Other Universes

The following is a quote from Betty Shine in her book The Infinite Mind - Chapter 9:The Universes

"All my life I have been able to see beyond this dimension……With this knowledge already in my psyche, I was not unduly puzzled when the plethora of Universes was shown to me.

It was though giant slides were being slipped into place, each one bearing a different picture to the last. Even the stars were different - some oval, some round, some elliptical - while others danced around like free spirits. (see the question on Dancing Stars) Sometimes I seemed to be looking at a plain jet black canvas with a light behind it, as though it was blocking out the vision of a much brighter galaxy……… But from that day on I told anyone who might be interested that the Universe we inhabit is much smaller than we imagine, and that there are Universes so expansive that they defy description.

This next section is a précis from the book by Stephen Hawkins-A Brief History of Time- Chapter 11: The Unification of Physics.

"String theories, however, seem to be consistent only if our four dimensions (length, breadth, height and time) have either ten or twenty-six dimensions………
Why don't we notice all these extra dimensions, if they are really there? Why do we see only three space and one time dimension? The suggestion is that the other dimensions are curved up in a space of a very small size…..so small we just don't notice them……. It seems clear then that life, at least as we know it, can only exist in regions of space time in which one time and three space dimensions are not curled up small……….. There may well be other regions of the universe, or other universes (whatever that may mean) in which all the dimensions are curled up small or in which more than four dimensions are nearly flat…...

Wouldn't it be nice if Betty Shine and Stephen Hawking could sit down over a nice cup of tea and pool their resources?
Is it surprising that a physicist and a clairvoyant could be talking the same language yet come from such diverse backgrounds?