Those who don’t know me may be surprised to learn I’m not an experienced quantum mechanic. I know, I know – it does sometimes seem like I know everything, but I don’t. In fact, I had never heard of M Theory until the other night.

Unfortunately M Theory deals with more than just Ms. If it were merely about Ms I wouldn’t have to watch the Science Channel to learn about it. Could just stick with Sesame Street.

Parallel Universe was the first time I ever in my life watched a scientist gird his hypothetical loins, snap on the pocket protector, bust out the slide ruler with a swashbuckling swish, and careen straight through the Big Bang and out the other end, whistling and measuring – on both sides.

The other side of the Big Bang!

That’s the Holy Grail, ain’t it? What a cool show. Hate to spoil the plot but here goes, in a dumbish nutshell.

Physicists tried to come to a Theory of Everything using String Theory, but ended up with 5 string theories. All of which held in common the understanding that there are 10 parallel dimensions inside/outside our own. But as a guy in the show puts it, “Five theories isn’t the Theory of Everything, it’s the Theory of Nothing.”

So now comes the gravity part. This one scientist lady was wondering how come gravity is so weak, in compairison to other forces, such as electromagnetism and Tiger Woods? She thought maybe because it was leaking from here into another dimension. Then she had the strange thought: what if gravity is leaking here, into our universe?

Apparently that was the major breakthrough that led to the development of the theory of an 11th dimension, the place we get our gravity from. That led to the gradual realization among many physicists (don’t ask me how – something to do with numbers, one assumes) that the strings were actually membranes, or at least this postulated the existence of a membraneous parallel universe, which eventually became filled theoretically with several then many then an infinity of other parallel universes. And all these other membranes (M theory) were moving and flowing through the 11th dimension.

That strange thought led to the charming occurance of three smart guys riding in an English train to a symposium having an hour-long conversation. What would happen if a pair of these differently-shaped membranes/universes ran into each other? It would be a pretty ‘big bang’ eh?

Upshot of it was that they figured out a theory that goes right through the big bang and out the other side, intact, beyond that bourne from which no throught-traveler had yet returned.

M theory,

LWIII