{"id":95712,"date":"2019-09-02T17:25:51","date_gmt":"2019-09-03T00:25:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2019\/09\/theory-m-theory-is-a-theory-in-physics-that-unifies-all-consistent-versions-of-superstring-theory"},"modified":"2019-09-02T17:25:51","modified_gmt":"2019-09-03T00:25:51","slug":"theory-m-theory-is-a-theory-in-physics-that-unifies-all-consistent-versions-of-superstring-theory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2019\/09\/theory-m-theory-is-a-theory-in-physics-that-unifies-all-consistent-versions-of-superstring-theory","title":{"rendered":"Theory: M-theory is a theory in physics that unifies all consistent versions of superstring theory"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/theory3.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p><b>M-theory<\/b> is a theory in <a href=\"https:\/\/en.m.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Physics\" title=\"Physics\">physics<\/a> that unifies all consistent versions of <a href=\"https:\/\/en.m.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Superstring_theory\" title=\"Superstring theory\">superstring theory<\/a>. The existence of such a theory was first conjectured by <a href=\"https:\/\/en.m.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Edward_Witten\" title=\"Edward Witten\">Edward Witten<\/a> at a <a href=\"https:\/\/en.m.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/String_theory\" title=\"String theory\">string theory<\/a> conference at the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.m.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/University_of_Southern_California\" title=\"University of Southern California\">University of Southern California<\/a> in the Spring of 1995. Witten\u2019s announcement initiated a flurry of research activity known as the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.m.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Second_superstring_revolution\" class=\"\" title=\"Second superstring revolution\">second superstring revolution<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Prior to Witten\u2019s announcement, string theorists had identified five versions of superstring theory. Although these theories appeared, at first, to be very different, work by several physicists showed that the theories were related in intricate and nontrivial ways. In particular, physicists found that apparently distinct theories could be unified by mathematical transformations called <a href=\"https:\/\/en.m.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/S-duality\" title=\"S-duality\">S\u2013<i>duality<\/i><\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/en.m.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/T-duality\" title=\"T-duality\">T\u2013<i>duality<\/i><\/a>. Witten\u2019s conjecture was based in part on the existence of these dualities and in part on the relationship of the string theories to a <a href=\"https:\/\/en.m.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Field_theory_(physics)\" class=\"\" title=\"Field theory (physics)\">field theory<\/a> called <i>eleven-dimensional<\/i> <a href=\"https:\/\/en.m.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Supergravity\" title=\"Supergravity\">supergravity<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Although a complete formulation of M-theory is not known, the theory should describe two- and five-dimensional objects called <a href=\"https:\/\/en.m.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Branes\" class=\"\" title=\"Branes\">branes<\/a> and should be approximated by <i>eleven-dimensional<\/i> supergravity at low <a href=\"https:\/\/en.m.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Energy\" title=\"Energy\">energies<\/a>. Modern attempts to formulate M-theory are typically based on <a href=\"https:\/\/en.m.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Matrix_theory_(physics)\" title=\"Matrix theory (physics)\">matrix theory<\/a> or the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.m.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/AdS\/CFT_correspondence\" title=\"AdS\/CFT correspondence\">AdS\/CFT correspondence<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>M-theory is a theory in physics that unifies all consistent versions of superstring theory. The existence of such a theory was first conjectured by Edward Witten at a string theory conference at the University of Southern California in the Spring of 1995. Witten\u2019s announcement initiated a flurry of research activity known as the second superstring [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":513,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2229,1617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-95712","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mathematics","category-quantum-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95712","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/513"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=95712"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95712\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}