Though human brains are not wired to picture a world beyond the familiar three dimensions of space, one can begin to overcome this myopia by pretending to be antlike creatures in a two-dimensional fantasy world like the one in Edwin A. Abbott’s story Flatland. Confined to the surface of a plane, the Flatlanders can move left and right or forward or backward, but the idea of up and down is inconceivable to them.
—From an explanation of superstring theory in the Times
PRETEND that you are a barnacle attached to the bottom of a big whaling ship like the one in Moby-Dick. It is very cold and wet and dark where you are, on the underside of the boat. Now imagine that the boat is a speedboat instead, and that you’re its tanned Filipino captain with great abs. You are moving very fast. Still, your drink could use refreshing, and you can’t for the life of you figure out why. This is just like superstring theory, except with boats, and your having great abs.
WALK over to a mirror and stare at your reflection. Now pretend that that reflection no longer resembles you at all. Pretend that your reflection actually more closely resembles the smiling face of Ned Beatty. Now slam your forehead into the mirror three times, hard. You are bleeding. Of course. Superstring theory.
PRETEND that you are Russell Crowe in Gladiator. Find a gladiator costume. Put it on. Engage in swordplay. Slay a tiger with your bare hands and offer it to the Emperor as a sign of respect. Very, very superstring theory.
IMAGINE that you did better on your SATs than you did. A lot better. Now imagine that you smoked, say, a quarter of the pot that you smoked during your sophomore year in college. Now imagine that you never decided to leave school the following summer in order to try your luck with Cirque du Soleil. Finally, imagine that instead you became a Harvard-educated physicist who now often attends conferences in Oslo during the summer months. Imagine that you know Oslo is a city, probably somewhere in Europe, and that you understand all about superstring theory.
CLOSE your eyes and scream as loud as you can. Next, open your eyes and shut your mouth very tight. Think about how one might be able to open one’s eyes and close one’s eyes and shut one’s mouth very tight and scream all at the same time. Now relax and check out a rerun of The Sopranos. Superstring theory is not so tough.
IMAGINE that you have some money in the stock market. What if one day you woke up to find that your stocks had lost 20 percent of their value? And what if the very next day you woke up to find that those same stocks had bounced back? Imagine if you paid attention to all this, but not so much, and still decided to go ahead and buy one of those cool flat-screen TVs. Imagine if that TV showed nothing but new episodes of The Sopranos, and that in one episode one of the show’s delightfully piquant secondary characters explained superstring theory, to you and only you.
FIND a pencil and a five-year-old. Now tell the five-year-old that you’d like to bet him or her five dollars that you can make a pencil bend just by waving it in the air. Place the bet. Then hold the pencil horizontally at one end and move it up and down rapidly, in a sort of wavelike motion. Take your money. Before walking away, explain to the five-year-old that the reason you can make a pencil bend in the air, and are now five dollars richer, is because of a little something called superstring theory, something that he or she might not understand but you do.
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