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Was the Early Universe 2 Dimensional Spacetime?
astroengine writes "According to two theoretical physicists, our current four-dimensional Universe (3 dimensions of space, 1 dimension of time) is actually an evolution from a lower-dimensional state. The early Universe may have existed with just one spatial dimension (plus one time dimension) up until the Universe cooled below an energy state of 100 TeV. At this point, a transition occurred when the spatial dimension "folded" to create 2 dimensions. At 1 TeV, it folded again to create the Universe we know today: 3 dimensions of space, one of time. This may sound like a purely theoretical study, but there might be evidence of the evolution of universal dimensions in cosmic ray measurements and, potentially, in gravitational wave cut-off frequency."
Does anyone else think sometimes that physicists are just coming up with crazier and crazier ideas just to see what we'll buy?
I thought we done with this "theory" crap ever since this guy revealed the truth...
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The sound of this thing going completely over my head.
"The Cameron Divide" is the point at which the Universe went from 2D to 3D. "The Lucas Shift" is when it went to being 'far, far, away'.
...because most of the folks that I know who are hot-headed are still 1-dimensional.
TARDIS*
Um no. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spacetime
So how long until it cools enough to get a fourth dimension and will we ever get to 11?
Fact of the matter is we can't deduce what happened during the early BB because we can't make experiments to determine how quantum gravity works. Until somebody comes up with a theory which actually produces testable predictions for it all the weirdo suggestions is just pure speculation.
Does anyone else think sometimes that physicists are just coming up with crazier and crazier ideas just to see what we'll buy?
And speaking of which, doesn't this make "foldspace technology" described in Frank Herbert's Dune a bit less fantasy based? The thought is making my mind crinkle!
I went to battle M.C. Escher, but drew a blank.
I wonder if this follows from the Holographic Principle, which states that the information from the entire universe scales with area, rather than volume. That is, the information inside our universe is embedded in 2-space, not 3- or 4-space.
I guess that the transition to 5D means that all the matter that we know (atoms, light, ...), will be destroyed.
Not necessarily. To visualize increasing dimensions, think of a sheet of paper. Two dimensions. Imagine it being progressively crumpled, until it becomes a paper ball. Now it's three dimensional. Everything you wrote on the paper is still intact.
Please include a link to the work you are reporting on, not just to someone else reporting on someone else's reporting etc. I think this might be the link you are looking for: http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.106.101101
Swedish plasma phys. PhD student; MSc EE; knows maths, programming, electronics; finance interest; seeks opportunities
Its not the physicists, its you, along with billions of others. Your grip on reality isn't strong enough to deal with how strange the universe really is, or how limited your perceptions really are.
If everything was collected into a 1 dimensional line/point, wouldn't there be so much gravity that not even energy could escape? How can something cool down if it can't release energy? Or how can energy escape from an absolute container? I'm more of a fan of great crunch and bang than these singularities. I'd like to think that there truly is an absolute minimum space that matter can exist, and that space is bigger than a point.
When the Universe was new it wasn't 2D, it was text based.
This isn't the first theory about the dimensionality of the universe changing over time. A while back it was proposed that time itself is shifting into a spacelike dimension.
The "Earth is Flat" crowd just doesn't know when to quit!
Since we care nature cares (humans being a part of nature) and that is the "way it is".
Encryption: I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend your right to encrypt it...
It cannot be modelled mathematically unless it involves statistics, which physicists hate to admit becasue it means no tractable solutions for real General Relativity problems exist.
Time is no dimension, but if you don't mind a little uncertainty, you can pretend it is.
In somewhat plain English:
:-) ).
We might imagine the universe is starting with a very large amount of energy compressed into singularity and then it starts expanding by inflating dimensions. You can assume that there are as many dimensions as you want, but that they are very small; not infinitely small, but small enough so that a complete circuit of the dimension is much smaller than a Planck length. The dimensions are expanding to create a place to put all that energy, so we might expect that one dimension would inflate significantly before it runs out of space - literally - and the next one would start to inflate in earnest. So to expand out and get the three big dimensions we have now, you would naturally pass through a stage where we have 1 and then 2 dimensions. If this happened, we should be able to see the tell-tale signs still imprinted in the make-up of the current universe. For instance, events that happened at very high energies (from early universe), should look today like they all happened in a line or plane instead of in 3D space. That is what the paper is about - more ways to check for this..
BTW, the reason inflation mostly stops after 3 dimensions is that three dimensions is the lowest number of dimensions where randomly distributed items are no longer on top of each other. (e.g., a 1d or 2d random walk will always return to its origin, but in 3D you can get lost for good). You can also hypothesize that a few more dimensions also expanded a little in the process, but not by very much. This is (very) basically what string theory holds.
Many people have trouble understanding the relationship between how many dimensions you have, how much you can hold, and the energy levels involved. Here is a simple thought experiment that anyone can do with just a pen and paper or maybe a string. We will use the paper for space and the string for energy. Draw a 1" line. How long of a piece of string can it "hold"? Only an 1" of course. Now draw a 1"x1" box. How long of a piece of string can it hold? About 1.4", if you stretch it from corner to corner. Now make a 1"x1"x1" box. How long of a piece of string can it hold now?
You can actually stick the Empire State Building into a 1" n-dimensional cube, as long as n is sufficiently large (I think around 225 million should do it...