PHYS: M-theory
Kathryn Aegis (aegis@igc.apc.org)
Wed, 11 Feb 1998 18:45:13 +0000
Has anyone had the chance to read Michael Duff's rollicking dispatch
of string-theory in favor of M-theory in this month's SCIENTIFIC
AMERICAN? He cross-references a couple of articles from PHYSICS
TODAY, and I wish that he had written this article for that
publication, as he might have been able to go into longer and more
connected explanations. As it is, he skips from supersymmetry to
11-dimensional calculations and leaps into p-branes with very little
transitional text. (Also in this month's PHYSICS TODAY: several verbal
2x4's regarding an omission from the September article on Lise
Meitner).
Still, you have to love a quote like this one: 'Indeed, future
terrestial historians may judge the late 20th century as a time when
theorists were like children playing on the seashore, diverting
themselves with the smoother pebbles or prettier shells of
superstrings while the great ocean of M-theory lay undiscovered
before them.'
Sin,
Kathryn Aegis