Evicting Einstein
Date: Wednesday, March 31, 2004 @ 20:53:00 UTC
Topic: Science
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From science.nasa.gov site: A physics experiment on the drawing board for the International Space Station could help find the grand unifying "Theory of Everything."
March 26, 2004: Sooner or later, the reign of Einstein, like the reign of Newton before him, will come to an end. An upheaval in the world of physics that will overthrow our notions of basic reality is inevitable, most scientists believe, and currently a horse race is underway between a handful of theories competing to be the successor to the throne.
In the running are such mind-bending ideas as an 11-dimensional universe, universal "constants" (such as the strength of gravity) that vary over space and time and only remain truly fixed in an unseen 5th dimension, infinitesimal vibrating strings as the fundamental constituents of reality, and a fabric of space and time that's not smooth and continuous, as Einstein believed, but divided into discrete, indivisible chunks of vanishingly small size. Experiment will ultimately determine which triumphs.
Read the whole article at:
science.nasa.gov/headlines
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