From the September 2004 Scientific American Magazine | 0 comments

The String Theory Landscape ( Preview )

The theory of strings predicts that the universe might occupy one random "valley" out of a virtually infinite selection of valleys in a vast landscape of possibilities

By Raphael Bousso and Joseph Polchinski

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According to Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity, gravity arises from

the geometry of space and time, which combine to form spacetime. Any massive body leaves an imprint on the shape of spacetime, governed by an equation Einstein formulated in 1915. The earth's mass, for example, makes time pass slightly more rapidly for an apple near the top of a tree than for a physicist working in its shade. When the apple falls, it is actually responding to this warping of time. The curvature of spacetime keeps the earth in its orbit around the sun and drives distant galaxies ever farther apart. This surprising and beautiful idea has been confirmed by many precision experiments.

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