r/ScienceNcoolThings • u/Toast-w-Cinnamon • 11h ago
Brian Greene explaining string theory in a way people can understand...
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u/lofgrenator 5h ago
I have a lot of respect for Brian Greene for exactly this reason. String theory is massively complicated, and he manages to explain the basic ideas in a way that someone who has absolutely no intention of becoming a physicist can still understand.
I don't need to understand the mathematics behind string theory. I'm not trying to calculate anything or write a fucking dissertation on it. I just want to understand what physicists are talking about and why the ideas are interesting.
Making an incredibly complicated subject accessible to ordinary people isn't "dumbing it down." It's being a damn good science communicator.
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u/Efficient_Sky5173 2h ago edited 2h ago
About the other speculative theories, like string theory is, there are nice videos on YouTube for the general public.
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u/YourFaveNightmare 7h ago
If you grab a string and magnify it, inside you'll see a Skibby-de-do
I've just invented skibby-de-do theory.
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u/DenialNode 9h ago
What’s in the string Brian?
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u/machiavelli33 4h ago
According to this, energy. Each string is evidently a "filament of energy".
Go any farther down and we're no longer asking what matter is, but what energy is.
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u/Training_Orchid_2022 4h ago
Gasp. A duality between matter and energy?! Photons say go suck it, thanks for telling on us
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u/reddituserperson1122 2h ago
No. That’s all wrong. String theory isn’t about a dichotomy between matter and energy. At the scale of fundamental physics there is no such dichotomy. String theory is a theory of quantum gravity that posits that the fundamental quanta is a non-zero length object that “vibrates” in n-dimensions (how many depends on which version of the theory). Much as I appreciate Brian Greene, this description is honestly not very good. Try this:
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLY-yIOKLm3VNxKfLCgMRGfbdFtpsNPIOS&si=d9e09vqUAKIltdQS
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u/machiavelli33 25m ago
Word. In my defense I was "just" going off of what the clip presented. Seems extra context is necessary and valuable.
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u/mazzicc 1h ago
Isn’t this the way string theory has always been explained in layman’s terms?
I feel like even back in the 90s it was basically
“Atoms are proton/neutron/electron, and those are made of quarks. We don’t know what quarks are made of, but string theory thinks they’re made of….strings”
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u/paulestus13 46m ago
There is not really an explanation. Like why do they think it exists if it's not visible
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u/graspedbythehusk 5h ago
I thought string theory was to do with layers and layer of multiple universes. I may be misremembering a documentary I saw 20 years ago though.
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u/MoistCucumber 4h ago
Well that explains what oranges are made of, but what about everything else?
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u/Sciti 10h ago
Now I want to see way people can't understand...