No strings attached—

I have long been fascinated by string theory. It has struck me more than once that a scientist is actually an artist who speaks in mathematics—and strings were an elegant and lovely leap of that mathematic imagination. Or maybe they are diviners, using equations in place of crystal balls or ouiji boards, sitting at the table, gazing into the paper, waiting for the words or the pictures to rise from the patterns and make sense of what seems to the rest of us a chaotic and chancy existence.

Anyway, I liked strings—they seemed to explain so much: why there are so many references to the concept of “tuning” in the scriptures, why the rocks and the planet sing, the nature of bonds and the shape of meaning.

But science couldn’t explain The Big Bang with them. Evidently, if you peel back the math, you eventually come to what is known as The Singularity—the suggestion that, before The Legendary Bang existed something else with a completely different set of physical laws. A little like genealogy, really—and shouldn’t it be? Even though you may start with Adam, as far as I am concerned, every question I answer about my ancestry is a small big bang of its own, with another world on the far side of it, and another set of rules. Funny that the answer expands my challenge, rather than unifying it – but unifies it at the same time. But scientists, it seems, don’t like their answers to color outside of the lines.

And they had five theories. String ones. Almost the same—varying slightly from one another: an ununified unification theory. Another thorn in the flesh. As this was all explained to me, I thought – maybe these people should spend a little more time outside of their offices. Isn’t it plain enough that if you have variations, you can pretty much bet there’s a theme floating around out there to begin with?

And there was. Or at least, at the present moment, there seems to be one. It’s called “M theory.” The “M” is supposed to stand for membranes, but I’ve heard scientists suggest it might also stand for magic or magnificence or madness. I love to hear the word “magic” from the mouths of scientists.

From the little I know of it (speaking little mathematics, and so lacking in detailed information – or in a vision of what shapes the idea), I am delighted. Yes, there are strings, but they have stretched and merged into a membrane – and that is evidently what our universe is, I am assuming, defined by its identifiable behaviors in terms of physics. That the whole thing should be one, all connected—a new age concept that seems to be as native to our existence as is the suspicion of the existence of God.

But one female Harvard physicist, working to understand the puzzling weakness of gravity, pushed the thing even further. I, myself, have never been particularly impressed with the weakness of gravity—when I fly, I could wish it even a little weaker, thank you. But when you realize that, using a tiny magnate, you can defy the force of it—pulling paperclips off a desk top with the magnate—in, other words, picking them UP—you can begin to understand what she means by weak. It seems that, of all the defined natural forces, gravity is amazingly weak – and that’s the puzzle.

When M theory entered the game, this person began to wonder if maybe our gravity was leaking out into the eleventh dimension. Oh, wait—did I not mention that string theory, in order to make sense, requires that there be ten dimensions rather than the usually accepted three—or four, if you count time, which I really think you have to do. But M theory requires eleven. The seven between where we were and where we now are were mostly tiny things and I don’t understand them in the least – some room required for the resonation of the strings. But the eleventh is grand—a huge space of emptiness, defined by exponents that are larger than I can count.

So, is our gravity sort of leaking out into this grand nothing? My first thought is—siphoned off, maybe. But when the equations are worked, it appears that this is not the case, but that our gravity is actually moving OUT of the eleventh dimension and into our universe. Leant to us, somehow, to keep all our little molecular solar systems in order. This was my first delight—that the strong force should live somewhere else, and that we should have just enough of it here to allow us to exist as we do. It could be exactly the kind of relationship explained in the scriptures by the more warm-and-fuzzy words “justice” and “mercy.”

These are concepts I’ve always understood on an emotional level. But, as I suspect all “emotional” concepts that are offered as information by God (information leaked) are actually not so much emotional as simplistic—tuned to our infantile understanding and experience; and that they are only the tip of a far more scientific truth.

Justice is what must be, what is—the real, inescapable consequence of an action—the inexorable force. Mercy is mitigation, done for a purpose. Lovely.

But it gets better. It seems that the mystical equations require that this eleventh dimension be full of parallel universes – other membranes of all kinds of mathematical shapes, some cylindrical, some doughnut, some wing – all rippling and moving and brushing up against each other. And these are understood to be exactly like ours, but different – perhaps differing by only one choice of one organism, or by the absence of some requirement of physical law. And they are said to be infinite in number—worlds, as it were, without end.

Okay. Interesting to me that when we are introduced in the scripture to the concept of “Other sheep I have,” and “worlds without end” we instantly think in terms of Life on Other Planets. But what if the scriptures don’t have anything to do with planets? What if the substance of it has far more to do with choices? This is a little bit like trying to stare into the sky and see space – but the possibilities are exhilarating.

Once scientist spoke of, now that we know about all this, creating his own pet universe in the lab. “It would be entirely, safe,” he said. “You’d start it, and it would begin to grow, but it wouldn’t displace any of our own substance.” Like, I’d have to take his word for that—my “no two things can occupy the same space at the same time” knee jerk begins to twitch. And this new universe would continue to grow, filling the whole earth (pretty much what he said, accompanied by a graphic of a new bubble, its membrane attached but not intruding on the one that proceeded it) – growing without displacement. Filling the cosmos – a closed universe inside of its membrane. A kingdom, of sorts, that begins with a particle and then grows to fill the whole earth?

What I don’t understand is why science is happy to start with now and follow the math back to where there was actually a before—The Singularity. But they see it irresponsible to start with God, and work forward, testing the likelihood of intentional design? It’s like they are walking through a botanical garden, assiduously limiting their upward gaze so as to exclude the dome over their heads, refusing to admit that they are existing in a controlled environment—but wanting, in the worst way, to be able to predict the sprinkler schedule.

Now, it seems that the Big Bang wasn’t so much a result of divergence as convergence: not an explosion of particles that somehow spontaneously blew out a universe, but a response to the collision of two membranes. A consequence of two things coming inexorably together (sounds like our marriage). I have to laugh as I listen to all of this—what if there is a point in reality where mathematics break down? Where the laws that govern our equations twist on us and come out of a place we haven’t been able to imagine? But we are so confident of our tools—as if mathematics were our Hubble, and we have actually seen the beginning.

Once bright–eyed physicist finally explained that we are like a bubble in a space filled with endless bubbles—and this is my last definable delight: the thought that we are in this vast scale, that our entire reality occurred when two bubbles collide—that what we know is so tiny, we with all our bustling intelligence—that our ancient existence has been just a breath, a fraction of a moment in the great sea of possibility – one quick little bubble in a vast, slow ocean. We could live a thousand life-times during the stroke of one huge fin.

But the scale doesn’t really matter to me. It’s interesting, but not all that relevant. It’s the company I keep that makes my life real—the love, the pain, the joy—my family, my children, my friends, my animals – my heart engaged. In the end, mathematics is a cold dance, but grass grows in my yard, and I have to cut it. And there’s a time when the burgers are hot, and that’s seminal. Whatever the structure of the universe, whatever the language that promises me glimpses of it, I have been given the gift of my own time. Small bubble, big miracle. And I am grateful.