“The human mind is not capable of grasping the Universe. We are like a little child entering a huge library. The walls are covered to the ceilings with books in many different tongues. The child knows that someone must have written these books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. But the child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books… a mysterious order which it does not comprehend, but only dimly suspects.” -Albert Einstein

Trying to wrap your mind around the inner workings of the universe is like trying to understand the opposite sex.  It seems possible, fathomable… yet it lingers just slightly out of reach. Theoretical physicists deserve more credit than they get.  If I tried to do for a day what they do for a living–and more than likely what they do as a hobby–I’m not sure if I’d ever be able to see the world in the same light.  Staring at the stars, just long enough to take a breath and to let a few more twinkling lights break through the night sky.  Realizing that it’s all too perfect to be coincidence.  There’s more to it.  More than the dimensions we can see.  

At least that’s what Albert Einstein, and later Michio Kaku, physicist and co-founder of the supersymmetric string theory, hypothesized.  His string theory, if proven, would be the key to attesting to the practicality of more than four dimensions and to the existence of multiple, parallel universes.  The concept taken generally provides an explanation of how quantum mechanics and gravity work together to make a rock fall faster than a feather.  How the two natural phenomena make it possible for little league baseball players to catch a pop fly in the outfield, and for your alarm clock to wake you up exactly three times after you’ve hit snooze.  The practicality of quantum physics, when applied to our everyday lives, is astounding.  Yet when the average, non-theoretical-physicist person attempts to fully grasp its logical basis, they stop almost as soon as they started.  At least that’s been my experience.

I am no theoretical physicist.  I want to make that very clear.  The extent to which I understand Einstein’s theory of everything, along with other physicists’ ideas, goes only as far as the bits and pieces of information and insights gathered from my sporadic reading and from the average, conversational, teenage discussions on light particle duality.  But the weight of the matter is worth discussing.  

To scratch the surface in attempt to describe the string theory, I must begin with the four main forces of nature in order of increasing power: gravity, electromagnetism, the weak nuclear force, and the strong nuclear force.  The string theory ties each of these forces together, explaining how quantum physics and relativity combine to form theories of quantum gravity, of which the string theory, one theory of quantum gravity, is the most promising.

Einstein’s theory can only exist in a world with more than four space dimensions.  If proven correct, it could be determined that six other dimensions exist–each compactified, or curled up tightly in impeccably small sizes– outside of the four known dimensions dealing primarily with quantum mechanics: left and right, up and down, front and back, and time.

What would a sixth, a seventh, a ninth dimension even be composed of?  A pattern of mirrored reflections?  A energetic ball of light particles?  Time travel?  Comparing other universes?  Simply imagining something so intricately woven into the make-up of our universe seems near impossible.  And thus I rest my case that these scientists are some form of super humans, programmed to question without end, wired to analyze and decrypt the complexities of the quantum world surrounding us.  The closest that theoretical physicists have gotten to validating the string theory is finding evidence of supersymmetric partner particles. What these theoretical physicists are working toward is no small feat.