Lawrence Krauss - Hiding in the Mirror: The Quest for Alternate Realities, from Plato to String Theory (by way of Alicein Wonderland, Einstein, and The Twilight Zone)

A DIMENSIONAL LOVEAFFAIR

Two parents wake in themiddle of the night to sounds of theirdaughters crying out in the distance. The father rushesto her bedroomand nds her missing. Hefrantically searches everywhere, slowly com-ing to the grim realization that she is gone. His wiferuns into the roomsoon afterward, overcomewith panic. At his wits end, he dashes outto the living room and picks up the phone and calls aneighbor. He re-turns to his wife and, inwords that are probably unique in the historyof television, tells her:

Bills coming over. Hes aphysicist! He ought to be able to help!

Forty-two years ago,when I was very young, a Twilight Zoneepisode called Little Lost Girl scared the living daylights outof me. Touching on every childs fear of being separated from thesafety of parents and home, the episode told the story of a littlegirl who falls into another dimension.

When I rst thought about writing a book thatmight focus on our love affair with extra dimensions, Little LostGirl came immediately to mind, although I confess I had no memoryof the episodes title or when it aired. After a short bit ofresearch on the Web, I was able to locate it, and a few days later,along with forty-two other episodes I had to buy in a Twi-light Zone boxed set,it arrived at my door.

That night I placed the DVD into my computerand relived my childhood trauma. The eerie thing was that Iremembered everything about the episode... except for the physicist! But suddenly, upon hearingthat line of dialogue, a rush of memories came ooding back. Ofcourse! The physicist was the hero of the episode. He came over inthe middle of the night, discovered and traced out the portal inthe wall through which the small child and her dog had wandered,guided her father through the gap, and ultimately reached throughand saved the father and the terried duo moments before this doorto another dimension closed forever.

I now vividly remember (or I think I remember)being struck by how exotic and powerful Bill the physicistsknowledge seemed, and how much respect this knowledge engendered inhis frightened neighbor. I, too, wanted one day to be privy to suchsecrets, and to explain them. I wanted to be the one whom people indistress knew they could count on. In short, thephysicist-superhero!

Alas, I have been a physicist for over twentyyears now, and except for some students every now and then thenight before an exam, no one has sought out my physics expertisewhen in distress. Nevertheless, I sometimes wonder if I write bookssuch as this to fulll my desire to provide what Bill had offeredhis neighbors: insights that physics has revealed about universalhuman mysteries, such as from whence we came, and what may liebeyond the darkness of the night. Some people seek solace throughthe spirit, but for others it comes through knowledge. As RodSerling, the creator of the Twilight Zone,observed in his weekly introductions beginning in 1959, the humanimagination can create whole universes into which we can travel viathe depths of despair or the peaks of ecstasy. Ultimately ourcontinuing intellectual fascination with extra dimensions may tellus more about our own human nature than it does about the universeitself.

We all yearn to discover new realities hiddenjust out of sight. So much so, that we have continually reinventedthem throughout human history, whenever the world of our experiencehas seemed lacking. But this does not necessarily mean that all ofthese worlds beyond our direct experience are unreal. There arescientists today who truly expect to discover the existence ofextra dimensions and perhaps even extra universes in our lifetime.I originally began this book because I wanted to explore the uniquecultural and scientic legacy that has led to our currentfascination with exotic new realms that may lie hidden in themirror. But I never guessed that the voyage could be so personal. Inow realize that with seven words heard in a television programsome forty-two years ago, my own future may have beendetermined.