Word: theorist
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...offers the best hope yet of integrating gravity with nature's other fundamental forces. This framework is popularly known as string theory because it postulates that the smallest, indivisible components of the universe are not point-like particles but infinitesimal loops that resemble tiny vibrating strings. "String theory," pioneering theorist Edward Witten of Einstein's own Institute for Advanced Study has observed, "is a piece of 21st century physics that fell by chance into the 20th century...
Over the years, enthusiasm for string theory has waxed and waned. It enjoyed a brief vogue in the early 1970s, but then most physicists stopped working on it. Theorist John Schwarz of Caltech and his colleague Joel Scherk of the Ecole Normale Superieure, however, persevered, and in 1974 their patience was rewarded. For some time they had noticed that some of the vibrating strings spilling out of their equations didn't correspond to the particles they had expected. At first they viewed these mathematical apparitions as nuisances. Then they looked at them more closely; the ghosts that haunted their equations...
...that, in fact, has turned out to be the case. In 1995, Witten, perhaps the most brilliant theorist working in physics today, declared that all five supersymmetric string theories represented different approximations of a deeper, underlying theory. He called it M theory. The insight electrified his colleagues and inspired a flurry of productive activity that has now convinced many that string theory is, in fact, on the right track. "It smells right and it feels right," declares Caltech's Kip Thorne, an expert on black holes and general relativity. "At this early stage in the development of a theory...
...theory--the latest rage in physics, which attempts to meld relativity and quantum theory--there may be more than three dimensions of space and more than one dimension of time. What does that mean? Even the experts have no clue. "We're trying to understand it," says Harvard theorist Cumrun Vafa. "It's quite mysterious...
...fellow conspiracy theorist had a more moderate, if less idealistic, explanation. "There's an understanding between Dean of the College Harry R. Lewis '68 and the only Cancun vacation company that's open during our spring break. He gets a kickback for every Harvard student that vacations there. But to hide it from the IRS and the Ad Board, he's paid in Crimson Cash...