Scientists at the famed Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) may be too preoccupied to ever look up at the sky they are studying; they are usually crouched over the sort of math that makes arts look very good. They are trying to explain that the universe is not made up of particles, as generations learnt at school, but that all matter is made up of string-like entities, the most fundamental component possible.
Yet strings have so far shown no physical evidence. Worse, in a world where some people can’t comprehend three dimensions, string theory postulates 10. Yet, its framework has explained so much that the theory has become the strongest contender for the elusive Unified Theory, more grandly called, "the theory of everything". This holds that the largest things in the universe and the smallest, and everything in between, is governed by a single principle.
Indians are among the leaders of this theoretical revolution; the first annual gathering of string theorists ever held outside the West was held in India, at TIFR.
Sandip Trivedi, one of TIFR’s string theorists, rarely finds what he’s seeking in his room because all three dimensions here are filled with papers, but he has found several crucial answers in his 10-dimensional world. He says the world learnt something "remarkable" recently. "The universe is accelerating when everybody thought it was slowing down." With three friends from Stanford, he showed that string theory math allows such acceleration. Don’t you slow down, chief.
