Table Of ContentHIDING IN THE MIRROR
A L S O B Y L A W R E N C E M . K R A U S S
Atom: A Single Oxygen Atom’s Journey from the Big Bang to Life on Earth .
. . and Beyond
Quintessence: The Mystery of the Missing Mass
Beyond Star Trek: From Alien Invasions to the End of Time The Physics of
Star Trek
Fear of Physics: A Guide for the Perplexed
The Fifth Essence: The Search for Dark Matter in the Universe G
HIDING IN THE MIRROR
T H E M Y S T E R I O U S A L L U R E O F E X T R A D I M E N S I O N S ,
F R O M P L AT O T O S T R I N G T H E O R Y A N D B E Y O N D
Lawrence M. Krauss
V I K I N G
VIKING
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Copyright © Lawrence M. Krauss, 2009
All rights reserved
Figure on page 67: Brendan Crill, The Boomerang Collaboration. All other
drawings by the author.
ISBN: 1-4362-9493-2
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For my mother . . . at last!
There is a dimension, beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension
as vast as space and as timeless as infinity.
It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and
superstition, and it lies between the pit of man’s fears and the summit of his
knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination.
—Rod Serling, The Twilight Zone
R E M I N I S C E N C E
A DIMENSIONAL LOVE AFFAIR
Two parents wake in the middle of the night to sounds of their daughter’s
crying out in the distance. The father rushes to her bedroom and finds her
missing. He frantically searches everywhere, slowly com- ing to the grim
realization that she is gone. His wife runs into the room soon afterward,
overcome with panic. At his wit’s end, he dashes out to the living room and
picks up the phone and calls a neighbor. He re- turns to his wife and, in words
that are probably unique in the history of television, tells her:
“Bill’s coming over. He’s a physicist! He ought to be able to help!”
Forty-two years ago, when I was very young, a Twilight Zone episode called
“Little Lost Girl” scared the living daylights out of me. Touching on every child’s
fear of being separated from the safety of parents and home, the episode told
the story of a little girl who falls into another dimension.
When I first thought about writing a book that might focus on our love affair
with extra dimensions, “Little Lost Girl” came immediately to mind, although I
confess I had no memory of the episode’s title or when it aired. After a short bit
of research 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 computer and relived my childhood
trauma. The eerie thing was that I remembered everything about the episode . . .
except for the physicist! But suddenly, upon hearing that line of dialogue, a rush
of memories came flooding back. Of course! The physicist was the hero of the
episode. He came over in the middle of the night, discovered and traced out the
“portal” in the wall through which the small child and her dog had wandered,
guided her father through the gap, and ultimately reached through and saved the
father and the terrified duo moments before this door to another dimension
closed forever.
I now vividly remember (or I think I remember) being struck by how exotic and
powerful Bill the physicist’s knowledge seemed, and how much respect this
knowledge engendered in his frightened neighbor. I, too, wanted one day to be
privy to such secrets, and to explain them. I wanted to be the one whom people
in distress knew they could count on. In short, the physicist-superhero!
Alas, I have been a physicist for over twenty years now, and except for some
students every now and then the night before an exam, no one has sought out
my physics expertise when in distress. Nevertheless, I sometimes wonder if I
write books such as this to fulfill my desire to provide what Bill had offered his
neighbors: insights that physics has revealed about universal human mysteries,
such as from whence we came, and what may lie beyond the darkness of the
night. Some people seek solace through the spirit, but for others it comes
through knowledge. As Rod Serling, the creator of the Twilight Zone, observed in
his weekly introductions beginning in 1959, the human imagination can create
whole universes into which we can travel via the depths of despair or the peaks
of ecstasy. Ultimately our continuing intellectual fascination with extra
dimensions may tell us more about our own human nature than it does about the
universe itself.
We all yearn to discover new realities hidden just out of sight. So much so,
that we have continually reinvented them throughout human history, whenever
the world of our experience has seemed lacking. But this does not necessarily
mean that all of these worlds beyond our direct experience are unreal. There are
scientists today who truly expect to discover the existence of extra dimensions
and perhaps even extra universes in our lifetime. I originally began this book
because I wanted to explore the unique cultural and scientific legacy that has led
to our current fascination with exotic new realms that may lie hidden in the
mirror. But I never guessed that the voyage could be so personal. I now realize
that with seven words heard in a television program some forty-two years ago,
my own future may have been determined.
