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Articles: Devotion | In quest of infinity - 9
- Prof. venkata ramanamurty mallajosyula
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In this issue, I think I can at best barely deal with question 3; the last question I may have to leave for the next time. The link between gravity and particle physics comes via what are referred to as strings.
Time now to talk about strings. Let us go back to Figure 3, which shows the basics as we understand them today. For decades, it has been implicitly assumed that these particles are really particles in the traditional sense. But now there is a strong school of thought that the basic building blocks are strings and not particles, and as a result we now have a vigorous theory called String Theory. That is what I wish to discuss next because String Theory is poised to make a very strong impact and contribution.
The String Theory came into existence almost unnoticed, when a physicist named Veneziano guessed a formula that explained many experimentally observed features related to elementary particles. Shortly thereafter, physicist Nambu in Chicago showed that using Veneziano’s formula is equivalent to treating particles like neutrons and protons to be different modes of vibration of a string. Now I suppose you are aware that a string clamped at two ends as in the figure below, can vibrate in many modes.
A vibrating string clamped at both ends. Left to itself, the string would be stationary as at the bottom. When plucked and let go, it can vibrate in many ways; in general, these are combinations of the basic modes of vibration, some of which are illustrated here. In String Theory, the basic idea is that there exist elementary strings and that the so-called fundamental building blocks are just different “modes of excitation” of the string.
So, with just one string, one can get different particles! That is just one of the interesting points about String Theory. There are, however, many other compelling features, that have made people take String Theory far more seriously in recent years than they did when it first appeared on the scene.
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