if you have various objects in space, what does space look like?

How does the

universe evolve? I mean, cosmology has turned into a science since the time of
Einstein. I mean, before that people had ideas about the universe. And you'll often
see people refer back to the same notions that occurred earlier. But really, it's now
a scientific theory. So it's true. There were tremendous breakthroughs in the last
century. But if you know what the universe is made of, that's going to tell you how,
to some extent, how it evolves. And if you know how it evolves that gives you
constraints on what it's made of. So it's not like there's one field of physics and you
can do it in complete isolation from another one. I mean, part of what makes the
field rich and enjoyable for me is that you can ask questions not just about
elementary particles, but also about cosmology. And when you begin to think
about ideas about the whole global nature of space-time, you can't help but think
about cosmology as well.
You're now doing or rewriting a book called Warped Passages: Unravelling The
Mysteries of the Universe's Hidden Dimensions. I love three words there one,
unraveling the mysteries and secondly, hidden dimensions. What are you trying to
find out? What is it you want to tell us that we're going to be amazed by? If it
proved right.
We're really trying to understand, it sounds very vague, but what is the
fundamental nature of matter and forces? What are the fundamental forces? And
why are they related in the way they are? So we're trying to understand more about
gravity. For example, why is gravity so much weaker than all the other elementary
forces we know about, that is to say, the three other elementary forces we know
about, electromagnetism and weak and strong nuclear forces. Gravity is far
weaker. I mean, if you think about it, you can pick up a paperclip with a tiny
magnet competing against the entire earth. And the fact that you can jump up and
down I mean, gravity is not a strong force, although it dominates things. It's only
because there's big massive objects.
Is it only, is not a strong force where we are, it might be a strong force somewhere
else?
Yeah. So there's a question of how it manifests itself. And if there's a big energetic
object, it seems strong. But if you took two elementary particles and compare the
force of electromagnetism, and force of gravity, I mean, gravity is negligible. You
don't even have to consider it, you throw it away. But why is that? Why is gravity
so much weaker? And as for particle physicist, it's even more mysterious than just
why is it so much weaker? If you natively just sat down and calculated how you
expect the forces to be related, you would think that those forces should be about
the same strength. So there's a big question that particle physicists have is, why is
gravity so much weaker than the other forces? And so that's one question we have.
But we have other questions too, what is the fundamental nature of gravity?
Ultimately, we do want to know, what's a quantum theory of gravity that combines
it with quantum mechanics, we want to understand what the universe is made of
what is the dark matter? What is the dark energy that's not carried by matter? So
there are some pretty big questions that are driving us.
Okay, this multiple dimensions idea. I think even Einstein said there were four
dimensions, and then String's theories came along and said there are 10
dimensions.
Yeah, String theorists seem to think that there are at least 10 dimensions.
And how many do you think there are?
I'd like to leave it an open question. I like to say, what have we measured? What do
we know? And could there be other dimensions out there? And there certainly
could be other dimensions out there, it might be 10 or 11 space-time dimensions as
String theorists tell us now. So why is it that physicists today are really thinking
about extra dimensions? Well, one of the reasons is that we think it might actually
have something to do with our universe, I mean, that's I think for me the most
important reason. But another reason is in fact, String theory. And it's introduced
the idea that maybe dimensions really are there because that's the only way the
theory makes sense. But string theory has also introduced something else. In the
1990s a physicist Joe Polchinski realized that there were these other objects in the
context of String theory called "brains". [laughter]

That word is sort of related to membrane and the idea is that there could be, even if
you have higher dimensions, even if you have a fifth spatial dimension or fourth
spatial dimension out there. There could be objects in the universe called "Brains"
that don't spread throughout the entire universe. And maybe stuff is stuck on those
lower-dimensional surfaces, and that's one idea that we got very excited about