String Theory tagged posts

A paper by the Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe (Kavli IPMU) Director Ooguri Hirosi and Project Researcher Matthew Dodelson on the string theoretical effects outside the black hole photon sphere has been selected for the “Editors’ Suggestion” of the journal Physical Review D...

A new theory may have far reaching implications for the multiverse paradigm. Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/PSU/L. Townsley et al; Optical: UKIRT; Infrared: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Professor Stephen Hawking’s final theory on the origin of the universe, which he worked on in collaboration with Professor Thomas Hertog from KU Leuven, has been published in the Journal of High Energy Physics. The theory, which was submitted for publication before Hawking’s death earlier this year, is based on string theory and predicts the universe is finite and far simpler than many current theories about the big bang say...

This image shows the galaxy cluster Abell 1689, with the mass distribution of the dark matter in the gravitational lens overlaid (in purple). The mass in this lens is made up partly of normal (baryonic) matter and partly of dark matter. Credit: NASA, ESA, E. Jullo (JPL/LAM), P. Natarajan (Yale) and J-P. Kneib (LAM).

Currently, one of the strongest candidates for dark matter is weakly interacting massive particles, or WIMPS, although so far this hypothetical particle has not yet been directly detected. Now in a new study, physicists have proposed that dark matter is not a WIMP, and further, it is not any particle that is so far known or theorized to exist...

The graph depicting the tensor product structure of the binary icosahedral group 2I is the same as the Dynkin diagram of affine E8.

Over centuries, humans have tried to discover a Theory of Everything. Possible candidates eg String Theory and Grand Unified Theory, require higher dimensions or higher-dimensional symmetries, eg 10 dimensions, despite their radical difference from the world we actually experience. One such symmetry – known as E8 – exists in 8 dimensions and is the largest symmetry without counterparts in every dimension and is therefore called exceptional. Now a scientist has constructed E8 for the first time, along with other exceptional 4D symmetries, in the 3D space we inhabit. These exceptional symmetries are essentially 3D phenomena in disguise.

Dr Dechant, who is al...