science

Today's cutting-edge theory—quantum gravity—suggests that even space and time aren't fundamental. They emerge from something deeper: pure information. This information exists in what physicists call a Platonic realm—a mathematical foundation more real than the physical universe we experience. It's from this realm that space and time themselves emerge.

I can't for the life of me find the term, but after going turbo-tism about researching the origins behind Three Body Problem's wacky physics (11-dimension manifold, dimensional unraveling, "Three-and-Three-Hundred-Thousand Syndrome," etc.), I stumbled upon a video postulating that our universe exists to "prop up" this "real" universe. The term that sticks in my head is "corkboard universe" or "anchor universe" but Google finds nothing. Anyway...

The idea is that our universe, and it's 3 dimensions across time, exists to clump things together in gravitational "hotspots" of spacetime. The matter and physics we experience is entirely a byproduct of quantum foam, that itself only creates matter on this side, isolating these 3 dimensions from an entire, larger, fuller universe on the other "side" of the quantum foam made of stuff we would most certainly not call matter, more like weird energy with effects we can't predict or comprehend, all within a much larger dimensionality than our own 3D+T.

This theory is used to explain why String Theory can only postulate higher dimensions as occupying impossibly small spaces in particularly strong regions of spacetime, which are only strong because of the relatively vast swaths of interspersed vacuum between spacetime hotspots (galaxies, mostly, but ESPECIALLY black holes). It's only the transition between low gravity and high gravity that gravity itself has any meaning, much like temperature. Those string universes that String Theory postulates, if real, may be the holes punched through the foam, pulling that real universe into ours at microscoping points. This "anchors" that universe in place, and likely results in some fundamental force on that side "keeping everything together," so to speak. That universe may be the cause of most if not all fundamental forces and constants in our universe, like the speed of light.

So... Basically... We exist as the living scum on the nails holding the corkboard to the wall. If you like. I'm sure the art pinned to the other side is very pretty. I'd hate for it to be a calendar or something boring.