Turns out if you start with basically nothing and strings just fall out. Turns out that you don’t need to assume strings exist at all. Four simple rules, two from quantum mechanics and relativity that everyone already accepts, plus the idea that physics stays consistent at insane energies and that nature picks the simplest possible math then the equations spit out the exact scattering amplitudes string theorists predicted decades ago. The Veneziano amplitude, the Virasoro-Shapiro amplitude, and the whole tower of massive spinning particles all just appeared automatically. Strings end up naturally appearing as an emergent phenomena in this framework. It important to note that this is not experimental proof since the energy scales are still stupidly out of reach, but the bootstrap math says if you want a universe that makes sense under these bare minimum rules then string theory is basically what you get.
Turns out if you start with basically nothing and strings just fall out. Turns out that you don’t need to assume strings exist at all. Four simple rules, two from quantum mechanics and relativity that everyone already accepts, plus the idea that physics stays consistent at insane energies and that nature picks the simplest possible math then the equations spit out the exact scattering amplitudes string theorists predicted decades ago. The Veneziano amplitude, the Virasoro-Shapiro amplitude, and the whole tower of massive spinning particles all just appeared automatically. Strings end up naturally appearing as an emergent phenomena in this framework. It important to note that this is not experimental proof since the energy scales are still stupidly out of reach, but the bootstrap math says if you want a universe that makes sense under these bare minimum rules then string theory is basically what you get.