Its possible that the true structures in the underlying theory are som — String theory

"... within , string theory is a complex subject. There are few large particle theory groups within major universities that do not have at least one person doing string theory. In total, there are probably a couple of thousand people at universities around the world whose mortgage is paid either by doing string theory, using string theory, working with tools made within string theory, solving problems using methods developed in string theory, or simply having their mental map of the world at the set by string theory."

"String theory... resolves the central dilemma confronting contemporary physics—the incompatibility between quantum mechanics and general relativity—and that unifies our understanding of all of natures fundamental material constituents and forces. But to accomplish these feats, ...string theory requires that the universe have extra space dimensions. ... Physicists have found that a key signal that a quantum mechanical theory has gone haywire is that particular calculations yield "probabilities" that are not within... acceptable range. For instance... infinite probabilities. ...string theory cures these infinities. ...a residual ...problem remains. In the early days ...calculations yielded negative probabilities ...so string theory appeared to be awash in its own quantum-mechanical hot water. ... Physicists found that the troublesome calculations were highly sensitive to the number of independent directions to which a string can vibrate. ...if strings could vibrate in nine independent spatial directions, all of the negative probabilities would cancel out. ... Kaluza and Klein provide a loophole... in addition to our familiar three... there are six other curled-up... rather than just postulating the existence of extra dimensions, as had been done by Kaluza, Klein, and their followers, string theory requires them."

"The most recent chapter in our new understanding of nonperturbative effects in string theory has been the incorporation of unstable branes and open string tachyons into the overall framework of the theory. It has turned out that an understanding of unstable D-branes is necessary to properly describe all D-branes. This is natural from the point of view of K-theory, where brane configurations which are equivalent under the annihilation of unstable branes are identified ... The long-mysterious tachyon instability of open string theory has finally been given a physical interpretation: it is the instability of the D-brane that supports the existence of open strings. The instability disappears in the tachyon vacuum, in which the D-brane decays. Moreover, the belief that D-branes are solitonic solutions of string theory has been confirmed: starting with the appropriate tachyonic field theory of unstable space-filling branes, one can describe lower dimensional D-branes as solitonic solutions. Lower dimensional D-branes are thereby essentially obtained as solitons of the tachyon field theory, so, in some sense, lower-dimensional D-branes can be thought of as being made of tachyons! It has also been shown that the physics of unstable D-branes is captured by string field theory, thus making it a candidate for a non-perturbative formulation of string theory capable of describing changes of the string background."

"Currently, string theorists are in a position analogous to an Einstein bereft of the equivalence principle. ...[A] central organizing principle that embraces ...all ...features of the theory within one overarching and systematic framework ...is still missing."

"String theorists, of course, continue to do whatever it is that string theorists do."

"I have no idea whether the properties of the universe as we know it are fundamental or emergent, but I believe that the mere possibility of the latter should give the string theorists pause, for it would imply that more than one set of microscopic equations is consistent with experiment — so that we are blind to these equations until better experiments are designed — and also that the true nature of the microscopic equations is irrelevant to our world."