… Try living with that! Don’t get me started…) He is an absolute whiz at seeing ‘the big picture’, though, and can -and does!- wax poetic on all manner of mundane and extraordinary things…to include String and M Theories. Quite incredible! Not to pun, but: Go figure. beth. —-

When it comes to “String Theory”, “M Theory”, et al, I am perfectly ‘comfortable’ with the discussions and explanations given by the likes of Neil deGrasse Tyson. IOW, I do not *have* to completely ‘understand’ them [at the 'primary'-level] to accept them as having (provable, at some point) validity and, therefore, as their being, even now [*before* irrefutable proof], factual.

It’s the concept I can ‘handle’…not the minute ‘detail’ of what makes “the concept”, so. Once the discussion and/or explanation goes into sine-this and cosine-that, and to-the-power-of-this and the-exponential-of-that, I glaze over into sheer and utter Lostville. [Does that make sense?]

Although I’m mechanically minded, I’ve never been good at, nor found the least bit of write-home-about-it excitement in, mathematics. [I will, however, sometimes --not often!-- puzzle over a problem for hours and get inordinately happy when I've (finally) figured out the 'why' and 'where for' of the correct answer.] I get excited for those who find excitement in math, though – it’s a joy for me to see someone pursue what they love.

My poor son, bless his heart, has a severe learning disability: Dyscalculus. He, no matter *how* it is explained, *how* it is presented to him, CANNOT make heads nor tails sense out of *any* mathematics (or *any* of its associated operations…like reading schedules, maps, time sheets, ‘quarter to’ on the face of a clock, diagrams, charts, and such. Oy! Try living with that! Don’t get me started…) He is an absolute whiz at seeing ‘the big picture’, though, and can -and does!- wax poetic on all manner of mundane and extraordinary things…to include String and M Theories. Quite incredible! Not to pun, but: Go figure. beth.

One of the things that still troubles me about gravity is how it can interact with light – If gravity is a function of mass and photons are “massless” particles?

It is my understanding of course that the mass element of gravity is actually an empirical means of quantifying the curvature of space and hence even massless particles fall under its influence.

I too find the “music of the strings” seductive.

Here’s to the wee hours…

I’m not a theoretical physicist either, but am intensely interested in cosmology. I tend to wax eloquent in the wee hours of the night when skepticism is at its lowest ebb……It is then that the specter of a universe composed of a symphony of vibrating strings with hidden dimensions is so irresistible as to supplant the pedestrian and concrete in my mind. Haha. As for when a “TOE” will emerge? Maybe never, but I believe most think it could be decades or centuries. The current theories will probably bear little resemblance to any final theories.

Cheers, yourself.

Much as I enjoy reading about the various string theories and M theory etc. I have to remain a little skeptical about anything that would never be empiracally verifyable. I had them in mind when I mentioned gravity because according to what I have read the quantum/relativistic properties of gravity can be resolved by at least some subsets of the many dimensional theories.

In my limited understanding though that still does not explain in any sense that I can understand what gravity *IS*. I also hold out the possibility that like the nearly supernatural numbers, the TOE is intractable and the intellectual journey to understand the universe is an infinite regression. On the bright side that means very long term job security, at least for theoretical physicists.

Cheers,

Goethe’s quote resonated with Calabi-Yau spaces and the eleven (or more?) hidden dimensions in String Theory for me….

Wandering through the labyrinth of the mind is the same as wandering through the labyrinth of the universe. Our minds are made of the same “star dust” that formed the galaxies….and the language of the universe is mathematics.

It’s only a matter of time before another Einstein wanders on to the true “Theory of Everything” in which all the nearly supernatural numbers/concepts make perfect sense, including gravity.

I was heading there, but you scooped me.

Lee323 -

One that springs to mind is gravity.

How many more “nearly supernatural” concepts are out there wandering? (h/t Krubozumo for phrase in quotes).