Japanese supercomputer says: String theory says: universe is 3D expanding Normally I view string theory with great skepticism and lack of understanding. And now to up the ante on that, here is an amazing claim which I suppose one could consider to be an "experimental confirmation" of string theory. Press release: http://www.kek.jp/intra-e/press/2011/122209/ Paper: Sang-Woo Kim, Jun Nishimura, Asato Tsuchiya: Expanding (3+1)-dimensional universe from a Lorentzian matrix model for superstring theory in (9+1)-dimensions, http://arxiv.org/abs/1108.1540 (4 pages) This gist seems to be as follows. String theory says that particles are tiny 1-dimensional "strings" not points, and the universe is 9+1 dimensional not 3+1 dimensional, with the 6 extra dimensions curled up in some microscopic fashion for some reason so we do not perceive them -- which leaves it somewhat of a mystery why the universe is 3D and expanding. The "IKKT matrix model" is a way supposedly to simulate nonperturbative string theory using monte carlo on a supercomputer. So they put some strings in some kind of 9D box with periodic boundary conditions, simulated, and voila, the box automagically wanted to have 6 dimensions shrink small, and the other 3 dimensions expand. -- Warren D. Smith http://RangeVoting.org <-- add your endorsement (by clicking "endorse" as 1st step)