The Theory of Everything

Superstring theory, however, predicts the universe should exist in 10 dimensions, not four. To explain where the other six dimensions went, physicists believe that the universe originally existed in 10 dimensions. However, at the instant of the Big Bang, for reasons we don't understand, six of the 10 dimensions "curled up" and collapsed, while the other four dimensions expanded rapidly. In some sense, our universe expanded at the expense of a twin universe which collapsed down to microscopic size.

Other critics of superstring theory point out that an atom smasher powerful enough to test the superstring theory would have to be the size of the galaxy. The theory is untestable. I think this criticism is a bit silly. Most science is done indirectly, not directly. No one has ever been to the sun or seen a black hole, yet we know what the sun is made of and we have found 20 galactic black holes in space. Similarly, we might be able to detect echos of the 10th dimension from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), now being build outside Geneva, Switzerland. There is a small hope that we will be able to find "sparticles," (or superparticles) which would represent higher vibrations of the superstrings.

Personally, I think that the problem will be solved by pure mathematics. Once the theory is solved completely, it should yield not just the origin of the universe, but it should also perfectly match the masses of the quarks, leptons, Higgs particles and others.

NASA

Gateway to the future? A black hole.

Time Travel?

Although a quantum theory of gravity has immediate practical application there is one budding area of physics devoted to a novel application of quantum physics: time travel. Oddly enough, Einstein's equations admit the possibility of time travel. But it may take the full power of the unified field theory to calculate whether it's really possible or not. Back in 1949, Einstein's next door neighbor at the Institute for Advance Study, the great mathematician Kurt Goedel, demonstrated Einstein's own equations allowed for time travel. If the universe rotated, and you went around the universe, you could arrive back before you left!

In his memoirs, Einstein pointed out that Goedel's solution could be dismissed on "physical grounds." Our universe expands, it doesn't rotate. But this leaves open the possibility that if the universe rotated, then time travel would be common place!

Since then, literally hundreds of solutions of Einstein's equations have been found which yield time travel solutions. They include: