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This multiverse landscape seemed to provide enough possibilities that, should researchers explore them, they would come across one that corresponded to our own version of reality. The most recent challenges to string theory have come from the framework itself, which predicts the existence of a potentially huge number of unique universes, as many as 10^500 (that's the number 1 followed by 500 zeroes). "Are you chasing a ghost, or is the collection of you just too stupid to figure this out?" teased Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of the museum's Hayden Planetarium, who pointed out that progress on string theory had been patchy in the previous years. In 2011, physicists gathered at the American Museum of Natural History for the 11th annual Isaac Asimov Memorial Debate, to discuss whether it made sense to turn to string theory as a viable description of reality. Most of its predictions are untestable with current technology, and many researchers have wondered if they're going down a never-ending rabbit hole.
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A never-ending pursuitīut string theory has lately come under greater scrutiny. Some scientists have even attempted to use string theory to get a handle on dark energy, the mysterious force accelerating the expansion of space and time.
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Researchers have used string theory to try to answer fundamental questions about the universe, such as what goes on inside a black hole, or to simulate cosmic processes like the Big Bang. They've simply described how the extra dimensions are all curled up in an extremely tiny space, on the order of 10^-33 centimeters, which is small enough that we can't normally detect them, according to NASA. That the theory bizarrely requires 11 dimensions to work - rather than the three of space and one of time we normally experience - has not dissuaded physicists who advocate it. The theory explains gravity via a particular vibrating string whose properties correspond to that of the hypothetical graviton, a quantum mechanical particle that would carry the gravitational force.
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