A Capella String Theory: Bohemian Gravity (Video)

By Nancy Atkinson - September 17, 2013 at 1:50 PM UTC | Physics
strings-pbs.jpg

There's not much to say except you MUST watch this. Incredible.

Here is Tim Blais' master's thesis:

A New Quantization Condition for Parity-Violating Three-Dimensional Gravity.

Words to the song below:

A Capella Science - Bohemian Gravity!

Is string theory right? Is it just fantasy? Caught in the landscape, Out of touch with reality Compactified On S5 or T*S3

Space is a pure void Why should it be stringy? Because it's quantum not classical Nonrenormalizable Any way you quantize You'll encounter infinity You see

Quanta Must interact Via paths we understand Using Feynman diagrams Often, they will just rebound But now and then they go another way A quantum Loooooop Infinities will make you cry Unless you can renormalize your model Of baryons, fermions And all other states of matter

Curved space: The graviton Can be thought of as a field But these infinities are real In a many-body Loop diagram Our results diverge no matter what we do... A Quantum Soup (any way you quantize) Kiss your fields goodbye Guess Einstein's theory wasn't complete at all!

I see extended 1-D objects with no mass What's their use? What's their use? Can they give us quark plasma? What to minimize? What functional describes this String? Nambu-Goto! (Nambu-Goto) Nambu-Goto! (Nambu-Goto) How to quantize I don't know Polyakov! I'm just a worldsheet, please minimize me He's just a worldsheet from a string theory Reperametrized by a Weyl symmetry!

Fermi, Bose, open, closed, orientable? Vibrations Modes! They become particles (particles!) Vibrations They become particles (particles!) Vibrations They become particles (particles!) Become particles (particles!) Become particles (many many many many particle...) Modes modes modes modes modes modes modes! Oh mamma mia mamma mia, Such a sea of particles! A tachyon, with a dilaton and gravity-vity-VITY

(rock out!)

Now we need ten dimensions and I'll tell you why (anomaly cancellation!) So to get down to 4D we compactify! Oh, Kahler! (Kahler manifold) Manifolds must be Kahler! (Complex Reimannian symplectic form) If we wanna preserve Any of our super-symmetry

(Superstrings of type I, IIa and IIb) (Heterotic O and Heterotic E) (All are one through S and T duality) (Thank you Ed Witten for that superstring revolution and your new M-theory!)

(Maldecena!) (Super-Yang-Mills!) (Type IIB String!) Dual! Dual! (In the AdS/CFT) (Holography!)

Molecules and atoms Light and energy Time and space and matter All from one united Theory

Any way you quantize...

Lyrics and arrangement by Tim Blais and A Capella Science Original music by Queen

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson is a space journalist and author with a passion for telling the stories of people involved in space exploration and astronomy. She is currently retired from daily writing, but worked at Universe Today for 20 years as a writer and editor. She also contributed articles to The Planetary Society, Ad Astra (National Space Society), New Scientist and many other online outlets.

Her 2019 book, "Eight Years to the Moon: The History of the Apollo Missions,” shares the untold stories of engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make the Apollo program so successful, despite the daunting odds against it. Her first book “Incredible Stories From Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos” (2016) tells the stories of 37 scientists and engineers that work on several current NASA robotic missions to explore the solar system and beyond.

Nancy is also a NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador, and through this program, she has the opportunity to share her passion of space and astronomy with children and adults through presentations and programs. Nancy's personal website is nancyatkinson.com