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Evolution of Matter and Energy

1992; Springer Nature; Linguagem: Inglês

10.1007/978-3-540-46995-7_3

1867-979X

Michelle Taube,

Space Science and Extraterrestrial Life

Maybe during our time, at the end of the twentieth century or at the beginning of the next century, the old dream of natural sciences will become reality—the theory which unifies all phenomena, the natural and the artificial, the smallest and the largest, the simplest and the most complex, the past and the future, the here and the elsewhere. The possibility of the emergence of the theory of everything seems not to be as remote as before, even if some theoretical physicists are too optimistic. Not only on the grounds of pure symmetry, the number of sceptical theoreticians who do not believe such “theories of everything” equals the number of enthusiasts. The “theory of everything”, TOE, is probably approaching. There exist different ways of achieving the TOE. One of them, which seems to have good prospects is the theory of “superstrings”. This theory proposes that all particles—real particles, the ‘bricks of the Nature’ (fermions), and also field particles, the carriers of forces,being ‘the mortar of nature’ (bosons)— are not pointlike but are stringlike. The superstrings theory not only describes all known forces (including gravitation), but gives an intimate coupling between forces, particles, space and time [1, 2, 3].