Wolff’s theory works, he’ll be hailed as one of the greatest minds of all time.’
70
August 4
On an unusually cool, clear summer morning, Elli Vital wept quietly as Reverend Bothe of the Dexter Lutheran Church said a final prayer. In addition to Johann Wolff’s fiancee and the family of his friend Martin Kilkenny, the President of the University of Michigan and several members of the Department of Physics were present to pay their respects. Photographers and video crews kept a polite distance from the gravesite, their long telephoto lenses allowing them to get their pictures of the slain physicist’s memorial service.
Bothe closed his prayer book and walked around to where Elli sat with Martin and Audrey Kilkenny. ‘Ms Vital, I just wanted to express my deepest sympathies to you.’
‘Thank you,’ Elli replied softly.
Martin drew Bothe aside. ‘Reverend, you did a fine job. I appreciate your doing this for us, even though none of us are in your flock.’
‘When Father Walsh called and explained that Johann Wolff was a Lutheran, well, how could I refuse?’
‘Walsh’s right. You’re a good man, for a Lutheran.’
Bothe laughed, and pumped Martin’s hand warmly, then walked back toward his car.
‘Nolan,’ Elli called out. ‘Could you give me a hand?’
‘Sure. I’ve still got one good one left.’
Elli stood and slipped her left arm through Nolan’s right, bracing her elbow in his.
‘Kelsey, you don’t mind if I steal him away for a moment? I need to have a word with him.’
‘Just as long as you return him.’
Elli led Nolan up to the headstone, where she paused for a moment. The marker bore both her name and Wolff’s. When death finally came for her, this was where she wanted to be laid to rest.
‘It’s a strange thing to see your own name on a grave marker,’ she said. ‘But reassuring, in a way.’
They walked past a few more rows of headstones until they were well out of earshot of the small group of people milling around Wolff’s grave. Elli pulled her arm free and turned to face Nolan.
‘I wanted to thank you for everything you’ve done for me, and for Johann.’
‘I’m just glad that both you and my grandparents lived to learn the truth.’
‘It is a comfort.’ Elli sighed, then held up her left hand. ‘On the night before he was murdered, Johann proposed to me and gave me this ring. It was a symbol of his promise to love me always. As you know, Johann and I never married. Now I am an old woman. This is an engagement ring, and nothing would please me more than to see it used for its intended purpose. Unfortunately, I have no children of my own to pass it on to. Kelsey and I went through quite an ordeal together, one that I was uncertain we would survive. I would like her to have this ring – I believe she would appreciate it on many levels – but it’s a gentleman’s place to offer such a gift.’
Elli carefully slipped the ring from her finger and offered it to Nolan.
Nolan eyed the gold band carefully. ‘Do you think Johann would mind?’
‘If your heart, your mind, and your soul support the promise of that ring, then I know he would be pleased.’
Following dinner at Martin and Audrey’s house, Nolan and Kelsey took a walk down by the small spring-fed lake. The evening sky burned with an orange-red glow, and the lake’s surface mirrored the unearthly blaze. They walked side by side, each with an arm wrapped around the other’s back.
‘You know, Kelsey, I’ve been thinking about something.’
‘Yes,’ she said coyly.
‘When you and Elli were taken hostage, your kidnappers sent me a video clip to show that you both were unharmed.’
‘I remember,’ she replied, not at all sure where this was leading.
‘In that clip, I saw that you were wearing what I assumed was Elli’s ring.’ ‘I was hoping you’d notice.’
‘I knew you were trying to send me a message. Actually, you sent two.’
‘Two? What message did you get besides the obvious ‘I’ve got Elli’s ring, please get us out of here’ message?’
‘This one.’
Nolan pulled away from Kelsey and turned to face her.
‘Kelsey, will you marry me?’
‘Are you serious?’
Nolan pulled the ring Elli had given him from his pocket and held it in his fingertips. Kelsey held out her left hand, and he carefully slipped the band onto her ring finger. Then he wrapped his hand around hers.
‘When I saw this ring on your finger and thought about the very real possibility that I might lose you, I knew that when I got you back, I would ask you to marry me. I love you and want to spend the rest of my life with you. Will you marry me?’
Kelsey drew close and gently pressed her lips to his. She then withdrew, but only an inch.
‘Yes.’
A Note to the Reader
Johann Wolff’s vision of tiny, one-dimensional loops – filaments whose vibrations and oscillations define both matter and energy – is not the product of my imagination. String theory is a very real scientific frontier, one being explored by a handful of physicists in search of a better way to describe how the universe works. I am not ashamed to admit to possessing only a layman’s understanding of string theory. Fewer than a thousand scientists have waded into the depths of this young theory to explore its mysteries, and what they’ve found so far is both frighteningly complex and extraordinarily beautiful.
To understand string theory, you need a little background. Isaac Newton observed apples falling and planets orbiting and set out to write a mathematical description of these actions. He didn’t have a clue how gravity worked, but he realized that it always worked the same way. The rules of gravity were too much for the math of Newton’s day, so he developed new techniques and laid the foundations for modern calculus.
Newton’s description worked just fine until the 1800s, when scientists working with electricity and magnetism, both of which move very fast, discovered some problems. This troubling situation festered until the early 1900s, when Albert Einstein wrote a better theory of how gravity worked. In Einstein’s description, time could go fast or slow, the curved space of the universe was expanding, and energy and matter were intimately connected (E=mc ^ 2).
Einstein’s description (general relativity) works very well for studying the big stuff: stars, galaxies, black holes, and the entire universe itself. Where it’s not so useful is where things get really small, deep inside the atom.
Split an atom and you’ll find it’s made of protons, neutrons, and electrons. Smashing these particles yields a collection of quarks, muons, and neutrinos. The rules for how these particles interact, forming what we experience as matter and energy, were painstakingly revealed by many physicists during the twentieth century. Collectively, these rules are known as quantum mechanics.
Nearly all of the predictions made by general relativity and quantum mechanics have been proven with startling accuracy. The breakneck pace of technological advances during the past fifty years is, in part, a testament to the value of these two theories. There’s just one problem: as they are currently written, general relativity and quantum mechanics don’t mesh.
In Hollywood, when movie moguls find a problem with the script, they call for a rewrite. The same is true in physics. String theory is a rewrite that seamlessly incorporates the rules of the big stuff and the small in a way that changes our understanding of how the universe works. And like the two systems it hopes to replace, string theory reveals some unexpected surprises.
One facet of string theory that seems really out there is the idea that we live in an eleven-dimensional
