Two pieces of string can join together to form a single string. It is like the two legs joining on a pair of trousers. Similarly, a single piece of string can divide into two strings. In string theories, what were previously thought of as particles are now pictured as waves traveling down the string, like waves on a washing line. The emission or absorption of one particle by another corresponds to the dividing or joining together of strings. For example, the gravitational force of the sun on the Earth corresponds to an H-shaped tube or pipe. String theory is rather like plumbing, in a way. Waves on the two vertical sides of the H correspond to the particles in the sun and the Earth, and waves on the horizontal crossbar correspond to the gravitational force that travels between them.

String theory has a curious history. It was originally invented in the late 1960s in an attempt to find a theory to describe the strong force. The idea was that particles like the proton and the neutron could be regarded as waves on a string. The strong forces between the particles would correspond to pieces of string that went between other bits of string, like in a spider's web. For this theory to give the observed value of the strong force between particles, the strings had to be like rubber bands with a pull of about ten tons.

In 1974 Joël Scherk and John Schwarz published a paper in which they showed that string theory could describe the gravitational force, but only if the tension in the string were very much higher-about 10 39 tons. The predictions of the string theory would be just the same as those of general relativity on normal length scales, but they would differ at very small distances-less than 10 -33 centimeters. Their work did not receive much attention, however, because at just about that time, most people abandoned the original string theory of the strong force. Scherk died in tragic circumstances. He suffered from diabetes and went into a coma when no one was around to give him an injection of insulin. So Schwarz was left alone as almost the only supporter of string theory, but now with a much higher proposed value of the string tension.