Elegant Universe

After a long long time, I am reading a book on physics, "The Elegant universe", by Brian Greene. It's quite interesting to know the conflicts in Newton's theory and how the proposed "STRING THEORY" tries to resolve them. Okay, so now what are the conflicts

1. According to Newton's laws of motion, if you run fast enough you can catch up with a departing beam of light. Interesting, what newton thought that what would happen if you catch a beam of light with speed of light. The conflict occurred as according to James Clerk Maxwell's laws of electromagenetism light always travels with speed of light, it never slows down or tire down.

2. To resolve conflict 1, Einstein came with "Special Theory of Relativity" (time dilation and Lorentz contraction"), which says that space and time state depends on one's state of motion. Einstein established that no influence or disturbance of any sort can travel faster than the speed of light. This conflicts with universal theory of gravitation, it has been shown influences that are transmitted over vast distances of space instantaneously.

3. Einstein came up with "General Theory of Relativity", which says that not only time and space are influenced with one's state of motion, but they can wrap and curve in response to the presence of matter and energy. Now this led to conflict between quantum mechanics and general relativity.

Proposed STRING theory is quite interesting, what it says is that matter is composed of atoms, which in turn are made of quaks and electrons, all such particles are actually tiny loops of vibrating string.

More as I read ...........