Steins;Gate: Understanding String Theory Thanks to Anime

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Steins;Gate: Understanding

String Theory Thanks to Anime

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All credits of the OPL goes to Inari for such an amazing edit.

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INTRODUCTION

So you want to watch Steins;Gate? Well do you like Physics? Time travelling? Bad cringy jokes? Traps? Neko maids? Tsundere geniuses? Yes...? Then welcome to this blog about one of the most iconic anime series of our time: How to Raise a Mad Scientist.

Jokes aside, if you're a weeb or someone who watches anime then you must've heard about Steins;Gate somewhere, or even better, you probably watched it already. If that's the case... then sorry but this blog will not be very helpful to you. Just kidding. Stay because I won't just discuss about why you haven't watched this masterpiece yet, today on this blog I will be talking about string theory, quite literally. For those who didn't like physics back in high school you're probably confused about this string theory, well Wikipedia says: "string theory is a theoretical framework in which the point-like particles of particle physics are replaced by one-dimensional objects called strings. String theory describes how these strings propagate through space and interact with each other."

Yeah, I didn't get that either, but don't worry because Steins;Gate is here to help you all of your physics classes with straight A's. So without further ado, let's jump into this particular universe.

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│SUMMARY

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│ 1. Résumé

│ 2. Why you have to watch it

│ 3. The String Theory

│ 4. The Will of Steins Gate

│ 5. Conclusion

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Résumé

Steins;Gate is originally a 24 episodes long anime TV series first aired in 2011 by studio White Fox based on the visual novel of the same name. They later on went to release an OVA, followed by a movie and ultimately, a sequel: Steins;Gate 0 aired in 2018.

The story revolves essentially around our mains characters, especially Okabe RIntarou, a self-proclaimed mad scientist who rented an apartment in Akihabara where he invents all sorts of weird "gadgets" along with two of his friends: Shiina Mayuri and Hashida Itaru. On one particular occasion, Okabe, or Hououin Kyouma (as he claims his name to be), decides to attend a press conference held by Dr. Nakabachi. When he realizes Dr. Nakabachi's theories were copied by the internet blogger John Titor who was said to be a time traveler he bursts out in a spectacular fashion. While denouncing the doctor he is interrupted by a young girl who brings him outside of the room. Okabe finds out the girl is Makise Kurisu, a young genius in physics who appeared in "Science Magazine". She tells him about how he had apparently something to tell her 15 minutes ago, but Okabe has no recollection of such a thing. He ends up fleeing from her out of awkwardness and finds Mayuri later on. Then suddenly he hears a terrible scream and out of curiosity he heads towards the place only to find Makise Kurisu on the ground covered by a pool of blood.

Terrified he runs away out of the building where he sends a text message to Daru (Hashida Itaru) informing him of the scene he witnessed. At that moment Okabe experiences a weird sensation of change in time and the next thing he knows, a satellite-like object has crashed on the building he was just in minutes ago. He returns back to his "laboratory" where he can only find inconsistencies in the things his friends says about his actions the same day. When Okabe checks Daru's phone about the text he sent to him, he finds out he had received it a week ago. Furthermore, when he goes out with Daru, he finds a Kurisu leaning on a pillar, seeming to be alive.

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Why you should watch it

What you don’t want to watch it? Even after my incredible résumé? How insolent…

On a serious note, if even all that pre-given plot worthy information wasn’t enough to persuade you into watching this anime then this part right here is made for you. Yes there will be SPOILERS but at this point you’re probably one of those people that prefers spoiling themselves with various commentaries in order to fully understand the greatness of what you can potentially experience. Ok that was a bit rude but long story short, there are spoilers so if you don’t want them, just skip this part.

Now! Let’s talk about this anime. Steins;Gate. Let’s see, do you like action? I got you! While it’s true it won’t be filled with supernatural powers and explosions where a hero has to save the world from evil, Steins;Gate contains a lot of action scenes that will keep your thriller and action instincts tuned on. What about comedy? Well let me introduce to you Hououin Kyouma. Better than Yuuta and Rikka’s cringe worthy chuninbyo content. He’s literally so cringy at times you’d want to apologize to all the hard-working scientists around the world. Gintama? Sakamoto? Don’t make me laugh, this is the one and only anime where you ask yourself how you can combine such comedy with a serious plot.

Let’s also not forget about our dear “Daru”. The perverted super hacker that goes completely in sync with the main character and gives us some “harem mc comedy vibes” even if his physical attributes are anything but that. And yes, while I’m not a pervert (of course definitely not) there’s no doubt I laughed when I heard “Say, your banana is soft and squishy”.

What more do you need? Romance? Steins;Gate offers you a full-on ride through the lovey dovey triangle loop and your exclusive low-key “this is a harem” astounding 80 degrees free fall. Oh but you need drama. Well fear not because by the time you finish episode 20 you have already gone through an emotional train wreck that quite literally makes you feel the “psychological” aspect of this series, hence the genre psychological included. Overall, you got action, comedy, drama, mystery, psychological, romance, sci-fi and thriller. But what? you don’t believe in the quality of this anime? Alright then let’s go on a journey abroad myanimelist.

On myanimelist, probably the biggest anime community on the internet, Steins;Gate is currently ranked the second-best anime of all time with an incredible 9.13/10. As any anime out there, success comes with a reason and people does not go easy on the critique part when it comes to the reviews on myanimelist. About half of the people who gave a rating (approx. 48%) considered the anime to be a masterpiece (as the 10 out of 10 is considered a masterpiece on mal). It gives you an idea of the sheer number of people who enjoyed these 24 episodes and to what degree they felt the enjoyment. I shall explain.

So what exactly makes this anime so great apart from everything I pointed out above? If I had to sum it into one word, it would be: “writing”. The writing style of this story and how everything is portrayed is just mind-blowing. The author is able to juggle between so many different genres at the same time and still make everything logical. From episode 1 all the way to the last scene, everything is calculated in such an unpredictable way and manner you might ask yourself how come this isn’t recognized internationally and made into a Hollywood movie. Every genre are perfectly inserted and entangled one with another that you know it wouldn’t make sense if any of the genres were removed. You may think at the beginning that this anime is going to be your average romcom harem-based anime with a simple plot to keep the readers interested but as soon as you dive in deeper, there’s no escape from the iceberg you’re about to crash into. And when you reach the bottom, you realize just how enormous all of this is. While most of the times a good story revolves around the sense of familiarity and the relatable feelings you have towards it, Steins;Gate offers you a complete alternative universe where everything is unfamiliar and yet so relatable. You cannot predict anything out of the story, yet you know it is going to unfold, you know the feelings and emotions you will experience and yet, you’re uncertain about how it will go, how it will end. It is like being a defeated detective facing a sadistic murderer that slowly but surely, tells you everything.

So what are you waiting for? Go watch it right now if you haven’t. And make sure to come back for the next section of this blog: Physics.

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The String Theory

Ok so now that we are tackling this part of the blog, let’s first understand the basic theory of String Theory. Just a bit before this section I gave out a “simple” definition of what it is in which I’m sure no one without prior knowledge about this theory would understand. I’ll make it simple, or simpler. First off, we need to go back to the basics: what is our universe made of? Or if you prefer it this way, what is a chair made of? Materials, right? Easy. Now as you all know materials are on a smaller scale made out of molecules, in which they themselves are made out of atoms. Atoms are assembled by electrons, protons and neutrons (nucleons) and if you’re a fan of physics, you must know how these thought-to-be elementary particles are in reality made out of quarks. Now as you all know quarks are the smallest indivisible matter in this universe and it is thanks to them that we have everything else.

But what does any of this has to do with strings? Well my dear reader imagine this: What if quarks, who we illustrate under the form of matter or particles, are in reality a vibrating string attached to itself? And that the circle like vibrating string on a three-dimensional point of view, appears to be a spherical particle? Well folks that’s basically superstring theory simplified.

Now right off the bat 2 immediate questions might pop up: Why do we think quarks might possess a different physical aspect? And how is this related to Steins;Gate? Fear not, I will explain both of these in detail.

To give an answer to the first question I will talk about the forces of this universe. As you may know, every force, from electromagnetic forces to nuclear ones, every one of them are transmitted through the usage of matter and particles. For example nuclear forces are the ones that binds nucleons together (protons and neutrons for those who aren’t sure), it is thanks to the properties of the quarks that this phenomenon can happen and it is the same thing when it comes to electromagnetic forces between a proton and electron (positive and negative charges). But there’s one force that cannot quite be explained, that is gravity.

Gravity interacts between anything in this universe, between particles, objects, or even planets. It’s a mutual attraction of both entities proportional to the mass. There’s just two problems: One is that we don’t actually know why gravity exists and the other one is, whether it’s with Newton’s general law of gravity or Einstein’s general theory of relativity, none of them are correct mathematically when it comes to atomic or subatomic particles. So what then?

Some physicists invented a new matter in the beginning: graviton. Basically it was like every other matter, but for gravity. It helped a lot in explaining where gravity came from and with the existence of gravitons, we could introduce gravitational forces into the quantum world (studies of physics in atomic or subatomic environment). Quantum gravity was a reality and thanks to that we no longer had to rely on inconsistent and impossible phenomenon such as singularities in a black hole. But yet again another problem arose.

Quantum gravity could not match up mathematically, and the constituents of gravitons where impossible to observe. It was like we invented the matter without knowing if it was real of not, and unfortunately, mathematics said that it was fake. So then what? Physicists struggled for a long time until when suddenly, someone decided to change the whole aspect and way we see modern physics. Instead of particles, why not strings?

Some thought it to be crazy but when string theory was invented it wasn’t just something coming out of a sci-fi writer, it was legitimate. To make it simple, the vibrations of string theory is fundamentally what makes up for the different matter in this universe. Just like music, different vibrations creates different quarks, which in turn creates different atoms etc. Why is that valid? Because mathematically it worked. And luckily it also made sense. With string theory the understanding of quantum mechanics would make sense, conceivable with classical physics. You could explain incredible said to be “supernatural” phenomenons such as duality, superposition and entanglement. String theory is for some, the one and only theory that can generalize our universe and sum it up. The perfect theory.

But once again, a problem lies ahead. how I said the maths worked out? Yeah well that was half a lie. The maths didn’t work out at first when we calculated things in our 3-dimensional world and to be honest physicists weren’t surprised, our universe didn’t just contain 3 dimensions after all. So we tried 4 dimensions, didn’t work. Then 5, 6, 7 and guess what, it finally worked, in the 11th dimension. I’m pretty sure you get my point. How the hell do we prove that 11 dimensions exist? Because the truth is, you can’t see 11 dimensions, you see a 2-dimensional image of our current 3-dimensional point of view.

Alright that was long and confusing but if you’re still with me, chances are you were able to grasp this fascinating theory. There are a lot of information I skipped because well, physics is hard to understand and visualize and personally, when I had to gather information to write this blog, it took me more than just days to figure out what this string theory is. Without further ado let’s jump right back into Steins;Gate and see how all of this is related to the anime.

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The Will of Steins Gate

The will of Steins Gate was something our main protagonist would blur out from time to time. No one quite understood what he was trying to say because it was probably just another part of his cringe-edgy lines. But there’s actually something behind it, and the answer lies in time. You see Steins;Gate is an anime about time, it tackles time and bends it in different universes. If you followed Steins;Gate properly you would know it’s not about changing the future or past of one’s world, it is interacting between different parallel universes and to jump from one to another, thanks to time and the alteration of it. And that’s quantum mechanics 101.

Now in the anime, they talked about black holes and the singularity. They used the wormhole theory about how blackholes are space-time bending phenomenons that allows you to travel in time and space. One of the things I really enjoyed watching this anime was how well and accurate they interpreted physics, because while it is mind-blowing, all of this is theoretically correct. Black holes are literally holes in space that connects one point from another in both time and space. Unfortunately because of the force of gravity within a black hole and especially the singularity, objects who es through a black hole will literally get its atoms forcefully teared apart. In the anime they represented it with the jelly effect, which of course is less scientific, but proves the danger. In case some of you wonder how they find a blackhole, the author used the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) located in CERN, Switzerland: A huge megastructure that accelerates particles at an excessive speed and then makes them collide one with each other to create huge waves of energy which in theory could create a black hole.

Ok Winter but what does any of this have anything to do with string theory? I’m glad you asked. You see in order for wormholes, safe black holes that does not possess the gravitational forces to be dangerous, you create them. And here’s the catch, you have to create them because the notion of singularity cannot be there. Simply put, you have to manifest gravity and control it.

It only gets more complicated from here on: The only way we currently know how to control, and manifest gravity is thanks to the notion of gravitons. And as I mentioned earlier, gravitons can only be proved by string theory. So if we take this hypothesis and turn it around it becomes something like: since string theory proves gravitons and gravitons prove wormholes, it must be true the other way, around right?

Yes ladies and gentlemen, wormholes prove gravitons, and gravitons prove string theory. Why? Because quite literally, gravitons can be found in multiple dimensions. If gravitons exists, then that means there exists a vibration corresponding to the graviton matter. And maybe I didn’t clarify earlier but the reason these strings vibrate in such ways is because of the interactions in the other dimensions. The forces that exists beyond the 3rd dimension bend the strings in various ways and directions and the result is spectacular. So if I had to be precise, graviton proves the existence of 11 dimensions, which proves string theory.

All because of a black hole? Yessir all because of an artificial black hole, that’s how wonderful physics can be. Now did the author intend any of this. Probably not. He probably didn’t even know the existence of string theory but here’s the reason why I want to talk about this. String Theory is everything.

String theory would literally prove every quantum phenomenons, the existence of multiverses, teleportation in space time and why both Einstein and Newton were right. String theory even proves Steins;Gate itself! The idea of going back in time would not be fiction and the idea of travelling between parallel universes would be our reality. Of course the fact that Okabe Rintarou is not affected by this is pretty unscientific and fake, you cannot bend space and time without affection yourself, because you are part of the universe.

Oh and one last thing. For those who watched Steins;Gate, you would probably ask me about the time-travelling machine. Well folks that’s not a time travelling machine hehe, or at least it would be impossible. You don’t actually travel in time, rather, you teleport yourself through time and space, thanks to quantum mechanics. And you know fun fact, that was nothing to do with a black hole, that’s just using the principles of superposition, entanglement, and the reconstitution of one’s body with particles which isn’t something easy to do, in short, that’s quantum teleportation (it’s actually cloning to be precise).

So there you go, we just solved string theory with an anime and a dumb mad scientist’s delusions, worth it. Ok maybe it’s not that simple, maybe I did neglect all the math process, and maybe I did skip the “how to create a safe wormhole” project, but hey now we know what we have to do. And guess what, this is exactly what CERN is trying to do right now, colliding particles together to eject gravitons and prove they exist! So yes while we’re not going to have flying cars and spaceships in the next 20-30 years to come we might be able to witness far greater technologies such as space travelling, teleportation, cloning, energy harvest from gravitons and the whole interstellar thing where kids play baseball and have the ball flying upside down (yeah that?).

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Conclusion

So now that I’ve written all this, why did I actually make this blog? To be honest probably because I’m bored, and I want to test the limits of absurdity someone can have when they’re bored. But also because I love both anime and physics. I’ve watched anime since I was 6 and physics has always been a ionate subject for me, just seeing both of these two things collide together makes me happy. I want people to see and realize why physics is such an interesting thing. I know a lot of people don’t like it and do badly at school because of how complex it can seem at first, but hey think about the pros. If it’s to meet a hot red haired tsundere genius who will fall in love for you, I’d die for physics! Just kidding… But yeah when I think about all the things we can do or all the things we’ve already done thanks to physics it mesmerizes me and the only thing I can do is to encourage people to like it. So please, I hope you enjoyed reading this blog and now that you’ve grasped string theory, time to surprise your physics teacher in September. I will see you next time.

For those who are curious, I used quite a lot of references writing this bcluding the images:

Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/String_theory

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_mechanics

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_gravity

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extra_dimensions

Myanimelist:

https://myanimelist.net/anime/9253/Steins_Gate

Fascinating youtube videos:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Da-2h2B4faU&t=21s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kF4ju6j6aLE&t=1s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jI50HN0Kshg

Oh and also my introduction was inspired by a youtuber who would do the same kind of introduction with league of legends champions, check him out:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqdcfoz9hDXCXbJDaklkwjQ