Question

What is String Theory?

Answer 1

String theory is the idea that matter is an illusion that is caused by standing waves of energy of a mathematical nature.

Explanation:

The idea is that energy vibrates like a string on a violin. The length and thickness of string determines the frequency and nature of the wave produced. The idea is that matter is created by vibrating energy. These vibrations are based on complex mathematical formulas. String theory is not proven but has substantial experimental evidence to support the theory.
( The elegant Universe Brain Greene 1999)

The idea that the universe is vibrations, it brings to mind the statements in Genesis that God spoke ( vibrations) and the universe came into existence.

Answer 2

String theory is a candidate Theory Of Everything.

Explanation:

Albert Einstein produced his General Theory of Relativity. It describes gravity as the curvature of 4 dimensional spacetime by massive objects. It has been proven to describe the way planets orbit the Sun and other large scale interactions.

Quantum mechanics describes the interactions of particles on a very small scale. It describes electromagnetism, radioactivity and how atoms are assembled.

There is a problem. The two theories are totally incompatible. Black holes and the Big Bang require the two theories to work together, which they don't. Also, there are many unanswered questions, like why is a muon 200 times more massive than an electron.

So, a Theory Of Everything is required to unify the two theories. String theory is such a theory. The actual name is super string theory. The idea is that fundamental particles like electrons and quarks are actually a vibrating one dimension string in a multi-dimensional space. There are actually several string theories.

The various string theories are being united by a theory called M theory. It requires strings and multi-dimension structures called branes (for membrane) which exist in an 11 dimensional universe.

One problem with string theory is that the mathematics is very very hard. Even approximations are very difficult to solve.

We definitely need new physics to unify General Relativity and Quantum mechanics. Maybe string theory will be the answer.

Answer 3

please see below

Explanation:

String theory is a theory of everything .
After Albert Einstien explained gravitation by his theory of relativity in terms of wraps and curves in space time .
Many other physicists around the world thought to make a unified theory to explain everything .
In the `20^(th)` century itself , one more physicist tried to explain electromagnetic force in terms of wraps and curves .

But a big problem was wraps and curves in what?

Einstien had already used space time .

He thought to explain electromagnetic force required a dimension .

But we see only 3 dimensions .
The idea was that other dimensions are really really small to be observed .

Here comes the basic idea of 'flatland' , existence of many dimensions we can,observe .

Here's where string theory comes in , the basic idea of string theory is to unify the laws of physics because the equation don't work near the big bang nor in black holes .

String theory holds a 'string' responsible for all the properties of particles such as quarks , leptons and Bosons and also fundamental forces like nuclear force , gravitation , electromagnetism .

A string in a violin or a guitar can vibrate in many ways to produce different musical notes similarly the string in string theory can do .