Olden Times
Thursday, September 29, 2011 at 05:35PM 
Early Greek and Indian Philosophers believed all matter was composed of extremely small indivisible balls. Democritus (c.470 BC - c.360 BC) called these balls "atoms".
Quite A Few Years Later...
Leonhard Euler, a mathematician, began plucking the mysterious strings of sub atomic space with his Beta function (aka the "Euler integral"). Euler was quite famous and prolific in his day, but it was not until 1968 that physicist Gabriele Veneziano realized Euler's mathematical function had, in its logical way, opened the door to a wondrous world composed of tiny strings instead of tiny dots.
But let us return, for a moment, to the beginning of the 20th century.
Albert Einstein revealed many secrets of the universe, and it would not be appropriate to discuss them all here. Most relevant for us, is his Theory of Relativity wherein Einstein envisioned space as fabric like: shaped by the gravitational force into beautiful warps and curves.
Physicists in the early 20th century also worked with "Quantum Theory" which was imperfect but a giant leap nonetheless in the field of sub-atomic space. Einstein was not a fan of this new branch of theoretical physics, as its wildly random messiness was at odds with his own elegant notions of space and time. He wrote "I, at any rate, am convinced that He (God) does not throw dice" in a letter to fellow physicist Max Born dated 1926, and made several variations on this statement throughout his life.
Sadly, the explosion of scientific research in the early part of the 20th century led, in part, to the development of the nuclear bomb.
Reader Comments (1)
Hello Caroline! I wanted to let you know that we have a statue of Democritus about 2km south in our lake. It is only his head, made of bits of broken shapes. It is large, about 5 meters across. They were the perfect material as they are also quite old.