The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality (44 page)

That's string theory in brief, but to convey the power of this new approach, I need to describe conventional particle physics a little more fully. Over the past hundred years, physicists have prodded, pummeled, and pulverized matter in search of the universe's elementary constituents. And, indeed, they have found that in almost everything anyone has ever encountered, the fundamental ingredients are the electrons and quarks just mentioned—more precisely, as in Chapter 9, electrons and two kinds of quarks, up-quarks and down-quarks, that differ in mass and in electrical charge. But the experiments also revealed that the universe has other, more exotic particle species that don't arise in ordinary matter. In addition to up-quarks and down-quarks, experimenters have identified four other species of quarks (
charm-quarks,
strange-quarks, bottom-quarks,
and
top-quarks
) and two other species of particles that are very much like electrons, only heavier (
muons
and
taus
). It is likely that these particles were plentiful just after the big bang, but today they are produced only as the ephemeral debris from high-energy collisions between the more familiar particle species. Finally, experimenters have also discovered three species of ghostly particles called
neutrinos
(
electron-neutrinos,
muon-neutrinos,
and
tau-neutrinos
) that can pass through trillions of miles of lead as easily as we pass through air. These particles—the electron and its two heavier cousins, the six kinds of quarks, and the three kinds of neutrinos—constitute a modern-day particle physicist's answer to the ancient Greek question about the makeup of matter.
¹¹

The laundry list of particle species can be organized into three "families" or "generations" of particles, as in Table 12.1. Each family has two of the quarks, one of the neutrinos, and one of the electronlike particles; the only difference between corresponding particles in each family is that their masses increase in each successive family. The division into families certainly suggests an underlying pattern, but the barrage of particles can easily make your head spin (or, worse, make your eyes glaze over). Hang on, though, because one of the most beautiful features of string theory is that it provides a means for taming this apparent complexity.

According to string theory, there is only
one
fundamental ingredient— the string—and the wealth of particle species simply reflects the different vibrational patterns that a string can execute. It's just like what happens with more familiar strings like those on a violin or cello. A cello string can vibrate in many different ways, and we hear each pattern as a different musical note. In this way, one cello string can produce a range of different sounds. The strings in string theory behave similarly: they too can vibrate in different patterns. But instead of yielding different musical tones,
the
different vibrational patterns in string theory correspond to different kinds
of particles.
The key realization is that the detailed pattern of vibration executed by a string produces a specific mass, a specific electric charge, a specific spin, and so on—the specific list of properties, that is, which distinguish one kind of particle from another. A string vibrating in one particular pattern might have the properties of an electron, while a string vibrating in a different pattern might have the properties of an up-quark, a down-quark, or any of the other particle species in Table 12.1
.
It is not that an "electron string" makes up an electron, or an "up-quark string" makes up an up-quark, or a "down-quark string" makes up a down-quark. Instead, the
single
species of string can account for a great variety of particles because the string can execute a great variety of vibrational patterns.

Table 12.1 The three families of fundamental particles and their masses (in multiples of the proton mass). The values of the neutrino masses are known to be nonzero but their exact values have so far eluded experimental determination.

As you can see, this represents a potentially giant step toward unification. If string theory is correct, the head-spinning, eye-glazing list of particles in Table 12.1 manifests the vibrational repertoire of a single basic ingredient. Metaphorically, the different notes that can be played by a single species of string would account for all of the different particles that have been detected. At the ultramicroscopic level, the universe would be akin to a string symphony vibrating matter into existence.

This is a delightfully elegant framework for explaining the particles in Table 12.1, yet string theory's proposed unification goes even further. In Chapter 9 and in our discussion above, we discussed how the forces of nature are transmitted at the quantum level by other particles, the messenger particles, which are summarized in Table 12.2
.
String theory accounts for the messenger particles exactly as it accounts for the matter particles. Namely, each messenger particle is a string that's executing a particular vibrational pattern. A photon is a string vibrating in one particular pattern, a W particle is a string vibrating in a different pattern, a gluon is a string vibrating in yet another pattern. And, of prime importance, what Schwarz and Scherk showed in 1974 is that there is a particular vibrational pattern that has all the properties of a graviton, so that the gravitational force is included in string theory's quantum mechanical framework. Thus, not only do matter particles arise from vibrating strings, but so do the messenger particles—even the messenger particle for gravity.

Table 12.2 The four forces of nature, together with their associated force particles and their masses in multiples of the proton mass. (There are actually two W particles—one with charge +1 and one with charge -1— that have the same mass; for simplicity we ignore this detail and refer to each as a W particle.

And so, beyond providing the first successful approach for merging gravity and quantum mechanics, string theory revealed its capacity to provide a unified description of all matter and all forces. That's the claim that knocked thousands of physicists off their chairs in the mid-1980s; by the time they got up and dusted themselves off, many were converts.

Before the development of string theory, the path of scientific progress was strewn with unsuccessful attempts to merge gravity and quantum mechanics. So what is it about string theory that has allowed it to succeed thus far? We've described how Schwarz and Scherk realized, much to their surprise, that one particular string vibrational pattern had just the right properties to be the graviton particle, and how they then concluded that string theory provided a ready-made framework for merging the two theories. Historically, that is indeed how the power and promise of string theory was fortuitously realized, but as an explanation for why the string approach succeeded where all other attempts failed, it leaves us wanting. Figure 12.2 encapsulates the conflict between general relativity and quantum mechanics—on ultrashort distance (and time) scales, the frenzy of quantum uncertainty becomes so violent that the smooth geometrical model of spacetime underlying general relativity is destroyed—so the question is, How does string theory solve the problem? How does string theory calm the tumultuous fluctuations of spacetime at ultramicroscopic distances?

The main new feature of string theory is that its basic ingredient is not a point particle—a dot of no size—but instead is an object that has spatial extent. This difference is the key to string theory's success in merging gravity and quantum mechanics.

The wild frenzy depicted in Figure 12.2 arises from applying the uncertainty principle to the gravitational field; on smaller and smaller scales, the uncertainty principle implies that fluctuations in the gravitational field get larger and larger. On such extremely tiny distance scales, though, we should describe the gravitational field in terms of its fundamental constituents, gravitons, much as on molecular scales we should describe water in terms of H
₂
O molecules. In this language, the frenzied gravitational field undulations should be thought of as large numbers of gravitons wildly flitting this way and that, like bits of dirt and dust caught up in a ferocious tornado. Now, if gravitons were point particles (as envisioned in all earlier, failed attempts to merge general relativity and quantum mechanics), Figure 12.2 would accurately reflect their collective behavior: ever shorter distance scales, ever greater agitation. But string theory changes this conclusion.

In string theory, each graviton is a vibrating string—something that is not a point, but instead is roughly a Planck length (10
^-33
centimeters) in size.
¹²
And since the gravitons are the finest, most elementary constituents of a gravitational field, it makes no sense to talk about the behavior of gravitational fields on sub-Planck length scales. Just as resolution on your TV screen is limited by the size of individual pixels, resolution of the gravitational field in string theory is limited by the size of gravitons. Thus, the nonzero size of gravitons (and everything else) in string theory sets a limit, at roughly the Planck scale, to how finely a gravitational field can be resolved.

That is the vital realization. The uncontrollable quantum fluctuations illustrated in Figure 12.2 arise only when we consider quantum uncertainty on arbitrarily short distance scales—scales shorter than the Planck length. In a theory based on zero-sized point particles, such an application of the uncertainty principle is warranted and, as we see in the figure, this leads us to a wild terrain beyond the reach of Einstein's general relativity. A theory based on strings, however, includes a built-in fail-safe. In string theory, strings are the smallest ingredient, so our journey into the ultramicroscopic comes to an end when we reach the Planck length—the size of strings themselves. In Figure 12.2, the Planck scale is represented by the second highest level; as you can see, on such scales there are still undulations in the spatial fabric because the gravitational field is still subject to quantum jitters. But the jitters are mild enough to avoid irreparable conflict with general relativity. The precise mathematics underlying general relativity must be modified to incorporate these quantum undulations, but this can be done and the math remains sensible.

Thus, by limiting how small you can get, string theory limits how violent the jitters of the gravitational field become—and the limit is just big enough to avoid the catastrophic clash between quantum mechanics and general relativity. In this way, string theory quells the antagonism between the two frameworks and is able, for the first time, to join them.

What does this mean for the ultramicroscopic nature of space and spacetime more generally? For one thing, it forcefully challenges the conventional notion that the fabric of space and time is continuous—that you can always divide the distance between here and there or the duration between now and then in half and in half again, endlessly partitioning space and time into ever smaller units. Instead, when you get down to the Planck length (the length of a string) and Planck time (the time it would take light to travel the length of a string) and try to partition space and time more finely, you find you can't. The concept of "going smaller" ceases to have meaning once you reach the size of the
smallest
constituent of the cosmos. For zero-sized point particles this introduces no constraint, but since strings have size, it does. If string theory is correct, the usual concepts of space and time, the framework within which all of our daily experiences take place, simply don't apply on scales finer than the Planck scale—the scale of strings themselves.

As for what concepts take over, there is as yet no consensus. One possibility that jibes with the explanation above for how string theory meshes quantum mechanics and general relativity is that the fabric of space on the Planck scale resembles a lattice or a grid, with the "space" between the grid lines being outside the bounds of physical reality. Just as a microscopic ant walking on an ordinary piece of fabric would have to leap from thread to thread, perhaps motion through space on ultramicroscopic scales similarly requires discrete leaps from one "strand" of space to another. Time, too, could have a grainy structure, with individual moments being packed closely together but not melding into a seamless continuum. In this way of thinking, the concepts of ever smaller space and time intervals would sharply come to an end at the Planck scale. Just as there is no such thing as an American coin value smaller than a penny, if ultramicroscopic spacetime has a grid structure, there would be no such thing as a distance shorter than the Planck length or a duration shorter than the Planck time.

Another possibility is that space and time do not abruptly cease to have meaning on extremely small scales, but instead gradually morph into other, more fundamental concepts. Shrinking smaller than the Planck scale would be off limits not because you run into a fundamental grid, but because the concepts of space and time segue into notions for which "shrinking smaller" is as meaningless as asking whether the number nine is happy. That is, we can envision that as familiar, macroscopic space and time gradually transform into their unfamiliar ultramicroscopic counterparts, many of their usual properties—such as length and duration—become irrelevant or meaningless. Just as you can sensibly study the temperature and viscosity of liquid water—concepts that apply to the macroscopic properties of a fluid—but when you get down to the scale of individual H
₂
O molecules, these concepts cease to be meaningful, so, perhaps, although you can divide regions of space and durations of time in half and in half again on everyday scales, as you pass the Planck scale they undergo a transformation that renders such division meaningless.

Many string theorists, including me, strongly suspect that something along these lines actually happens, but to go further we need to figure out the more fundamental concepts into which space and time transform.
³³
To date, this is an unanswered question, but cutting-edge research (described in the final chapter) has suggested some possibilities with far-reaching implications.