ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

DS/CFT correspondence

Have you ever played with a jigsaw puzzle? Imagine you have a puzzle with lots of small pieces and you want to figure out how all those pieces fit together to form a big picture. Now, let's say you also have a friend who loves to solve math problems.

In physics, there are also puzzles to solve, but they are much more complicated than a jigsaw puzzle. Physicists try to understand how things work in the universe, from the very tiny particles that make up atoms, to the biggest structures like galaxies. One of the big puzzles in physics is called the "AdS/CFT correspondence," which is like a really big, complicated jigsaw puzzle.

When physicists work on this puzzle, they use two different tools that seem to be really different from each other. One tool is called string theory, which is like a really tiny piece of rope that vibrates in different ways to make different particles. The other tool is called gauge theory, which is like a big puzzle with many pieces, where each piece represents a different way that particles can interact with each other.

At first, it seemed like these two tools couldn't fit together, like two different jigsaw puzzles that don't have the same shapes or colors. But then physicists discovered something amazing: they found out that the string theory puzzle and the gauge theory puzzle are actually the same puzzle! It's like if you had two jigsaw puzzles that looked different on the outside, but when you put the pieces together, you realize they make the exact same picture.

This discovery is called the AdS/CFT correspondence, which means that two different puzzles seem to be describing the same thing. This is really helpful for physicists because it means they can use either the string theory tool or the gauge theory tool to solve the same puzzle. It's like if you had two ways to solve a jigsaw puzzle, you could use the tool that you find easier or more fun, and still get the same answer.

So, in summary, the AdS/CFT correspondence is like a big jigsaw puzzle that used to look like two different puzzles, but now we know they make the same picture. It's really helpful for physicists because it means they can use either string theory or gauge theory to solve the same puzzle. And just like you can choose any fun tool to solve a puzzle, physicists can choose the tool that they find easier or more interesting to use.