An Attempt at the Theory of Everything

The true nature of the universe is one of the biggest questions that remains unanswered till date. To find the answer to this one question humans come up with different stories and theories to describe the world. We test our theories and stories to learn what to keep and what to throw away, but the more we learn and understand the more complicated, weird, and absurd our stories become. Some of them are so complicated that it’s really hard to know what they’re actually about. One such theory is the String theory. String theory is a famous, controversial and an often misunderstood story about the nature of everything

String theory is a candidate for the so-called “Theory of Everything”. Its aim is to address various theoretical conundrums, the most fundamental of which is how gravity works for tiny objects like electrons and photons. According to the String theory, matter is made up of strings. Instead of point-like particles, String theory proposes that the fundamental constituents of the universe are one-dimensional “strings”. The particles we perceive are actually vibrations in loops of string, each with its own characteristic frequency. The theory originated as an attempt to describe the interactions of particles such as protons. Now something much more ambitious- it has developed into an approach to the construction of a complete unified theory of all fundamental particles and forces.

String theory is one of the few attempts to unify physics that has no hiccups when we introduce gravity and other forces. It not only embraces gravity but requires it. String theory also requires six or seven extra dimensions of space, and it contains ways of relating large extra dimensions to small ones. However, inflation is one basic concept where there is a doubt about String theory working. Inflation, in theory, is a way of explaining how our universe came from nothing to its current structure. The answer to this question changes with the scientist you ask. String theorists do hope for predictions by String theory that can be tested experimentally. The theory has near-miraculous breakthroughs every 8 to 10 years, so we can expect 2 more breakthroughs in the theory in the coming years. Have we finally come close to a unified “Theory of Everything”?

Diagrammatic representation of the “String theory”