STRING THEORY FOR BEGINNERS ------ by Steve Nadis
My five-year-old can get pretty silly before bedtime and last night was no exception. First she asked me if I ever tried coffee. I told her I hadn't. She said I should try it. When I asked her why she mentioned something about these little things out there that we couldn't see. I pressed her further, trying to figure out what little things she was referring to. Finally she said that there were tiny strings everywhere, too small to see, that tied the world together. I asked her if she'd ever heard me talking about that before. She swore (on her pinkies) that she had not. I told her that some very smart people believed in ideas that were very similar. That made her very proud because she thought she'd just made it up. She then asked me if I believed in the little strings. I said it was the best idea anyone had had so far but we didn't know for sure if it was right. "We'll never know for sure," she said, "because you can't see them."
