Why should a net baryon fraction initially of zero be more appealing aesthetically than 10⁻⁹? The underlying motivation here is perhaps the most ambitious undertaking ever attempted in the history of science—the attempt to explain the creation of truly everything from literally nothing. In other words, is the creation of the entire universe from a vacuum possible?

The evidence for such an event lies in another remarkable fact. It can be estimated that the total number of protons in the observable universe is an integer 80 digits long. No one of course knows all 80 digits, but for the argument about to be presented, it suffices only to know that they exist. The total number of electrons in the observable universe is also an integer 80 digits long. In all likelihood these two integers are equal, digit by digit—if not exactly, then very nearly so. This inference comes from the fact that, as far as astronomers can tell, the total electric charge in the universe is zero (otherwise electrostatic forces would overwhelm gravitational forces). Is this another coincidence, or does it represent a deeper connection? The apparent coincidence becomes trivial if the entire universe was created from a vacuum since a vacuum has by definition zero electric charge. It is a truism that one cannot get something for nothing. The interesting question is whether one can get everything for nothing. Clearly, this is a very speculative topic for scientific investigation, and the ultimate answer depends on a sophisticated interpretation of what “nothing” means.

The words “nothing,” “void,” and “vacuum” usually suggest uninteresting empty space. To modern quantum physicists, however, the vacuum has turned out to be rich with complex and unexpected behaviour. They envisage it as a state of minimum energy where quantum fluctuations, consistent with the uncertainty principle of the German physicist Werner Heisenberg, can lead to the temporary formation of particle-antiparticle pairs. In flat space-time, destruction follows closely upon creation (the pairs are said to be virtual) because there is no source of energy to give the pair permanent existence. All the known forces of nature acting between a particle and antiparticle are attractive and will pull the pair together to annihilate one another. In the expanding space-time of the very early universe, however, particles and antiparticles may separate and become part of the observable world. In other words, sharply curved space-time can give rise to the creation of real pairs with positive mass-energy, a fact first demonstrated in the context of black holes by the English astrophysicist Stephen W. Hawking.

Yet Einstein’s picture of gravitation is that the curvature of space-time itself is a consequence of mass-energy. Now, if curved space-time is needed to give birth to mass-energy and if mass-energy is needed to give birth to curved space-time, which came first, space-time or mass-energy? The suggestion that they both rose from something still more fundamental raises a new question: What is more fundamental than space-time and mass-energy? What can give rise to both mass-energy and space-time? No one knows the answer to this question, and perhaps some would argue that the answer is not to be sought within the boundaries of natural science.

Hawking and the American cosmologist James B. Hartle have proposed that it may be possible to avert a beginning to time by making it go imaginary (in the sense of the mathematics of complex numbers) instead of letting it suddenly appear or disappear. Beyond a certain point in their scheme, time may acquire the characteristic of another spatial dimension rather than refer to some sort of inner clock. Another proposal states that, when space and time approach small enough values (the Planck values; see below), quantum effects make it meaningless to ascribe any classical notions to their properties. The most promising approach to describe the situation comes from the theory of “superstrings.”

Superstrings represent one example of a class of attempts, generically classified as superunification theory, to explain the four known forces of nature—gravitational, electromagnetic, weak, and strong—on a single unifying basis. Common to all such schemes are the postulates that quantum mechanics and special relativity underlie the theoretical framework. Another common feature is supersymmetry, the notion that particles with half-integer values of the spin angular momentum (fermions) can be transformed into particles with integer spins (bosons).

The distinguishing feature of superstring theory is the postulate that elementary particles are not mere points in space but have linear extension. The characteristic linear dimension is given as a certain combination of the three most fundamental constants of nature: (1) Planck’s constant h (named after the German physicist Max Planck, the founder of quantum physics), (2) the speed of light c, and (3) the universal gravitational constant G. The combination, called the Planck length (Gh/c³)^1/2, equals roughly 10⁻³³ cm, far smaller than the distances to which elementary particles can be probed in particle accelerators on Earth.

The energies needed to smash particles to within a Planck length of each other were available to the universe at a time equal to the Planck length divided by the speed of light. This time, called the Planck time (Gh/c⁵)^1/2, equals approximately 10⁻⁴³ second. At the Planck time, the mass density of the universe is thought to approach the Planck density, c⁵/hG², roughly 10⁹³ grams per cubic centimetre. Contained within a Planck volume is a Planck mass (hc/G)^1/2, roughly 10⁻⁵ gram. An object of such mass would be a quantum black hole, with an event horizon close to both its own Compton length (distance over which a particle is quantum mechanically “fuzzy”) and the size of the cosmic horizon at the Planck time. Under such extreme conditions, space-time cannot be treated as a classical continuum and must be given a quantum interpretation.

The latter is the goal of the superstring theory, which has as one of its features the curious notion that the four space-time dimensions (three space dimensions plus one time dimension) of the familiar world may be an illusion. Real space-time, in accordance with this picture, has 26 or 10 space-time dimensions, but all of these dimensions except the usual four are somehow compacted or curled up to a size comparable to the Planck scale. Thus has the existence of these other dimensions escaped detection. It is presumably only during the Planck era, when the usual four space-time dimensions acquire their natural Planck scales, that the existence of what is more fundamental than the usual ideas of mass-energy and space-time becomes fully revealed. Unfortunately, attempts to deduce anything more quantitative or physically illuminating from the theory have bogged down in the intractable mathematics of this difficult subject. At the present time superstring theory remains more of an enigma than a solution.