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The Brane Is the Screen: The Ontological Status of the Eleventh Dimension

The preprint version is available on SSRN: The Brane is the Screen: The Ontological Status of the Eleventh Dimension (August 28, 2026). http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.7368701   The Brane Is the Screen: The Ontological Status of the Eleventh Dimension   Juliet Zhong  Independent Researcher | London, United Kingdom | August 2026 ORCID: 0009-0006-5099-3671 Abstract M-theory established that the five superstring theories are related by exact dualities and that eleven-dimensional supergravity is the low-energy limit of Type IIA at strong coupling. Yet when a mathematical structure encodes a network of dualities, does it thereby acquire independent spatial ontology? The answer is no. Description is not identity, and predictive success is not ontological licensing. The structure M-theory discovered is real, and it has been misplaced. Dirichlet branes are defined by termination; the holographic principle defines a surface by encoding. In the D3-brane cons...
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Strings as the Ontology of Radiation: Dissolving String Theory’s Fifty-Year Impasse

The preprint version is available on SSRN: Strings as the Ontology of Radiation: Dissolving String Theory’s Fifty-year Impasse (August 10,2026). http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.7260061     Strings as the Ontology of Radiation: Dissolving String Theory’s Fifty-Year Impasse   Juliet Zhong Independent Researcher | London, United Kingdom | August 2026 ORCID: 0009-0006-5099-3671 Abstract String theory's fifty-year impasse is not mathematical but ontological: its mathematics is highly developed, yet the physical ontology of the string remains unsettled. This paper proposes that strings are fundamental degrees of freedom of the radiation domain (τ=0), not localized material objects at the Planck scale, building on a redefinition of the matter–radiation boundary and a dimensional-separation argument distinguishing the radiation domain from a matter domain with τ>0. Under this identification, several otherwise puzzling features acquire a common explanati...
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