Tiny little threads whizzing through spacetime and vibrating incessantly: this is roughly how you can imagine the universe, according to string theory. The various vibrations of the threads generate the elementary particles, such as electrons and quarks, and the forces acting among them.
Over the years, however, string theorists have been confronted with increasing difficulties. For the theory to work, additional spatial dimensions are needed, as well as additional particles that have not yet been observed. One of the most serious setbacks, however, is the sheer number of possible solutions that string theory offers: more than 10500 possible universes tumble out of the equations. And among them, you would have to find the one that fits our world, describing the same elementary particles and forces. But it’s not just the enormous number of solutions that causes problems. From a mathematical point of view, it is also extremely difficult to deduce the observable particles and forces from a particular solution. This is why string theorists are now turning to certain artificial intelligence algorithms to help them with the task. In early 2024 researchers achieved impressive results, which they posted on the preprint server arXiv.org.
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