Space and the matter in between

Space. The final frontier...

Quite.

The edge of this universe is also the edge of space. Frankly, without the matter in between, there can be no space at all. Space is defined by matter. Actually, space is defined by energy. The notion that space, or space-time for that matter, is somehow a fabric in which mass is dispersed is a little far-fetched. Since space is expanding, it must have been a singularity once - with no space at all, no fabric either. Rather, the fabric of space is being woven by the expanding energy.

The matter in between space is quite something.

It was the year 1989. I was stationed in Pretoria at the South African Air Force Chief of Staff Logistics, doing my national military service. Since I had some time on hand serving God and country under duress of the law, I became fascinated with Schroedinger's wave equation. Well, Schroedinger's equation, as well as statistical thermodynamics that was taught at Master's level in Mechanical Engineering at the Stellenbosch University during my run up that ladder, made an intriguing pair. Threw in Einstein's E=mc^2 and one was tempted into wild thoughts over how all things were composed of the superposition of energy vibrations, a bit like a violin playing a note consisting of a base tone and harmonics.

What really poked my fancy was the perpetual discovery of new subatomic particles, all depending upon how an experiment was set up. It seemed that all these "particles" were hiding in E=mc^2, and realised as superimposed energy wave spectra, a bit like a set of Schroedinger waves superimposed on each other.

And then we had to content with Heisenberg and his frustratingly taunting uncertainty principle. Perhaps, this principle was only valid in the projection of a high-dimensional space onto the 3-D + t with which we had to make do. Perhaps, the universe was build up of ever higher dimensions like the complex plane on one axis and another dimension on the other of a Cartesian plane, recursively for several iterations.

I ran out of physics knowledge and mathematical steam long before my wild thoughts ran out. So, I tried to convince a physicist at the CSIR in Pretoria where I did my national service as an engineer. But she had little stomach for my silly ideas.

Shortly after, the father of a university friend of mine handed me a popular article on a possible fifth dimension to the universe, having heard my ideas on dimensionality of matter. It was interesting but a bit odd, not quite what I was contemplating. So, I buried my thoughts and only dusted them off at the odd gathering in a pub over several beers, but not too often lest I would never be joined in a pub ever again.

And then came the outburst of string theory - at least, it crossed into my awareness. A brother-in-arms during my Ph.D onslaught first mentioned the theory to me after one of my rambles. Interesting, I thought. Sounded familiar and infinitely more exact and elaborate than my musings of yesteryear.

Verily it is said in science: He who wins the race to the publisher, wins the prize.