Imagine This

Illustration by Moonrunner Design

If you could stand outside our universe in a higher dimension, cosmic history might look something like this: The Big Bang was a hot spot on a rippled, three-dimensional membrane (left), which eventually stretched and cooled (middle) into our modern universe (right).

One of the great questions of human existence is whether we are smart enough to figure out how our own brains work. But there’s a related question that may be even more fascinating: Are we intelligent enough to figure out how the universe works?

Now, more than any time since Albert Einstein introduced his special theory of relativity 99 years ago, we face a comprehension problem that stretches the limits of human imagination. Einstein asked us to contemplate how a person traveling away from Earth at nearly the speed of light would experience the passage of time. His answer still seems shocking. The idea that an astronaut could return to Earth after a 30-year voyage to find that all his friends had grown old while he remained youthful warps our sense of what is real. Nonetheless, comprehending the effects of special relativity is easy compared with what you will face on the next eight pages of this magazine. In our cover story, we challenge you to wrap your mind around the idea that another universe exists in a three-dimensional membrane located about the distance of a proton away from the one you live in.


Don’t try looking for this universe: It exists in a direction that is incomprehensible to us because it lies in a dimension—one of 10 or so defined by a radical physics concept called string theory—that humans are able to describe only through mathematical models.

To help you make the leap to higher dimensions, Discover has forgone its dedication to showing you science through photography. We would love to show you a photograph of another universe’s membrane, but of course we wouldn’t have any idea where to point the camera. Instead we’ve enlisted the aid of the talented graphic designers at Moonrunner Design, the company responsible for illustrating Stephen Hawking’s enlightening book The Universe in a Nutshell.

We hope Moonrunner’s illustrations allow you to envision a cosmic history that continues forever—making our Big Bang just one stage in an endless cycle of creation and re-creation. Depicting a multidimensional universe on a two-dimensional page is not easy, so be prepared to unlock your imagination. Remember that humans have a history of communicating complex ideas through drawings, a history that goes back tens of thousands of years. You may need that comfort as you confound your brain with concepts that reach the limits of understanding.