The Origin of the 11d World Membrane as a Pascal Conic Section of Six 1d Strings in a 5d Projective Space

a promising unification of physics within one quantum gravitational theory of superstrings was impossible since they branched into five distinct 10 mathematical groups (which led to the situation where a raft of mathematical eggheads, most with little interest in physics per se, began dominating the theoretic physics departments). Which led to a second ‘superstring revolution’ in the mid 90’s when Ed Witten concluded that each of the 10D super-string theories is a different aspect of what was originally called a single ‘Membrane theory’ (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Membrane_Theory), whose totality is naturally eleven dimensional and establishes interrelations between the different superstring group theories as described by various ‘dualities.’ For just as 1D strings are more manageable, finite extensions of singular points, groups of strings on a plane form ‘world-sheets’ as literal ‘2D membranes,’ where these so-called ‘branes’ can be defined of any dimension, starting with a 0-brane or point.

So though the total system can correctly be called an ‘11D World Membrane,’ Witten generically prefers to call it ‘M-theory,’ where M can stand for membrane, mother, mathematical, matrix, master, mystery, magic, or then, as Pascal would forcefully add, Mystic! In any case, there is little doubt that someday a full rendering of 6-dimensions of compacted 1D strings in a 5D space-time will fulfill Einstein’s dream of a fully unified physical theory.

But personally I’m far less concerned with ‘theoretical’ unifications

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7