The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos

by Brian Greene

What is the number, and why such a fuss? Evidence is mounting that it’s what I referred to earlier as the entry on the third line of the general relativity tax form: Einstein’s cosmological constant, which specifies the amount of invisible dark energy permeating the fabric of space. As the result continues to hold up under intense scrutiny, physicists are becoming increasingly confident that decades of previous observations and theoretical deductions, which had convinced the vast majority of researchers that the cosmological constant was 0, have been overthrown. Theorists scurried to figure out where they’d gone wrong. But not all had. Years earlier, a contentious line of thought had suggested that a nonzero cosmological constant might one day be found. The key supposition? We’re living in one of many universes. Many universes.