Unraveling String Theory
After a brisk morning walk, I reposed to my confabulatory to enjoy the comfort
of my smokeless jacket, a bowl of Trinidad Moruga Scorpion chili peppers,
and a cup of Earl Grey. It is here that I exercise my intellectual mortises and tendons
like a weightlifter on anabolic steroids. I ponder the blind alleys,
sideshows, and crannies of language, science, and literature.
I pondered. "Dumbfound" impressed me as a rather peculiar word. Conventionally it means "amazed," but when I employed Aristotelian logic, as I am prone to do and adjusted my slide rule accordingly, I concluded that its proper meaning is "having found dumbness." I took another sip of tea and pondered: How do you really "boggle a mind"? Does it involve shaking the cranium? If so, how much shaking is needed to boggle but not maim?
I dozed a bit, then awakened with dumbfound and mind boggling clarity. "String theory!" I exclaimed. "I have recalled my repressed memories, and now I can reveal the truth about the so-called Theory for Everything." (I call it the angel hair theory.) I was not sure why such important memories had been repressed, but I suspected outside forces were to blame. Perhaps I had fallen out of the back of a pickup truck and hit my head. Surely I would have remembered such an event, or would I?
Let's get back to string theory. As you all know, it refers to mathematical models that try to explain the four main physical forces - gravity, the electromagnetic force, and the weak and strong nuclear forces. I will not explain the lesser forces - the Velcro force, the pantyhose force, the Zelda-B force, and the Carlos Fructose force, which are related as corollaries - since the subtlety of thought needed to understand these elusive conditions of nature eludes all but me and a few welders I know.
Anyway, in string theory, elemental particles like electrons and quarks are not really particles. Rather, they are strings (maybe noodles is a better word) that form the four different forces by vibrating in different ways. (By the way, the quark was made famous by Lumis Carrot in his famous poem, The Quarkawocky.) This is an elegant theory, but bear in mind that no one thus far has been able to see any of these little wigglers, let alone pick one up and see if it tastes good.
String theory has multiple versions, each of which postulates a different number of hidden dimensions beyond the four that we are familiar with. I prefer the theory that settles on eleven hidden dimensions because I have been to all of them. Let me explain as I take another sip of Earl Grey.
One day last year while I was dozing in my confabulatory, the room suddenly began vibrating. The toilet wasn't stopped up, so I knew something really strange was happening. Bang! A Calabi–Yau manifold appeared out of nowhere. (This manifold is not related to either an intake or exhaust Chevy manifold.) It twisted and turned. It floated to the ceiling, then it crashed to the floor and shimmied on its belly like a reptile.
I had to pick it up to see what the heck it was. That was my undoing. It had forward, back, and restart buttons. I naively pushed the forward button and was transported to what I later would discover was the fifth dimension. I became disoriented and afraid. Fortunately, the manifold accompanied me and I pushed the back button. Once I did that I was back in my confabulatory and my Earl Grey was still warm.
After further experimentation, I learned to push the forward button multiple times to travel to the dimension of my choice. What follows are my summaries of the nature of these dimensions. Please understand that words and normal concepts are inadequate for this purpose, but you may get a general sense of what I encountered:
Dimension 5: It's a real mess. You wouldn't want to live there. There's nothing but empty parking lots, blowing dust, howling wind, tumbleweeds, oppressive heat, stop signs, and camel dung all over the place. The presence of camel dung is quite strange in that Dimension 5 has no camels.
Dimension 6: Now this one is a doozy. It has thousands of incarnations of Señor Wences' Pedro - you know, the talking head puppet in a covered box that only could say "s'awright." Señor Wences, the ventriloquist, was on the Ed Sullivan Show a lot. Some string theorists consider that show a hidden dimension. Well, in Dimension 6, all of Pedro's incarnations are eternally being attacked by billions of starving termites 24/7. It's a carnivorous or perhaps herbivorous mess.
Dimension 7: This is Brahmanland. I highly recommend it if you can figure out a way to buy a ticket to go there. This place is like Disney World on steroids. There are free carnival rides everywhere. In fact, everything there is free, including cotton candy, Twinkies, soda pop, franks and beans, fry bread, chili dogs… Now about the rides. This place has got 'em all: bumper car, roller coaster, octopus, tilt-a-whirl, teacups, water slide, and wipe out just to name a few.
However, like all of the higher string theory dimensions, there is an oddness about each environment. For example, in Dimension 7, all of the ride attendants are Arabs in flowing white thawbs and keffiyehs. They never speak, but they drink a lot of diet Coke.
Dimension 8: This is a retro world and a scary place. It's fully populated with sterile, gray people who pretty much look and act alike. They all live in condos designed by Lawrence Welk. Each one has a tiled roof, and a small front yard consisting of colored gravel and a roadrunner wind vane.
All of the men have short, parted hair kept in place by copious amounts of Brylcreem. All of the women have the same beauty saloon beehive hairdos kept in place by multiple layers of hairspray. All of the men play golf on Saturdays while their wives do household chores and make little white bread bologna sandwiches with the bread crust cut off. On Sundays the families go to a Presbyterian church and afterwards take short drives out in the country.
In the city square - nothing more than a square with a white gravel surface - there is a band. It is the Carlos Fructose Marimba Band, and they play some delightful Caribbean tunes. However, all of the gray people walking to and fro totally ignore them. Not a single musical bone quivers. Not a hip gyrates. Not a toe taps.
During the week all of the men wear suits while working in business office cubicles and all of the women wear long cotton dresses, aprons, and high heel shoes. The women stay at home doing housework, shopping at the local Piggly Wiggly, and caring for the 2.5 children each family has. Needless to say, the .5 child has a lot of issues.
Dimension 9: Once I arrived it became evident that this was a very strange "place." There was no way to orient. There was no up or down, no landmarks, no objects, no sky, no ground. I instantly knew that this was a non-perturbative, 2-brane, 8-vectored, polytopical, compactified dimension.
So after not getting my bearings, I took a few steps and then saw myself materializing into this dimension. Finding this rather bizarre, I stood still and watched. My other self that just materialized, started walking, and then another Zoe materialized and started walking.
As I kept watching, more and more other Zoes emerged and walked resulting in more Zoes emerging and walking. It starting to get crowded. I looked at the other Zoes but they only looked at the Zoe that emerged just after they emerged. I was getting dizzy. This seemed to be a linear unMöbius strip with mirrored complications. I was ready to return to my confabulatory and drink some tea.
Dimension 10: Once I arrived here I immediately knew - based upon my prior Arabic geometry studies - that this was a plincus reality, replete with moduli inflations and rectangular slices of physical pdls replaced by virtual pdls - the tell-tale signature of a piddle dimension.
I encountered energies on the Planck scale manifested as inverted octopi, albino beavers and aqueous marsupials. This was a pee-yellow water world, but the water was not down and the sky was not up. The indigenous aquatic creatures followed me as I dog paddled, but paddle as I may, there was no place to paddle to. I paddled up, and I paddled down. I quickly grew weary and pressed the manifold's back button.
Dimension 11: As soon as I arrived, a helicopter appeared overhead. This was a bit strange because it had some electronic gismo sticking out of the side. This gismo had big coils, Jacob's ladders, and other assorted electronic paraphernalia. It hovered. I looked up. It still hovered. I still looked up. Then, all of a sudden the electronic whatever started buzzing. It lit up, and then it went into action. A duplicating ray, as best as I could ascertain, shot down and enveloped me. My guard hairs tingled, my rectum clinched, and my fore claws jangled.
Then things got even weirder. Some cubistic, misshapen creature wearing a nametag around its neck proclaiming "Bizarro-Zoe #1" appeared beside me.
It said, "Me Bizzaro-Zoe. Me like squirrel. Me like chipmunk. Me want pet cat."
"Holy shit!" I gasped. "What the hell are you," I asked.
"Me cosmic trickster - Miss Nyzaquml," it said. "Me name too is Hymie Qtip from planet Qtip. Where me at?"
I evacuated my bowels as I pressed the back button on the Calabi–Yau manifold. I spilled the rest of my Earl Grey upon my return. I trembled in a corner of the room, and I swore I would never return to the 11th Dimension.
Note: Throughout my sojourns into the hidden dimensions, I never pressed the restart button on the Calabi–Yau manifold. I'm sure that was a good decision.
Necessity is the mother of taking chances.
~ Mark Twain