String Theory Is flawed, I have the solution

For those of you who choose not to keep up with the latest comings and goings in math and physics, here's a quick review of what string theory (or brane theory, or M theory, or whatever it's called today) says: the entire world is made up of tiny, oscillating strings. The way these strings move determines what kind of matter they end up contributing to. This is a pretty big step from how people thought matter was made when I was in high school, which is that everything was made from point particles. By having vibrating strings everywhere, string theorists are saying that the entire universe is one giant symphony -- think of it as each string is like the string on a guitar, capable of playing only one note. Of course, there's lots of complicated math in there, but there's no need to go into that right now (or ever, I hope).

String theory requires that we live in a 10-, 11- or 26- dimensional world, depending on who you ask, but the main point for these theorists remains the same -- all of the dimensions outside of the three/four that are apparent to us (up-down, left-right, out-and-back, and time) have to be rolled up into a very tiny space (technically, they are looped into themselves), because otherwise we'd already know about the other dimensions. This is a little esoteric, so it's helpful to think of an example here. The one that all of the physics books use is that we should imagine that we are all two-dimensional people, living on a page (or a blog). If we were living in this two-dimensional world, the idea of a third dimension -- something above the page -- would be impossible for us to comprehend. Likewise for us and the extra 6+ dimensions that scientists say are out there.

I certainly can swallow the idea that there are extra dimensions out there, but I don't believe -- not for one second -- that we can't experience these other dimensions. It's not that I'm offended by the idea that there are things beyond my comprehension; the corner deli's meat products are often beyond my comprehension. It's that I think the scientists are ignoring all of the possibilities for what could constitute a dimension. I don't think, for example, that a dimension has to be strictly spatial. A dimension could be something that is omnipresent -- colors, say -- and a few of the dimensions out there could be part of what we call the color spectrum. Or musical scales. There's hundreds of possibilities out there. We simply have to rethink what we call a dimension.

(This is a character study for Gabe Numm, the protagonist of my third novel, kept. I've yet to publish any parts of that novel yet, but if you want to read how some of my character studies get incorporated into my work, visit www.jonbrodsky.com).