Getty Images / Shutterstock
The theory of strings is the best candidate we have for a theory of everything. Fold to its rule and the different tangled theories of conventional physics emerge in the context of a sublime and superior tapestry. It can unify the four forces of nature, including the most annoying gravity. With a little luck, he can also tame the big fringes and black holes without losing the thread.
There is just one taking: string theory cannot explain a universe like ours. Its mathematics can describe gasillars of different possible universes, but not an expansion at an acceleration rate, which is precisely what we see ours. Admittedly, no one knows what stimulates this acceleration – a mysterious “black energy” is the usual reserved space. According to theoryHowever, that should probably not happen at all.
For 25 years, it has been a big problem, but now we may have found a way to go beyond. Superficially, the answer will not shock anyone used to the extravagance of modern physics: we simply have to rethink our universe as part of a much larger company. Do this, and he can ball at his heart – indeed, the accelerated expansion seems to come naturally. But this new scheme is perhaps the wildest to date, in which our familiar space is delicately ready between high dimension hyperspace and complete nothingness. “In our proposal, our existence is like a shadow – a projection on a wall at the end of the world,” says Antonio Padillaphysicist at the University of Nottingham in the United Kingdom.
For all its current greatness, thong …