M theory is an attempt at the unified theory of everything (ToE) based from string theory / is string theory. The notion of the universe as strings presents itself in five different theories. Edward Witten blew the world away when he showed that all five theories were just different faces of the same theory. The combination of these theories is M theory. Superstring Theory.

String theory posits that the basic building block of the universe-the smallest unit of existence-is a vibrating string of energry. It is unclear if the string is a loop or a strand, but if M theory is correct, the string would be in a Calabri-Yau shape which has this two dimensional string on a six dimensional plane supplemental to our own four dimensions (three spatial, one time).

By being creatures only observant of these four dimensions, it's very difficult to imagine dimensions we don't noticably experience. It's like trying to imagine a color that our eyes can't see. What would this color be? Blueish, greenish, unimaginable-ish?

However, to get a little perspective, imagine a hypercube. Draw a three-dimensional box on a peice of paper. Now, draw another three-dimensional box within the previos box. Now, you're staring at a four-dimensional box. A hypercube. If string theory is correct, our universe is similar to this drawing. Our universe as we exeperience it is the large box and we can move freely through it regardless of the smaller box. We never really experience this smaller box directly, and in our universe is only noticable at extremely small scales (a billion times smaller than an atom).

M theory also posits that these strings may leave behind a membrane as they vibrate and articulate through six dimensions. This creates a somewhat tube-like effect. And it is possible with the energy and expansion created at the onset of the big bang that there was sufficient energy to potentially create and expand a single string into an infinitely large loop of energy with it's encasing membrane. That is to say that all of the unverse..all of existence could potentially be held within the space of a single string (unfathomably expanded, but still a single string). Thus, creating another dimension and making string theory postulate a total of eleven dimensions.

This Calabri-Yau shape is six dimensions folded over on themselves into something like a ball. This string..this loop of energy..is theoretically impossible to probe. Probing requires energy. The smaller the scale, the more energy required to probe it. It would theoretically take all the energy of the universe to probe deeper than the Planck length (10 to the -27th I think? Ten times one tenth twenty-seven times over). Another words, if this is true..the smallness of our universe would finally be answered-which would make answering the grandness of the universe easier to find.

Oddly, our normal manner of distance measuring breaks down in to nonsensical gibberish at sizes smaller than that of the Planck length. However, our universe comes with two manners of measurement and the other manner is pointless to use at the normal distances we generally deal with. However, this other form of measurement is capable of mathematically breaching the Planck length..but something odd happens. The further it pobes..the larger the distance becomes. So as we probe smaller with one method of measuring..the other manner produces larger and larger measuerments. And yet this is reversed when we use normal measurements for the macrouniverse (the larger universe) or the alternate method of measuring. As we probe larger...it comes back smaller. Our universe is either relentlessly massive-as is the common thought-or....unfathomably small.

If our universe is within a single super-expanded string and it's membrane...there may not be a manner to probe outside of it. Potentially, we may be within the Planck length of another universe outside and more massive than our own. It would take all the energy of our own universe, then, to probe outside of it. If this is true...our universe has a definition of size. It is not infinite. However, what is outside of it..is infinite. As well as what is INSIDE our universe could be infinite.

Despite that the borders of our universe could be defined. we must remember that if we are a universe inside a string...that our universe also contains strings which, too, could contain universes of their own with universes within them and so on and so forth. How infinite is life? It is very likely we may never know.

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