Hawking Talks on ' Brane ' World
September 17, 2002

The possibility of parallel universes and humankind's precarious perch atop a thin bubble of universal matter just might have become dinner topics in this capital city of East China's Zhejiang Province, thanks to the visit of world-renowned physicist Stephen Hawking during the past few days.

On August 16, 2002, at Zhejiang University, the curious finally had the chance to have their questions answered by Hawking, considered the world's most outstanding theoretical physicist after Albert Einstein. The famous British scientist has been tackling the greatest academic problems of humankind for decades, all while confined to a wheel-chair for 40 years because of disability.

About 3,000 people, including domestic and foreign scientists of both mathematics and physics, professors and teachers from the university, and many other listeners who bought tickets, squeezed into the university's stadium to listen to Hawking's vivid exposition of "Brane - the new world."

" Brane " is a new word which Hawking and his researchers created with regard to the coating that the universe is living on. Thousands of others heard the speech through a live local television broadcast.

" We all have common knowledge that we live in a three-dimensional space," said Hawking, speaking through a special machine. " But according to our recent research, space-time is in fact in 10 or 11 dimensions, leaving the other six or seven dimensions in curved and very, very small forms. In this sense, we are living on a 'brane'," he said. " The subject of 'the brane world' has been one of the hottest topics among scientists throughout the world. Although it is largely based on conjecture, many of its speculated actions may be discovered and proved by observations," said Hawking.

" It was a brilliant speech that Hawking has made. It will lead us to understand the world and the universe that we are living in from some totally different angles," said Pan Yunhe, president of Zhejiang University.