki Yoneya of Hokkaido University came to a radical
conclusion. They suggested that one of the supposedly failed predictions of string
theory—the existence of a particular massless particle that no experiment studying
the strong force had ever encountered—was actually evidence of the very unification
Einstein had anticipated.

Britannica Quiz

All About Physics Quiz

Although no one had succeeded in merging general relativity and quantum
mechanics, preliminary work had established that such a union would require
precisely the massless particle predicted by string theory. A few physicists argued
that string theory, by having this particle built into its fundamental structure, had
united the laws of the large (general relativity) and the laws of the small (quantum
mechanics). Rather than merely being a description of the strong force, these
physicists contended, string theory required reinterpretation as a critical step toward
Einstein’s unified theory.
The announcement was universally ignored. String theory had already failed in its
first incarnation as a description of the strong force, and many felt it was unlikely
that it would now prevail as the solution to an even more difficult problem. This view
was bolstered by string theory’s suffering from its own theoretical problems. For one,
some of its equations showed signs of being inconsistent; for another, the
mathematics of the theory demanded the universe have not just the three spatial
dimensions of common experience but six others (for a total of nine spatial
dimensions, or a total of ten space-time dimensions).

Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content.

Subscribe Now

Dimensions and vibrations

Because of these obstacles, the number of physicists working on the theory had
dropped to two—Schwarz and Michael Green of Queen Mary College, London—by
the mid-1980s. But in 1984 these two die-hard string theorists achieved a major
breakthrough. Through a remarkable calculation, they proved that the equations of
string theory were consistent after all. By the time word of this result had spread
throughout the physics community, hundreds of researchers had dropped what they
were working on and turned their full attention to string theory.
Within a few months, string theory’s unified framework took shape. Much as
different vibrational patterns of a violin string play different musical notes, the
different vibrations of the tiny strands in string theory were imagined to yield
different particles of nature. According to the theory, the strings are so small that
they appear to be points—as particles had long been thought to be—but in reality
 −33
they have length (about 10 cm); the mass and charge of a particle is determined
by how a string vibrates. For example, string theory posits that an electron is a string
undergoing one particular vibrational pattern; a quark is imagined as a string
undergoing a different vibrational pattern. Crucially, among the vibrational patterns,
physicists argued, would also be the particles found by experiment to communicate
nature’s forces. Thus, string theory was proposed as the sought-for unification of all
forces and all matter.
What of the six extra spatial dimensions required by string theory? Following a
suggestion made in the 1920s by Theodor Kaluza of Germany and Oskar Klein of
Sweden, string theorists envisioned that dimensions come in two distinct varieties.
Like the unfurled length of a long garden hose, dimensions can be big and easy to
see. But like the shorter, circular girth of the garden hose, dimensions can also be far
smaller and more difficult to detect. This becomes more apparent by imagining that
the circular cross section of the garden hose is shrunk ever smaller, below what can
be seen with the naked eye, misleading a casual observer into thinking the garden
hose has only one dimension, its length. Similarly, according to string theory, the
three dimensions of common experience are large and manifest, while the other six
dimensions are crumpled so small that they have so far evaded detection.
During the decade from 1984 to 1994, many theoretical physicists strove to fulfill
string theory’s promise by developing this abstract, wholly mathematical framework
into a concrete, predictive theory of nature. Because the infinitesimal size of strings
has precluded their direct detection, theorists have sought to extract indirect
implications of the theory that might be testable. In this regard, the extra dimensions
of string theory have proved a major hurdle. Imagining these extra dimensions as
small and hidden is a reasonable explanation for their apparent absence.
Nevertheless, their detailed geometry is required for the theory to offer predictions.
The reason is that strings are so small that they would vibrate within the tiny extra
dimensions. Studies showed that, much as the shape and size of a French horn affect
the vibrational patterns of airstreams coursing through the instrument, the exact
shape and size of the extra dimensions would affect how strings vibrate. And since
the strings’ vibrations determine quantities such as particle masses and charges,
predictivity requires knowledge of the geometric form of the extra dimensions.
Unfortunately, the equations of string theory allow the extra dimensions to take
many different geometric forms, making it difficult to extract definitive testable
predictions.
M-theory and AdS/CFT correspondence
By the mid-1990s these and other obstacles were again eroding the ranks of string
theorists. But in 1995 another breakthrough reinvigorated the field. Edward Witten
of the Institute for Advanced Study, building on contributions of many other
physicists, proposed a new set of techniques that refined the approximate equations
on which all work in string theory had so far been based. These techniques helped
reveal a number of new features of string theory, including the realization that the
theory has not six but seven extra spatial dimensions. The more exact equations also
revealed ingredients in string theory besides strings—membranelike objects of
various dimensions, collectively called branes. Finally, the new techniques
established that various versions of string theory developed over the preceding
decades were essentially all the same. Theorists call this unification of formerly
distinct string theories by a new name, M-theory, with the meaning of M being
deferred until the theory is more fully understood.
Another advance in string theory happened in 1997 when Juan Maldacena of
Harvard University discovered the anti-de Sitter/conformal field theory (AdS/CFT)
correspondence. Maldacena found that a string theory operating with a particular
environment (involving a space-time known as an anti-de Sitter space) was
equivalent to a type of quantum field theory operating in an environment with one
less spatial dimension. This has proved to be one of the most profound discoveries in
string theory, establishing a powerful link to the more conventional methods of
quantum field theory, providing an exact mathematical formulation of string theory
in certain environments, and inspiring thousands of further technical studies.
Today the understanding of many facets of string theory is still in its formative stage.
Researchers recognize that, although remarkable progress has been made over the
past five decades, collectively the work is burdened by its piecemeal development,
with incremental discoveries having been joined like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. That
the pieces fit coherently is impressive, but the larger picture they are filling out—the
fundamental principle underlying the theory—remains mysterious. Equally pressing,
the theory has yet to be supported by observations and hence remains a totally
theoretical construct.
Supersymmetry and cosmological signature
One essential quality of string theory is known as supersymmetry, a mathematical
property that requires every known particle species to have a partner particle species,
called a superpartner. (This property accounts for string theory often being referred
to as superstring theory.) As yet, no superpartner particles have been detected
experimentally, but researchers believe this may be due to their weight: they are
heavier than their known counterparts and require a machine at least as powerful as
the Large Hadron Collider at CERN to produce them. If the superpartner particles
are found, string theory still will not be proved correct, because more-conventional
point-particle theories have also successfully incorporated supersymmetry into their
mathematical structure. However, the discovery of supersymmetry would confirm an
essential element of string theory and give circumstantial evidence that this approach
to unification is on the right track.
Even if these accelerator-based tests are inconclusive, there is another way that
string theory may one day be tested. Through its impact on the earliest, most
extreme moments of the universe, the physics of string theory may have left faint
cosmological signatures—for example, in the form of gravitational waves or a
particular pattern of temperature variations in the cosmic microwave background
radiation—that may be observable by the next generation of precision satellite-borne
telescopes and detectors. It would be a fitting conclusion to Einstein’s quest for
unification if a theory of the smallest microscopic component of matter were
confirmed through observations of the largest astronomical realms of the cosmos.