'Levels of Reality' on the order of Strings

[Kherubin]

Please forgive my lay understanding of String Theory, but when contemplating it, I am drawn to two questions; one at a level 'above' string theory and the other 'deeper'.

I will begin with the former. As is my limited understanding, strings, according to restrictions placed upon them by the particular Calabi-Yau manifold along which they move, vibrate to produce the observable world around us.

My first question is, to what extent do strings determine the nature of the physical world? I understand that the form they take gives rise to how many physical 'constants' there are and which values they take and, presumably, by extension, the shape of physical 'laws'. However, what other observable facets do they 'control'? The number of 'inflated' dimensions is determined by the shape of the Calabi-Yau manifold? Do strings or their manifolds predetermine the form that those dimensions take (i.e. are they space, time or something else altogether)?

I understand that string theory appears to give rise to an entire 'landscape' of possible universes. The second, deeper, question, if you will is, is there anything beyond strings? Or, more precisely, does string theory preclude there being so? Is there any dictum within string theory which decrees that all universes MUST have stings as there base? Could something other than strings exist beyond the so-called string landscape? Is this an implicitly flawed question to ask? Does it even make sense?

Thank you for your time and information,
Kherubin

 

[Sum1sGruj]

String theory has evolved into compiled systems floating in an even higher dimensional space. Or the last I checked, anyways (I haven't stayed current with it).
M-theory is what they call it, which gave rise to the 11th dimension (just when you though there was too many lol). But, the theory is very elegant.

To go back a little for better understanding, string theory predicts that quarks, the fundamental particle of matter, are actually 1-dimensional strings.
It's a theory that attempts to make sense of infinite. To put it simply, an infinitely large circle would be a straight line, as it would never curve. String theory fixes this paradox by running dimensions into each other, creating finite loops in an infinite reality.

The best way to illustrate this in a more broad sense is to examine what string theory says about the big bang. According to it, the measure of the singularity at the beginning was negative infinite. We are in that singularity right now, and even though we are over 13 billion light years from the center, we are in an infinitely small dot.

That is about as laymen as it can get. Everything else is a brain buster. Imagine entire universes sitting right next to each other, or perhaps all in the same position, floating around in a master dimension. Think of them as bread loafs, with each slice maybe being a universe. These are 'branes' (compiled systems) that I spoke of with M-theory at the top.

One thing to know about this is that extra dimensions are required. There's much mathematical reason, but I can bring you through a good example of how it works:

The 4th spatial dimension. In it, you could see all sides of a 3D object at once. But in the 3rd dimension, we have to loop through the dimensions below (length, width) to see all the sides of the object.
With string theory, the general idea is 10 dimensions, with Me-theory producing an 11th.
But, this is not strictly ALL string theory. Some suggest that there are more (or less).