Thursday 15 December 2011

String Theory- Infinite Parallel Universes

String theory has been around for some time as a total physical explanation for the existence and behaviour of the cosmos. The Physics is awesomely impenetrable and the implications mind blowing. So, just the thing to write a poem about! I don't begin to understand the physics but do want to explore what it might mean for we humans, stuck in our three dimensions, with brains that have evolved to operate within these limits.
News from CERN is interesting. The shy Higgs Boson particle has at last started its Dance of the Seven Veils, so we might see it soon, fully revealed. Just as interesting for String Theory, an experiment firing neutrinos at Italy has come to the amazing conclusion that they travelled faster than the speed of light. This is absolutely forbidden under Einstein's rules, so a whispered explanation is that perhaps the neutrinos flipped into a different dimension, within which the different laws of physics allowed them to go faster than 'our' speed of light.


                                   Infinite Parallel Universes


The Princes of Cosmology have decreed
that matter consists of endless numbers
of infinitely long wavy thin strings,
like a billion children holding hands
then lined up head to toe in sheets;
our universe a membrane or a bubble
floating in the eternity of hyperspace.


But what happens when membranes collide?
There we have a big bang but not
The Big Bang; it’s happened many times,
ripples creating clumps of matter
that formed the stars the planets and us.
It takes time back beyond the singularity
with a new shiny theory of everything.

Our world is a spec of dust in the cosmos, 
an infinite series of parallel universes
in eleven different dimensions,
each with different laws of physics

The next dimension hovers very close
alongside, just above our skin; invisible,
where history is different from ours;
Elvis still alive and singing in one,
Nelson losing the battle of the Nile,
friends, family and lovers all different
and one where none of us was ever born.

Alas there is no link, no spy hole to let us see
what’s happening to the other versions of us,
running in blind parallel next door.
We can’t share the joy or the pain
of triumphs or disappointments
that  might have been our other lot,
even if emotion was an allowed state.


Unless the link is our unexplained dreams,
full of people and places we barely know,
or have never even met in this version of life;
each dream a  Technicolor film of detail
so clear that we could hardly make it up.
Are they our friends, loved ones and enemies
in the dimension that hovers just alongside?


Our eyes can’t see it in bright daylight,
awake it’s blotted out by the senses.
When we’re asleep the brain can focus
and make secret contact in the night,
delighting in our parallel fortunes and foibles,
meeting ourselves to swap outcomes
from the hidden world that’s just next door.

But why does the brain bury the dream?
Only fragments come through to confuse us
like snapshot trailers from an unseen movie
that can frighten and move in equal measure.
Is the brain protecting us from something?
Could we handle two or more versions
of ourselves with our evolved  3D brains?

Do the dimensions come in coupled pairs?
One for our bodies, DNA within its rules
the other limited, only electrons and electricity;
no angels or virgins to please the martyrs,
only energy to file away the endless spirits
of every man and animal that ever lived
in a digital Noah’s Ark of heaven and hell.

This is the other world that the mystic, the
shaman and priest always knew was there
and sometimes shows when ghosts get
charged up and stumble onto our stage
as holograms of their former selves.
Is this everlasting life, an electronic store
in that hidden twinned dimension?

Could love cross between dimensions in dreams?
Faithfully hopping between realities, a source
of happiness or sorrow we can’t explain.
For symmetry there must be evil spirits
that drive us mad with unseen delusion.
They were the enemies of our forefathers,
in the dream time, before we lost our sight.

Is God in the theory of everything?
The eternal dimensionless mathematician,
father of the veiled Higgs Boson
creator of mass in the standard theory.
He’s free from Einstein’s rules of the game
with his own perfect universe, reserving
the parallel ours for his experiments in chaos?

The Stuart Agenda by Alan Calder e-book at willowmoonpublishing.com, amazon.com, amazon.co.uk, Barnes and Noble. Paperback edition coming soon on Amazon.


1 comment:

  1. Truly magnificent. I love the idea of making secret contact in the night.

    ReplyDelete