Slashdot Mirror
Evidence of 6 Dimensions or More?
shelflife writes "Nature.com is reporting that there may be evidence of 6 dimensions. Galaxies seem to behave as there were more matter in them than is actually visible. 'One explanation, they say, is that three extra dimensions, in addition to the three spatial ones to which we are accustomed, are altering the effects of gravity over very short distances of about a nanometre.'" Update by J : Like most of string theory, this is acknowledged by its authors to be "extremely speculative."
That in at least one of the six that hopefully the geeks get the girls :P
"GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 51230 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; Setec Astronomy)"
This is slashdot! Most of us already know that theres multiple dimesions. Time itself is a dimension.
It's more important to figure out how to best use each dimension. We have only mastered the physical dimension with little knowledge about the quantum world. Perhaps computers will assist us in the future to determine the functions of the other dimensions.
This is clearly false and evil. The Time Cube has exactly 4 dimensions.
An open mind is a slop bucket, "THINK CUBIC".
Please alter my pants as fashion dictates.
But on the Moon we have five...THOUSAND dimensions.
But then again, if they do manage to actually find solid evidence (not just its apparent invisibility in our traditional 3 or 4 dimensions) of matter in an unexpected dimension, I will be extremely impressed. It's an interesting theory at any rate, and worth looking into.
I for one would like to thank slashdot for this amazing, Multi-Dimentional report...
The way I understood this phenomenon, as it was explained in Kaku's book, was that the extra dimensions were curled up on themselves so that they were smaller than could be detected.
The thought experiment was similar to the following. Imagine a sheet of paper with a line crossing from one edge to the opposite edge. You can see that the line exists when viewing the sheet in two dimensions. However, imagine if you rolled the sheet of paper up tightly with the line not directly aligned with the roll. Now you would have instead of a line a single dot or a series of evenly-spaced dots. The line hasn't gone anywhere, it has simply been rolled onto itself so that it seems to have become small and barely detectable.
Now extend that idea to multiple spatial dimensions beyond just two or three. Since we humans can only perceive three spatial dimensions, it is hard to imagine what multiple extra dimensions would be like. However, if we can take the extra dimensions and "roll" them into themselves, we can make a little more sense of the concept.
Jesus saved me from my past. He can save you as well.
This is why string theory is a joke. Whenever they run into a problem, they throw in more dimensions or some other kludge, like gravitons leaking out of the universe.
Now I'll be getting email about increasing the size of my penis' fourth, fifth, and sixth dimensions!
"The newly born animals are then whisked off for a quick run through a giant baking oven." --heard on Food Network
India Daily reported this back in July.
Keep up Westerners!
http://www.indiadaily.com/editorial/3799.asp
""The superstring theory in contemporary physics proves the existence of parallel universe with many higher dimensions where advanced alien civilizations prosper ""
if it doesn't make sense, blame it on another dimension.
But then again, if they do manage to actually find solid evidence (not just its apparent invisibility in our traditional 3 or 4 dimensions)
There is no "apparent invisibility". Their equations give answers that don't match reality. This is normal, it means there's stuff we don't know yet. But instead of saying "yeah, there's a lot of stuff we don't know yet" they make up some crap about invisible matter and hidden dimensions. It's just modern superstition.
It's the same as saying "god did it" or "fairy magic" but for a "scientifically" minded audience. It's a made up explanation with nothing going for it.
lol what
It's simple: They plug what they observe into a mathematical model and see if they can come up with a model that matches observation. It's not simple blind guesswork.
Someone came up with a model called string theory that includes systems with multiple "hidden" dimensions.
The dark matter they're talking about in the article is behaving in a way predicted by one of the current string theory models, which doesn't fit the more traditional models, thus the assertion that it must be 6 dimensions at work.
Alert: The fourth, fifth, and sixth dimensions were slashdotted today due to uncontrollable inflow of nerds, geeks, and other creatures.
To keep the traffic flow normal, mirrors have been provided on the seventh, eighth, and ninth dimensions for the earthlings...
An old professor of mine who was a string theory expert (i very much am not) once told me most of the maths he does deals with 11 dimensions.
This is only setting up for Cube V, of course...
Some lawyer sues someone citing some imagined harm caused by the additional dimensions.
and congratulations on the first -2 post ever.
I'd observe that if everything that can't be directly seen with the naked eye, and is thus infered by the mind's keener eye, must be a kludge among other jokes you'll find, atoms, photons, electrons, molecules, and all manner of small organisms.
Greene's Elegant Universe
The Mechanical Universe
Last book I enjoyed, Three Roads to Quantum Gravity by L. Smolin... ya, ya, I know, nothing fits, is, isn't, yo momma... no yo momma... can, can't... I'm not touching you!
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
There are like twelve dimensions here. Don't feel jealous though, they are really boring. There is not even any ketchup, and not in the extra dimensions. When I went to the car, then the gravity was different, so I thought so. There is another dimension, but it is oriented left on top, so arranged laterally. With the extra dimensions, lucidity is beneficial but orthogonal to our clear destination. I anticipate an increase in coherency, thought may suffer but I think a good drive will clear my mind. There is health but in the yellow, it is vaporous, and at such speed some clouds are quite hard. Be oviparous, but not before it hatches!
You can't just pull dimensions out of your ass like that.
Screw with dimensions and unleash species 8472e ns/article/119943.html/
http://www.startrek.com/startrek/view/library/ali
is this in anyway related to the string theory?
The only problem is that when the calculation is done, the universe's dimensionality is not four as one may expect (three axes of space and one of time), but twenty-six. More precisely, bosonic string theories are 26-dimensional, while superstring and M-theories turn out to involve 10 or 11 dimensions.
HD Trailers
we are expecting a 'n'D revolution next?
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can we expect to get this for our home cinema experience?
...who's gonna patent them?
Observational Evidence for Extra Dimensions from Dark Matter
(It's actually a draft of a paper submitted to Physical Review Letters, not yet approved.)
It's a nice phenomenology paper without any heavy math that puts together a bunch of theoretical ideas floating around. Even better, it has testable hypotheses! (unlike many papers these days)
- Gravity should deviate from the inverse-square law at the nanometer scale.
- Dark matter should be composed of a particle with mass 3e-16 GeV/c^2. (For comparison, mass of electron is 5e-4 GeV/c^2.)
- The large extra dimensions assumptions all this is based on would require us to see all sorts of quantum gravity interactions at the LHC.
Now short-range gravity experiments are just approaching the micron scale, so we're 3 orders of magnitude away from testing hypothesis #1. I doubt anyone has an idea how to close that gap right now.Checking hypothesis #2 would require some independent way of determining the mass of dark matter particles. I don't know what the sensitivity range of the various dark matter experiments running or planned are. Maybe they would be able to see something this light.
#3 however is going to start running in 2 years, and then we'll get some good information either way.
Try reading 'The Field' by Lynne McTaggart.
I can't recommend it highly enough, and it'll tell you a lot of what you need to know.
And yes, it is scientifically based and discusses real results from real establishment (and in many cases highly lauded) scientists.
I thought it was well known that the weakness of gravity can be explained if there are 11 dimensions. I mean, geez, I read stuff like this in Discover magazine like 10-15 years ago.
Occam: I seem to have misplaced my razor...
The Hacker's Guide To The Kernel: Don't panic()!
It would be great now if the Superstring theory people could provide us with some interesting explaination. ... if the quoted info is really true.
In any case thay have never thought about such an evidence
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
"This has never been tested experimentally: no one has measured how gravity behaves over distances below about a hundredth of a millimetre."
On atomic scale, 1/100 mm is still pretty huge and I understand science itself has progressed enough to have the means to make such measurements. So before speculating any further, it seems it would make sense to start doing that first then, wouldn't it?
Visit http://ringbreak.dnd.utwente.nl/~mrjb/growingbettersoftware to download your free copy of the book
...and if you call before the dupe is posted, we'll include an extra 2 dimentions at NO ADDITIONAL COST!*
(*old people in korea need not apply)
Know what I like about atheists? I've yet to meet one that believes God is on their side.
And I quoth:
ATH0 Bitcoin: 1DnwFLXczVZV8kLJbMYoheUrpqHesjxrSi
I think one of the problems here is how you actually define a dimension. Most people when they think about dimensions think about three spatial dimensions. Some people will then go on to say that time is a fourth type of dimension, yet time is very different to spatial dimensions. Likewise these new so called extra "dimensions" are only so because of the label we give them, they are obviously different again to spatial or time dimensions as most people understand them. So before the mind starts to boggle (like wow man) over these so called extra dimensions, one should understand that very simply "dimension" is just a word, and a word with a seemingly rather open definition.
That IS the scientific method - you start with a 'conjecture' which IS a made up explanation and look for ways to prove or disprove it. If you think it's done by fairies at the bottom of the garden you race down there and start looking under leaves. "God did it"? start looking for gods to photograph and measure. Extra dimensions? start looking for evidence of them
Occam's Razor, which is a basic tenent of modern scientific thought says that the simplest explanation is the best. It seems that these dark matter explanations get more and more complex. When a theory is very complex it becomes suspect. For instance, when the Earth was though to be the center of the universe, Mars moving backwards in the sky caused much grief to astronomers. They invented all kinds of head spinning mathematics to describe the motion of mars and the other planets. Of course when the Sun was put in the center of the solar system and the laws of gravity were unearthed everything turned out to be far simpler than the theorists, working with broken premises had made it out to be. In the same way, something smells funny with String theory, and multi-dimensional explanations for dark matter, etc. Isn't science about experimentation and testing hypothesises in a laboratory instead of endless mathematical tricks to get theories to fit observations?
I agree, that's how it is done. Lots of times that produces pretty good results, sometimes less than stellar.
One of the things they had us do in college, and it is interesting IMO, is to take a sport you know nothing about and observe it. Try to formulate the rules of game based on observation (that is, create the model). Then look the actual rules up and compare them.
It's not a perfect experiment - there are things common amongst nearly all games that we simply just know, but it was interesting how correct you would normally get some things and how wrong others (this is even more true because we *do* have correct preconcieved notions, it gets worse when going blind into something). It's also interesting how you can be correct and wrong at the same time - accuratly predict the outcome but for totally incorrect reasons. And, in some sense, it raises the question of if it really matters if the path to get to the correct point is wrong. If you are correct 100% of the time that it is "pass interference" (in American Football) does it matter that you definition of "pass interference" is wrong?
In really really complicated scenarios I always wonder which side is thier model on (though, of course, it's a sliding scale not just an absolute two sides). Especially given the magnitude that some of the models will evnetually have in our lifes.
Of course, this is what makes these fields so interesting to me, the combination of "right or wrong" with the amount of "feel" and "intuition" in the system.
------- Sorry about the spelling, I suffer from two problems. Dyslexia makes it difficult to spell well, lazy makes it
... not new! String theory has been around for decades (Kaluza-Klein theory dates back to about 1920). For all my time in grad school, about four years ago, the fashionable space-time had dimension 10, 4 for "usual" space time plus 6 for a tiny little compact Calabi-Yau threefold (this is a complex manifold of dimension three, hence six real dimensions). Of course I was sitting around with algebraic geometers too much, and it might have just been a way to get the NSF to fund their projects by creating some applications for their abstract nonsense (time will tell...) One of my favorite memories from that time is a series of lectures given by a colleague on the basics of string theory. She gave a heuristic derivation of the dimension of space time (that time the dimension was 11, I apologize if it sounds inconsistent). She wrote down the series of all integers (the sum of n, for n from -infinity to +infinity, n being an integer) and said it was equal to -1/23; she took a short pause, thinking... then apologized, she forgot to mention: one should take the sum over n being a NONZERO integer! From that day on I quit going to that seminar (shouldn't that sum be -1/... 42 anyway?)
Is there evidence, or not? Is this a concrete advance in our understanding of nature, or is it just another article in Nature?
Way smaller than nanometers... if they're there, they're at the plank length...
Imagine if you weren't allowed to use roads because a bus company complained about your driving 3 times. --skunkpussy
Whatever happened to the Cold Dark Matter (each pound of which weighs over 10,000 pounds!) theory, where gravitational & mass anomolies were explained by the existance of such a substance?
The subject says there is evidence. The article only points out that there is a "gravitational tug", and then gives us a theory on why. Don't present something as evidence when it isn't.
"My power supply stopped working, therefor the power company is sending me too much electricity." The power supply not working is the problem, not the evidence. The "gravitational tug" is the problem, not the evidence.
http://illhostit.com/ - Webhosting
And all for the sake of maintaining the initial (unnecessary and insufficient) postulate that phi(x)->0 as x-->infinity in the Schrodinger equation... (http://www.blacklightpower.com/ - read the book, it's good...) Unlike, err, Time Cubes (sorry), the math checks out on this one - sub-ground state hydrogen makes up the dark matter, we don't need extra dimensions, quantum mechanics is fundamentally, well, wrong, etc. etc. etc. P.S. I did four years of physics at a very good university, and my conclusion was this: mainstream physics is barking up the wrong tree...
I'm probably not bright enough to really comprehend this subject but does this theory fit in with Occam's razor premise that the simplest answer is usually correct?
It seems that sometimes fanciful theories pop up that seem to just shoot wildly in the dark for lack of observable/obtainable info.
At least it's not a human-centric nonfalsiable unlimited paralell universes or time travel can't alter history theory........
i thought there were already 4? length, depth, bredth and time?... so, really there would be 8 now. length, depth, bredth and time.. AND dark length, dark depth, dark bredth and dark time... 8...
portfolio
One possible way to detect those additional dimensions are artifical black holes created in particle accelerators. These black holes cannot be created unless the gravitation becomes stronger on small scales than predicted by the classical 4-dim theory, due to the additional dimensions. Only if this increase is present the required mass density for the formation of artifical black holes can be reached (by LHC for example). So if they can ideed produce these little black holes that's a pretty good indication of extra dimensions.
:w!q
....another explanation is that you just can't see it BECAUSE IT'S VERY DARK. :P
I watched a stream yesterday which explained how dimensions can be interweaved into our own, and how the laws of gravity and Quantum physics can be combined with string theory,
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/elegant/
--
I'm starting to think that Occam's razor is abused more often than it is used correctly.
e ral/occam.html
Parent asserted;
Occam's Razor, which is a basic tenent of modern scientific thought says that the simplest explanation is the best.
This is an abuse of the version of Occham's Razor used in modern scientific thought, though an oft repeated misinterpretation.
A better way of phrasing the desire for elegance in modern science is; "Given two identically predictive models, choose the one which requires the fewest assumptions." Reducing the number of assumptions is not always the same as 'simplifying' the problem.
Also, remember that the purpose of science is to generate predictive value. If one of those models is more complex but also more predictive, then it is ALWAYS the better model, no matter how complex.
The original version of Occam's Razor, as correctly expressed in the Wiki article, is "Entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity" where 'necessity' equates to generating the maximum level of predictive value.
Check out the following link, which gives a better summation of the role of Occham's razor in science than the wiki article does.
http://www.physics.adelaide.edu.au/~dkoks/Faq/Gen
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
and it's value affects all the other variables.
Sorry, but this is bullshit. Should have said it is independent of other variables.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
I watched this DVD and it gave me a really good introduction to Relativity, String Theory and Quantum Mechanics. I'm no physicist, but I am able to understand the key ideas through the video.
Or you may prefer to visit their homepage here.
w00t
a dimension is an abstract mathematical idea. the dimensions of a system are the quantities required to describe its state. to quantify the space we see we need only 3. however, space is dynamic with time, and so now we have 4. to speculate more dimensions simply implies there is more that meets the eye. and to that I say: well, duh.
There's nothing like matter hidden on other dimensions. In TFA they say just the opposite. What we call dark matter is only the common matter we can see, but gravity will be stronger if it affect us through more dimensions.
When I read articles like this I think to myself "Yup, they really don't have a clue why it works like that."
Do you see what I did there?
I recall a few months ago a collider experiment where the resulting radiation was quite different from expected, because it was being absorbed into a short-lived black hole, which promptly collapsed and released its contents in a rather different manner. This required gravity being much stronger on a very small scale, and the scientists involved conjectured higher dimensions, but didn't have enough data to propose the details of these higher dimensions.
If sounds familiar to anyone, please post a link, because I can't remember enough about the experiment to find it right now.
There's no failure quite as dissatisfying as a complete and total solution to the wrong problem.
Some of these are actually measureable:
- time
- X axis
- Y axis
- Z axis
- female perception of reality (this is the "Q" axis that will never be understood due to constantly changing parameters)
And, yes, I've had sex with females before, they are quite squishy and nice.
That IS the scientific method - you start with a 'conjecture' which IS a made up explanation and look for ways to prove or disprove it. If you think it's done by fairies at the bottom of the garden you race down there and start looking under leaves. "God did it"? start looking for gods to photograph and measure. Extra dimensions? start looking for evidence of them
So we agree that right now these dimensions, for which no evidence exists other than the data they seek to explain, are on exactly the same basis as fairies, for which no evidence exists other than the data they seek to explain? As long as I'm looking for the fairies and they're looking for the dimensions, we're all nice and scietific, right?
http://groups.google.com/group/sci.physics/browse_ frm/thread/6ebfce5d3cf9076c/2e277b0625211ef5?lnk=s t&q=sci.physics+wanless&rnum=6&hl=en#2e277b0625211 ef5
You physics gods, humor me for a minute (please.)
Some of the more recent discoveries, like quantum action at a distance stuff makes sense from the Occams Razor point of view. On one hand, we have these bizzare behaviors that involve unseen forces, etc... On the other, our 4 dimensional universe is really a function of a multi-dimensional one, with the interactions in the other dimensions embodied as complex behavior here in our 4 dimensional world.
The latter makes more sense than the former does to me, because it's easy to visualize on a lay persons level. In the action at a distance scenario, the first thought becomes, how are they connected and what structures are involved? (Assuming they actually are, which is the assumption I would make, not knowing any better.)
After reading this article, I pictured a 2 dimensional universe formed from the intersections of three dimensional surfaces. The interactions between those surfaces would easily reproduce some of the spooky effects we see in our three dimensional one.
This brought me to a coupla questions, I'm hoping for a simple to understand answer to:
Does this not revive the concept of an 'ether'. Where we see only space, the extra-dimensional entities still exist. Just wondering about that.
Do we assume the basic rules, such as speed of light, etc... apply in the extra-dimensional space, or are they only embodied here in our space, being the result of interactions and rules unique to the extra-dimensional space?
How the hell can we deduce what those are, without being able to observe the extra dimensions? Are we hoping for cracks, etc? Thinking about that a bit farther reminded me of the Paul Hogan Giants novels where a virtual world existed inside a large computer. Those entities within that world could not see the computer that rendered their universe. How would they ever know just as we would never know?
Blogging because I can...
Way smaller than nanometers... if they're there, they're at the plank length...
You're wrong by at least 9 orders of magnitude. Based on observations, I'd say plank length is usually something like 1 to 10 metres. You mean Planck length, don't you?
The pattern continues as the number of dimensions increases. Gravity keeps getting weaker the more dimensions there are, because there's more to cover as distance increases.
I tried to create a simple explanation of why gravity gets weaker as dimensions increase. You can read it at UnSpace.
The pictures are a little crude, but I think they show the basic concept.
This sig seemed like a good idea at the time....
Your smart mario has sunshine. God chips fights evil Gates reality.
Sony fandom is a lie, "PLAY CUBIC".
I8-D
Occam's Razor is often misunderstood as offering a way to choose which of two theories is better. But in fact, there is no evidence whatsoever that simple theories are more likely to be correct--if anything, the trend of history seems to be that simple theories eventually get rejected in favor of more complex ones.
A better way of thinking of Occam's Razor is as a rule of thumb for ordering the universe of possible hypotheses for investigation. Simple theories have fewer free variables, which generally makes them easier to test. So it is most efficient to eliminate the simple theories first before proceeding to the more complex ones.
This actually seems like a rather good theory, in that it offers testable predictions.
The result is of course wrong, but it (or its equivalent) is actually used for renormalizing quantum field theories to get rid of ugly infinities. Don't ask me what's happening here, I just use the results :-)
Any sufficiently advanced libertarian utopia is indistinguishable from government.
Personally I think(feel) that universe has got infinite dimensions and after discovering new dimensions we can still find new one.Of course i cannot prove this theory and hmm its just a feeling but please note that its currently possible that universe is infinite in _every_ possible meaning.
;-)
after disciovering atoms we discovered electrons/protons and then researchers discovered quarks etc.
I believe that universe is (somehow) defined recursively.Propably God is Unix-geek and created this with -r option
"Kata ton daimona eay toy." (Be true to your soul).
Educators are evil people - for they teach cubelessness. All word is 'fictitious evil' - not a substance nor a deed. Life is based upon a perfect math or your arm would be too short to wipe your butt.
No that's just the dumbed down version for you.
It is so much fun to be scientist. If we throw math at people, which took years to understand, then we are accused of not communicating outside of our field. But then when we try to make a simple description that everyone can understand, people think that is all there is, and ridicule it. Arggggghhhhhh...
Wouldn't that be very dangerous? Wouldn't the artifical block suck in matter and become bigger and bigger, ultimately sucking in our solar system?
Jan
I would like to ask a physicist in the room two questions.
1) It sounds like the diamond-nanotube composite material mentioned in a separate slashdot article today would include nanoscale diamond chunks, nice hard, heavy things, nanoiron seeds, and conductive nanotubes. Would this not be an interesting candidate for use in the testing of this theory of how gravity works at the nanometer scale?
2) I don't really understand the idea of a dimension only a nanometer wide, or the idea of dimensions being rolled up even though I've heard the same metaphor for a long time explaining it. For example if the universe is really 1 nanometer wide along the axis of the 5th dimension, then how thin is the visible universe? Or to tackle the other metaphor, if the 5th dimension is in fact rolled up at a scale far smaller than atoms, what does this mean in terms of real world physics we know? Maybe gravity gets sucked in there, what about electrons or magnetic fields? Is it impossible for an atom to see into the rolled up dimension of the atom next to it? etc.
I think the grandparent might have been referring to the double-standard here. Ie, if this was an article about scientists developing conjectures regarding intelligent design, you can bet everyone here would be jumping down their throats. Whereas in this case people seem to be taking this conjecture as a well-established theory, regardless of the lack of evidence.
No you intelligent design moron.
All together now. Scientific hypotheses must be falsifiable. Generally we wait until a particular hypothesis has predictive power which has been confirmed in the laboratory to call it a theory.
String theory does have predictive power, but unfortunately *most* of it is beyond our experimental reach. String theorists are working very hard to try to devise ways to see evidence of string theory with today's technology. This is the very reason that we are interested in extra dimensions, it is a testable phenomenon!
We tend to still reward string theory with the label "theory" because the math is so elegant and compelling. But we always have in mind that there is no experimental evidence of string theory. This doesn't make string theory "unscientific", it just means it is more a hypothesis at this point.
So you see, it is not at all like saying "god did it" or "fairy magic" because those theories do not produce unique predictions that are falsifiable.
That's essentially correct; but in your haste to make a "point", you assumed that fairies don't exist in order to mock these extra dimensions. Now, I'm guessing you know fairies don't exist because you used the scientific method, or trust someone who used the scientific method a long time ago. Either way, it takes time to prove or disprove the existence of fairies if you're being scientific and honest. So give the scientists a bit of time to work it all out, OK? If you're looking for ready-made answers with no thinking involved, might I suggest any number of religions?
Mostly random stuff.
Read the interview here.
Mostly random stuff.
We could see it, but for instance, a sphere in the 4th dimension would appear as a series of spheres, increasing in size, then decreasing.
For one in the 2nd dimension, a sphere appears as a series of circles, increasing in size, then decreasing.
We see in 2 dimensions, we can only see one face of everything.
One in the fourth dimension can see in 3 dimensions. In our universe, they would be able to analyze an entire 3 dimensional object in one glance, just as we are able to analyze an entire 2 dimensional object (such as a circle) in one glance, without moving it around.
I suppose that in the 4th dimension, people would only be able to see one "side" of a 4-dimensional object, but this sort of knowledge is far beyond the mental reach of any human being.
I can't wait to see you build a house someday:
An engineer will present you with carefully drawn blue prints. You will say that it is just a peice of paper with lines on it and so is no better than your plan, which is to build your house from legos.
At last, scientists have a chance to understand what is magic and mysticism about...
There you are, staring at me again.
Occam's Razor, which is a basic tenent of modern scientific thought says that the simplest explanation is the best. It seems that these dark matter explanations get more and more complex. When a theory is very complex it becomes suspect.
When Kepler proposed (based on Tycho's observations) that the planets move in elliptical orbits, Galileo figured that Kepler had to be wrong, since circular orbits would be much simpler.
Sometimes the more complex explanation really is much closer to the truth.
It's a rule of thumb to help order one's already biased thinking. Nothing more.
-FL
When I get into Creation VS. Evolution battles with people, I try and point out why creation isn't a theory, and how that word is missused...for the love of Vishnu, even scientists misuse that word!
dahlek (will you squirm when you are pecked
"... it raises the question of if it really matters if the path to get to the correct point is wrong."
Yes would be my answer. The path is just as relevant as the answer in science because the path can bi,tri or greater furcate from any give point. If the path is incorrect, then it influences all subsequent divergences.
http://4d.shadowpuppet.net/ or read Michio Kaku's "Hyperspace"
this is a theory. and it's not even a new theory. wtf? are media hounds so desperate that they have to dig up old magazine articles and put them online in order to keep forgetful or uneducated readers occupied???
It takes just a moment and an action to destroy. It takes some time and thought to create.
John Titor said:
"Who doesn't love string theory? Please forgive the next few comments, I'm trying to be cryptic and jump starting my memory at the same time. In 2036, string theory still dominates physics due to its continued "effect" of encompassing other physical properties from unrelated fields.
A great deal of the theoretical mathematics behind time travel was discovered by testing various ideas in string theory and eliminating the anomalies. As I recall, it was this original work that led to the final proof that six dimensions do indeed curl up to give us our observable universe. This in turn supported more of the theoretical math behind time travel.
It's ironic that the beauty of string theory gives future engineers the confidence to create the distortion unit even though the final proof is still unknown. You're a physics student, have you ever heard the Princeton String Quartet play?"
After last night's party im having problem with ermmmm 3.
RUPERT! I TOLD YOU TO WATCH THE BAGS! You were looking at the boys again, WEREN'T YOU.
in a different dimension
::Very minor handwaving::... hence the inverse square law.
is a nonsense phrase. What they are (probably, I haven't RTFA) saying is really more along the lines of "in a different position in at least one of the microscopic dimensions".
As I understand it, the force carrying particles are all constrained to remain at one position in the microscopic dimensions (while being free to move in the macroscopic. Think of moving along the length of, but not around the circumference of, a paper towel tube)... except for gravitational force particles (gravitons, if you will). Gravitons are supposed to be free to move in all the dimensions.
The familiar inverse square law is a consequence of free motion in 3 dimensions (3 "degrees of freedom"). If you take a balloon, and measure its radius and surface area, then blow it up to twice the radius, then the surface area will have quadrupled. Similarly, if you have light or gravity radiating out from a point source, at twice the distance from the source, the density of the radiation will be one 4th what it was.
Now, on the other hand, suppose that we are talking about lots of (n) dimensions. Then, we would get the inverse n-1 power law for radiation density (and hence strength of the force) as distance increases. But, since the extra dimensions are very small and curled up, once you've gone all the way around the paper towel tube, there's nowhere else to go, and so the radiation density in that dimension is constant after that. Thus, once you pass the distance equal to the size of the extra dimension(s), those extra degrees of freedom drop out, and we're left with the good old inverse square law again.
This would be a measurable result. If you measure the strength of gravity on a very small scale, you just might find that it does not obey the inverse square law at very very very small distances, and in fact begins to obey an inverse 10th law, for instance. Then, we would conclude that there are 10 dimensions that have a size greater than or equal to the distance you are measuring at. This has nothing to do with something being "invisible" or "in another dimension".
However, since force carrying particles (except gravity) seem to be constrained to one position in the extra dimensions, and photons are force carriers for the electromagnetic force, if there were matter at other positions in the extra dimensions, it would be invisible to us, but we could still feel its gravitational effects. This is why matter in extra dimensions is or has been a moderately popular explanation for dark matter (matter which we deduce the prescence of due to the behavior of galaxies, but which does not produce any observable electromagnetic radiation).
Incidentally, this would also account for the extreme weakness of gravity compared to the other 3 forces. If gravity is evenly spread through several other dimensions, then the total amount of gravity output could be comparable to the other forces, but it would be much more thinly spread, thus be weaker.
SIGSEGV caught, terminating
wait... not that kind of sig.
Except Buddhism, please.
Who remembers the LucasArts Sean Clark masterpiece scored by Michael Land, back from 1995?
******SPOILERS******
The inhabitants of Cocytus escape our reality called Spacetime 4 to a plane of existence where time streches in all directions called Spacetime 6. They believe that eternal life in Spacetime 6 will bring them happiness, but they become sucked into that reality and find themselves unable to return. Our dimension, called Spacetime 4, represents the three dimesnions of space and only one dimension of time, 3 + 1 = 4. Spacetime 6 is three dimensions of space and three dimensions of time, 3 + 3 = 6. You even get to see a audiovisual representation of Spacetime 6 at the end of the game, so take that Joseph Silk and his co-workers of the University of Oxford! Sean Clark and his team beat you to it. =]
...this paper seems to completely ignore the laboratory work that has been done. In particular the D0 experiment at the Tevatron has already set world leading exclusion limits on ADD extra-dimensions (I presented them at a conference this summer!). Below an energy scale of ~1 TeV, depending on the precise model you use, they are effectively ruled out up to a lot greater than n=3 extra dimensions.
:-)
The other major problem seems to be the tiny mass of the dark matter particle. If its mass is so small why have we not produced it in accelerators yet? You might think that it has escaped notice but then the neutrino (which has a mass so close to zero we can't measure it) is easily observed. Peraps it is possible to concoct some scheme where this particle only couples gravitationally but then wouldn't it form "hot" dark matter (which WMAP has effectively rules out)?
Hmmm....I need to find a friendly particle theorist to ask
read something interesting the other day -- before someone
arbitrarily picked TIME as the fourth dimension, many scientists
also considered HEAT as the fourth dimension.
j.
Except that I know of no reliable evidence that fairies don't exist. (This isn't surprising, it's quite difficult to prove a negative, and even more difficult to prove an ill-defined negative.)
So if you were to assert that fairies exist (or that they don't exist), and I were to ask you to prove it, the first step would be to come up with an operational definition of what a fairy was. If such a definition exists, I haven't ever encountered it.*
* Exception: Linguistically Fairy appears to derive from the Persian word for Persian (Farsi).
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
It's not really a matter of matter existing in more than 3 or 4 dimensions. It's about matter interacting in ways that can't be explained with 3 or 4 dimensions, but are easy to explain by adding more dimensions.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
I have yet to see an article in favor of intelligent design which was proposing looking for evidence. (There may be such, but I've never encountered one.)
I seriously consider Intelligent Design as a possibility...but to me this means that one would need to find evidence proving this hypothesis. The sun is a 3rd or 4th generation star, so "Directed Panspermia" as an intelligent design choice is not impossible...but there doesn't appear to be any evidence in favor of it, either.
Just "Intelligent Design" is an ill-defined term, and is untestable, and therefore unscientific. String theory has usually been consider unscientific metaphysics because it was untestable. Now that someone is proposing a test, it is starting to look more like a scientific theory. After the test is made, it will appear even more like a scientific theory...perhaps a failed one, but failed theories can still be scientific theories. (Cf. Newton's "Laws of Motion")
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
If you find things behaving in ways where your inverse-power-X laws don't always apply, then if you add other dimensions and distribute your interacting elements through it you can control the distribution and control which X the power law exhibits at different scales. Or you can translate things into these microscopic dimensions and explain how this "translation" has differing effects on normal matter due to the dimensional propensities of various force interactions.
And if these theoretical "rotations" of reality gel with string theory and stuff... BONUS.
Amirite?
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
You might check out the writings of Stephen Jay Gould or Dawkins to see how they did it.
I'll grant you that it's impossibly difficult to convey everything, but you can pick pieces that can be described, and talk about those. I was at a recent talk by Conway, and he was able to convey an idea of what his current work was about without excessive mathematics (and he's a mathemetician). I don't think anyone came away thinking "that's all there is to it", and I don't really understand what he was saying (if it were a book, it would require several re-readings). But it was interesting to a (selected) general audience. (Not just anyone would go to hear Conway speak, there was a definite selection effect.)
I'll grant you that the communication skills are quite difficult. (I'm not particularly good at telling people about programming a computer.) This doesn't mean that it's not a good idea.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Funny that I just finished reading that book by Heinlein, in which travel is based on the premise of 6 dimensions and 6^6^6 universes.
perl -e '$_="\007/4`\cp%2,".chr(127);s/./"\"\\c$&\""/gees
Galaxies seem to behave as there were more matter in them than is actually visible.
Uh...galaxies have been doing this for years (or more accurately, we've known about this phenomenon for years). There's plenty of theories from Dark matter (there actually is matter there, it just isn't the type our equipment sees directly) to Modified Newtonian dynamics (force is proportional to acceleration^2 at low acceleration, thereby changing a couple of important formulas, and we haven't noticed this on Earth because Earth's gravity is too big of an acceleration). Adding multiple dimensions and string theory is just another theory, that seems as valid as the rest given the data. Until one has convincing proof or disproof of one over and above the others, we can't really say "evidence of 6 dimensions" or "evidence of dark matter" or whatever.
I haven't studied much beyond relativity and string theory and such are definitely above my head, but something about extra dimensions (even tightly curled ones) doesn't quite make sense.
All the electromagnetics I've studied involved waves that oscillate in two spacial dimensions and translate in time and another spacial dimension.
Supposing the existence of another dimension, what stops electromagnetic waves from oscillating or propogating in those dimensions instead of the dimensions we expect them to?
If the dimensions are so tightly curled that photons are unable to access it, then how is it loose enough to spit out gravitons?
What reasons might there be that the dimension would be curled up?
(Though speaking of curled dimensions, I was just thinking that time might be more curled than the spacial dimesions, making it less accessible...)
You can believe in either string theory or God without understanding either one first. You can also disbelieve in either one without understanding anything about it.
String theory is the new "religion" as it is not provable through observation of phenomenon. you must believe in it with faith alone combined with new incantations (formulas) to support it. Neither the theory or the formulas have any basis in observable phenomenon.
If anything, String Theory verges on philosophy rather than hard science.
The String theorists are the new shaman's/priests/wizards of the modern world.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
it may dominate the large scale structure and behavior of the universe (star formation, galaxy formation, intergalactic structures . .
Check out the following:
Plasma Cosmology
Plasma Universe
Guided Tour of the Plasma Universe
Electric Currents and Transmission Lines in Space
Immense Flows of Charged Particles Discovered Between the Stars
Interesting quote from Hubble regarding redshift:
Thuderbolts.info
Thunderbolts' Picture of the Day
Picture of the Day Archive
A few very interesting selections from the archive:
The Picture that Won't Go Away
Quasars in Infrared are Still Nearby
Predictions on "Deep Impact"
Electric Stars
Of Pith Balls and Plasma
Space Shuttle Struck by Megalightning?
The website of Halton Arp
The Observational Impetus For Le Sage Gravity
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I should have included these links specifically, in the spirit of relevance:
Galactic Rotation: Point or Axis?
Galactic Currents or Collisions?
Plasma Galaxies
Galaxy Filaments
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I want to keep this short so I will just say this.
People don't understand what dimensions are!
String theory has always been a joke based around the old question "how long is a piece of string?", scientists have always used this addage to extract "money for old rope" from those who are "thick as two short planks"
There is no lower limit to a mans stupidity.
Ask yourself how is this knowledge going to help you?
embedded linux
Here is a quote from plasmacosmology.net:
So . . . maybe the missing "extra force(s)" that some researchers are trying to explaine by extra dimensions, dark matter, etc. will continue to be misunderstood if what is described above as applies to the behavior of plasma filaments in the laboratory is not accounted for in models of galactic behavior and formation.
Would that be an error of galactice proportions?
I welcome (even harsh) criticism and feedback. Please explain to me why the plasma physicists are nuts for thinking that many/most of todays space physicists and astronomers are presently blind to one of the major governing "mechanisms" of the universe -- plasma physics!
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Have these scientists thought about building a huge magnifying glass that would solve this debate once and for all? Sometimes, scientists ignore what could be right under their nose. Duh!
Not sure where you got this from. At least according to the OED, 'fairy' comes from words that are cognate with 'fay', which in turn are derived from Latin fatum, 'fate', which in turn is derived from the verb fari, 'to speak'. Of course evidence is not always compelling, and the OED doesn't provide quite enough evidence to convince me that 'fay' absolutely certainly comes from fatum. But what is your evidence?
I'm not sure where I got it from either... and I can certainly see a resemblence between Fey and fate. But I'm not sure it's the same word...I've also encountered Fay, and a few other variants, which would make reasonable ancestors to fairy, but I believe that faerie (sorry, no umlauts) existed at the same time, and that it was derived from Farsi (though I forget the intermediate chain of derivations).
The OED is a good source, and I haven't checked it. And I can easily see a reasoned chain of dirivations. Only I'm not certain that that's the way it happened. I seem to remember that Farsi lead somehow to Paynim, and thence somehow to Fairy...but I don't really remember the intermediate forms, or where I traced this out. (I'm no linguistics scholar, so I have to have been following the efforts of someone[s] else.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
I don't like string theory - to me it looks like theorists just added degrees of freedom (dimensions) to a model until it became flexible enough to be solved in countless ways, some which resemble the physical properties of known particles.
Don't like dark matter / dark energy either - MOND (Modified Newtonian Dynamics) fits observations better than Dark matter, which can't explain anomalous stellar velocities within globular clusters.
Ah well. I was curious, that's all ... I have an interest in languages. But I'm afraid I don't buy the paynim connection either - that seems to come from the Latin word for 'pagan'.
Most people can't even agree that the everyday world we live in exists in four deminsions and not three. If there were only three we would not be able to even conceive of the three, for without the fourth deminsion of time, consience could not exist, and there would be no perception of the world around us. So, it's simple to say that we owe our very existance two the four demensions: 1)Longitude 2)Latitude 3)Elevation 4)Time
The latin word for pagan is paganos. I.e., pagan ... of the plains or countryside .. I know it doesn't look genative, but that's the way it was explained to me in Latin class. Probably it's a nominalization of a genative form, but I don't really remember. It looks like a nominative form, though, and as I remember it's use is as a subject. OTOH, this is remembering back several decades to something that wasn't important at the time.
(It's possible that I got a lot of my linguistic dirivations here from Edmund Spenser's "The Faerie Queen", and he may not be a totally reliable source. He was, after all, writing in mock archaic english for political reasons, and wouldn't have allowed inappropriate facts to get in his way. I can't say that this is were I *did* get the linguistic infor, as I don't remember, but it could have been. [And I'm not about to read it again just to find out!])
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
> welcome (even harsh) criticism and feedback. Please explain to me why the plasma physicists are nuts for thinking that many/most of todays space physicists and astronomers are presently blind to one of the major governing "mechanisms" of the universe -- plasma physics!
Well. I was already quite partial to the plasma theories of cosmology, and I've read some of the material presented.
Let me play devil's advocate:
Firstly, it sounds very much like they want to throw out gravity. Yes, the theory that everything at the large scale is caused by gravity has problems, but shall we throw the baby out with the bathwater?
Secondly, they could do with toning down the petulance. Just because they're being ignored does not mean they must be correct, it just makes them sound like a bunch of von dannikens. (sp?)
Thirdly a little more info, a little less mumbo jumbo. I mean I was trying to find out what the specifics of the Saturn theory were and I couldn't find any, just whining and moaning. And abstract references to mythology do not impress either (especially not in a scientific context - see the von danniken objection).
Fourthly, some kind of explanation of what is causing the red shift would help. They spend so much time going on about how its not the doppler effect that they never provide a clear alternative explanation of what could be causing it. (Yes the whole quasars being up close thing is a fatal blow to the big bang, lets take that as a given, but *why* are the newer objects more redshifted than older objects?)
Fifthly I'm not sure how up to date the stuff is. I was aware that galaxy clusters were supposed to be in sausage strings, but then also recently hadn't they announced that the strings/sausages of clusters also formed sheets? (And wasn't that something which dealt the big bang a pretty nasty blow, that those sheets would have taken something like 80 billion years to form by gravity, and hence would have been 5 times older than the universe?) - If there are sheets (under standard redshifted ideology), then doesn't that contradict the thing about the fingers of god?
As for the fingers of god (redshift showing big 'fingers' of clusters pointing at us from every direction) data suggesting that we were the centre of the universe, wasn't the standard explanation for that be that an inflationary universe is like a balloon, as you inflate it the points on it get further apart from each other, but from the point of view of each point, each point thinks it is the centre from which all others are expanding)?
Note that of course if there's a better explanation of redshift then the whole inflationary universe thing is a moot point.
Also, if the universe is much smaller, how big is it? (At least the parts of it we've observed?)
Halton Arp seems to have some interesting ideas as to what my be causing the redshift.
See this abstract: The Observational Impetus For Le Sage Gravity
[ I'm aware that I linked to these in a previous reply under this story; but you may have missed them amidts that long list of links. ]
Is it total nonsense? I'm interested to hear your thoughts on the matter.
By the way, I agree with you about the Electric Universe proponents being too eager to engage in polemics -- it doesn't help their "cause" at all.
I find the stuff on Peratt's website to be more balanced than much of what is found on thunderbolts.info, holoscience.com, and some of the others.
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