a multidimensional journey

Here’s a little blast form the past. Some of you might remember this video by author and music composer Rob Bryanton. Starting with the simplest ideas of coordinates, points and dimensions, it takes viewers through the basic ideas of string theory and modern quantum physics without going too deep into all the complicated equations.

As you watch the video though, keep a few important things in mind. String theory and its next of kin, brane theory, are actually a complex set of mathematical formulas intended to explain a wide range of phenomena we don’t quite understand yet. By combining relativity with quantum mechanics, theoreticians behind these theories are trying to develop what’s known as a unified theory of everything, a feat that Albert Einstein and his colleagues couldn’t accomplish because the emergent discipline of quantum physics shook up the predominant ideas about the forces governing the subatomic world.

Now, because string and brane theories are based almost entirely on math, there are still quite a few debatable points. In the video, Bryanton takes on time travel and alternative timelines via the fourth and fifth dimensions. However, while we know that that laws of physics don’t prevent time travel per se, we don’t know if the time travel options being described here are feasible at all. You might be able to jump through the timeline, but to jump between future possibilities is a far more complicated task, requiring a whole different universe and an accessible pathway to it. And that leads us to another problem. How exactly do we test traveling between universes or whether other universes exist?