I’ve been meaning to post this for a couple of weeks and forgot. From the New Yorker two weeks ago (I can’t decipher the artist’s name [Update: Lee Lorenz, I think.]):
I’m pleased to see this for lots of reasons. It reminds me that it was in the New Yorker in the middle 90s that I first saw one of the big signs that the idea of string theory had made it to a large part of the popular consciousness. It was another cartoon. In it, there are two people walking along chatting, and one is saying to another, mid-conversation, “It’s all string theory to me”. I shall have to try to find it, and recall the name of the artist.
This more recent one may be preferable in some ways since perhaps it represents a piece of science appearing in the public domain in a more satisfactory way: An actual discussion of the content rather than (as in the other cartoon) just as a new fashionable buzzword to be parachuted into conversation out of context (although there’s nothing wrong with the latter eithera)… Perhaps I’m being too optimistic and overanalytical?
-cvj
______________________________________________________________________
aThe same 8th Jan. issue of the magazine has a title heading “String Theory” when describing an upcoming guitar concert in the “goings on about town” section… and why not?
I think it was the 5-8 and the “time thing” that threw me off. A dimensional perspective perhaps?
….and of course the “dimensional thing” in general?
Well, Aaron, excuse my ignorance. I thought so, but it failed to make me smile, so I thought it might have been a first name. Or what do I know, maybe there’s indeed a place called ‘Harvey’s place’ and I’ve just never heard of it. But I give it up – humor is too complicated for me. I’ll stick to my equations.
I searched http://www.cartoonbank.com (which I use often because it *explains* obscure cartoons that appear in The New Yorker) and found that this cartoon was by Lee Lorenz. The other cartoon, published on September 28, 1998, was by Victoria Roberts. You can buy an over-priced t-shirt for $19.95 with the cartoon on the front–or get them as note cards.
Dear Clifford, (and other kind experts)
I am glad there is a new post in the string theory category because there was a technical thing that puzzled me. I know that questions to experts from layperson can be a bit tiring. But let me try it anyway. I have the following question about strings. (Probably it puzzles others too.)
From what I saw in Wikipedia (string theory) strings are like arcs that can close up or remain open and if you add time you get a nice and smooth two dimensional picture like a cylinder. The pictures are always like that. Also from Wikipedia (string(physics)): “a string is an object with a one-dimensional spatial extent, unlike an elementary particle which is zero-dimensional.”
In short, my question is, why one-dimensional and not, say, 1.25-dimensional?
Do you regard string as a nice looking curve that over time looks like nice surface? (or it is just the pictures.) I remember that there are curves that look very different: like plane filling or space-filling curve (again there is a Wikipedea item mentioning a mathematician Peano who invented such curves). These curves have dimension which is that of space they fill, and there are even curves that have dimension which is not an integer number like fractals, I think. So isn’t it better to assume strings are some sort of fractals? say 1.25 dimensional arcs in space? (or 1.63-dimensional)
Does string theory relies (beyond the nice pictures) on thinking about strings as smooth and nice and their “spacesheets” as nice behaving surfaces? Does it make a difference if strings are fractals?
(Actually, I thought first to ask this question in the old tea thread. Why not have 1.25-dimensional fractal-like weblogs?)
Who’s Harvey? You have to ask?
I still don’t understand it. And who’s Harvey?
Also from the New Yorker, displayed now on my office door: two cats conversing, the caption is “people are OK, but I prefer little pieces of string”.