• Question: If string theory is correct then what makes up the strings? is it possible for something to not be made up of smaller things?

    Asked by anon-244418 to Ondrej, Jordan, Eleanor, Ed, Christine, Alice on 12 Mar 2020.
    • Photo: Eleanor Jones

      Eleanor Jones answered on 12 Mar 2020:

      String theory is a theory where instead of having point-like particles, such as the ones we’re used to dealing with, we have one-dimensional strings. So then these strings are the basic components of everything and you would study how the strings move through space.

      One particularly nice aspect of string theory is that it incorporates gravity into the theory, something that our current theory is unable to do.

    • Photo: Edward Banks

      Edward Banks answered on 12 Mar 2020:

      For the second part of your question- there is a tiny size called the Planck length, it is as small as (brace yourself, lots of zeros incoming) 0.000000000000000000000000000000000016 metres. We’re not sure if anything smaller than this size can exist- in our current model of the universe, distances smaller than this don’t really make sense to talk about; essentially they are too small for any of our current theories to apply. We don’t have any methods of ever investigating distances that small, as we run in to fundamental problems caused by Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle!
      So if there is anything smaller at all, it would have to operate on completely different mechanisms to anything we know about today.

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