my perception of string theory (with calc 3 and phys 2 background, which still is far not enough, but enough to sorta see whats going on)
spacetime itself is not "emty" according to physics. according to some new ideas, spacetmie is an actual entity itself with energy that our particles/strings vibrate through. they vibrate and oscillate according to certain energies. their vibrations and vibration interactions are what cause "particles" to seem to appear and move around (and this explains many quantum oddities as well, by physically laying out exactly what happens)
string theory has spacetime as a, as far as we can tell, 4 dimensional (time is a dimension that all particles are moving one direction in) to learn more about time you'd want to learn about entropy, the arrow of time, heat death... interesting facts: universe started out very low entropy (ordered) yet all in one point (singularity) and entropy of the total universe has been going from low to high. black holes are singularities, and have problems with entropy due to information paradox... one solution is that matter falling into black holes enters another spacetime. it's possible each black hole is a mini universe, and i presume the stellar reaction occuring at the point when the BH was made could be what causes their "big bang". perhaps, since the dimension of time is not uniformly distributed and pretty much anything goes with dimensions, all the matter that ever falls into a black hole gets to the original big bang of the universe, and then it exists "out of time" with the rest of the universe" (it gets its last bit of matter almost out of time)
with string theory certain possibilities still exist in the mathematics just like with general relativity, like worm holes.
speculation: maybe the mystery of the singularity can be "pixeled out" if we could do precise enough and accurate enough and copious calculations about the interaction of strings and investigate the physical relationships that occur when event horizons form
some of my post went farther than normal string theory fyi, i was sorta rambling on about the physical universe, which i guess is appropriate for this particular audience
if anything i said is crap, i have faith zorn will swoop in, batman of science and technology. wait this is p&s... no batlight
edit... discussion with zorn in another post corrected some of my ideas
DrZorn said:
Each 'particle' is really just a string. The nature of the string -- how it is wound around extra dimensions, etc. -- determines the 'type' of particle it is, ie its mass, its charges, and so on. In particular, the mass of each type of particle is supposed to correspond to the energy of the lowest-energy state (ground state) of the string. Strings that are more "stretched out" will have a higher energy, just as a more stretched out guitar string will have a higher frequency.
there's some more string theory
LOL!