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You have that one basic string, but it can vibrate in many ways. But we're trying to get a lot of particles because experimental physicists have discovered a lot of particles.

Quantum mechanics brought an unexpected fuzziness into physics because of quantum uncertainty, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. String theory does so again because a point particle is replaced by a string, which is more spread out.

String theory is an attempt at a deeper description of nature by thinking of an elementary particle not as a little point but as a little loop of vibrating string.

The central idea of string theory is quite straightforward. If you examine any piece of matter ever more finely, at first you'll find molecules, atoms, sub-atomic particles. Probe the smaller particles, you'll find something else, a tiny vibrating filament of energy, a little tiny vibrating string.

Having those extra dimensions and therefore many ways the string can vibrate in many different directions turns out to be the key to being able to describe all the particles that we see.

What the string theorists do is arguably physics. It deals with the physical world. They're attempting to make a consistent theory that explains the interactions we see among particles and gravity as well. That's certainly physics, but it's a kind of physics that is not yet testable.

There are a lot of good things about string theory, and it's great that some people want to work on it.

String Theory describes energy and matter as being composed of tiny, wiggling strands of energy that look like strings. And the pitch of a string's vibration determines the nature of its effect.

Even before string theory, especially as physics developed in the 20th century, it turned out that the equations that really work in describing nature with the most generality and the greatest simplicity are very elegant and subtle.

I'd say many features of string theory don't mesh with what we observe in everyday life.