What if the most elementary particles of the universe were extended objects instead of point objects? Strings that can oscillate and represent a type of particle or another depending on the vibrational state in which they are. How would this affect the perception of our world and the laws that govern it? All this and much more is what the String Theory proposes to us.

A set of pioneering ideas, with a long way to go, which aims to unite all the laws of physics under the same rules, including the elusive law of gravity. And one of the most useful tools that theoretical physicists have to investigate these laws at ever deeper levels is to synthesize the common causes and characteristics of phenomena that a priori are different. 

A way of reasoning that is known as "unification", which has led to great discoveries in this field of science and that we can review with professor and researcher Óscar Varela during the talk, starting with Newton, through Einstein and culminating with modern string theory. In addition, he will analyse some surprising aspects of this theory, such as his prediction of additional space-time dimensions in addition to the usual four, and will explain, in short, how these aspects give string theory a powerful unifying character of the known Physics.

Óscar Varela (València) is PhD in Physics from the Universitat de València and works as a full professor at the Utah State University, United States, and as a Ramón y Cajal researcher at the Theoretical Physics Institute in Madrid. Varela’s specialty is the theoretical high-energy physics and the string theory. He has conducted Postdoctoral stays in leading centres, such as the Imperial College in London, the Max Planck Gravitation Institute in Potsdam, Germany, or the Harvard University, by means of prestigious fellowships as Alexander Von Humboldt from the German government or Marie Curie from the European Union.

The talk is part of #LasCharlasdelGrel, an initiative from the group La Física del Grel, which intends to talk about science in an attractive and accessible way for everybody. It has the cooperation of the Botanical Garden of the Universitat de València, the Spanish Ministry of Education, Valencian Department of Education of the Valencian Government and the Universitat de València.