Bernoulli's principle lost, but was well covered in the comments. So instead we will humor tommyp who said "If y'all are so good at making stuff up, you would think you could come up with something interesting for universe building blocks." This ones for you, tommyp. String Theory is complicated, but luckily I am a really smart guy, as evidenced in my many publications on this website.
Gravity owes its existence to an apple being in the right place at the right time (see Newton). String theory is here due to socks. That is right, the kind you wear on your feet. See, a bunch of physics majors, or professors, I forget which, could have been both really, but they were instructing one of their colleges on the importance of wearing matching socks to the hypothetical "date" or "going out on the town." The exact conversation, which is said to have occurred in a particularly difficult dungeon in D&D, is lost to antiquity, but at some point the conversation turned to socks disappearing in the wash (several of the participants were unable to participate as their moms still, to this very day, do their laundry for them).
Two facts were focused upon in connection to the disappearing socks. First, socks are composed of matter in the form of strings. Second, according to Einstein E=Mc^2. It was proposed that the driers were acting as a low speed particle accelerator, converting the socks to pure energy. Plugging the mass of the socks into Einstein's equation proved that this would be an unhealthy amount of energy for the drier to absorb. However, the idea did not die, instead it shifted to the theory of the socks being converted to really small strings, still mater, not engergy. Some of these strings would be open, others would be closed, others could be stretched into 'branes. I would call that "pretty interesting" tommyp.
Currently string theory is composed of at least 6 different partially conflicting partially overlapping theories, as well as the one string to rule them all; M-Theory. Theories were generated to use cool, but otherwise worthless things, such as Calabi-Yau manifolds. These theories include up to 11 different dimensions, including the possibility of a second time dimension. These additional dimensions allow for realms where nerds and/or geeks, and/or dweebs, and/or dorks, and not jocks are at the top of the high school food chain. Thus allowing the possibility of moving the hypothetical "hot date" in to the realm of reality, which would have prevented that fateful conversation from ever taking place.
For more specifics on the different theories beyond the limited scope available here search the web, there is a convenient Google tool bar on this very page, near the top. In closing I would just like to say I am grateful that the initial conversation dealt with socks and not 'unmentionables' which also disappear on more rare occasions. A sub-atomic particle named the "skid mark" would be bad for business, not that a "gluon" is a poster child.
2 comments:
Oddly enough, I heard that conversation while exploring the 7th-dimension dungeon. We took the people musing about the theory for a band of evil stufessors (CR 7 encounter), and quickly dispatched them.
On another note, I'm somewhat confused. "These additional dimensions allow for realms where nerds and/or geeks, and/or dweebs, and/or dorks, and not jocks are at the top of the high school food chain." Are you seriously saying that they're not at the top? Last I checked, it's those nerds that make the world go 'round.
gaiwecoor, sadly, nerds are not at the top, although the most definately do "make the world go 'round." Being the most important does not equate with being at the top.
One example is plants. We all either eat plants, or eat things that eat plants. Plants are indeed most important to life on this planet, yet with few notable exceptions such as that plant from "Little Shop of Horrors" they are at the bottom of the food chain.
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