Wikipedia:Today's featured article/requests/M-theory

M-theory

 * This is the archived discussion of the TFAR nomination for the article below. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as Wikipedia talk:Today's featured article/requests). Please do not modify this page. 

The result was: scheduled for Today's featured article/June 22, 2015 by — Chris Woodrich (talk) 06:20, 4 June 2015 (UTC)



M-theory is a theory in physics that unifies all consistent versions of superstring theory. The existence of such a theory was first conjectured by Edward Witten (pictured) at a string theory conference in 1995. Witten's announcement initiated a flurry of research activity known as the second superstring revolution. Prior to this, string theorists had identified five versions of superstring theory. Although these theories appeared at first to be very different, work by several physicists showed that the theories could be related by mathematical transformations called S-duality and T-duality. Witten's conjecture was based in part on the existence of these dualities and in part on the relationship of the string theories to a field theory called eleven-dimensional supergravity. Some physicists believe that a complete formulation of M-theory could provide a framework for developing a unified theory of all of the fundamental forces of nature. Modern attempts to formulate the theory include matrix theory and the AdS/CFT correspondence. According to Witten, the M in M-theory can stand for "magic", "mystery", or "membrane" according to taste, and the true meaning of the title should be decided when a more fundamental formulation of the theory is known.
 * Most recent similar article(s): Mirror symmetry (string theory)
 * Main editors: Polytope24
 * Promoted: March 25, 2015
 * Reasons for nomination: June 22nd is the first day of the annual Strings conference on string theory. The discovery of M-theory was announced at the same conference in 1995, so in a sense, this marks the 20th anniversary of Witten's discovery.
 * Support as nominator. Polytope24 (talk) 03:27, 5 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Support. I like the date connection. Karanacs (talk) 17:35, 8 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Support: looks like a good overview on the topic. Plus: science. Praemonitus (talk) 21:54, 15 May 2015 (UTC)