Do quantum strings vibrate in one direction?

String theory has been left to the annuls of ‘things that didn’t pan out’ in quantum theory.

@cazzie Has there been any development that better describes all the known forces?

The unfortunate part about quantum string theories is that they are so extremely tiny it’s pretty much impossible to observe them at all, including what directions any of their vibrations go.
I haven’t heard much detail from any of the string theories that would answer your question, but people keep hammering away at understanding these things and some day we may well know.

It isn’t a matter of which way they vibrate, but at what frequency, if at all. The best work on quantum physics is being done by CERN.

String theory was taken over by mathematicians because to make the theory work, they had to do some serious math-gymnastics, creating 9 (or more) parallel universes. This has been my problem with it.

NONE of this stuff can be observed. It is theory only, when it comes to string theory. String theory has tried to be an all encompassing theory about quanta, based on early 90’s knowledge and then they rode with String theory by making the underlying math work.

Well, I shouldn’t say none. What they are doing at CERN is actually observing quantum mechanics, or at least watching what happens when they smash them together. When they observe how they behave, they make certain assumptions about what they will do next time.. They do it again and if they do what they assumed, then they know they are on the right track. It takes smash after smash and collection of all the data gives them an idea about the qualities of the tiniest bits on an atom. Data collected by CERN have run contrary to the proofs of String Theory.

No body is saying that the eventual answer won’t be some mash up of the ideas of both theories, but right now, we lack the ability to observe it all, so it can only be theory for now. This work is very much like trying to understand what ‘The Nightwatch’ by Rembrandt looks like by only being able to see a centimeter of it at a time. Frankly, I wish someone would invent some sort of reverse binocular where we could look through them and see everything at Planck length.

Now, there are scientists capturing antimatter and they are able to look at it’s properties. That is very cool shit. http://www.symmetrymagazine.org/article/whats-left-to-learn-about-antimatter (this is a good up-to-date article)
Join my science group if you like. Send me a PM.

Symmetry Magazine is a very good online resource for keeping up to date on particle physics.

I just want to clarify, I’m not a physicist. I’m just a nerdy girl who likes science and understands it on a surface level, perhaps enough to communicate it to others. Really, I’m just an uneducated, bored housewife.

@cazzie Thank you, that’s some good information.
All of the most honest pop-science I have seen about string theory comes right out and says it may never be possible to prove anything about new phenomenon described by string theory. Don’t they occur in the “collapsed” dimensions at dimensions we have no way to see yet?

I think we can try to answer this part, “Do these quantum strings vibrate in one direction? Can this vibration direction be reversed?”
If I understand it correctly, a string will carry energy in a resonant vibration pattern, so ‘direction’ would be part of the whole description of a potentially complex repeating waveform. The maths describe strings that hold energy in quantum levels similar to the multiple standing waves a string of a musical type could have.
So however you might describe the direction of the resonant wave at a certain energy level, I would guess the next resonant energy levels would describe their directions distinctly.

If you are talking about changing the ‘wave form’ of a vibration, I don’t recall it being called ‘reversed’ or changed in ‘direction’ but a change in resonance. Can you refer me to any material that refers to the ‘reversal’ or ‘direction change’?

I cannot find @cazzie on Fluther. I am interested in joining her science group and would “Send me a PM”, but when I clicked on the @name and icon I get “Oh, no. We couldn’t find /users/cazzie/.”