Please correct me if I am wrong but wasn't it Einstein that said time was a creation, a persistant illusion? If you will permit me to be a little metaphysical, I would like to think that the other strings we cannot see are dimensions of the spiritual - angels, demons, our spirit. Since God spoke the world into being (see Genesis 1) would it not also make sense that he controls events in all dimensions through sound? These filaments (strings) are sound in particle form, correct? Another analogy I like to think about is that we are dancing on the strings of God's violin. So to get back to my idea, if time is created but does not seem to apply to God or the spiritual world, then it would make sense to me that time is only one dimension - one that we can sense. What do you think?
"Whereof we cannot speak thereof we must remain silent."
Wittgestein's excellent, and timeless, advice.
Einstein said that "Reality is an illusion, albeit a very persistent one."
And you are right on target with the observation that space/time is created as the universe expands. It doesn't pre-exist. Space/time are not separate in the math, i.e. time is geometric.
And the point you raise about harmonics is at the root of the physical realm whether looking at string theory or quantum field theory. The strings are not however in particle form, they are the structure (the geometry) of the harmonics.
What we sense as time passing is often called an arrow of time or a timeline. In relativity it may be called a worldline. But time to us at these space/time coordinates of the universe are not the same as it would be to someone elsewhere.
For instance, on a black hole a week might elapse while on earth it would be 40 years. Here is a great website with graphics and animations to help explain special relativity: The Space/time Wheel. Be sure and check out the chart at the bottom and then start with the postulates at the top menu and browse through the graphics. It is a beautiful presentation!
When I first read the following article, the Scriptures about God speaking it all into being welled up inside of me!
The MAXIMA, BOOMERANG, and DASI collaborations, which measure minute variations in the CMB, recently reported new results at the American Physical Society meeting in Washington, D.C. All three agree remarkably about what the “harmonic proportions” of the cosmos imply: not only is the universe flat, but its structure is definitely due to inflation, not to topological defects in the early universe.
The results were presented as plots of slight temperature variations in the CMB that graph sound waves in the dense early universe. These high-resolution “power spectra” show not only a strong primary resonance but are consistent with two additional harmonics, or peaks.
The peaks indicate harmonics in the sound waves that filled the early, dense universe. Until some 300,000 years after the Big Bang, the universe was so hot that matter and radiation were entangled in a kind of soup in which sound waves (pressure waves) could vibrate. The CMB is a relic of the moment when the universe had cooled enough so that photons could "decouple" from electrons, protons, and neutrons; then atoms formed and light went on its way.
Actually Thermopylae, I think you are on to something there....
Have you read much C.S. Lewis or Tolkien??? Both men have the universe being created by "song." I can't remember how Tolkien described it (I believe the description is in "The Silmarillion"), but C.S. Lewis, in one of his Narnia tales, has Anslan the Lion "singing" everything into being.
It's amazing how science is never able to contradict anything in the Bible, but often confirms some of those things taken as being the most unbelievable.