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String along.

Article Excerpt
There is a revolution going on in physics right now that looks set to shake the scientific worldview to its very core. After decades of sweat and toil, physicists believe they are finally onto a theory that will embrace all of nature's forces and matter--the long sought 'Theory of Everything'. Gareth Lloyd welcomes you to the bizarre world of superstring theory which seems to confirm what the ancients told us: that everything in the universe is a form of vibrating energy.

The ancient Greeks made the first step in particle physics when they imagined that the stuff of the universe was made up of tiny 'uncuttable' ingredients that they called atoms. Two millennia later, Albert Einstein helped show their existence when he watched the dance of pollen grains as air molecules buffeted them.

Bring on the string

Physicists found that atoms were not in fact the most basic material, but consisted of a nucleus, containing protons and neutrons, surrounded by a swarm of orbiting electrons. Then structure was found within protons and neutrons when these particles themselves were found to be composed of triplets of particles they called quarks. The reduction of matter to finer and finer levels was starting to look endless.

String theory makes a clean sweep of this particle zoo by saying everything, at its most basic level, consists of tiny vibrating strings of...

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