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Re: Superstrings cannot be 'fundamental'Posted by Jfnewell7 on July 21, 2002 at 07:00:52: In Reply to: Re: Superstrings cannot be 'fundamental' posted by DickT on July 20, 2002 at 13:31:48: We are beyond my area of knowledge - I am trying to bridge from psychological theory. So I don't know whether or not this is all string theory, or just one variation of it. I do have a question: How can one dimensional objects have mass and tension? In a one dimensional object, we have a situation where each point (not a strictly mathematical point) only touches two adjacent points, If the tension between two points is always a constant, then there will never be any variations in tension, which I assume isn't what you are talking about because your description of the mathematics involves, I infer, tension as a variable. But it looks like there is a problem is tension is a variable. In one dimension, with each point only touching its neighbors, each pair of points would generate its own tension independently. After all, there would be no connection with any points further away, so no possibility of coordinating the pair's tension with the tension's of distant pairs. In that case, it doesn't seem that the lack of coordination would create chaotic changes in tension, and tension amounts, along the string, and I am guessing that that is not involved in the mathematical model you are talking about. I am guessing that the tension variable in whatever equations you are talking about are well behaved and regular. Mass also seems to have some problems. If you don't assume that points can vary in distance from one another, then I don't see how a single point mass (that assumes mass would be a variable defining the point) could bend the rest of the string. Bending is a complex geometric process involving a stretching on one side and a compression on the other side. But stretching and compression for a one dimensional strings isn't something I am able to imagine - at least, this morning. Further, if the strings points govern this process, and no points more distant than neighbors are connected and able to interact, then again, the bending of the string would be chaotic, which is infer is not the case in the mathematical equations you are using. For a one-dimensional string to bend in a nonchaotic way, something outside the string would have to control the bending, so we need something further in the model to account for that outside influence. That could imply that the model involved with one dimensional strings is wrong. However, it could also imply that the model would be right if it were part of something more complex. Then, it would be merely an equational value describing a property of a more complex process/structure. That is to say, a string wouldn't really be one-dimensional, but it would have one or two properties that could be described by part of a larger mathematical model, and that part would happen to form, if it were taken in isolation, a one-dimensional string description. But tearing those equations out of the entire model would not be valid, as tearing a property (or an aspect of a property) out of an entire process/structure may not be valid. I see I have to worry about what a property or aspect of a property is. Let me just start with an example, for now. A primitive airplane has a wing that is flat on the bottom and curved on the top (bottoms have become very sophisticated now). A number of different airplanes might have different curvatures above, but all have the same flat bottoms. Tearing out an aspect of a property would be like tearing out only the flatness, and saying that airplanes fly because the have flat wings. It is the flatness in one place and the curvature at another place that provides the lift, so in tearing out this one property or aspect of a property, we have a statement that is true in the sense that we can find flat wing surfaces, but that single torn out statement describes neither the wing nor how the wing works. Jim Newell
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