Thanks to my buddy Stik, I read
this article, adapted from a press release published by the University of California, Santa Barbara. It's some more recent insight into String Theory and particularly talks about string cosmology and an experimental approach to confirming the existence of strings as the fundamental building block of the universe. As I've mentioned with regard to String Theory, it's almost entirely a theoretical and mathematical exploit, because the size of the particles we're talking about are so small, there's likely no way to
ever see them. So, this is exciting news indeed.
There were a couple things that stuck out for me in the article.
The first was the mention of the curled-up spatial dimensions that exist unseen because of their unique shapes which basically allow them to "hide" their spatial existence. The article says,
"Some of the "extra" dimensions are thought to be curled up or compactified and therefore exceedingly small; and some, to be larger, perhaps infinite."
Now, according to
Brian Greene, author of
The Elegant Universe, it is not even a point of contention that these curled up dimensions might be infinite. In fact, he stated something to the effect that when working out certain calculations having an answer of "infinity" usually denoted that something was amiss in the calculation. I am interested in whether what Greene was talking about and what the people over at UofCSB is really the same thing.
I think it is the same thing only because I particularly remember thinking how short-sighted it was for theoretical physicists to simply disregard the
possibility that a curled-up spatial dimension could be infinite.
The next book I'm reading, which I've just started, is
Mario Livio's The Golden Ratio: The Story of Phi, The World's Most Asonishing Number. Phi (pronounced 'fee') is the number which corresponds to the particular pattern that appears in such things as chambered nautlii or the 12-sided polygon (12-sided die for fans of Dungeons and Dragons). Anyway, the interesting thing about Phi (other than it's numerous seemingly unrelated occurrences in nature), is that it's an
irrational number, meaning, 1.6180339887..., it's never ending and never repeating - no pattern. This seems to me like an instance of the infinite in nature.
Ah, what do I know about theoretical physics anyway? I got a D in Algebra II/Trig!
In my readings, I've noticed there are very few female theoretical physicists, cosmologists or mathematicians of any considerable noteworthiness. So when I saw this:
"During the "Superstring Cosmology" program at the KITP, Alessandra Buonanno (Institut d'Astrolophysique de Paris) provided an overview of the possible gravitational wave signatures from the early universe. "When she gave the talk," said Polchinski, 'I didn't pay careful attention because I wasn't thinking about that, but later I went back to her talk in the KITP online series and started clicking through and got to where she talked about gravitational waves from cosmic strings. She had these curves which were quite amazing.'"
It was funny. My stereotypical idea of what a theoretical physicist might be like makes me think he didn't even realize how this quote might be read.
Ahhh, science and boobies.
bhofmeister13