Soap Bubbles

Soap Bubbles

I recently read about some physicists theories about the Universe. I have to admit that the ones about string theory make absolutely no sense to me (no surprise there – I’m not a genius, especially when it comes to math). And I can kind of get a glimpse in my mind of what they mean by “brane” theory (short for membrane). But lately there’s been more talk about the multiverse. Getting my head around that concept is like in calculus when they kept harping on imaginary numbers. I just didn’t get it. No one’s ever accused me of not having a very good imagination. But in my imagi-Nation, there are no citizens called imaginary numbers. They’re either real or they don’t exist at all. Just something a bunch of mathematicians came up with to twists ordinary folks brains in a knot, and then laugh when they sit scratching their heads with drool running out of the corner of their mouths. I have a hard enough time getting my mind around the concept of one universe “expanding” creating time/space as it goes. Outside of which…well there is no outside. At least that’s what they say. And if there isn’t, how can you really say something is expanding? Expanding into what from where? It’s all relative after all. I am reminded of a couple of scenes from “Men in Black” where in one there was a whole world inside a locker and another where there was a whole galaxy inside a marble. That is relativity of perspective in a nutshell. Now to the multiverse. What is being theorized is that there is not just one “universe” but many – perhaps even an infinite number of them. And we’re asked to think of soap bubbles massed together – almost touching each other but not quite. And our particular universe would be just one among many of those soap bubbles. First things first. If this is accurate, we need to tune up our language a bit. In particular, we need to be more precise in what we mean when we use the word universe. The word is defined as: the totality of known or supposed objects and phenomena throughout space; the cosmos; macrocosm. Okay then, we need a new word to refer to the individual bubble we happen to be in because “universe” would refer to all the bubbles in existence. Just like when we talk about matter and an individual part of it called an atom. Now there’s some perspective for you. If you think of the infinite multiverse as matter, then we are living on (or in) just one of its atoms (our particular soap bubble). I don’t know which is more mind blowing – down here looking up at the infinite everything or being infinite and looking down at the infinitesimally small me. Either way it gives me nightmares. My big question is this: if there are an infinite number of soap bubbles, and our universe is just one of many nestled together with all the others, then how could we be expanding? Are we expanding into our neighboring soap bubble’s territory? Or them into ours? I at this moment feel like Hamlet did when he said:  “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” So I think it is with all of us. We have little dreams, and reality is so much bigger than a soap bubble.