32. The 11th dimension

They mentioned it on Discovery News, in theory “it is possible to travel faster than light.” Except, we wouldn’t move.

Using the principle of the Alcubierre drive, we expand the fabric of space behind our ship and shrink it at the front, letting the ship rest on the bubble we’ve created, space itself rolling, moving beneath us.

Don’t think your Laolao will accomplish this anytime soon. It would require way too much energy, much more than I have at my disposal. I’m very tired, remember.

And I would need to perfect my understanding of superstring theory, enough to expertly manipulate an hypothetical 11th dimension.

But I still can find interesting the project of letting the universe do the hard work, inflating, deflating itself while, aghast, we watch.

The swollen bubble, they say, would be made of dark energy, the very energy that speeds up the universe as time flies.

Once in a while, I enjoy classifying galaxies and spotting stars. You should try it. I do it online, at Galaxy Zoo. But I find it’s the intergalactic void that’s fascinating. It is believed that around two-thirds of the space seen in those incredible pictures sent by the Hubble telescope represent dark energy; less than a third would be dark matter; while stars occupy no more than a few percent of space. The invisible more significant than the visible.

This negative pressure, this cosmological dark energy permeates the entire universe, accelerating its expansion. Instead of the collapse gravity would otherwise guarantee.

You see, energy - depending on which one we’re referring to - either decreases or increases the amount of space found between things. And the “things” - stars, clusters, all the way to the molecule - trace the boundaries of the void, like the membranes circling the holes of a sponge (the simplest of all multi-cellular animals, the Porifera, which resides at the bottom of the sea).

Oh, so deep regrets, why didn’t I become an astrophysicist? Or a marine biologist?

I was once good in science, does it surprise you? Always a perfect score in chemistry before they kicked me out of high-school for displaying the wrong behavioral attitudes. And when I managed to get back, enrolled in a small school for misfits after my release from the psychiatric hospital, I naturally qualified for the Canadian national contest in mathematics. Did very well in geometry, not so well in algebra, sorry.

I didn’t know one had to study before the big day. No one coached me. No one told me what to look at, what to prepare. You see, I had qualified without knowing I was qualifying.

I never made any mistakes in chemistry or geometry due mainly to an absolute lack of imagination, because I didn’t know mistakes were possible.

I wasn’t studying. I just loved the rules, the nomenclature, the perfect set of beautiful, infallible recipes. It was a game where nothing could go wrong. There were known parameters. The motions of the mind step-by-step evolving with clarity. Impossible to get lost.

My father was a special kind of psychologist, he was into organizational behavior with an edge on the study of higher intelligence. Even more specific than that: he cared about the interaction between personality and intelligence with the goal of explaining and improving efficiency at the organization’s executive level. That was his exact field of research.

Elitist?

No. He was too much of an ass-hole for that appellation. Look, when I went all the way to his office to proudly announce to him I had been selected for a fancy math contest to be given nation-wide to top students, he went “Heeuu…” and didn’t even look at me, mismanaging, fumbling some papers on his desk. He didn’t reply, barely mumbling something about being late for dinner.

I mean, if at a respected university the guy in charge of superior IQs is not impressed, why should I be?

So, you see, sweet one, I was an idiot and so was he. I can’t help thinking that one word of support, something kind, a tiny smile of pride, a look of praise even, would have perhaps suffice to change my life.

Consider the facts: One minute I'm good for the nut house, the next I'm invited to check my abilities in a club for smart kids. If that isn't perfectly in line with his professional concerns, then what is? Let's forget him as a father for an instant. Let's just look at the situation from the point-of-view of an excellent case study

He missed out on that one. Thoroughly.

So unconcerned was he, that the day of the competition came and went, and he never inquired about what had happened.

I still find it sad, honey.

I had changed my mind about attending the test, but at the last minute decided to show up, not a clue about what to expect. I finished somewhere in the middle, result-wise, nothing to brag about. Got screwed, I know, by algebra, which would have required beforehand some serious reviewing.

To this day, I’m proud of one thing only. That morning, I got up early and made it to the test venue without being late. True, hadn’t brought any pencils with me, had to borrow some, and had no ruler either. Hadn’t planned anything.

I kept thinking instead that nobody at home when I left had asked me where I was going. Had my priorities wrong, see. And I didn’t know it.

Here’s a revelation: I never finished high-school, baby. Your Laolao dropped-out. I eventually registered for the final exams. Passed. That was it. Kind of plain and depressing.

Instead of going to class, I spent entire days bumming around downtown in coffee shops and hang-out places where they played Bob Dylan. Do not think I was serene and popular because I knew all the lyrics. Remember what I told you, much void before we bump into a single reliable molecule. On a cosmological scale, matter is rare. As said, scientists these days joggle with the idea that immense oceans of antiparticles are gradually leaving the small islands of matter that exist in the universe. Antiparticles that are simultaneously self-repulsive and matter repulsers. I used to function in a similar way, through my own personal version of space-time, floating on the curvature of the universe, going away, pushing others away, wondering whether my life would eventually reveal itself as nothing more than a mathematical figment.

This mysterious 11th dimension? The quest to unify all matter, all forces? A theory of everything? One idea able to contain all possible representations of the same thing? They say the key is with M-Theory. Answer me, please, anyone, is that M for mother?

Laolao