Okay, for the physics and cosmology wonks, I have a probably amateurish question. It used to be assumed that space is mostly empty; of course now we see that is not true. I think it's also believed that atoms are mostly empty, even emptier than space was supposed to have been. Just a few electrons, protons and neutrons that are so tiny and rare inside an atom that a logician might conclude that an atom is empty. As theoreticians have reasoned their way into subatomic particles, they've concluded that even these are not indivisible but seem to be mostly empty with a few almost negligible bits like quarks and such. Then, if I've got it right, even those unimaginably tiny tendancies may actually be composed of (mostly) space and superstrings. Superstrings are evidently indivisible but, if I remember rightly, are thought to be two-dimensional. Now if I recall my Euclidian geometry, two-dimensional things are only ideas and, lacking any higher dimension except time, have no real existence. So…

1. Do cosmologists then believe that the entire universe may only be an idea?
   
2. Does this explain, for cosmologists, how everything may once have occupied the same theoretical point as a unity? (Or, now, maybe not.)
   
3. How does this relate to the idea that each event actualization results in a new universe, one in which the event is actualized and one in which it is not?
   

One can see from these questions that I've either read too many books or else not nearly enough books. I suppose in another of the infinately many parallel universes I've actually read all the books and learned the answers. Unfortunately, in this universe, I'm a little out of touch.

      - Mark