The Elegant Universe. Welcome to the 11th Dimension

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Description

String theory calls for at least ten dimensions in order for its rather abstruse mathematics to remain consistent. However, in 1995, Edward Witten of Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study, revolutionized string theory by successfully uniting the five different versions into a single theory, cryptically named "M-theory". It was a development requiring a total of eleven dimensions. In this program, we explore how this new dimension is different from all the others, as it implies that strings can come in higher dimensional shapes called membranes, or "branes" for short. Having truly science-fiction-like qualities, branes can be as large as the universe - or even present as a parallel universe - one we may be living on one right now. It is one of the most startling views at our existence through the curious lens of physics.