God, Science & The Secret Doctrine  IV-chapter 4c

The search for a unified theory is a central activity in theoretical physics today, and just as Einstein foresaw, geometric concepts play a key role. The Kaluza-Klein idea has been resurrected and extended as a feature of string theory…. In both … the laws of physics that we see are controlled by the shape and size of additional microscopic dimensions. (Bousso, Polchinsky, Scientific American, Sept. 2004)

As scientists peeled back the layers of material nature, they first developed an understanding of atoms.  In the eighteenth century, John Newlands applied the ‘law of the octave’ to understanding the repetition of properties among the different atoms found in the first rows of the periodic table of elements.  These elements appeared to fall naturally into an octave or eightfold pattern.  Eventually, all of the elements composing material reality were arranged into seven rows of elements in the periodic tables, which embody different inner octaves patterns.

         During the early part of the twentieth century, physicists came to understand that ‘atoms’ were not truly indivisible or atomic but composed of further three primary elements: protons, electrons and neutrons, embodying positive, negative and neutralizing forces. Subsequently, these elements were further divided into quarks–with protons composed of two ‘up quarks’ and one ‘down quark,’ and neutrons composed of one up quark and two down.  Each has an inner triad of quarks which cannot be separated and which are bound together by their own messenger particles, gluons, which mediate the sub-atomic strong force.

            The 11-dimensional K.K. theory regards any such quantum as the result of ‘broken symmetries’ in an underlying seven dimensional hyperspace.  The more recent theories to be put forth as the ultimate theories concerning the nature of matter are superstring theory and its extension into M-Theory. These theories propose that point particles have extension as ‘strings’ and that different modes of vibration of these strings produce the varied quanta of nature.  In this view, everything at the most microscopic level consists of combinations of vibrating strands or strings.  The mass and force charges of the particles are due to the string’s oscillatory pattern.  Greene (1999) notes: “... each particle contains a vibrating, oscillating, dancing filament what physicists ... have named a string.”  (p. 14) Once again, another layer of the onion of material nature is peeled away.  What were once conceived of as point particles are now determined to constitute a whole inner world on a different inner order of scale. These strings exist at the level of the Planckian units and/or beyond –at many orders of magnitude greater than anything that can be measured or investigated directly with modern technology.

In string theory, the “ultimate building blocks of nature” are these small strings with diameters at the level of the Planck units–around 10^-33 centimeters.  This is inconceivably small.  Each different mode of vibrations of these strings corresponds to different fundamental particles.  These modes of vibration are referred to as the ‘zero point vibrations’ of the string. ² Atkins (2003) provides this arresting analogy to describe these strings: “Just think of the string as pulsing away quietly, like a human heart, each mode of its pulsing corresponding to a different particle.” (p. 197)

The word string implies ‘elasticity’ and string are both bendable and stretchable.  They are also incredibly strong.  Physicist L. Susskind notes:

 Indeed, despite the extreme thinness of fundamental strings, they are incredibly strong—vastly stronger than anything made of normal matter.  The number of trucks that could be suspended from a fundamental string is about 10⁴⁰. That enormous tensile strength makes it extremely difficult to stretch a fundamental string to any appreciable length.  As a result, the typically size of a fundamental string may be almost as small as the Planck length.  (p. 336) 

 These strings can be open or closed, and can attach or not attach to various membranes-or ‘branes.’  Photons are open strings, while gravitons are closed.  Strings can also absorb or emit other strings.  The ground states of these strings can also be energetically excited, although this takes massive energy expenditure.  Susskind writes:

 If you bombard a string with enough energy, it would spread out and become as big as a violently jittering, tangled ball of yarn.  And there is no limit; even with more energy, the string could be excited to any size.  … black holes—even those giants at the centers of galaxies—are enormously large, tangled “monster strings.”  (pp. 337-8)

             If point particles are replaced by vibrating strings, then this may resolve the inconsistencies between quantum theory and the general theory of relativity, and could ultimately provide that elusive ‘theory of everything’–the holy grail of modern science.  The string concept allows scientists to weld together an understanding of quanta with a new understanding of higher space dimensions.  Although earlier versions of string theory predicted a twenty-six dimensional model of space-time and subsequently a ten dimensional model, the most advanced model posits the eleven dimensions—with a seven dimensional hyperspace existing at every point underlying the four large spacetime dimensions of the everyday world.  Atkins writes:

“... currently it looks as though the different theories can be united into one super-theory if the dimensionality is allowed to rise to eleven. ... string theory is all about strings vibrating in ten dimensions of space and one of time. ... In actuality, there are seven dimensions compactified in this way at each point, with the strings somehow wrapped round them, like a rubber band wrapped round a pipe. The compactified dimensions are thought to adopt a special shape at each point ... called Calabi-Yau spaces ... Shapes like these–in seven dimensions–are the hosepipes of string theory, for the strings wind round them and through their holes. ”  (2003, pp. 197-9)