He was searching for an equation, perhaps no more than one-inch long, that could be placed on a T-shirt, but was so powerful it could explain every- thing from the Big Bang, exploding stars, to atoms and molecules, to the lilies of the field. It was supposed to be the crowning achievement of the last 2,000 years of science, ever since the Greeks asked what the world was made of. He wanted a theory that could explain the four fundamental forces that govern the universe: gravity, electromagnetism, and the two nuclear forces (weak and strong). But the theory, once considered the province of eccentrics and mystics, is being revived for a simple reason: it may hold the key to the greatest theory of all time, the “theory of everything.”Įinstein spent the last 30 years of his life futilely chasing after this theory, the Holy Grail of physics. The theory of hyperspace, however, languished for many decades for lack of any physical proof or application. Although these higher dimensions are invisible, their “ripples” can clearly be seen and felt. We spend our life in three spatial dimensions, confident that what we can see with our telescopes is all there is, ignorant of the possibility of 10 dimensional hyperspace. Today, many physicists believe that we are the carp swimming in our tiny pond, blissfully unaware of invisible, unseen uni- verses hovering just above us in hyperspace.

We would laugh at them, because, of course, we know there is no “force” at all, just the rippling of the water. These ripples might even be felt by the carp, who would invent a silly concept to describe this, called “force.” They might even give these “forces” cute names, such as light and gravity. The third dimension would be invisible to them, but vibrations in the third dimensions would be clearly visible. The carp could see rippling shadows on the surface of the pond. I then wondered: how would a carp scientist know about our existence? One day it rained, and I saw the rain drops forming gentle ripples on the surface of the pond. Beings who could emit sounds without bubbles. I thought what a wondrous story the scientist would tell the others! The carp would babble on about unbelievable new laws of physics: beings who could move without fins. I wondered what would happen if I could reach down and grab a carp scientist and lift it up into hyperspace. the third dimension “above” the pond, would immediately be labelled a crank. Any carp scientist daring to talk about “hyperspace”, i.e. But I imagined that the concept of “up”, beyond the lily pads, would be totally alien to them. The carp would only be able to swim forwards and backwards, and left and right. I would ask myself a question only a child could ask: what would it be like to be a carp? What a strange world it would be! I imagined that the pond would be an entire universe, one that is two-dimensional in space. I would spend hours fascinated by the carp, who lived in a very shallow pond just inches beneath the lily pads, just beneath my fingers, totally oblivious to the universe above them. When I was a child, I used to visit the Japanese Tea Garden in San Francisco. Hyperspace and a Theory of Everything What lies beyond our 4 dimensions?

Hyperspace definition