AI-powered
podcast player
Listen to all your favourite podcasts with AI-powered features
The Evolution of String Theory
The switch really flipped in the 90s when we had what is called the second superstring revolution. Many of the best physics departments in the world didn't hire any string theorists at the time, because they weren't sure whether the idea was just going to go away or if it was just a fad. In the 1990s, Joe Polchinsky pointed out that string theory is not just a theory of strings. There are also these things called D brains, Dirichlet brains, which are not one dimensional strings but there's also two dimensional brains, three dimensional brains, four dimensional brains, etc. This is brain B, R, A, and E,.