Cosmological Unification of String Theories – Simeon Hellerman
Date: Fri. January 18th, 2008, 1:00 pm-2:00 pmLocation: Rockefeller 221
Recent developments have greatly extended our understanding of quantum gravity in cosmological environments. A new set of exact time-dependent solutions has been found to the equations of motion of string theory, that interpolate among string theories of dramatically different character. These transitions dynamically alter features of the theory such as the degree of stability, the amount of supersymmetry, the number of dimensions of space itself, and the basic type of string. Taken together, these transitions fill out a web that unifies (almost) all known string theories into a single dynamical structure.