What are Branes? Explained Simply

[Quds Akbar]

I am having a hard time understanding branes, especially the P-branes and the D-branes, so could someone put it in simple words?

 

[Chronos]

It's an imaginary construct that exists in higher dimensions under string theory - in other words, it lacks observational support.

 

[Chalnoth]

A brane is a surface with some specific number of dimensions. Surfaces in our three-dimensional world, for example, are two-dimensional. Because string theory has more dimensions (10 in superstring theory, for example), it is sensible for surfaces to have more dimensions than just two. It is impossible for humans to visualize these higher-dimensional objects, but easy enough to write down their properties mathematically.

They arise from string theory because one of the ways you can define the strings is for the endpoints of the strings to be confined to a specific boundary. So the branes serve as a sort of anchor point that strings attach to.

 

[Quds Akbar]

It's an imaginary construct that exists in higher dimensions under string theory - in other words, it lacks observational support.

What does it do or sopposed to do and what are P-branes?

 

[bapowell]

D-branes are a specific type of brane that act as anchors for the endpoints of open strings (the 'D' stands for Dirichlet, for the Dirichlet boundary conditions specified along the brane). p-brane is the general term for any type of brane in p-dimensions.

Branes are more than space-filling surfaces -- they have dynamics as solutions to the string (really supergravity) equations of motion.

 

[Ben Jala Melami]

What does it do or sopposed to do and what are P-branes?

The way I try to understand these things, is like trying to see all these sub particles (quarks, and such...) in disarray, but once the branes excites them, they all conspire to make matter. Different vibrations, different manifestations of matter.