The Strangest Numbers in String Theory

John Baez and John Huerta

May 1, 2011

Ever wonder why superstrings like to live in 10 dimensions? One reason is an 8-dimensional number system called the octonions:

• John Baez and John Huerta, The strangest numbers in string theory, Scientific American, May 1, 2011, pp. 61-65.

If you want to see how the Scientific American editing transformed our original manuscript with top-notch editing but also added more of a pro-string-theory slant, you can compare the original.

For more details, see:

• John Baez, The Octonions, Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. 39 (2002), 145-205.
• John Huerta, Division Algebras, Supersymmetry and Higher Gauge Theory, Ph.D. thesis, U.C. Riverside, 2011.

home