Is Gravitational String Theory the Unified Theory of Everything?

[SeannyBoi71]

In the other day's lecture, my professor was going over gravitational potential energy and on a side note he added that there is a theory (though not fully accepted by many people as a theory) out there saying something about another dimension, with tiny strings acting on objects, and that is how gravity works? Anyone ever heard anything about this or know any more information?

 

[Kevin_Axion]

Yes, superstring theory is one of the most widely studied areas of research in theoretical physics. Essentially, superstring theory postulates that every elementary particle (seen as points) is actually a loop (a superstring - super comes from something known as supersymmetry) that vibrates. It vibrates due to the fact that it wants to have the lowest amount of potential energy, much like a spring. Superstring theory is able to incorporate General Relativity into Quantum Field Theory by having a string vibration mode that is a spin 2, massless particle, a graviton. It is spin-2 because the Stress-Energy tensor is a second-rank tensor. Although, superstring theory can be generalized to M-Theory which is a theory of M2-branes and M5-branes but this isn't necessary to know for the sake of my argument. In order for superstring theory/m-theory to be consistent the framework needs 11 space-time dimensions. The extra dimensions are accepted within the string community to be compactified at each point in space into Calabi-Yau Manifolds.

I hope this helped.

 

[SeannyBoi71]

Wow! Very in-depth, but thank you, definitely clarified it

 

[Kevin_Axion]

I'm just going to add this for the sake of other people if I wasn't clear. The graviton is a force carrying particle for gravity and tells space-time how to curve via the Stress-Energy Tensor.

No problem, I'm glad I could help