To come here reciting our favorite slogan:
"We'll finally know how the cosmos behaves,
If we can detect gravitational
waves."
Dimensions, they say, may exist to perplex us.
The trouble is they hardly ever affect us.
A world on a brane sounds exciting and new,
'Specially if we could be
sure that it's true.
But how will we know? Well, it might be enough
To look for the wiggles of vibrating stuff.
Looking back far enough, maybe we'll tell
If extended objects once
rang like a bell.
LISA may probe how the stuff's stress and strain was.
Maybe that's how we'll find out where the brane was!
The waves can reveal, then, our early gestation,
As long as they weren't
blown away by inflation.
Craig wrote a book, just a wee little one.
About the big bang, and the work that's been done
On how the world started a long time ago.
Let's hope that some day
we'll be sure that it's so.
John Preskill
March 15, 2001