Theorists have long sought a “theory of everything” that would unify all of the forces of nature along with matter into one mathematical model. Their main objective is to unify the general theory of relativity with quantum mechanics. The general theory of relativity deals with natural occurring phenomena on the very large scale and Quantum mechanics deals with natural occurring phenomena on the very small scale. These two theories are mathematically incompatible. Physicists had developed the “standard model” to try and correct the incompatibilities of the two theories, but many physicists found the standard model to be incomplete. The parameters of the mathematical equations of the standard model have to be adjusted continuously in certain experimentally measured values to make successful prediction.
The incompatibility between general relativity and quantum mechanics has been called the “central conflict” of modern theoretical physics. In quantum mechanics there is a randomness at the sub-planck-length level called the “quantum foam” that destroys the smooth geometric fabric of space-time that is central to the functioning of general relativity. Calculations that attempt to merge general relativity and quantum mechanics produce infinite answers. The impossible results from these calculation prompted physicists to search for a better theory.
In 1968 Gabriele Veneziano, while researching at CERN (a European particle accelerator lab), observed that many properties of the strong nuclear force are perfectly described by a two hundred year old formula known as the Euler beta function. This started a flurry of research in which other physicists noted that nuclear interactions of elementary particles modeled as one-dimensional strings instead of zero-dimensional particles where described exactly by the Euler beta function. This was the beginning of string theory.
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