Six-Dimensional Space-Time Theory

eldavojohn writes "PhysOrg is covering an interesting year-old paper that proposes an alternative six-dimensional theory of space and time. George Sparling's proposition, based on Einstein's general relativity and Elie Cartan's triality, is a twistor space (which I've only read of in Roger Penrose's latest work). The gist is that space-time is modeled not by four dimensions but by six, and that the extra two dimensions are time-like. Sparling is hoping that tests from the Large Hadron Collider will help prove his theory. The paper is heavy but the PhysOrg article summarizes it nicely."

Comments

The Dig

[Neillparatzo]

Wasn't 6-dimensional space-time covered in the LucasArts adventure game, The Dig?

(watch me get modded down for mentioning Dig)

Whew!

[RyanFenton]

I'm glad they're time-like dimentions! I'd hate to find out they're orthogonal directions, and suddenly have to worry about all my organs spilling out into the v and w dimensions. Or start filling a glass with water, only to discover I have to keep pouring until I had 1/8pi*r^4*height units of water. It'd just be inconvenient!

Speaking of which, anyone interested in some rather funny dimensional hijinks, you might want to check out Flatland the classic book, or one of the movies being made about the story.

Ryan Fenton

Consequences of three dimensional time?

[SlowMovingTarget]

I read the article, but I really don't understand the consequences of the theory. What would it mean for there to be more than one time dimension?

I'll have to settle for completely off-the-cuff, wild speculation: Could that help explain human temporal perception (you can "feel" time slow down or time flies by when having fun)? Can our consciousness span more or less of these other dimensions of time at need? Would this help explain the apparent causality problem of neuromuscular control (humans seem able to send the neural command to catch the ball before our senses could have delivered the signal that it should be caught)?

Could the existence of extra time dimensions have implications regarding the existence of free will?

How does this relate to the "one-graviton level" for quantum collapse / observation (if at all)?

As you can see, I'm just an amateur toying with the Duplo blocks of popularized physics, but I still find the notion fascinating.

Re:Consequences of three dimensional time?

[KDR_11k]

What this means for free will depends on how things exist within the time dimension, I'd think. Either things move through time like they move through space (i.e. when they move somewhere they're no longer at their old position which would require some kind of metatime and of course make time travel impossible since you'd land somewhere with nothing in it) or they exist at each point in time at the same "time" which would preclude free will since the whole universe is mapped out from creation to destruction (apparently called Eternalism). Having things leave "trails" through time would violate the conservation of mass I'd assume and obviously introduce metatime again.

So, um, I guess if you somehow projected an object's 6 dimensions into something we could see the question would be if we'd see a point or what appears to be a function plot. I really don't know how scientists expect time to function within these theories.

Re:Consequences of three dimensional time?

[The_Wilschon]

They aren't so much extra "time" dimensions as in extra directions of time, as extra time-like dimensions which has a specific meaning that refers to how they behave in calculating space-time distances.

Yes. Also, IIRC, theories with multiple timelike dimensions tend to be unstable, leading to the collapse of all but one timelike dimension, so that the total length of space in the extra timelike directions is very small. This would tend to lead to a physical interpretation in which the extra timelike dimensions matter very very little, especially on macroscopic scales.

Of course, I'm an experimentalist, not a theorist, so I'm really just talking out of my elbow here.

Re:Consequences of three dimensional time?

[TapeCutter]

I agree, the brain is constantly predicting the muscle movements that will be required ~0.25 seconds into the "future". The communication lag between hand and eye becomes aparent when you see your keys in the boot as you are closing the lid. Even though you brain screams stop your hand keeps pushing for that split second too long, the prediction was wrong and the brain had no way to cancel the "close the lid" command. The "illusion" of time can also be demonstrated when you are in fear of your life such as during a car accident the driver will often expeience a slow motion effect as their brain goes into hyperdrive looking for a way out.

Interesting claim

[Coryoth]

An interesting claim made in the paper, but not mentioned in the PhysOrg writeup, is that this theory provides a co-ordinate free definition of chaos in spacetime. That is, for usual definitions of a dynamical system being chaotic, there is a preferred time co-ordinate describing the evolution of the system. General relativity, on the other hand, is remarkable because there is no single preferred co-ordinate system; everything works independently of the particular choice of co-ordinates to work in. As far as I can glean from the paper (it is very very dense) they simply define a chaotic system with regard to properties of the Chi operator, and claim that this conforms to the more restricted usual definition. This is far from clear to me -- I'm struggling just to get my head around their definition of Chi, let alone any implications of it -- but it would certainly be very interesting if true.

Re:Who modded that insightful?

[Goalie_Ca]

Actually i think that could make very useful terminology. Please please publish a paper so that we can all start using those words :D I'm not kidding either. Calling 3 dimensions 'time' is just not very fun.

Why 3 dimensions of space?

[Chuck Chunder]

Is there a relatively simple explanation of why we think the space we experience is actually the result of 3 distinct "dimensions"?

Obviously from a practical point of view it is useful for use to measure things using a coordinate system with three sets of perpendicular axes but why do we think that is more than a useful logical construct? Why do we think it tells us that the very nature of the universe really stems from three distinct "dimensions"?

There doesn't seem to be any real distinction between up/down, left/right, and forward/backward. Couldn't they all be something that is part of one "space" dimension?

Re:Why 3 dimensions of space?

[Coryoth]

Obviously from a practical point of view it is useful for use to measure things using a coordinate system with three sets of perpendicular axes but why do we think that is more than a useful logical construct? Why do we think it tells us that the very nature of the universe really stems from three distinct "dimensions"? There doesn't seem to be any real distinction between up/down, left/right, and forward/backward. Couldn't they all be something that is part of one "space" dimension? Well these days physics theories use 4 space-time dimensions. More importantly, with general relativity, we have a co-ordinate free description of the universe: that is, there is no preferred set of co-ordinates; you can use up/down, left,right, forward/backward, and time or radial distance from some origin, azimuth, and elevation, and time, or whatever other system (possibly mixing space and time dimensions) you like. So why do we end up with 3 (or in practice, 4) dimensions? Because regardless of what means you use to develop co-ordinates, you will always require at least (you're free to use more if you like) 3 (or 4 if we want time included) independent pieces of information to describe a location. Ultimately this comes down to the concept of the dimension of a vector space, at which point we're dealing with purely mathematical models.

Re:Who modded that insightful?

[RyanFenton]

Depending on how it works out, time, possibility, and variance might be good names.

Time is a line of in a field of possibility for our space and time, which in turn is a sliver of all potential variance in all spaces and times.

Each is a coordinate in being able to find an object, and an object can stretch across each.

Ryan Fenton

Re: No humsn has a right to think wrong!

[Black Parrot]

Time is four-dimensional, so there are 7 dimensions! So sayeth the TimeCube! Wouldn't TimeCube theory predict three dimensions of time rather than four, just as the scientists discovered?

(I tried to look it up at the TimeCube page, but those who clicked the link will understand why I had trouble finding it.)

Yet another hypothesis of Three-Dimensional Time

[iaculus]

I've been rather fascinated with Peter Carroll's hypothesis of 6-dimensional space-time for a while now. He has a few dozen articles up at specularium.org

iirc he suggests that 3-dimensional space is curved in one of the extra time dimensions to form a finite, boundless 4-dimensional hypersphere, and 1-dimensional time is curved in the other extra time dimension to form a finite, boundless 2-dimensional circle.

He makes some falsifiable predictions based on his theory (from http://specularium.org/index.php?option=com_conten t&task=view&id=26&Itemid=55&Itemid=1 ):

9. Predictions from the Hyperwarp 6D model

a) No more generations of particles can exist. (Subject only to falsification)

b) No Higgs particle exists. (Subject only to falsification)

c) As it seems that no known natural process except, perhaps, neutron star or black hole collisions could cause a sufficiently large quantity of matter to undergo a sufficient acceleration to produce graviton bosons in detectable quantities, we shall never easily detect gravity waves (subject only to falsification).

d) The principle of t-axis neutrality does permit the existence of a number of exotic bosons corresponding to configurations such as :

d-quark/positron, or d-antiquark/electron or any type of quark/antineutrino or antiquark/neutrino

Within Hyperwarp 6D theory a "leptoquark boson" does not really represent a fifth force of nature, anymore than weak (W-, W+, or Zo) bosons represent anything other than a special case of electromagnetism. See Leptoquarks and Neutron Stars paper.

e) Spacetime singularities larger than fundamental particles do not exist. The quantisation of particle properties in terms of spacetime curvature implies a quantisation of spacetime itself and the top quark represents the maximum possible curvature at any point.

f) Neutrinos can annihilate against neutrinos in head on collisions. Antineutrinos can likewise annihilate against antineutrinos. Such collisions could create photon pairs or pairs of neutrinos of other generations. This controversial proposition lies open to experimental confirmation. It may also contribute a solution to the solar neutrino problem.

Stick that in your pipe, Einstein

[Dr_Bliss]

Einstein he may not be, but the author of the Time Cube holds some great patents

• * U.S. Patent 3,974,591 Chum dispensing attachment for fishing rigs, granted 1976.
• * U.S. Patent 4,095,365 Bait bucket, granted 1978.
• * U.S. Patent 4,095,793 Marble game resembling golf, granted 1978.
• * U.S. Patent 4,707,869 Swim through safety division line for pools, granted 1987.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_Ray

Game engines may use 5D to do 3D space

[JPMH]

What would it mean for there to be more than one time dimension?

The dimensions may not be quite what you think. This paper sounds to me very like technology which is already being used in games engines and robotics applications, eg for lighting models and collision detection.

The idea is that there are various things that make rotations of objects much nicer to handle than translations. But if you add some extra dimensions, you can turn the translations into rotations. It's to do with conformal projection. Translations on a 2D plane are difficult to handle (at least in the framework of Clifford algebra), but if you map that plane onto the surface of a sphere in 3D, then you can identify the 2D translations with rotations on the surface of the 3D sphere. Similarly, you can exchange 3D translations for rotations in 4D, if you create a new dimension which allows you to have an origin for your rotations which is lifted outside "real" 3D space. It turns out to be nice to be able to do rotations about a point at infinity, too, which you can achieve by doing the same trick to go up to 5D. A consequence is that each no-D point in 3D gets represented by a 2D surface in the 5D, a line gets turned into a 3D hypersurface, etc.

The nice thing about rotations is that you can do them with spinors, and you can use spinors to rotate lines and planes directly without having to break them down into points. In the 5D system you can also use geometric algebra to compute directly whether and how different hypersurfaces meet, again without having to compute points and normals and things, which is good for collision detection.

It looks to me that this article is doing pretty much the same trick, turning 4D into 6D, that the geometric algebra people are using turning 3D into 5D.

Here's a paper from a group at Amsterdam university discussing some of this stuff, using it for a ray-tracing program. See also the previous two papers in the series, here. They've also just got a book out, "Geometric Algebra for Computer Science" (links to Amazon etc).

There's also a company called Geomerics based in Cambridge in England that has used the technology to develop a new lighting engine, which it has just released for the Unreal platform.

This is not new.. string theory proposes 11

[plasmacutter]

string theory proposes 11 dimensions, and while im not quite clear on how they all work, the extra dimensions have been presented on the science channel as a kind of "backstage" or "mechanical room" on which the universe is maintained, and that gaining an understanding of the properties of each dimension could lead to the holy grail "grand unification" equation.

(for those not familiar, the grand unification equation is an extension of the equations/theorems which allow us to convert between electromagnetic and kinetic forces, and would allow us to translate between all 4 major forces by adding gravity and the force which holds atomic nuclei together)

because of how new string theory is, i dont think there are enough findings to distinguish weather this new hypothesis might be a subset of string theory, though i could be wrong.

The Dig

[alexgieg]

This made me remember the plot for the LucasArts adventure game "The Dig".

(Warning: spoiler follows.)

The aliens there had discovered much time ago the two extra time dimensions, and a way to transition from space-time to 3-time (I don't remember whether this is the in-game name for the concept, but you get the idea). That worked, they discovered that in 3-time they are practically immortal, and as a result the whole alien species transitioned, losing the ability to come back, since there was no one left in space-time to activate the portal. After some centuries in 3-time, however, the aliens perceived it was a mistake, due to their livings losing all meaning since in 3-time nothing changes, ever. In the end, the humans discover this history, reopen the portal, and allow the aliens to come back into standard space-time.

Re:Erh... call me old fashioned...

[hkBst]

Erh... this is physics, or rather a new mathematical foundation for future physics. All we have been doing so far has been reverse engineering nature. Once we have the full documentation things will really start happening. Things like this are what make the world of today look nothing like the world of a hundred years from now.