The Theory of Everything

One of the Great Human on the face of this planet, Sir Albert Einstein, believed that one single theory can be populated to explain everything around us. Sadly, he died before he could put together this theory of everything and since then physicists around the world are constantly searching for this combined theory of all. For nearly 18 years now, most advanced mathematical work in theoretical particle physics has centered on something known as string theory.

This theory is built on the idea that elementary particles are not point-like objects but are the vibration modes of one-dimensional "string-like" entities. This formulation hopes to do away with certain lingering problems in fundamental particle physics and to offer the possibility of soon explaining all physical phenomena everything from neutrinos to black holes with a single theory.

First, string theory predicts that the world has 10 space-time dimensions, in serious disagreement with all the evidence of one's senses.The second concern is that even the part of string theory that is understood is internally inconsistent. This aspect of the theory relies on a series expansion, an infinite number of terms that one is supposed to sum together to get a result. Whereas each of the terms in the series is probably finite, their sum is almost certainly infinite.

The "M" Word

The latest version of the theory to explain the inconsistencies goes under the name of "M-theory," where the "M" is said variously to stand for "Membrane," "Matrix," "Mother," "Meta," "Magic" or "Mystery" although "Mythical" may be more appropriate, given that nearly eight years of work on this idea have yet to lead to even a good conjecture about what M-theory might be.

There is still a third possibility for the M in M-theory. One of the islands that was found on the M-theory planet corresponds to a theory that lives not in 10 but in 11 dimensions. This seems to be telling us that M-theory should be viewed as an 11 dimensional theory that looks 10 dimensional at some points in its space of parameters. Such a theory could have as a fundamental object a Membrane, as opposed to a string. [1]

1- http://th1.ihep.su/soloviev/perevod/woit.htm