Are Strings Still Our Best Hope for a Theory of Everything?

F ifty-eight years after it first appeared, string theory remains the most popular candidate for the “theory of everything,” the unified mathematical framework for all matter and forces in the universe.

自首次出现五十八年后，弦理论仍然是“万有理论”（宇宙中所有物质和力的统一数学框架）最受欢迎的候选者。

This is much to the chagrin of its rather vocal critics.

这令那些相当直言不讳的批评者感到非常懊恼。

“String theory is not dead; it’s undead and now walks around like a zombie eating people’s brains,” the former physicist Sabine Hossenfelder said on her popular YouTube channel in 2024.

2024 年，前物理学家萨宾·霍森菲尔德 (Sabine Hossenfelder) 在她颇受欢迎的 YouTube 频道上表示：“弦理论并没有消亡；它已经不死，现在就像僵尸一样四处走动，吃掉人们的大脑。”

String theory is a “failure,” the mathematical physicist and blogger Peter Woit often says.

数学物理学家兼博主彼得·沃伊特经常说，弦理论是一个“失败”。

His complaint is not that string theory is wrong — it’s that it’s “not even wrong,” as he titled a 2006 book.

他抱怨的并不是弦理论是错误的，而是弦理论“甚至没有错”，正如他在 2006 年出版的一本书中所标题的那样。

The theory says that, on scales of billionths of trillionths of trillionths of a centimeter, extra curled-up spatial dimensions reveal themselves and particles resolve into extended objects — strands and loops of energy — rather than points.

该理论认为，在十亿分之一厘米的尺度上，额外卷曲的空间维度显露出来，粒子分解成延伸的物体——能量链和环——而不是点。

But this alleged substructure is too small to detect, probably ever.

但这个所谓的子结构太小，可能永远无法检测到。

The prediction is untestable.

预测是无法检验的。

For decades, physicists have engaged in bitter back-and-forths over whether string theory is worth studying.

几十年来，物理学家一直在争论弦理论是否值得研究。

The “string wars” aren’t going anywhere anytime soon.

“字符串战争”不会很快结束。

A further problem is that uncountably many different configurations of dimensions and strings are permitted at those tiny scales; the theory can give rise to a limitless variety of universes.

另一个问题是，在这些微小的尺度上，可以有无数种不同的维度和字符串配置。该理论可以产生无限多种的宇宙。

Amid this vast landscape of solutions, no one can hope to find a precise microscopic configuration that undergirds our particular macroscopic world.

在如此广阔的解决方案中，没有人能指望找到一种精确的微观结构来支撑我们特定的宏观世界。

These issues are profound indeed.

这些问题确实很深刻。

Yet in my experience, the typical high-energy theorist in a prestigious university physics department still thinks string theory has a good chance of being correct, at least in part.

然而，根据我的经验，著名大学物理系的典型高能理论家仍然认为弦理论很有可能是正确的，至少是部分正确的。

The field has become siloed between those who deem it worth studying and those who don’t.

这个领域在那些认为值得研究的人和那些不值得研究的人之间变得孤立起来。

I n philosophy, “qualia” refers to the subjective qualities of our experience: what it’s like for Alice to see blue or for Bob to feel delighted.

在哲学中，“感受性”指的是我们体验的主观品质：爱丽丝看到蓝色或鲍勃感到高兴是什么感觉。

Qualia are “the ways things seem to us,” as the late philosopher Daniel Dennett put it.

正如已故哲学家丹尼尔·丹尼特所说，感受性是“事物在我们看来的方式”。

In these essays, our columnists follow their curiosity, and explore important but not necessarily answerable scientific questions.

在这些文章中，我们的专栏作家追随他们的好奇心，探索重要但不一定可以回答的科学问题。

Recently, a new angle of attack has opened up.

最近，新的攻击角度已经打开。

An approach called bootstrapping has allowed physicists to calculate that, under various starting assumptions about the universe, a key equation from string theory naturally follows.

一种称为“自举”的方法使物理学家能够计算出，在关于宇宙的各种起始假设下，弦理论中的一个关键方程自然成立。

For some experts, these findings support the notion of “string uniqueness,” the idea that it is the only mathematically consistent quantum description of gravity and everything else.

对于一些专家来说，这些发现支持“弦唯一性”的概念，即它是对引力和其他一切的唯一数学上一致的量子描述。

Not everyone agrees, but the findings are reviving an important question.

并非所有人都同意，但研究结果重新提出了一个重要问题。

“This question of ‘Does string theory describe the world?’ has just been so taboo,” said Cliff Cheung , a physicist at the California Institute of Technology and an author of the paper discussed by Hossenfelder.

“‘弦理论能描述世界吗？’这个问题一直是个禁忌，”加州理工学院的物理学家、霍森菲尔德讨论的论文的作者之一克里夫·张 (Cliff Cheung) 说。

Now, “people are actually thinking about it for the first time in decades.”

现在，“几十年来人们第一次真正开始思考这个问题。”

Getting wind of this work, I wanted to drill down on the logic and examine how the string hypothesis is faring these days.

听到这项工作后，我想深入研究其中的逻辑，并研究弦假说目前的进展情况。

The new bootstrapping work relates to the first bit of string theory to be discovered, in 1968.

新的引导工作与 1968 年发现的第一个弦理论有关。

A young Italian physicist named Gabriele Veneziano reverse-engineered a formula to capture the behavior of particles called hadrons.

一位名叫加布里埃尔·韦内齐亚诺 (Gabriele Veneziano) 的年轻意大利物理学家对一个公式进行了逆向工程，以捕捉强子粒子的行为。

Other researchers soon realized that his formula, now known as the Veneziano amplitude, implied that hadrons aren’t particles, but vibrating strings.

其他研究人员很快意识到他的公式（现在称为维内齐亚诺振幅）暗示强子不是粒子，而是振动的弦。

Further research showed that hadrons aren’t strings; they’re just stringlike.

进一步的研究表明，强子不是弦，而是弦。它们只是像绳子一样。

They’re made of pairs and trios of quarks that are bound together by stringy trails of gluons.

它们是由成对或三对夸克组成，这些夸克通过胶子的绳索结合在一起。

Even as physicists came to understand these particles by developing a quantum field theory (QFT) — the standard language of particle physics, in which particles are ripples of energy in fields that permeate space-time — the string theory that emerged from Veneziano’s work stuck around.

即使物理学家通过发展量子场论（QFT）来理解这些粒子——粒子物理学的标准语言，其中粒子是渗透时空的场中的能量涟漪——维内齐亚诺工作中出现的弦理论仍然存在。

Physicists realized that it offered a deeper mathematical description of the quarks and gluons themselves, as well as all other elementary particles, including, most thrillingly, gravitons: the hypothetical quantum units of gravity.

物理学家意识到，它为夸克和胶子本身以及所有其他基本粒子提供了更深入的数学描述，其中最令人兴奋的是引力子：假设的引力量子单位。

Vibrations of open-ended strings could give rise to the properties of all known particles.

开放弦的振动可以产生所有已知粒子的特性。

Join a string’s ends, forming a loop, to do the same for gravitons.

连接一根绳子的两端，形成一个环，对引力子做同样的事情。

Those who came to be known as string theorists marveled at the beauty of the math.

那些后来被称为弦理论家的人惊叹于数学的美丽。

In QFT, point particles can take endlessly variable paths, which causes conceptual and technical headaches.

在 QFT 中，点粒子可以采取无限可变的路径，这会导致概念和技术上的难题。

But the paths of strings converge and split in finite, enumerable ways, simplifying calculations.

但弦的路径以有限的、可枚举的方式聚合和分裂，从而简化了计算。

One catch was that these strings must have 10 space-time dimensions to wiggle around in, so string theorists posited that there must be six tiny extra directions curled up at each point in our familiar four-dimensional space-time.

一个问题是这些弦必须有 10 个时空维度才能在其中扭动，因此弦理论学家假设，在我们熟悉的四维时空的每个点上必定有六个微小的额外方向卷曲。

For all the mathematical elegance, the hidden dimensions were a bitter pill, at least until a striking result in 1984 made strings much easier to swallow.

尽管数学上很优雅，但隐藏的维度却是一颗苦药丸，至少在 1984 年的惊人结果使弦变得更容易吞咽之前是这样。

Elementary particles are “chiral,” meaning they differ from their mirror images, but the chiral theories physicists attempt to write down are prone to mathematical inconsistencies called chiral anomalies.

基本粒子是“手性的”，这意味着它们与其镜像不同，但物理学家试图写下的手性理论很容易出现数学上的不一致，称为手性异常。

The string theorists John Schwarz of Caltech and Michael Green of Queen Mary University of London calculated that in string theory, all the terms that threaten to be anomalous cancel out.

加州理工学院的弦理论家约翰·施瓦茨和伦敦玛丽女王大学的迈克尔·格林计算得出，在弦理论中，所有可能出现异常的项都被抵消了。

The self-healing power of the math triggered a string theory revolution.

数学的自我修复能力引发了一​​场弦理论革命。

“The string theory community went into a level of obnoxiousness that has never before been seen in physics,” Eric Weinstein , a physicist turned financier turned podcaster, said recently about this period.

“弦理论界陷入了物理学界前所未有的令人厌恶的境地，”物理学家、金融家、播客主播埃里克·韦恩斯坦最近谈到这一时期时说道。

“They became completely intolerable.”

“他们变得完全无法忍受。”

Into the 1990s, string theorists uncovered a bewildering web of mathematical equivalences, or “dualities,” between different versions of string theory, and between strings and quantum fields in different dimensions.

进入 20 世纪 90 年代，弦理论学家在不同版本的弦理论之间以及不同维度的弦和量子场之间发现了一个令人眼花缭乱的数学等价性或“对偶性”网络。

It made things more complicated, but more mathematical miracles emerged — calculations that went right that didn’t have to.

它让事情变得更加复杂，但更多的数学奇迹出现了——计算结果是正确的，而不是必须的。

In 1996, for instance, Andrew Strominger and Cumrun Vafa at Harvard University constructed a model of a black hole in string theory.

例如，1996 年，哈佛大学的安德鲁·斯特罗明格 (Andrew Strominger) 和卡姆伦·瓦法 (Cumrun Vafa) 在弦理论中构建了黑洞模型。

(They stacked many “D-branes,” which are surfaces that open strings end on, until their gravity became inescapable.) They calculated the black hole’s entropy by counting the possible configurations of the D-branes and got the same expression that Stephen Hawking and Jacob Bekenstein had derived for black hole entropy in the early 1970s using thermodynamics.

（他们堆叠了许多“D-膜”，即开口弦末端的表面，直到它们的引力变得无法逃脱。）他们通过计算 D-膜的可能构型来计算黑洞的熵，并得到了与斯蒂芬·霍金和雅各布·贝肯斯坦在 20 世纪 70 年代初使用热力学推导出来的黑洞熵相同的表达式。

The Bekenstein-Hawking entropy law had been mysterious; string theory seemed to explain where it comes from.

贝肯斯坦-霍金熵定律一直很神秘。弦理论似乎解释了它的来源。

No other theories satisfying the constraints of quantum mechanics and general relativity worked well enough to allow such explicit calculations.

没有其他满足量子力学和广义相对论约束的理论能够足够好地允许这样的显式计算。

But string theory was still totally detached from empirical reality.

但弦理论仍然完全脱离了经验现实。

In the early 2000s it was shown that there are at least 10 500 different configurations of the six compact dimensions, each theoretically undergirding a universe with different properties.

2000 年代初期，研究表明六个紧凑维度至少有 10 500 种不同的配置，每种配置在理论上都以不同的属性支撑着宇宙。

Any hopes of testing the theory and determining which configuration produces our universe faded.

任何测试该理论并确定哪种结构产生我们的宇宙的希望都破灭了。

The “string wars” ensued — a vitriolic back-and-forth over whether string theory is legitimate science and whether string theorists deserve the power and prestige they’ve accrued.

“弦之战”随之而来——围绕弦理论是否是合法的科学以及弦理论家是否值得他们所积累的权力和声望进行了激烈的争论。

It’s become a forever war.

这已经成为一场永远的战争。

Enter the bootstrap.

输入引导程序。

Physics usually involves proposing a theoretical model, making predictions based on that model, and then testing them experimentally.

物理学通常涉及提出理论模型，根据该模型进行预测，然后进行实验测试。

Bootstrapping, on the other hand, involves starting with a list of desirable logical and physical principles — symmetry principles, for example, and unitarity (the rule that the probabilities of possible outcomes must add up to 1) — and imposing these constraints to try to infer a theoretical model.

另一方面，自助法则涉及从一系列理想的逻辑和物理原理开始——例如对称原理和幺正性（可能结果的概率加起来必须为 1 的规则）——并施加这些约束来尝试推断理论模型。

When bootstrapping works, it can point to only one physical system that’s consistent with the assumptions.

当引导起作用时，它只能指向一个与假设一致的物理系统。

In recent papers, researchers have bootstrapped the Veneziano amplitude, the formula for the scattering of two open strings, as the unique solution that follows from various sets of starting assumptions.

在最近的论文中，研究人员将 Veneziano 振幅（两个开弦的散射公式）作为从各种起始假设得出的唯一解决方案。

“People have studied for decades, what does string theory imply, and we’re asking, ‘What implies string theory?’” Cheung said.

“人们已经研究了几十年，弦理论意味着什么，我们要问，‘弦理论意味着什么？’”张说。

With this approach, if assumptions X, Y, and Z are true of our universe, then string theory is true.

通过这种方法，如果假设 X、Y 和 Z 对于我们的宇宙来说是正确的，那么弦理论就是正确的。

This focuses the debate not on the pros and cons of string theory but on the reasonableness of the assumptions.

这使得争论的焦点不是弦理论的优缺点，而是假设的合理性。

Bootstrappers assume that, even at the highest energies and shortest distances (known as “the UV,” a reference to short-wavelength light), it still makes sense to talk about individual quantum units (be they particles or strings) moving around on a flat space-time background.

自举者认为，即使在最高能量和最短距离（称为“紫外线”，指的是短波长光）下，谈论单个量子单元（无论是粒子还是弦）在平坦的时空背景上移动仍然有意义。

In other words, just as they do at lower energies, these quantum units would respect the properties of unitarity and Lorentz invariance — essentially the symmetry between observers moving at constant speeds through space-time.

换句话说，就像它们在较低能量下所做的那样，这些量子单元将遵循幺正性和洛伦兹不变性的特性——本质上是在时空中以恒定速度移动的观察者之间的对称性。

These principles serve as the pillars of quantum mechanics and relativity and are sacrosanct in the accessible domains of the universe, so it’s reasonable to assume they also hold in the UV.

这些原理是量子力学和相对论的支柱，并且在宇宙可触及的领域中是神圣不可侵犯的，因此可以合理地假设它们在紫外线中也成立。

On top of these baseline requirements, the bootstrappers must make further assumptions in order to arrive at a unique answer.

除了这些基线要求之外，引导者还必须做出进一步的假设才能得出独特的答案。

This question of ‘Does string theory describe the world?’ has just been so taboo …

“弦理论是否描述了世界？”这个问题一直是个禁忌……

people are actually thinking about it for the first time in decades.

几十年来人们第一次真正思考这个问题。

In the August 2025 paper “ Strings From Almost Nothing ,” Cheung and three collaborators assumed “ultrasoftness,” a mathematical statement about avoiding infinitesimal distances.

在 2025 年 8 月发表的论文《Strings From Nothing》中，Cheung 和三位合作者假设了“超柔软”，这是一种关于避免无穷小距离的数学陈述。

They showed that if the universe’s fundamental objects are ultrasoft (along with one more technical assumption), high-energy particle states must fall into a restricted pattern.

他们表明，如果宇宙的基本物体是超软的（以及另一个技术假设），那么高能粒子态必须落入一种受限制的模式。

They found that only the Veneziano amplitude and the Virasoro-Shapiro amplitude, which describes the scattering of two closed strings, match that pattern.

他们发现，只有 Veneziano 振幅和 Virasoro-Shapiro 振幅（描述两个闭合弦的散射）符合该模式。

The upshot is that for the universe to be ultrasoft, string theory is the only way.

结果是，要使宇宙变得超软，弦理论是唯一的方法。

The outcome is nice, but it might not be very revealing, because ultrasoftness was a known property of string theory.

结果很好，但可能不是很有启发，因为超柔软是弦理论的一个已知属性。

When strings collide ever more energetically, they spin faster and stretch instead of concentrating energy at smaller and smaller points.

当弦更加剧烈地碰撞时，它们旋转得更快并且拉伸，而不是将能量集中在越来越小的点上。

Woit called the use of ultrasoftness to bootstrap string theory “sophistry.”

沃伊特称利用超柔软性来引导弦理论是“诡辩”。

“What’s great is we are legalistic about our assumptions,” Cheung said.

“最棒的是我们的假设是合法的，”张说。

“If you want to break our conclusion, break the assumptions, and let’s go think about it.

“如果你想打破我们的结论，打破假设，那么我们就去思考一下。

We don’t have to feel emotions about it.” This is the bootstrapping ethos.

我们不必为此感到情绪化。”这就是引导精神。

The January 2026 paper “ String Theory From Maximal Supersymmetry ” is generally regarded as more striking.

2026 年 1 月的论文“Maximal Supersymmetry 的弦理论”通常被认为更引人注目。

In it, Henriette Elvang at the University of Michigan and two collaborators start with assumptions about QFT and get the Veneziano amplitude as the unique answer at high energies.

其中，密歇根大学的 Henriette Elvang 和两位合作者从 QFT 的假设开始，并得到了 Veneziano 振幅作为高能量下的唯一答案。

“To really be able to say, ‘I’m just using field theory; I’m not assuming anything about the higher-order theory,’ …

“要真正能够说，‘我只是使用场论；我没有对高阶理论做出任何假设，’......

and then string theory comes out of just field theory — that’s really, really fun, I think,” Elvang said.

然后弦理论就源于场论——我认为这真的非常有趣，”埃尔万说。

The group’s main assumption was a property called “ N = 4 supersymmetry,” which says that particles with different amounts of spin, or intrinsic angular momentum, form a single family with related interactions.

该小组的主要假设是一种称为“N = 4 超对称性”的性质，它表示具有不同自旋量或内在角动量的粒子形成具有相关相互作用的单一族。

We don’t see this highest level of symmetry in nature, but theorists often study it as a toy model, because calculations are easier and sometimes reveal insights or structures that extend to less symmetric QFTs.

我们在自然界中看不到这种最高水平的对称性，但理论学家经常将其作为玩具模型来研究，因为计算更容易，有时还能揭示扩展到不太对称的 QFT 的见解或结构。

Elvang and her co-authors showed that if a QFT has this highest level of supersymmetry (along with two other technical assumptions), at close range the particles must be strings — that is, for two particles scattering off each other, the Veneziano amplitude is the unique “UV completion.” (Note that these calculations involve the “tree-level” amplitude, which is an approximation of the full formula that omits rare versions of the scattering event.)

Elvang 和她的合著者表明，如果 QFT 具有最高水平的超对称性（以及其他两个技术假设），那么近距离的粒子必定是弦——也就是说，对于两个相互散射的粒子，Veneziano 振幅是独特的“UV 完成”。 （请注意，这些计算涉及“树级”振幅，这是完整公式的近似值，省略了罕见版本的散射事件。）

“It’s very nice work,” said Pedro Vieira , a physicist at the Perimeter Institute in Canada and the ICTP South American Institute for Fundamental Research in Brazil, who co-authored one of the first papers to bootstrap an element of string theory in 2021 but has since moved on to other questions.

“这是一项非常好的工作，”加拿大周界研究所和巴西 ICTP 南美基础研究所的物理学家佩德罗·维埃拉 (Pedro Vieira) 说，他于 2021 年与人合着了第一批引导弦理论元素的论文之一，但此后转向了其他问题。

In his opinion, if string theory is the unique UV completion of maximally supersymmetric QFT (and he stresses that so far Elvang has only shown this for the tree-level amplitude), the same probably goes for the particles and fields of the real world.

在他看来，如果弦理论是最大超对称 QFT 的唯一 UV 完成（他强调到目前为止 Elvang 只针对树级振幅展示了这一点），那么现实世界的粒子和场也可能如此。

But that will be difficult or impossible to prove.

但这将很难或不可能得到证明。

The QFT we see in the present-day, low-energy universe simply isn’t symmetric enough for physicists to solve the necessary equations.

我们在当今低能宇宙中看到的 QFT 的对称性不足以让物理学家求解必要的方程。

Still, as more starting points are shown to lead to stringiness in the UV, the story of string theory is evolving in a way critics must contend with.

尽管如此，随着越来越多的起点被证明会导致紫外线的拉丝性，弦理论的故事正在以批评者必须应对的方式发展。

Woit, when I asked for his take, called Elvang’s finding “not really surprising.” He noted that trying to understand certain limits of QFTs in terms of strings is “a very old idea with a lot of evidence for it.”

当我询问沃伊特的看法时，他称埃尔万的发现“并不令人意外”。他指出，试图理解 QFT 在字符串方面的某些限制是“一个非常古老的想法，有很多证据证明这一点”。

In my view, this is overly dismissive.

在我看来，这太过于轻视了。

It has indeed long been a central source of interest in string theory that certain toy QFT models can be re-expressed as string theories.

某些玩具 QFT 模型可以重新表达为弦理论，这确实长期以来一直是弦理论的主要兴趣来源。

Elvang’s paper reveals a novel aspect of the that connection, even if the scope and meaning of it all remains unclear.

埃尔万的论文揭示了这种联系的一个新颖的方面，尽管其范围和含义仍不清楚。

It’s certainly true that the laws of physics have gotten more mathematically beautiful as we’ve understood them better.

毫无疑问，随着我们对物理定律的理解越来越深入，物理定律在数学上变得更加美丽。

Other researchers questioned the foundational assumptions of these recent papers, arguing that it might not even make sense to talk about fundamental objects scattering off each other at the high energies and short distances of the UV.

其他研究人员对最近这些论文的基本假设提出质疑，认为谈论基本物体在紫外线的高能量和短距离下相互散射可能没有意义。

Bootstrappers take such interactions for granted by assuming Lorentz invariance (the symmetries of a flat space-time fabric for particles to move around in).

自举者通过假设洛伦兹不变性（粒子在其中移动的平坦时空结构的对称性），将这种相互作用视为理所当然。

But Astrid Eichhorn , a physicist at Heidelberg University who studies an approach to quantum gravity called asymptotic safety , explained that the UV regime of quantum gravity might be “dominated by space-time configurations which are far from flat and around which fluctuations are large, so that flat-space scattering amplitudes are meaningless.” Latham Boyle , a physicist at the University of Edinburgh who studies an eclectic array of topics , also questioned the assumption that scattering necessarily makes sense in the UV.

但海德堡大学的物理学家阿斯特丽德·艾希霍恩（Astrid Eichhorn）研究了一种称为渐近安全性的量子引力方法，她解释说，量子引力的紫外区域可能“受到时空结构的支配，这些时空结构远非平坦且周围波动很大，因此平坦空间的散射幅度毫无意义。”爱丁堡大学的物理学家莱瑟姆·博伊尔研究了一系列不拘一格的主题，他也对散射在紫外线中必然有意义的假设提出了质疑。

Grant Remmen of New York University, an author of the ultrasoftness paper, pushed back.

纽约大学的格兰特·雷曼（Grant Remmen）是这篇超柔软论文的作者，他对此进行了反驳。

He argued that any UV-complete theory should say what happens in flat space: “Scattering amplitudes are a necessary ingredient that any full theory of quantum gravity should make a prediction for.” In other words, it should be possible to describe high-energy scattering, even if that’s only one aspect of the full theory.

他认为，任何紫外完备理论都应该说明平坦空间中发生的情况：“散射振幅是任何完整的量子引力理论都应该做出预测的必要成分。”换句话说，描述高能散射应该是可能的，即使这只是整个理论的一个方面。

In general, Boyle, who occasionally works on string theory but thinks string theorists have taken a wrong turn, expressed a perspective on the string uniqueness papers that I agree with.

总的来说，博伊尔偶尔研究弦理论，但认为弦理论家走错了方向，他表达了我同意的关于弦唯一性论文的观点。

“I don’t think that the most likely implication is that string theory has to be true,” he said.

“我不认为最有可能的含义是弦理论必须是正确的，”他说。

But “these results, like many earlier results, do show that there’s something very special about string theory.

但“这些结果，就像许多早期的结果一样，确实表明弦理论有一些非常特别的东西。

So I wouldn’t at all be surprised if it turned out as one of the fundamental ingredients of nature.”

因此，如果它被证明是自然的基本成分之一，我一点也不会感到惊讶。”

Asked to elaborate, he said he counted string theory among a collection of “special mathematical objects,” along with Penrose tilings , the four number systems (real and complex numbers, quaternions , and octonions ), and certain symmetry groups.

当被要求详细说明时，他说他将弦理论与彭罗斯平铺、四种数字系统（实数和复数、四元数和八元数）以及某些对称群一起归为“特殊数学对象”的集合。

“When you begin asking questions in the space of those objects, you find that you always keep getting led back to these very special theories.

“当你开始在这些物体的空间中提出问题时，你会发现你总是会回到这些非常特殊的理论。

And also these theories end up connecting to a lot of areas of math and physics.

这些理论最终也与数学和物理的许多领域联系起来。

The literature is full of people getting led to them from all directions.

文献中充满了人们从四面八方被引向它们的情况。

So they have this special awesome quality.

所以他们有这种特别棒的品质。

That can be a hint that they are on the right track.

这可能表明他们走在正确的轨道上。

“It’s certainly true,” Boyle added, “that the laws of physics have gotten more mathematically beautiful as we’ve understood them better.”

“这当然是真的，”博伊尔补充道，“随着我们对物理定律的理解越来越深入，物理定律在数学上变得更加美丽。”

Several of the researchers I interviewed, including authors of the bootstrap papers, described themselves as agnostic about whether string theory is true in our universe.

我采访的几位研究人员，包括引导论文的作者，都表示自己对弦理论在我们的宇宙中是否正确持不可知论。

They prefer to map out the logical relationships between ideas — like supersymmetry, ultrasoftness, and string theory — but prefer not to read between the lines, perhaps to avoid the sins of their forebears: overenthusiasm and overinterpretation, for example, which tend to get people riled up.

他们更喜欢绘制出思想之间的逻辑关系——比如超对称性、超柔软性和弦理论——但不愿意去解读字里行间的含义，也许是为了避免他们祖先的罪恶：例如过度热情和过度解释，这往往会让人激怒。

But Vieira also told me about a steady drip of research over the years that raises a final point worth considering.

但维埃拉还告诉我，多年来不断进行的研究提出了最后一点值得考虑。

Lines and other extended objects seem to be commonplace and even expected in QFT, which ostensibly describes pointlike objects.

线条和其他扩展对象似乎在 QFT 中很常见，甚至是预料之中的，QFT 表面上描述了点状对象。

Symmetries and forces that operate along lines and over surfaces naturally arise.

沿线和表面作用的对称性和力自然会出现。

“I think that is something that has been accepted,” he said.

“我认为这是已经被接受的事情，”他说。

“Whether these extended objects, should we call them strings?

“这些扩展对象，我们是否应该称它们为字符串？

Do we need to call them strings?

我们需要称它们为字符串吗？

I don’t know.

我不知道。

But I think understanding that to fully describe quantum theories and quantum objects, thinking just about points is not enough.”

但我认为要充分描述量子理论和量子物体，仅仅思考点是不够的。”

From that perspective, the notion that string theory is true in some circumstances might be totally quotidian, even if the space of theories, fundamental objects, and mathematical relationships between them is not yet fully understood.

从这个角度来看，弦理论在某些情况下是正确的这一概念可能完全是司空见惯的，即使理论空间、基本对象以及它们之间的数学关系尚未完全理解。

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辱骂、亵渎、自我推销、误导、语无伦次或偏离主题的评论将被拒绝。

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