A Shaun Michael Diem-Lane Presentation

Is the Universe Really Made of Rubber Bands?

A Kid's Exploration of String Theory

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Science can prove something right or wrong by testing it. This is called falsifiability; this means an idea can be tested and the evidence tells us if it is a correct idea or not. Much of philosophy, however, cannot be proven right or wrong. For this research project I watched several Brian Greene videos on Nova and on Ted Talks. When I watched the videos, Brian Greene raised a question, “Is string theory science or philosophy?” I decided to study this for my science project.

What I learned is that string theory, also called M theory, fits more in the science category and not in the philosophy one. It is more science than simply philosophy because it can be potentially tested. There have been experiments set up in several places around the world to do this. One of the experiments was set up in Geneva, Switzerland. There they have a Large Hadron Collider that can smash atoms together as they accelerate really close to the speed of light. They are trying to see if when they get a direct hit a graviton escapes into a parallel universe. If the graviton does escape into a parallel universe this might mean that we live in a multiverse and not a universe at all. If this is true there might be an infinite number of universes with an infinite number of planets, galaxies and stars. This might mean that there is another Shaun writing this essay right now, because with an infinite number of universes there are an infinite number of possibilities.

Having researched this topic for eight weeks I wrote a twelve-page magazine on string theory (with my own illustrations added, except for two), made a ten-minute movie on the topic (containing half of my own illustrations), and, finally, created an Apple interactive iBook on “M” theory. All of these are now on the Internet and available for all to see around the world.

I enjoyed studying this topic and I would like to thank my teacher, Mr. Hammond, for letting me do this as my science project. He has served as an inspiration in science throughout this year. I would also like to thank Brian Greene for his Fabric of the Cosmos video series; it explained complicated physics in such a simple way to me. I emailed Brian Greene personally my website address with my film and magazine article in appreciation for all that I learned.

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