The clock on the wall ticked away.
For the past hour, Frank Wilczek had remained in the same position, staring motionlessly at the image on his computer screen.
Just then, the office door opened.
Seeing Witten enter, Professor Wilczek, who had been sitting there like a statue, finally raised his head an inch. But before he could speak, Witten beat him to it.
"I know you want to ask what Professor Lu thinks, but I'm afraid I'll have to disappoint you. Apart from a conjecture about extra dimensions, he didn't tell me anything."
Hearing an unexpected term, Wilczek frowned.
"Extra dimensions?"
In fact, extra dimensions were hardly a new concept. Any dimensions added by modifying Einstein's equations of relativity could be called extra dimensions.
It was just like when Theodor Kaluza added a fifth dimension to explain gravity. Thanks to string theory, that value of n had already risen to thirteen.
What puzzled Wilczek, however, was why Witten-or rather, Lu Zhou-had singled out this concept.
"Yes. He attributes this mass expansion phenomenon to some sort of existence that can neither be proven nor disproven." Looking at the confusion written all over Wilczek's face, Witten took a lighter out of his pocket and placed it on the desk. "Suppose the universe consists of matter in n dimensions, like this lighter."
"And the disturbance interfering with our experiment comes from dimension n+1, like this thumb of mine pressing the lighter's switch. Of course, that analogy might be a little crude. In reality, it could be something more poetic. For instance... an omnipotent God lives in dimension n+1. Watching us imprisoned in a box, it sings us a beautiful song."
His brows tightly furrowed, Wilczek watched Witten click the lighter and murmured to himself.
"That sounds... rather interesting."
Putting the lighter away, Witten