![]() #Strings theory font series#As he does, the virtual classroom passes through a series of grids-this is to represent shrinking-until everyone is small enough to directly observe the six dimensional Calabi-Yau manifolds that exist at reality's most minuscule junctures. Greene goes on to explain that humans would need microscopes capable of peering inside the smallest particles in order to observe the curled-up dimensions. ![]() The analogy with the wire makes sense, but it doesn't scratch all the strangeness away from trying to visualize six dimensional curling. "String theory," says Greene, "is speculative and hypothetical, but mathematically quite compelling." Ultimately, these phenomenon scale up to explain modern how gravity and quantum mechanics fit together: Otherwise known as The Biggest Question in Physics. But, according to the theory, the six, curled up dimensions play a major role in controlling how subatomic strings vibrate, and those vibrations determine how quarks, electrons, and other fundamental particles behave. These extra dimensions would be too small for humans to detect-about 10 -33 centimeters. String theory posits that the universe is built not just from three spatial dimensions (up/down, side/side, forward/backward) and the single dimension of time, but at least six other dimensions. Also, cyberspace-and apparently extradimensional space, too.Įxtra dimensions are a critical part of Greene's field of study. In addition to VR classrooms, it features panel discussions on the future of AI, chemistry-themed cooking demonstrations, and ride-alongs with rat scientists. He's actually a co-founder, along with documentarian Tracy Day. Greene is teaching this futuristic class as part of the World Science Festival, a week-long, city-wide celebration of intellect and curiosity. An HTC Vive headset covers his face, and he gestures effusively-he's a New York native-with the controllers. In real life, Greene is wearing a dark blue shirt, black jeans, and boots, and his normal, non-hovering chair is sitting in a concrete-floored VR business called Step Into the Light planted firmly on Earth's surface-Manhattan's Lower East Side. This is a virtual reality course on string theory the lesson happens to be about objects with more than three dimensions. After he shows the students the tesseract, Greene directs his class to try making four, five, even six dimension objects. The classroom is outer space: Greene and the arc of student-robots orbit Earth. His robot avatar teaches a semicircle of student robots, each wearing a shoulder badge of their home country's flag. ![]() And the robot is Brian Greene, a physicist at Columbia University and bestselling author of several popular science books. The robot lowers its hands, and the cubes coalesce into a single shape-with 24 square faces, 16 vertices, and eight connected cubes existing in four dimensions. He drags it to the left, but the two cubes stay connected, strung together by glowing lines radiating from their corners. He motions at a glowing cube floating before him, and an identical cube emerges. ![]()
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