Justice Is BLIND

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daredevil

DO NOT BELIEVE

BELIEVE - NOT

Do not believe because you read it in a book,
Do not believe because you saw it on television,
Do not believe because science says so,
Do not believe because a famous person says so,
Do not believe because a wise person says so,
Do not believe because a wise person believes it,
Do not believe because your best friend believes it,
Do not believe because everyone else believes it,
Do not believe because others have believed it for a thousand years,
Do not believe because you've heard it many times before,
Do not believe because you are told you must,
Do not believe because others expect you to,
Do not believe because it gets you accepted
Do not believe because it will make your parents happy,
Do not believe because it will get you noticed,
Do not believe because you want to believe,
Do not believe because you can't afford not to,
Do not believe because it helps you cope,
Do not believe because you'd go mad if you didn't,
Do not believe because you must believe something
Do not believe because there's nothing else to believe,
Do not believe because it feels good to believe,
Do not believe because it makes sense,
Do not believe because your eyes tell you it is so,
Do not believe because it is your own experience,
Do not believe because it feels true,
Do not believe because you know it is true,



Do NOT believe any of this

Believe only that you ARE

And do not even believe that

For THAT IS beyond belief

QUANTUM ENTANGLEMENT

There is at the bottom of the picture one three-dimensional sphere containing one three-dimensional cube.

At the top of the picture there is the same three-dimensional sphere inside a larger three-dimensional cube.

From the two-dimensional point of view there are now two two-dimensional circles on top of different sides of the two two-dimensional planes the three-dimensional cube is made of.

What was once connected in the past is still connected in the timeless now. There is no such thing as different energy-states. The term energy is a metaphor for higher dimensional levels of phenomenal expression in the timeless now.



THINK PINK !

ANGEL OF ANARCHY

Are you a radical? Have you heard that question before? Or is it rather a suggestion by the corporate-controlled media? Simply because you don't believe in capitalism doesn't make you a radical. But that's exactly what they want you to believe.

If someone doesn't like Marxism, does this mean he is a right-wing radical? Of course not. Now if someone doesn't like capitalism, does this mean he is a left-wing radical? Of course not. But that's exactly what the media make you believe. They want you to alienate you from yourself and the rest of society. They want to alienate the average guy from you.

Radicals were people like Hitler and Stalin, and they killed millions. So, who wants to be a radical after all? Who is killing people nowadays in the name of freedom and democracy? Those are the real radicals. So, don't be a radical, simply refuse to support a system, that is unethical and unfair and is killing people in the name of this or that.

PSYOPS MOOD-FACTORY

PSYOPS - kiaz6453PFSK
OPERATION START: OKTOBER 10 - 2005
OPERATION END: OKTOBER 17 - 2005


Operation: Negative Mood-Induction
Operation: Anti-Hippie-Resentments
Operation: Establishment-Stabilization
Location: Area Europe
Time-Date: From October 10 to October 17 - 2005
Keywords:

DEATH - THREAT - PANDEMIC - 68 (HIPPIES) BOWING OUT


Operation: Positive Mood-Induction
Operation: Mood-Stabilization
Operation: Katrina-Posttrauma-Conciliation
Location: Area North America
Time-Date: From October 10 to October 17 - 2005
Keywords:

LIVING - BETTER - LONGER - SOUND - SLEEP - FEEL - YOUNGER - SEX - HEALTHIER - WELLNESS



HAVE A NICE DAY

ROOSTER-ALARM

Avian Flu

The cock crows on the dung heap and nobody cares two hoots about it.















The 7 Plagues:

16:1 Then I heard a loud voice from the temple saying to the seven angels, "Go, pour out the seven bowls of God's wrath on the earth."

The 7 Plagues are also called the 7 Bowls, the 7 Cups, the 7 Vials, the 7 Angels... and hey come from Heaven, from the Tabernacle of the Testimony itself, in answer to the prayers and blood of the martyrs, as we saw in Rev.15.

They are the last call for repentance, the seven last plagues--last, because with them God's wrath is completed (Rev.15:1)... they are the last opportunities for the Church, for you an for me... they are catastrophes in our lives calling for repentance, because God wants all persons in the world to go to eternal Heaven (1Tim.2:5).

The seven plagues can be compared to the warning given in Lev.26:21,24,28.: If you remain hostile toward me and refuse to listen to me, I will multiply your afflictions seven times over, as your sins deserve... people ignored the repentance call of the 7 Seals and the 7 Trumpets, so here come the 7 Bowls...

The 7 Bowls are directed at:
1- The people who had the mark of the beast and worshipped his image, both Christians and non-Christians (16:2).
2- Those who had shed the blood of the saints and prophets, the martyrs (16:6,7).
3- To the throne of the beast and his kingdom on earth (16:10);
4- To the air where Satan has his dwelling (16:17).

hey follow similar pattern as the 7 Trumpets, and some them remind us the plagues of Egypt: The first four affecting creation: earth, sea, water, cosmos... then two affecting the beast... the final one in which the cities of the nations collapsed.

A difference:
- The 7 Seals affect a quarter of the land.
- The 7 Trumpets affect a third of mankind... and much of mankind refuse to repent.
- The 7 Bowls or Cups with the 7 Plagues affect all mankind who once again refuse to repent.

Bowl 1 is poured out on the land and it effects the people who had the mark of the beast and worshipped his image.
Bowl 2 is poured out on the sea.
Bowl 3 is poured out on the rivers
Bowl 4 is poured out on the sun
Bowl 5 is poured out over the throne of the beast
Bowl 6 is poured out over the Euphrates, the kingdom of the beast on earth
Bowl 7 is poured out into the air, where Satan has his dwelling... the cities of the nations collapsed

Speak of the Future

"Anthroposophy is a path of knowledge, to guide the spiritual in the human being to the spiritual in the universe... Anthroposophists are those who experience, as an essential need of life, certain questions on the nature of the human being and the universe, just as one experiences hunger and thirst."

- Rudolf Steiner, Anthroposophical Leading Thoughts (1924)



Speak of the Future (AAC 64 kbps)

THOU SHALT NOT KILL

"President Bush said to all of us: 'I'm driven with a mission from God. God would tell me, "George, go and fight those terrorists in Afghanistan." And I did, and then God would tell me, "George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq …" And I did. And now, again, I feel God's words coming to me, "Go get the Palestinians their state and get the Israelis their security, and get peace in the Middle East." And by God I'm gonna do it.''

“I believe today that I am acting in the sense of the Almighty Creator. By warding off the Jews I am fighting for the Lords work.” - Adolf Hitler, in a speech delivered at Reichstag, Berlin, 1936


Religious Delusions in Patients Admitted to Hospital with Schizophrenia

Siddle R, Haddock G, Tarrier N, Faragher EB.
Department of Clinical Psychology, North Manchester General Hospital, Crumpsall, UK.

BACKGROUND: Religious delusions are clinically important because they may be associated with selfharm and poorer outcomes from treatment. They have not been extensively researched. This study sought to investigate the prevalence of religious delusions in a sample of patients admitted to hospital with schizophrenia, to describe these delusions and to compare the characteristics of the patients with religious delusions with schizophrenia patients with all other types of delusion.

METHOD: A cross-sectional investigation was carried out. The prevalence of religious delusions was assessed and comparisons were made between religiously deluded patients and a control group on demographic, symptom, functioning and religious variables. One hundred and ninety-three subjects were examined of whom 24% had religious delusions.

RESULTS: Patients with religious delusions had higher symptom scores (as measured by the PANSS), they were functioning less well (as measured by the GAF) and they were prescribed more medication than those patients with schizophrenia who had other types of delusion.

CONCLUSION: It is concluded that religious delusions are commonly found in schizophrenia and that by comparison with other patients who have schizophrenia, those patients with religious delusions appear to be more severely ill. This warrants further investigation.


THOU SHALT NOT KILL

"Moses was taught that men were living in such unruly ways, lacking self-discipline, and all men were to be told that to kill was against God, for do not forget, God is The Creator and The Judge. Men do not have the right to kill another human being, whether it be to take his life, his will, his dignity, his skill, his mind, his hope, his trust, his integrity. Men can be depleted of physical energy, emotional control and spiritual strength by another man's lack of self-discipline, emotional instability, greed, hate, lust, anger, lack of charity.

To kill is to rob man of the great privilege reserved for God alone. Only God has the right to judge when the physical must end."

Principle of Locality

Principle of Locality

In physics, the principle of locality is that distant objects cannot have direct influence on one another: an object is influenced directly only by its immediate surroundings. This was stated as follows by Albert Einstein in his article "Quantum Mechanics and Reality" ("Quanten-Mechanik und Wirklichkeit", Dialectica 2:320-324, 1948):

The following idea characterises the relative independence of objects far apart in space (A and B): external influence on A has no direct influence on B; this is known as the Principle of Local Action, which is used consistently only in field theory. If this axiom were to be completely abolished, the idea of the existence of quasienclosed systems, and thereby the postulation of laws which can be checked empirically in the accepted sense, would become impossible.

Local realism is the combination of the principle of locality with the assumption that all objects must objectively have their properties already before these properties are observed. Einstein liked to say that the Moon is "out there" even when no one is observing it.

Local realism is a significant feature of classical general relativity and classical Maxwell's theory, but quantum mechanics rejects this principle. Every theory that, like quantum mechanics, is compatible with violations of Bell's inequalities must abandon local realism. (Most physicists believe that experiments have demonstrated such violations, but some local realists dispute the claim, in view of the recognised loopholes in the tests.) Different interpretations of quantum mechanics reject different parts of local realism.

In most of the conventional interpretations, such as the version of the Copenhagen interpretation in which the wavefunction is not real, the many-worlds interpretation, and the interpretation based on Consistent Histories, it is realism that is rejected. The actual definite properties of a physical system "do not exist" prior to the measurement and the wavefunction is only interpreted as a mathematical tool used to calculate the probabilities of the outcome of the experiments, which is, in agreement with positivism in philosophy, the only topic that science should discuss.

In the version of the Copenhagen interpretation where the wavefunction is real, it is the principle of locality that is violated. The wavefunction is a real object that exists prior to the measurement, but the measurement causes the wavefunction collapse which is a non-local process.

The Bohm interpretation always wants to preserve realism, and it needs to violate the principle of locality to achieve the required correlations. In fact, it needs to violate not only locality, but also causality which seems to imply a real conflict with the special theory of relativity because real, superluminal signals would have to be propagated.

Because the differences between the different interpretations are mostly philosophical ones (except for the Bohm interpretation), the physicists usually use the language in which the important statements are independent of the interpretation we choose. In this framework, only the measurable action at a distance - a superluminal propagation of real, physical information - would be usually considered to be a violation of locality by the physicists. Such phenomena have never been seen, and they are not predicted by the current theories (with the possible exception of the Bohm theory). This is why relativistic quantum field theory is usually considered to be a local theory.

The above is only about one sense of locality. In another use of the term, if we have two observables, each localized within two distinct spacetime regions which happen to be at a spacelike separation from each other, both observables would commute and we have locality. This interpretation of the word "locality" is closely related to the relativistic version of causality in physics.

Nonlocality

Nonlocality in quantum mechanics, refers to the property of entangled quantum states in which both the entangled states "collapse" simultaneously upon measurement of one of their entangled components, regardless of the spatial separation of the two states. This "spooky action at a distance" is the content of Bell's theorem and the EPR paradox.

Actions obtained from nonlocal Lagrangians are called nonlocal actions. The actions appearing in the fundamental theories of physics, such as the Standard Model, are local actions - nonlocal actions play a part in theories which attempt to go beyond the Standard Model, and also appear in some effective field theories. Nonlocalization of a local action is also an essential aspect of some regularization procedures.

Action at a Distance

In physics, action at a distance is the interaction of two objects which are separated in space with no known mediator of the interaction. This term was used most often with early theories of gravity and electromagnetism to describe how an object could "know" the mass (in the case of gravity) or charge (in electromagnetism) of another distant object.

According to Albert Einstein's theory of special relativity, instantaneous action-at-a-distance was seen to violate the relativistic upper limit on speed of propagation of information. If one of the interacting objects were suddenly displaced from its position, the other object would feel its influence instantaneously, meaning information had been transmitted faster than the speed of light.

Electricity

Coulomb's law in electrostatics appears to be a theory with action-at-a-distance - Coulomb's law deals with charges which have always been static. Efforts to develop a theory of interaction between moving charges, electrodynamics, led to the necessity to introduce the concept of a field with physical properties. In the theory of electrodynamics as formulated in Maxwell's equations, interactions between moving charges are mediated by propagating deformations of an electromagnetic field. These deformations propagate with the speed of light and therefore do not violate special relativity. The deformations of the field can carry momentum independently, thus facilitating conservation of angular momentum.

Gravity

Newton's theory of gravity offered no prospect of identifying any mediator of gravitational interaction. His theory assumed that gravitation acts instantaneously, regardless of distance. Newton had shown mathematically that if the gravitational interaction is not instantaneous, angular momentum is not conserved, and Kepler's observations gave strong evidence that in planetary motion angular momentum is conserved. (The mathematical proof is only valid in the case of a Euclidean geometry)

A related question, raised by Ernst Mach, was how rotating bodies know how much to bulge at the equator. How do they know their rate of rotation? This, it seems, requires an action-at-a-distance from distant matter, informing the rotating object about the state of the universe. Einstein coined the term Mach's principle for this question.

Einstein: One of the conditions that a relativistic theory of gravitation must meet is to be mediated with a speed that does not exceed lightspeed. It could be seen from the previous success of electrodynamics that the relativistic theory of gravitation would have to use the concept of a field or something similar.

This problem has been resolved by Einstein's theory of general relativity in which gravitational interaction is mediated by deformation of space-time geometry. Matter warps the geometry of space-time and these effects are, as with electric and magnetic fields, propagated at the speed of light. Thus, in the presence of matter, space-time becomes non-Euclidean, resolving the apparent conflict between Newton's proof of the conservation of angular momentum and Einstein's theory of special relativity. Mach's question is resolved because local space-time geometry is informing a rotating body about the rest of the universe. In Newton's theory of motion, space acts on objects, but is not acted upon. In Einstein's theory of motion, matter acts upon space-time geometry, deforming it, and space-time geometry acts upon matter.

Quantum Mechanics

Current physical theories incorporate the upper limit on propagation of interaction as one of their basic building blocks, hence ruling out instantaneous action-at-a-distance. At the same time however, instantaneous action at a distance appears to be an essential feature of some very fundamental quantum mechanical effects like entanglement and quantum nonlocality. For these implications of quantum mechanics, Einstein coined the term "spooky action at a distance".

The question of whether this 'spooky action' at a distance constitutes a violation of the relativistic upper limit on the propagation of interaction is not straightforward. According to the laws of quantum mechanics, entanglement cannot be employed for relaying information from one place to another.

Quantum Teleportation

Quantum teleportation is a technique discussed in quantum information science to transfer a quantum state to an arbitrarily distant location using an entangled state and the transmission of some classical information.

Indistinguishability

Let's say that Alice has a rubidium atom (the element physicists in this field like to use for their experiments), which is in its ground state, and Bob also has such an atom, as well in its ground state. It is important to see that these two atoms are indistinguishable; that means that there really is no difference between them.

If Alice and Bob had, say, two glass balls, which exactly look alike, and they exchanged them, then something would change. If you had a powerful microscope, you could certainly find some difference between the two balls. For atoms of the same kind and in the same quantum state, however, there really is no difference at all. The physical situation with Alice having the first atom and Bob the second is exactly the same as vice versa.1 In a certain sense, it is even wrong to say that the two atoms have any individuality or identity. It would be more appropriate to say that the two locations in space both have the property that the fundamental quantum fields have those values which define the ground state of the rubidium atom.

Quantum Teleportation: The Result

Now, imagine Alice's atom being in some complicated (excited) quantum state. Assume that we do not know this quantum state — and of course, we cannot find out by inspection (measurement). But what we can do is to teleport the quantum state to Bob's rubidium atom. After this operation, Bob's atom is exactly in the state that Alice's atom was before.

Now note that Bob's atom afterwards is indistinguishable from Alice's atom before. In a way, the two are the same — because it does not make sense to claim that two atoms are different only because they are at different locations. If Alice had gone to Bob and given him the atom we would have exactly the same physical situation.

But Alice and Bob were not required to meet. They only needed to share entanglement. The method: As a prerequisite, Bob has produced two particles (or atoms, to stay with the concrete example) called I and II, which are maximally entangled, e.g. in the Bell state.

This means that the particles I and II are neither in the state |0> nor in |1> but rather in both simultaneously, and if you measure one of them you will find it to be |0> or |1> each with probability 1/2. But the other is then always in the same state, and this connects them by some "spooky action at a distance", as Einstein has put it.

Bob passed particle I to Alice (by moving it there through a quantum channel) and kept particle II. From now on, Alice can send a quantum state to Bob, whenever she wants (or Bob to Alice).

If Alice now has a particle which she wants to teleport to Bob, she does a so-called Bell measurement on the particle to be sent and on particle I. The Bell measurement (for details see the article on it) projects Alice's two particle into one of the four Bell states. The two measured particles are afterwards in a known entangled state, specified by the measurement result, and the particle to be sent has lost its former state. That state, however, is not gone: it was teleported to Bob's particle II due to the previously existing entanglement.

One problem remains: The state of Bob's particle might be "rotated". This depends on the outcome of Alice's measurement, and Alice has to tell Bob this outcome by using some classical (i.e. ordinary) communication channel and Bob will then apply a unitary operation (a so-called Pauli operator) onto his particle.2 Afterwards, he really has the desired state.

Star Trek beaming: That the term teleportation reminds of the beaming process in the Star Trek TV series might have been intentional. After all, the physicists coining the term might have thought, it is as if the particle would be brought there. But this analogue is prone to miss the point: Only the information about the quantum state is brought there, the particle to take up the state must already be present.

Entanglement swapping: If a state being teleported is itself entangled with another state, the entanglement is teleported with it. To illustrate: If Alice has a particle which is entangled with a particle owned by Carol, and she teleports it to Bob, then afterwards, Bob's particle is entangled with Carol's.

A more symmetric way to describe the situation is the following: Alice has one particle, Bob two, and Carol one. Alice's particle and Bob's first particle are entangled, and so are Bob's second and Carol's particle:

Alice-:-:-:-:-Bob1 Bob2-:-:-:-:-Carol

Now, Bob performs a Bell measurement on his two particles, which projects them into a Bell state, i.e. they are now entangled. But, more spectacularly, Alice's and Carol's particles are now entangled as well, although the two never met:

Alice......Bob1-:-Bob2......Carol
|............................................|
\-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-/

This effect allows, at least in theory, to build a quantum repeater. Breaking news: [[1]] demonstrates one node of a quantum repeater.

It IS ALL in Your Head

Icon of Coil

Icon of Coil is a Norwegian electronic body music group. The band was formed in 1997 by Andy LaPlegua; it was later joined by Sebastian Komor and (in 2000) by Christian Lund.

Discography

* Access and Amplify (MCD) (2002)
* Shallow Nation(MCD) (2002)
* The Soul Is In The Software (2002)
* Seren RP (2003)
* Serenity Is the Devil (2003)
* Machines Are Us (2004)
* Machines Are Us (2CD) Limited edition (2004)
* Uploaded & Remixed / Shelter (2CD) Limited edition (2004)

Side projects include: Panzer AG (frontman of Icon of Coil)

AIYH (AAC 64 kbps)

Warning: If you download or listen to this file, you have to buy it afterwards, or else you will be locked up for the rest of your life by your government. Remember: You live in a free country. Now please repeat: "I really do live in a free country." Please repeat this one hundred times or until you believe it. If you believe it, it must be true.

GOD IS DEAD

GOD IS DEAD
- Nietzsche


Nietzsche IS DEAD
- GOD



Friedrich Nietzsche

String Theory

String theory is a model of fundamental physics whose building blocks are one-dimensional extended objects (strings) rather than the zero-dimensional points (particles) that are the basis of the Standard Model of particle physics. For this reason, string theories are able to avoid problems associated with the presence of pointlike particles in a physical theory. Study of string theories has revealed that they require not just strings but other objects, variously including points, membranes, and higher-dimensional objects.

Interest in string theory is driven largely by the hope that it will prove to be a theory of everything. It is a possible solution of the quantum gravity problem, and in addition to gravity it can naturally describe interactions similar to electromagnetism and the other forces of nature. Superstring theories include fermions, the building blocks of matter. It is not yet known whether string theory is able to describe a universe with the precise collection of forces and matter that we observe, nor how much freedom to choose those details the theory will allow. No string theory has yet made falsifiable predictions that would allow it to be experimentally tested.

Work on string theory has led to advances in mathematics, mainly in algebraic geometry. String theory has also led to insight into supersymmetric gauge theories, which will be tested at the new Large Hadron Collider experiment.

History

String theory was originally invented to explain peculiarities of hadron behavior. In particle-accelerator experiments, physicists observed that the angular momentum of a hadron is exactly proportional to the square of its energy. No simple model of the hadron, such as picturing it as a set of smaller particles held together by spring-like forces, was able to explain these relationships. In order to account for these "Regge trajectories," physicists turned to a model where each hadron was in fact a rotating string, moving in accordance with Einstein's special theory of relativity. This led to the development of bosonic string theory, which is still the version first taught to many students. (The original need for a viable theory of hadrons has been fulfilled by quantum chromodynamics, the theory of quarks and their interactions. It is now hoped that string theory or some descendant of it will provide a fundamental understanding of the quarks themselves.)

Bosonic string theory is formulated in terms of the Nambu-Goto action, a mathematical quantity which can be used to predict how strings move through space and time. By applying the ideas of quantum mechanics to the Nambu-Goto action—a procedure known as quantization—one can deduce that each string can vibrate in many different ways, and that each vibrational state appears to be a different particle. The mass the particle has, and the fashion with which it can interact, are determined by the way the string vibrates—in essence, by the "note" which the string sounds. The scale of notes, each corresponding to a different kind of particle, is termed the "spectrum" of the theory.

These early models included both open strings, which have two distinct endpoints, and closed strings, where the endpoints are joined to make a complete loop. The two types of string behave in slightly different ways, yielding two spectra. Not all modern string theories use both types; some incorporate only the closed variety.

However, the bosonic theory has problems. Most importantly, as the name implies, the spectrum of particles contains only bosons, particles like the photon which obey particular rules of behavior. While bosons are a critical ingredient of the Universe, they are not its only constituents. Investigating how a string theory may include fermions in its spectrum led to supersymmetry, a mathematical relation between bosons and fermions which is now an independent area of study. String theories which include fermionic vibrations are now known as superstring theories; several different kinds have been described.

In the 1990s, Edward Witten and others found strong evidence that the different superstring theories were different limits of an unknown 11-dimensional theory called M-theory. These discoveries sparked the second superstring revolution. (Several meanings of the "M" have been proposed; physicists joke that the true meaning will only be chosen when the theory is finally understood.)

Many recent developments in the field relate to D-branes, objects which physicists discovered must also be included in any theory which includes open strings of the super string theory.

Basic properties

The term 'string theory' properly refers to both the 26-dimensional bosonic string theories and to the 10-dimensional superstring theories discovered by adding supersymmetry. Nowadays, 'string theory' usually refers to the supersymmetric variant while the earlier is given its full name, 'bosonic string theory'.

While understanding the details of string and superstring theories requires considerable mathematical sophistication, some qualitative properties of quantum strings can be understood in a fairly intuitive fashion. For example, quantum strings have tension, much like regular strings made of twine; this tension is considered a fundamental parameter of the theory. The tension of a quantum string is closely related to its size. Consider a closed loop of string, left to move through space without external forces. Its tension will tend to contract it into a smaller and smaller loop. Classical intuition suggests that it might shrink to a single point, but this would violate Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. The characteristic size of the string loop will be a balance between the tension force, acting to make it small, and the uncertainty effect, which keeps it "stretched". Consequently, the minimum size of a string must be related to the string tension.
Science
Unsolved problems in physics: Is string theory, superstring theory, or M-theory, or some other variant on this theme, a step on the road to a "theory of everything," or just a blind alley?

Extra dimensions

One intriguing feature of string theory is that it predicts the number of dimensions which the universe should possess. Nothing in Maxwell's theory of electromagnetism or Einstein's theory of relativity makes this kind of prediction; these theories require physicists to insert the number of dimensions "by hand". The first person to add a fifth dimension to Einstein's four was the German mathematician Theodor Kaluza in 1919. The reason for the unobservability of the fifth dimension (its compactness) was suggested by the Swedish physicist Oskar Klein in 1926.

Instead, string theory allows one to compute the number of spacetime dimensions from first principles. Technically, this happens because Lorentz invariance can only be satisfied in a certain number of dimensions. This is roughly like saying that if we measure the distance between two points, then rotate our observer by some angle and measure again, the observed distance only stays the same if the universe has a particular number of dimensions.

The only problem is that when the calculation is done, the universe's dimensionality is not four as one may expect (three axes of space and one of time), but twenty-six. More precisely, bosonic string theories are 26-dimensional, while superstring and M-theories turn out to involve 10 or 11 dimensions.

However, these models appear to contradict observed phenomena. Physicists usually solve this problem in one of two different ways. The first is to compactify the extra dimensions; i.e., the 6 or 7 extra dimensions are so small as to be undetectable in our phenomenal experience. We achieve the 6-dimensional model's resolution with Calabi-Yau spaces. In 7 dimensions, they are termed G2 manifolds. Essentially these extra dimensions are "compactified" by causing them to loop back upon themselves.

A standard analogy for this is to consider multidimensional space as a garden hose. If we view the hose from a sufficient distance, it appears to have only one dimension, its length. This is akin to the 4 macroscopic dimensions we are accustomed to dealing with every day. If, however, one approaches the hose, one discovers that it contains a second dimension, its circumference. This "extra dimension" is only visible within a relatively close range to the hose, just as the extra dimensions of the Calabi-Yau space are only visible at extremely small distances, and thus are not easily detected.

(Of course, everyday garden hoses exist in three spatial dimensions, but for the purpose of the analogy, we neglect its thickness and consider only motion on the surface of the hose. A point on the hose's surface can be specified by two numbers, a distance along the hose and a distance along the circumference, just as points on the Earth's surface can be uniquely specified by latitude and longitude. In either case, we say that the object has two spatial dimensions. Like the Earth, garden hoses have an interior, a region that requires an extra dimension; however, unlike the Earth, a Calabi-Yau space has no interior.)

Another possibility is that we are stuck in a 3+1 dimensional subspace of the full universe, where the "3+1" reminds us that time is a different kind of dimension than space. Because it involves mathematical objects called D-branes, this is known as a braneworld theory.

In either case, gravity acting in the hidden dimensions produces other non-gravitational forces such as electromagnetism. In principle, therefore, it is possible to deduce the nature of those extra dimensions by requiring consistency with the standard model, but this is not yet a practical possibility.

Problems

String theory remains unverified. No version of string theory has yet made a prediction which differs from those made by other theories—at least, not in a way that could be checked by a currently feasible experiment. In this sense, string theory is still in a "larval stage": it possesses many features of mathematical interest, and it may yet become supremely important in our understanding of the Universe, but it requires further developments before it is accepted or falsified. Since string theory may not be tested in the foreseeable future, some scientists have asked if it even deserves to be called a scientific theory: it is not yet a falsifiable theory in the sense of Popper.

It is by no means the only theory currently being developed which suffers from this difficulty; any new development can pass through a stage of uncertainty before it becomes conclusively accepted or rejected. As Richard Feynman noted in The Character of Physical Law, the key test of a scientific theory is whether its consequences agree with the measurements we take in experiments. It does not matter who invented the theory, "what his name is", or even how aesthetically appealing the theory may be—"if it disagrees with experiment, it's wrong." (Of course, there are subsidiary issues: something may have gone wrong with the experiment, or perhaps the person computing the consequences of the theory made a mistake. All these possibilities must be checked, which may take a considerable time.) These developments may be in the theory itself, such as new methods of performing calculations and deriving predictions, or they may be advances in experimental science, which make formerly ungraspable quantities measurable.

Human beings do not have the technology to observe strings (which are said to be roughly of Planck length, about 10-35 meters across). Eventually, we may be able to observe strings in a meaningful way, or at least to gain substantial insight by observing cosmological phenomena which may elucidate string physics.

In the early 2000s, string theorists revived interest in an older concept, the cosmic string. Originally discussed in the 1980s, cosmic strings are a different type of object than the entities of superstring theories. For several years, cosmic strings were a popular model for explaining various cosmological phenomena, such as the way galaxies formed in the early Universe. However, further experiments — and in particular the detailed measurements of the cosmic microwave background — failed to support the cosmic-string model's predictions, and the cosmic string fell out of vogue. If such objects did exist, they must be few and far between. Several years later, it was pointed out that the expanding Universe could have stretched a "fundamental" string (the sort which superstring theory considers) until it was of intergalactic size. Such a stretched string would exhibit many of the properties of the old "cosmic" string variety, making the older calculations useful again. Furthermore, modern superstring theories offer other objects which could feasibly resemble cosmic strings, such as highly elongated one-dimensional D-branes (known as "D-strings"). As theorist Tom Kibble remarks, "string theory cosmologists have discovered cosmic strings lurking everywhere in the undergrowth". Older proposals for detecting cosmic strings could now be used to investigate superstring theory. For example, astronomers have also detected a few cases of what might be string-induced gravitational lensing.

Superstrings, D-strings or other stringy objects stretched to intergalactic scales would radiate gravitational waves, which could presumably be detected using experiments like LIGO. They might also cause slight irregularities in the cosmic microwave background, too subtle to have been detected yet but possibly within the realm of future observability.

While intriguing, these cosmological proposals fall short in one respect: testing a theory requires that the test be capable, at least in principle, of falsifying the theory. For example, if observing the Sun during a solar eclipse had not shown that the Sun's gravity deflected light, Einstein's general relativity theory would have been proven wrong. (Barring, of course, the chance of experimental error.) Not finding cosmic strings would not demonstrate that string theory is fundamentally wrong — merely that the particular idea of highly stretched strings acting "cosmic" is in error. While many measurements could in principle be made that would suggest that string theory is on the right track, scientists have not at present devised a stringent "test".

On a more mathematical level, another problem is that, like quantum field theory, much of string theory is still only formulated perturbatively (i.e., as a series of approximations rather than as an exact solution). Although nonperturbative techniques have progressed considerably — including conjectured complete definitions in space-times satisfying certain asymptotics — a full nonperturbative definition of the theory is still lacking.

Adoration of the Christ Child

Adoration of the Christ Child
1548
Oil on canvas
Galleria Borghese, Rome

Pellegrino Tibaldi (also Pellegrino da Bologna) was influenced by Perin del Vaga during a stay in Rome in 1547 (as seen in the decoration of the Castel Sant' Angelo). Later he orientated towards Michelangelo.

In his Adoration of the Christ Child, 1548, Pellegrino Tibaldi surrounds the infant Jesus by a whirling crowd of worshipping figures reminiscent of the angels and the damned in the Last Judgement in the Sistine Chapel.