If occasional brushes with relativity theory, quantum mechanics and similar concepts have made your head spin--quick now, is it fermions or bosons that occupy the same space?--you won't be pleased to hear that the most talked-about new idea in physics, "superstring" theory, makes Einstein seem like whistlin' Dixie.
Superstring theory posits there are at least 10 and perhaps 26 invisible dimensions crammed into every particle of your body, folded up to unimaginable smallness, and that from such structures, reality is composed. The invisible dimensions have no mass, but by spinning incredibly fast, they impart the qualities of mass to larger things such as protons and electrons. Thus, the universe is ultimately made of spinning nothing locked up in weird miniature dimensions that are wholly real, yet cannot be detected by any instrument, not even the largest and most powerful particle accelerator or "atom smasher."
More on superstring theory in a moment, but first let's make a parallel between it and theology. Einstein's General Theory of Relativity was considered strange when proposed, but it had testable elements. The theory predicted that there would be black holes, that some distant starlight would arrive at Earth "bent," and that the universe might be expanding. When the existence of black holes, bent starlight and cosmic expansion were confirmed, relativity theory became grounded in the observed. Quantum mechanics, in turn, predicted that subatomic particles would exhibit counterintuitive properties, such as the ability to hold energy only in discrete amounts--say, in units or one or two, but never one-and-a-half. When atom smashers found exactly those properties, quantum theory became an observed effect.
Of course since faith in one type of invisible dimension, the spirit, is loaded with value judgments, while faith in the superstring dimensions is just physics, reactions to the two vary widely. When superstring theory was first proposed in the 1980s, it won almost instant academic and media embrace. Many newspapers gushed over the news in their excited (if nearly incomprehensible) stories, while Time magazine named Ed Witten of Princeton, the first prominent superstring thinker, one of the "leading minds of his generation." If a member of the clergy had expounded on the reality of an invisible spiritual dimension in the same faculty lounges and media editorial meetings where the notion of a cornucopia of invisible dimensions was accepted with perfect equanimity, the clergyperson would have been dismissed as believing a kooky mythical idea.
Now back to superstring theory. The idea arose because Einstein's relativity laws, which are observed to work on the grand scale of the cosmos, and quantum mechanical explanations, which are observed to work on the infinitesimal scale of the inner atom, wipe each other out when they merge. We can skip the techno-details here, but suffice to say that relativity appears to govern very large things but break down at the level of the small; quantum mechanics appear to govern very small things but break down at the level of the large. A related problem is that quantum explanations of subatomic behavior work only if you (essentially) assume there is no gravity, and that's obviously not right.
The hidden superstrings, these thinkers went on, are the ultimate stuff of existence, forming us from the void by their tireless (and pretty much unexplained) rapid spinning, which surrounds each mass-less string with a sort of wall. The folded-up dimensions are at once incomprehensibly little, yet bulwarks; what they are is so alien to our existence that we'll never know, but add them all up like ingredients and you get solid matter.
Some scientists see superstring ideas as slight of hand or even hooey; priests of the middle ages, the theory's opponents are fond of pointing out, tried to explain forces of nature using mumbo-jumbo about the invisible too. But many physicists like superstring thinking, because it offers at least a conceptual explanation for one of the greatest of all questions: Why is there anything, instead of nothing?
What is haunting about the juxtaposition of superstring theory and theology is that both describe the unseen as ultimately responsible for our being. Maybe superstrings are real but arise wholly from natural forces; maybe they are real and were made by God; maybe the idea will be discarded. At any rate, hundreds of advanced physicists now believe that invisible planes of existence are everywhere around us, maybe by the dozens. Is it so hard, in that context, to believe there is one real but invisible plane of the spirit?