The Invisible Hand:How String Theory Changed our View of the Early Universe
In my talk, I shall review various ideas that either originated in or were justified by string theory. In particular, I will discuss three among them, that have come to play a prominent role even in cosmology:
1) That every coupling constant is the VEV of some scalar field
2) That Standard Model fields may be confined to a four-dimensional subspace of a multidimensional universe (the brane world scenario)
3) That string theory has very many vacua which essentially scan for all possible values of relevant couplings (the Landscape).
Department of Physics, New York University
