In a mirror of Western Tradition lore begining story J.R.R. Tolkien, in the "Silmarillion", tells how the World was made:
"The Music of the Ainur There was Eru, the One who in Arda is called Iluvatar, and he made first the Ainur, the Holey Ones, that were the offspring of his thought, and they were with him before aught else was made. And he spoke to them, propounding to them themes of music; and they sang before him, and he was glad. He declared to them a mighty theme, unfolding to them things greater and more wonderful than he had yet revealed; and the glory of its beginning and the splendour of its end amazed the Ainur. “Ye make in harmony together a Great Music”; adorning this theme; great beauty has been wakened into song. A sound arose of endless interchanging melodies woven in harmony that went out into the Void, and it was not void. And Iluvatar gave into their thoughts the secret fire.But now they were come into the Void, he said to them: “Behold your Music!” And he showed to them a vision, giving to them sight where before was only hearing; and they saw a new World made visible before them. This World began to unfold its history, and it seemed to them that it lived and grew. And they saw with amazement the coming of the Children of Iluvatar, and the habitation that was prepared for them; and they perceived that they themselves in the labour of their music had been busy with the preparation of this dwelling; this World."
The Science of String Theory
- Edward Witten (Many physicists consider Ed Witten to be Einstein's true successor. A mathematical physicist at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey).
String theory is an attempt at a deeper description of nature by thinking of an elementary particle not as a little point but as a little loop of vibrating string. One of the basic things about a string is that it can vibrate in many different shapes or forms, which gives music its beauty.
So in the case of one of these strings it can oscillate in many different forms -- analogously to the overtones of a piano string. And those different forms of vibration are interpreted as different elementary particles: quarks, electrons, photons. All are different forms of vibration of the same basic string. Unity of the different forces and particles is achieved because they all come from different kinds of vibrations of the same basic string.
The beauty of Einstein's equations, for example, is just as real to anyone who's experienced it as the beauty of music. We've learned in the 20th century that the equations that work have inner harmony.
Now there must be skeptics out there who will tell you that these beautiful equations might have nothing to do with nature. That's possible, but it's uncanny that they are so graceful and that they capture so much of what we already know about physics while shedding so much light on theories that we already have.
- Jim Gates Professor of Physics at the University of Maryland.
In String Theory, Strings create everything, including space and time and even us. The way that this is done is unfortunately extremely mathematical and detailed, but I can use an analogy. If I took a violin string and plucked it, it would vibrate back and forth. As it vibrates, it makes a note. The note that you get depends on how you pluck it. Roughly speaking, the idea of strings is that when you pluck it a certain way you might be looking at an electron. When you pluck it a different way you might see a particle of light. If you pluck it a third way you might be looking at a quark. All the particles are in fact different vibratory modes of this single object. there is a kind of elegance to string theory.
- Brian Greene Theoretical Physicist, Author of “The Elegant Universe”
According to string theory, absolutely everything in the universe -- all of the particles that make up matter and forces -- is comprised of tiny vibrating fundamental strings. Moreover, every one of these strings is identical. The only difference between one string and another, whether it's a heavy particle that is part of an atom or a massless particle that carries light, is its resonant pattern, or how it vibrates.
All objects, not just fundamental strings, have resonant patterns associated with them. Pluck the string of a violin and you hear mainly one tone. This is the string's fundamental resonant pattern, or frequency. And the instrument's resonance doesn't stop there. The body of the violin has resonant frequencies, which work to amplify the sound created by the vibrating string. There's resonance in objects that aren't musical, too. Your desk has resonant frequencies, and so does a flagpole, and so does the Earth.
What determines the type of particle is the movement of the string and the energy associated with this movement. According to Einstein's famous equation E=mc2, energy and mass are equivalent -- that is, the more energy something contains, the more mass it has, and vice versa. In string theory, this equivalence accounts for the different masses of different particles: a lower-energy string is lighter (less massive) than a higher-energy string.
