What Are Quantum & String Physics?

Classical (Newtonian) physics is what most adults learned in high school: forces, falling apples, F=ma, the inverse-square law of gravitation. It describes large things in the four dimensions of length, width, depth, and time. It works brilliantly for buildings, bridges, planetary orbits, and Major League Baseball.

Quantum physics is the study of energy, matter and motion at the sub-atomic scale — particles smaller than the atom: quarks, electrons, photons, gluons, neutrinos. At this scale, classical physics breaks down. Particles seem to be in two places at once. They behave like waves until you look at them, at which point they behave like particles. They «tunnel» through walls. They communicate instantaneously across any distance.

String physics (also called string theory, M-theory, or superstring theory) goes deeper still. It proposes that every particle is, at the bottom, a tiny vibrating strand of energy — a string. What kind of particle a string becomes is determined by the frequency at which it vibrates, like a guitar string sounding one note for an electron and another for a quark. On this account, the universe is one vast symphony.

The honest verdict of the most accomplished physicists alive is that they understand only a tiny corner of all this. Richard Feynman: «my physics students don’t understand it either. That is because I don’t understand it. Nobody does.» This is not the embarrassment of the field. It is its glory. Scripture, three thousand years ahead, predicted exactly this posture as the precondition of wisdom.

The Bucket and the Pacific

Zetting offers a memorable image: imagine walking up to the vast Pacific Ocean and filling a five-gallon bucket. That is what science knows about the universe — a miniscule fraction, yet the implications of that sliver are reshaping how we see the world. The bucket is magnificent. It is also, by volume, statistically zero compared to the ocean. This is the right epistemic posture for the scientist; it is also exactly the posture Paul describes in 1 Corinthians 13:12. We know in part.

Quantum and the Death of Certainty

For two centuries after Newton, classical physics carried an aura of completeness. In the late 1800s, leading physicists were openly suggesting that the work was almost done. Then quantum mechanics arrived. Particles refused to stay where they were put. The act of observation changed what was being observed. Cause-and-effect at the smallest scale dissolved into probability. The universe, it turned out, was much bigger and stranger than the bucket of classical science had revealed. Quantum did not destroy the bucket; it revealed the Pacific.

Strings and the Symphony

String theory takes one further step. If you look closely enough at a particle, the theory says, you find a vibrating strand of energy. Different frequencies of vibration produce different particles. All of matter is, at the bottom, a vibration. The image is irresistibly musical. The universe is a sustained song. Remember that image. By week eight we will be singing it back to Genesis 1.