What are your thoughts on string theory?  Could every element, atom, proton, neutron, quark, and so on consist of super small strings?  Do you believe this is a possibility?
215660
String theory is based on 'mathematical beauty.' There is a belief that the most profound insight into the universe should also be the simplest. When mathematical formula have properties of symmetry (they work the same no matter how you rotate them mathematically) they are said to be beautiful. Super string theory is based on a set of formula which are super-symmetrical. By themselves they are just pretty. But when you start applying them to physical phenomenon, things get interesting. It shows the universe was one 11 dimensional. Then at one instant, 7 of the dimensions collapsed into a single string in our 4 dimensional universe (count time as a dimension). It is a fascinating theory but we are a long time until we can perform an experiment to reveal the existence of these strings.
174570
string theory by it's very nature can never be observed, proven, or tested (see shadengers cat) thus, I would describe it as a faith, not a theory.
530485
Because a 1 dimensional string solves many of the problems associated with 0 dimensional point particles of the Standard Model.\n\nGuys, M-Theory isn't different from string theory, it just combines all the string theories into one.  There are actually many string theories and superstring theories.....
593651
Another string theory, \nG – hmm, \nwhy not then a G-string theory?\n\n\nCurios question it is. Let us as assume that you will put a geosynchronous satellite at about 300km from the center of the Earth. Since it is a geosynchronous satellite it will stay with the same point on the Earth say over your house.  The air resistance will be minimum as I‘ll assume that the planets atmosphere stays with the planet. Here are some numbers:\n\nEarth rotates at Ve= 1,700 km/hour (diameter ~13,000 km)\nOur geosynchronous satellite Vs= ~40,000 km/hour (at 300,000 km above center of the Earth)\nThis was just to show off, now let us do some serous computation.\n\nAnd the weight of the string say at 1gm/meter will weigh …. will weigh about 126.87 kg by employing the inverse square law of gravity.  (These were very tough computations).\nThat will apply a force of about 1,300 N on that satellite.  Why apply a steady pull? The weight of the string will bring the satellite down.\n\nThe daunting question is how are we are going to attach one end of that string to the satellite in the first place and then getting the other end to your house ;)? Or perhaps…\n\nThanks for all the fish
639452
Superstring theory is being hammered by many different new physical obervations. Proponents keep adding one fudge factor after another to try to save the theory from sinking.\nThe big bang theory has taken a beating, lately,  but not as bad as superstring theory.\nEvolution is solid and has been so for more than 100 years. But three methods of Lamarkian evolution, at a molecular biology level have recently been discovered. Especially the second one.(methylationof genes, and microsatellite r.n.a. in sperm and the massive random insertion of a jumping gene sequence in neurological cells causing random cell diversity.).\nDan the Answers-man
346269
Okay, let's try a summary.\n\nAll matter is made up of protons, electrons, and neutrons. However, the arrangement of the atoms and the movement of electrons different from one element to another.\n\nColors exist as different waves of light and energy are reflected or refracted through objects or mediums. Those objects or mediums are made up of different elements.\n\nIf there was no source of light, everything would be colorless or black (the absence of light).\n\n1) When a source of light is emitted, it passes through all sorts of atoms and the reflection and refraction of the light waves causes a separation of light waves. Certain waves produce certain colors. And since the world is not static and atoms are constantly moving, different combinations of atoms can "separate" certain colors.\n\n2) As electrons jump from orbitals to orbitals, energy is released. This is also a source of light waves and can be emitted from the atoms themselves (such as different colors in burning elements).\n\nAlso, there is strong trend to look at something known as "String Theory" in which scientists look smaller than an atom, smaller than a quark, to something known as "strings". These strings are constant strings (hence the name) of energy.\n\nHope that made sense.
442219
Hm.  Okay.  Here's some stuff about atoms to get you started:\n\nJust like all things are made of atoms, all atoms for the most part are made up of the same three parts.  Protons, neutrons, and electrons.\n\nProtons and neutrons are comparatively really heavy.  Pretty much all the weight of an atom comes from these guys.  Because they're heavy, they don't move around a lot unless the whole atom is moving.  Instead they stick together in the center of the atom (also called the nucleus).\n\nElectrons live very different lives.  Unlike protons and neutrons, they are not only light but comparatively large.  They buzz around the nucleus like planets around a star... or perhaps more like beach balls around a sack of marbles.  A lot of chemistry has to do with electrons zipping around, being attracted to one thing or another... or more likely to several things at once.\n\nAnother important thing to know about the parts of atoms is their charge.  The charge in these parts come from the electric force, which (if you can imagine it) is a billion billion billion billion billion billion times stronger than gravity (yes, that's a one followed by 36 zeroes).  The electric force is also involved with electricity that we use in our houses and the like.\n\nThe pro- in proton comes from its positive charge.  To make things easy for themselves scientists just decided to say a proton has a +1 charge.  The neu- in neutron comes from it being neutral.  It has zero charge.  Electrons have the opposite charge of protons, so they have a -1 charge.  Pretty straightforward.\n\nAnd here's where things get interesting.  The name we give an atom (like helium or uranium or whatever) depends ONLY on the number of protons it has.  So, for example, an atom with two protons is helium, no matter WHAT else its got.  Neutrons hang out in the nucleus with protons, where they add to the weight of an atom but don't do much else.  And the REASON all those electrons are buzzing around a boring nucleus instead of being off somewhere else is because all those negative charges like to be near all those positive charges.  And since the electric force is so incredibly strong, you can bet that just about everything you run into is going to have as close to a zero total charge as it can get.\n\nSo there you have it.  Atoms in a nutshell.  Hope that helps!
444865
Good question - it depends on which theory you want to use. Currently, it is estimated that there are 5 hydrogen atoms per cubic metre. But this does not necessarily mean that there is "nothing" between these atoms.\n\nAccording to quantum physics, even the space that we most often referred to a a vacuum, may be composed of various exotic unobservable (for now) components.\n\nIn quantum physics a vacuum is not the same thing as "nothing." One theory supposes that all space is filled with the Higgs Ocean composed of an undetected Higgs field.\n\nThe current idea in quantum physics is that the only place where there is "nothing" is between the strings making up all matter and energy. The concept of "nothingness" is a complex and extensive subject and very difficult for us to visualize.\n\nOf course there is much more to these concepts than a few words in a brief paragraph can relay.\n\nGood Luck
210011
Neutrons are made of quarks, yes. As are protons/neutrons (which are just positive/negative neutrons).
639498
I think the author of the article linked to in your referenced web page (it's the link below) explains it well. One of the many  fundamental constants, the Fine Structure Constant, may have changed very slightly -- or it may not have. The data acquired so far is not conclusive, especially as decided by the scientific establishment, which generally demands pretty overwhelming proof of such a radical idea. And as the author says, confirming evidence must be obtained not merely from more iterations of the same experiment, but from totally different kinds of experiment, and he adds that precision in these other experiment types is not yet high enough to be useful as a proof.
569016
I figure that a theory that predicts 6-7 extra dimentions may be true, but it is really easy to explain things with 9-10 degrees of freedom..\n\nTHink about it, you have data... you try to make a linear fit, most often you don't get a good correlation... Now try a 4th power polynomial fit... you get something better... 11th power can describe any data, but it makes no really valid predictions. \n\nAs Einstein said, "Any fool can make things bigger and more complicated" (don't remember exact words so this is paraphrasing) "but to explain things in simple manner truly takes a genius"\n\nBut there are things about it that are likely true, for instance the "strings" themselves... Yes, everything is made of a fundamental unit of energy (double slit experiment demonstrated that matter is localized energy) \n\nLast point: to have a valid theory it should predict measurable results, string theory does not.\n\nSo no, I doubt its tue, but only time will tell.
3176
M Theory attempts to go beyond superstring theory and purport that the multiverse is made up of 11 dimensions. \n\nM Theory is based on mathematical calculations and not empirical data. However, M Theory does successfully account for every issue of all superstring theories (classical, quantum physics, etc) and mathematically postulates the number to be at 11. \n\nFor more information:\nhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M_theory
14153
i have to agree with absynthian.  if they are in fact "physicists" then that means they have doctoral degrees in physics and telling them about quantum entanglement or string theory is going to be like giving a bunch of senators a talk about legislative procedure.  \n\nchaos theory, quantum entanglement/teleportation, and string theory are all huge and hot topics these days in physics, and they'll all have read plenty about them in physics today, nature and science, even if they aren't active researchers in that area.  you are going to bore their socks off if you get up there and start telling them about how strings are 11-dimensional objects, unless you have some really seriously deep and intuitive observations on the subject that you can share.\n\nhere is some good advice:  physicists are always interested in the historical development of their field.  the work of the big-name scientists - newton, galileo, maxwell - is well-known.  but there are a lot of physicists from the annals of history who led interesting lives and who often worked on subjects ahead of their time.  if you can find a research topic and show how someone from the 18th century studied a related phenomenon, and give it a historical twist, i think THAT would be a hit talk.\n\nanother thing might be to discuss some weird little topic from the back waters of physics.  people do research on all kinds of crazy stuff that's fun and interesting, but doesn't get much press.  for instance, nasa does a buttload of research into weird little problems - an example is that nobody understood why ketchup flows so slow at first, and then comes pouring out, until nasa figured it out.  that's one of many examples from this great page that might help you get started:\nhttp://exploration.nasa.gov/articles/index.html#fris\n\nanother way to get into this stuff is to just start searching around the web and looking at the research pages of faculty at various universities.  many of them will be working on hot topics - high-temperature superconductors or quantum information theory or photonics or something.  but you'll probably find one or two old guys at every place who are working on some totally off-the-wall thing.  THAT kind of stuff will be much better than the talk that ends with "..but we still have no idea whether string theory is really correct or not."\n\ncheers
598607
A Grand Unified Theory of Everything cannot be explained in such fashion. I would recommend reading "Hyperspace" by Michio Kaku.
562458
According to String Theory (M Theory being one of them), there exist a megaverse, which contains all existing universes. There is nothing outside of this megaverse. The megaverse has many higher spatial dimensions (how many exactly? right now I think it's 10). These higher spatial dimensions (i.e. 4th or higher) can be either curled up infinitesimally small (compactified), or very large like our 3 dimensional space. Our universe is just a tiny bubble inside this megaverse. Some String Theories say that our universe is a 3-brane attached to some other high dimensional brane, and that it's the collisions between these higher dimensional branes that creates the big bang and thus our universe. But there are other String Theories that say our universe were created perhaps via nucleation (the instantaneous formation of a bubble of 3-dimensional space), and because of its compactified higher spatial dimensional configuration, it was unstable and had alot of energy, which was instantly released (aka big bag) and also expanded exponentially the 3-dimensional space of the bubble.\n\nThe fact is we currently do not know exactly how our universe, or this megaverse came to being. We have many theories, but no definitively answers. But we are certain that there was a big bang. All indication points to the existence of higher dimensions, but no definitive proof yet. One thing is for sure, we exist in a very strange place indeed. Much of its secrets lie hidden and outside of our common perception. Very soon (within the next 5 years) we will begin to see some experimental results from the LHC (large hadron collider) that will likely provide some answers regarding the existence of higher dimensions.\n\nAs for your question about time, we also don't really understand what it is. But it is perhaps meaningless to ask whether time existed "before" some event like the big bang, since time is how you define events in the first place. All we know is that space and time is the fabric of existence. To say that anything exists is to say that it occupies some point in space at a particular time. So "before" the universe (or megaverse), before there was space and time, nothing existed period. There was no existence of any kind.
144987
Qunatum uncertainty says that you can never be certain that space is empty at Planck distances, therefore on those scales there is always some matter-energy in the form of virtual photon / antiphoton pairs that suddenly come into existence and then annilihate one another.  This suggests to me that empty space cannot exist on its own unless there is something in it.  Ultimately, we can spin whatever theories we want and debate forever which ones we prefer - but unless someone can design practical experimental methods, then the arm chair physics will not resolve very much.
278783
i don't know... this is all theoretical, and i would guess that this either \na- does not and cannot happen, or\nb- happens all the time and is therefore not something to be concerned about\n\ndid you read The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene? or Fabric of the Cosmos? (same author) \nI suggest these for further understanding of the string theory.... without having to consider the complexities of the mathematics behind it.