Testing String Theory: Exploring the Possibilities

[Alex Foyeur]

String Theory is basically the idea involving an indefinite amount of invisible "strings" vibrating at a large spectrum of frequencies, thus creating sub-atomic particles that compose everything we experience and ourselves. It would make sense if you could test this theory by creating something with sound that can be felt (i.e. a wall of sound that can be physically felt). But with string theory would something need to vibrate? Without oxygen which vibrates for sound, would string theory apply in a vacuum? Can we attribute that vibration to dark matter? These strings would have to tear themselves apart to create anything (conservation of mass taken into account, of course), unless they were moving dark matter. Then that leaves the question of dark matter. I'm curious to know if the data CERN collected with its Hadron Collider will be able answer anything on dark matter. Give me your opinions.

 

[Kevin_Axion]

String Theory is basically the idea involving an indefinite amount of invisible "strings" vibrating at a large spectrum of frequencies, thus creating sub-atomic particles that compose everything we experience and ourselves. It would make sense if you could test this theory by creating something with sound that can be felt (i.e. a wall of sound that can be physically felt). But with string theory would something need to vibrate? Without oxygen which vibrates for sound, would string theory apply in a vacuum? Can we attribute that vibration to dark matter? These strings would have to tear themselves apart to create anything (conservation of mass taken into account, of course), unless they were moving dark matter. Then that leaves the question of dark matter. I'm curious to know if the data CERN collected with its Hadron Collider will be able answer anything on dark matter. Give me your opinions.

Is it feasible that we can observe strings due to their vibrational qualities? I think this is what you're trying to ask.

In any case, CERN will never directly observe strings, the energy levels (distances) that string theory becomes observable at is far larger then what energies we're looking at with certain. I'm talking about around 18 orders of magnitude smaller.

"Sound" is a longitudinal wave that consists of the transport of energy due to the compression and contraction of groups of air molecules (oscillation). This won't be an observational pursuit for many reasons:

1. A string cannot vibrate anything to create sound since there is "nothing" around it
2. The energy of the strings vibration is far to small to constitute any classical effects.
3. Our instruments aren't precise enough to observe the stringy characteristics of particles.
4. Touching on the above point, the quantized energy of a string is discrete and very small. It would hardly be noticable in comparison to the mess of anti-pair annihilations occurring in the vacuum.

Yes, string theory still holds in the vacuum since the dynamics of it's vibration are governed by basic principles i.e $\alpha'$ (the string tension).

In principle, the dark matter we observe must also be strings.

 

[negru]

Or in other words, strings are to sound like what protons and electrons are to tidal waves. There at the fundamental level, but completely irrelevant for all practical purposes.

 

[Alex Foyeur]

The experiment suggested did not imply detecting strings directly, but to see if using vibrations in a vacuum can be Physically detected.