A couple of weeks ago, I watched Donnie Darko again for fun. It led me to read about time-travel paradoxes, which led me to theories of parallel universes which led me to string theory, which is apparently gaining acceptance by physicists and posits the existence of parallel universes (real ones!). In order to learn more without adding another book to my reading list, I ordered the Nova special series The Elegant Universe on DVD.

Although the documentary is sometimes really dumbed down, the animations are evocative and beautiful, the production value is excellent and the subject matter, nothing less than fascinating. Explaining something as esoteric as string theory, which says that there are 11 dimensions and that everything is made up of vibrating strings of energy, to the general public, is no small feat. Although I felt a little condescended to at first, by the end of the three 1-hour episodes I had brain sprain, and was glad the documentary was holding my hand as it was.

Wrap your head around these concepts for size: gravity may not stick well to our universe, and possibly seeps off into parallel ones. Our universe may exist on a membrane parallel to many others, and may have been empty until a collision with a neighbor transferred matter to our universe at the collision point. That’s why at the Big Bang, lots of stuff materialized out of nothing.

A fun way to spend a couple of hours getting smarter.