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In my universe magic is an underlying energy that is in everything, users can use it to perform simple tasks however their knowledge of how the universe works limits what they can do, if string theory is correct could my main character pretty much do anything I.e fly, open wormholes, control gravity, create elements etc?

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    $\begingroup$ The main problem is that computational complexity is a real thing. Even if you know how something works, it doesn't mean that you can actually compute its behaviour ahead of time; for a well known example, consider weather forecasting: we know very well how gases and water etc. work, but we still can't predict weather whether it will rain or not five days from now. Or consider how much money and effort SpaceX is spending testing successive iterations of the Starship prototype, although in priciple we know very well how steel and fuel etc. work. $\endgroup$
    – AlexP
    Oct 25, 2020 at 21:49
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    $\begingroup$ You are in essence asking "if my character could do things the laws of physics say are impossible, could they do anything ?". So, magic, basically. There's no "science" here to make a "science-based" answer. This is just asking if handwavium magic can do magic - yes, it can. $\endgroup$ Oct 26, 2020 at 0:16
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    $\begingroup$ Putting the "science-based" and "magic" tags on the same question is self defeating. $\endgroup$
    – puppetsock
    Oct 27, 2020 at 0:19
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    $\begingroup$ I’m voting to close this question because contradictory tags "science-based" and "magic" on same question. $\endgroup$
    – puppetsock
    Oct 27, 2020 at 0:20

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You'd need God's supercomputer to do it.

If they exist, strings are $10^{-35}$ meters long each. Assuming they work exactly how you think, and they can be manipulated perfectly, you're going to need to be tracking $10^{105}$ strings to affect a cubic meters worth of space.

Tracking that many objects is insane. It's more computationally feasible to track every fundamental particle in the universe ($10^{80}$) than to track every string in a cubic meter. If you have this level of computational power, just create a universe from scratch inside the supercomputer and make it however you please.

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No

String theory is not that pratical. To manipulate objects and create wormholes you need some applied science. String Theory is highly abstract and theoretical. And if it happened to be true it still need decades of scientific work to create some "basic" aplications of it (like, some "string-computer" or energy/propulsion system).

Consider Newton's Laws: they are quite simple. But your will not be able to build any mechanical system using this laws only. To do this you will need quite a lot applied disciplines, like statics, mechanics of materials, maybe aero/hydro-dynamics, and etc. All of this originate from this simple laws, but are quite complex.

Sting Theory we have now is like Newtons's Laws - they are base for applied science that will/would be build yet.

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A character who could do something like that would leave their humanity far behind, mentally speaking. Not only would they need to be able to sense and manipulate the strings, but also to determine the outcome of doing so. Other answerers have mentioned the difficulty involved with manipulating many strings at once, but consider that the implications making such a change to the fabric of the universe could be orders of magnitude greater.

Now a basic understanding of chemistry... That could be something a human being could work with in your setting.

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