Image by Bharat Siddam from Pixabay
“See, this is what Grandma was saying to Papa,” eleven-year-old Eleanor Ludlow said to her ten-year-old brother Andrew when he came to offer her some of the snacks their neighbor Mr. Stepforth was making. “You can read so far above grade level that you find out stuff you may not be ready to know.”
Andrew looked at the book his sister was reading.
“Well, the good thing is, string theory is really above everybody's grade level,” he said.
“Andy,” she said, “if this stuff is right, there are so many other universes and dimensions out here that we can't even count them.”
He handed his sister the plate and then looked at what she was looking at.
“Oop,” he said. “That is kinda deep, especially since the world seems to be struggling in the dimensions we already know about.”
“Andy, can you imagine the people mishandling the world as we have it now getting all the way up into the 11th dimension and messing with stuff?”
“It's actually too late,” he said, “because there's this guy named Ronald Graham who was trying to figure out how many dimensions a cube must live in before you get the same colors on a certain number of sides. The lower bound is 13.”
“Yikes,” Eleanor said.
“That's not the scary part. The scary part is that Mr. Graham figured out the upper bound is a power of 3, but it's kinda big, so that's how many dimensions we are really dealing with.”
“How big is kinda big?” Eleanor said.
“It's so big he only knew the last 500 digits,” Andrew said. “Hold on … here's Mr. Graham explaining how big it is.”
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“See, this is what I'm talking about – people are not going to know what they are doing up there!” Eleanor said. “He seems like a nice person though, like Cousin Harry as an old mathematician.”
Andrew thought about this for a long time, and then –
“Hey, Cousin Harry!”
Col. H.F. Lee was doing some work in the garage, but came out at the call of his cousin.
“How good is your math, Cousin Harry, because we've got a problem in the 11th dimension, and they are doing math out there bigger than that and don't know what their numbers are.”
Col. Lee smiled.
“I see string theory and Graham's Number have been discovered,” he said.
“And it's a whole problem!” Eleanor said. “We've got cubes bigger than the universe with colored sides, and nobody even knows how many sides the thing has!”
Col. Lee thought about this.
“The problem was solved relative to us in Ephesians 1:1-6,” he said. “The Scripture says we have ages to come to live to the praise of the glory of God's grace, and so you figure that there have to be some other universes and dimensions out there somewhere to explore. We'll get to all that later, after He remakes all things in perfection. Bear in mind: quantum physics has already determined that time is laid out from beginning to end, and that also is said in Acts 15:18 … so, eternity is another dimension, and we can think of infinity that contains other infinities in math the same way.”
“Wait, what?” Eleanor and Andrew said.
“In math, there's all the numbers you can count, called the cardinal numbers, and then there's all the ones you can't – numbers that keep things in order are called ordinals. Already, that's two sets of infinities – there's no end to them. Then, there's all the numbers like pi that are not countable – called irrational because we can't make a fraction or ratio out of them. That's a third set. And then there's just all numbers. So, already, without even needing string theory, all kinds of infinity and dimension are all around us.”
Eleanor and Andrew looked at each other.
“OK, we knew you were smart, Cousin Harry, but gee whiz!” Eleanor said.
He smiled.
“I was at the top of my class in mathematics in West Point,” he said, “but I was also single for a long time before meeting your Cousin Maggie. I like things like string theory and Graham's Number too, but I don't worry about them. I have enough to do living in three dimensions, and whatever else there is, the God Who loves me is running it.”
“That's it,” Andrew said. “That's the part we lost track of.”
“Feel free to learn about all of it, without fear,” Col. Lee said. “Theoretical post-doctorate physics are a little rough when you are 11, Eleanor, but, if you can handle it, have at it.”
“Yeah, I'm good for right now and I'm going to go work on some papier-mache,” she said. “Maybe I'll try to just make a regular cube and be satisfied.”
“Or, we can just go get in the Lego pile with Grayson, and be comforted in things making sense for a minute,” Andrew said.
“Yeah, let's do that.”
Col. Lee watched them go inside with a smile, and went back to the work he was doing in the garage.