All right, this one is obscure, but interesting nevertheless. String theory, is it true? Do you have to be an atheist to believe it? The answers to both of these questions is a resounding “No.” To the first one especially because string theory (M Theory) is a THEORY. So it isn’t necessarily true, nor is it untrue … And to the second one, you do not have to be an atheist to believe it either. Trust me on this one, I’m an Anglican Christian and while I’m not fully aboard the string theory bandwagon, I do think it holds some validity. So, let’s get into this very elementary explanation of one of the most complicated ideas in history.

Interstellar was a great movie. The scene in which the University of Texas’ very own (RIP to that football program) Matthew McConaughey was communicating with his daughter through manipulating string particles from the future might be one of the most curiosity-invoking scenes for me personally. Obviously it’s a very “Hollywood” concept, but it’s a cool one at that. Perhaps the most intriguing part of this specific scene is the depiction of time as different compartments in a single structural complex. Time is depicted as a physical location. Even in the movie, astronaut Amelia Brand talks about creatures living in the fifth dimension as being able to walk to the future as if it were on the top of a hill and to walk back to the past as if it were at the bottom of a valley behind them. What if this were true? What if there existed a plane where time was a physical location? Well, it might actually be true. It isn’t proven but it is a theory and a well-adopted one at that.

So what is M theory? Essentially, life is lived on planes, also called dimensions. Each plane holds a perception. We live on the X, Y and Z plane, with the plane “t” for “time” being our fourth dimension. On these four dimensions we can perceive ‘up-down’ motion (Y), ‘side-side’ (X), ‘front-back’ (Z), and time. For creatures who live in only two dimensions, X and Y, they cannot perceive anything moving on the Z-axis. As for creatures who live only on the X-axis, they cannot perceive anything that moves on any other axis. Follow me here. So if you live on all four dimensions, like a human does, you can perceive those four just fine … but what about the fifth? That’s where it gets interesting. Imagine a scenario in which there are beings who live in five dimensions. Albert Einstein, who balanced religion with science, thought that time was the fourth dimension and that creatures living in five could observe time. The concept that we, as humans, are slaves to. If M Theory is valid, then Interstellar’s Amelia Brand was right. There may be a universe where time is just a path. Where it’s malleable. And if that universe exists, we’re in it, we just can’t see all of it. Not only that, if this fifth dimension exists, then so do six more.

String theory proposes the idea of eleven dimensions, and we can only fathom four of them. One more thing — nobody has said that creatures from the fifth dimension cannot visit the fourth. This could explain ghost sightings, alien encounters or any supernatural experiences. So next time you see something peculiar,  immensely peculiar, more peculiar than the idea of a Big 10 team winning the college football playoff, maybe it’s just somebody from one of the dimensions above you paying you a little visit.