NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Smaller than molecules, smaller than atoms, smaller
than the sub-atomic particles that make up atoms — is string.
Undetectably small, vibrating loops of string, to be exact. It‘s this
string — the smallest of all the building blocks — that composes all
matter in the universe, according to Brian Greene, a leading physicist
and upcoming speaker in the Chancellor‘s Lecture Series at Vanderbilt
University.
Greene will speak Thursday, Feb. 10, at Ingram Hall on the Vanderbilt
campus. His lecture begins at 6 p.m., and a reception will precede the
lecture at 5 p.m. Both events are free and open to the public.
Greene didn‘t originate string theory — or its variant, superstring
theory — but in the last several years he‘s been credited with
explaining it to the masses in his best-selling book The Elegant Universe,
a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. In simple terms, superstring theory
says that all particles and forces — from people and plants to the
stars and planets — are manifestations of tiny, resonating,
one-dimensional strings, so tiny that human machinery can‘t detect
them. Reality, as it appears to us, is the pattern of their vibrations.
Greene likens the way string theory works to playing a guitar. Pluck,
or vibrate, one guitar string and you hear one note; pluck a different
string, which vibrates at a different frequency, and you hear a
different note. Pluck several strings at once and you get a chord, or
combine all five strings on a guitar vibrating at different frequencies
to create infinite combinations of sound. Similarly, according to
superstring theory, the fundamental forces and various particles found
in nature are simply different modes of vibrating string. According to
Greene, the whole universe is “akin to a string symphony vibrating
matter into existence.”
While string theory hasn‘t been proven, it reconciles two major
scientific frameworks that have: general relativity and quantum
mechanics. While general relativity quantifies the very large (think
galaxies) and quantum mechanics characterizes the very small (think
atoms and subatomic particles), string theory seeks to unify the two
mathematically by positing that all matter and all fundamental forces
can be described in terms of these tiny vibrating strings. Some have
dubbed string theory the “theory of everything.”
But, mathematically, the theory also requires the existence of as many
as 11 spatial dimensions, and humans only experience — and can
realistically conceive of — three.
In The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time and the Texture of Reality,
Greene theorizes the possibility of a multi-dimensional universe. The
extra dimensions could be all around us, yet curled up so tightly that
we don‘t have the magnifying equipment capable of seeing them. Or, the
extra dimensions could be of conventional size but contain no light,
which is how we see our three-dimensional universe.
Greene suggests that we think of the cosmos as a huge loaf of bread and
the universe as we‘ve always imagined it as but one slice. Light is
trapped within our slice of bread, unable to travel to other slices,
thereby rendering them invisible to us. Gravity, however, is a force
that can travel to other dimensions, and experiments using gravity are
currently underway in an attempt to detect other possible dimensions.
Greene‘s ability to translate higher mathematics into everyday language
has earned him high praise. The Washington Post calls him “the single
best explainer of abstruse concepts in the world today.” In 2003, he
hosted a three-part NOVA series based on his book The Elegant Universe.
It received a 2004 Peabody Award for broadcast excellence. Greene is
currently a full professor in the math and physics departments at
Columbia University.
Greene is the latest speaker in Vanderbilt‘s ongoing Chancellor‘s
Lecture Series. Previous speakers this academic year have included New
York Times critic Frank Rich and best-selling author James Patterson.
The Chancellor‘s Lecture Series serves to bring to the university and
the wider Nashville community those intellectuals who are shaping the
world today. For more information about the series, visit
www.vanderbilt.edu/chancellor/cls.
Media contact: Kara Furlong, (615) 322-2706
kara.c.furlong@vanderbilt.edu