Slashdot Mirror
Study: Our 3D Universe Could Have Originated From a 4D Black Hole
New submitter TaleSlinger sends this quote from Nature:
"Afshordi's team realized that if the bulk universe contained its own four-dimensional (4D) stars, some of them could collapse, forming 4D black holes in the same way that massive stars in our Universe do: they explode as supernovae, violently ejecting their outer layers, while their inner layers collapse into a black hole. In our Universe, a black hole is bounded by a spherical surface called an event horizon. Whereas in ordinary three-dimensional space it takes a two-dimensional object (a surface) to create a boundary inside a black hole, in the bulk universe the event horizon of a 4D black hole would be a 3D object — a shape called a hypersphere. When Afshordi's team modeled the death of a 4D star, they found that the ejected material would form a 3D brane surrounding that 3D event horizon, and slowly expand. The authors postulate that the 3D universe we live in might be just such a brane — and that we detect the brane's growth as cosmic expansion. 'Astronomers measured that expansion and extrapolated back that the Universe must have begun with a Big Bang — but that is just a mirage,' says Afshordi."
Turtles all the way down.
His noodliness wishes to inform you that string theory is closer to the truth but the full truth is that the universe is made of strings of spaghetti.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
... but what do I know?
I personally like the turtles explanation better than spaghetti but I'm just along for the ride.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
seriously, it's time
Could've, didn't.
So whatever a 4D star is, when it explodes there is a 3D layer that represents the event horizon. We live in this layer. One side of the layer is a 4D black hole, and the other side of the layer is some other kind of nothingness. Yeah?
Is there someone here I can offer monetary compensation to for them to comprehend this summary for me?
Someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool.
An explanation of why my socks go missing and where they went.
If I understand correctly, the universe we see is the inside of a black hole, and the big bang is the time that black hole created its singularity.
Now I can imagine that in each black hole we see there is another universe. Or is it always the same universe that is found inside all different black holes? And I still have trouble to imagine what happens to someone taking a dive into a black hole. Is it possible to enter the universe inside a black hole?
It's a news story on their website talking about a preprint paper posted on Arxiv.
#DeleteChrome
What's their point? There's not a singular thing I can see there.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
So can we go into the 2-D dimension then?
Scientists now claim that the universe originated from a gigantic asshole...
So when the Universe is expanding, is that caused by the black hole sucking in matter from this 4D Universe?
And what happens if this black hole evaporates? do we all just go POOF?
"I just had an awesome idea. Suppose the entire observable universe exists as a 3d brane on the edge of a 4 dimensional black hole."
"Okay. What would that imply?"
"I dunno."
".. we happen to live in the causal future of the classical big bang singularity .. we outline a novel mechanism through which any thermal atmosphere for the brane, with comoving temperature of 20% of the 5D Planck mass can induce scale-invariant primordial curvature perturbations on the brane, circumventing the need for a separate process (such as cosmic inflation) to explain current cosmological observations ..."
I've been saying just this for years.
Please?
we have assigned time as a 4th dimension out of convenience, just like a flatlander would be inclined to assign time as the third dimension without having any knowledge of the third dimension that we experience
The galaxy is on Orion's Belt.
In our Universe, a black hole is bounded by a spherical surface called an event horizon. Whereas in ordinary three-dimensional space it takes a two-dimensional object (a surface) to create a boundary
How is a sphere two dimensional? Surely they meant circular?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Perhaps as computer interfaces advance so we can use supercomputers seamlessly without even knowing it concepts such as this will become easily understood. Currently I'm hard pressed to figure out how we could test these theories let alone make use of them. We need to upgrade our brains...
Does anyone have a good response to the first-cause argument for the existence of God(s)? That is, is the creation of the ultimate progenitor of our universe from no-thing/no-laws best explained as being the act of an eternal and powerful supernatural entity, outside causality, that can be defined as "God"? Or is it easier to accept that something has always existed, perhaps allowing the definition of "always" to go beyond our time arrow?
What is the difference between Branes and String Theory? String Theory seems to have about 10 dimensions or so. Do theories with Branes have only 4 dimensions (3 spacial, 1 time)? I thought they were related. I realize this is all mathematical speculation but I wonder.
Not sure that the idea of an event horizon as being a 2D object in 3D space is valid. The Event Horizon is not a surface, it's the description of a place in space where information can not pass, because you can't pass information beyond the speed of light. There is no physical surface there. It's not like you could put your hand against this and pull back a stump.
The next question is are the 'D's between the 4D space as a source, and the resulting 3D space related or concurrent? I.e. does our 3D space x,y,z match to some combination of the earlier univers' w,x,y,z? or are we talking about completely separate t,u,v,w generating our x,y,z?
Alternatively is this an example of the string theroy's multiple dimensions being a common source of dimensions for each univers, and that (at least potentially) one could "translate" from one univers to the other by matching up dimensions in one universe with dimensions in the other, through the quantum foam? I can't see the translation into 4 dimenssions would work well for us, any more than I suspect that people would find it disconcerting if 2D cartoons sudenly popped up in our 3d univers. There would be a dimension of the resulting reality missing from the perspective of the translated being. Whether that would mean that the being would cease to exist, would have to learn new ways of representing reality in their mind, or if they would be subject to influences that they wouldn't be aware of because of how someone from that dimension set would nottice the missing dimension in the translated being. (Perhaps not an issue as there are sufficent dimensions actually available in the quantum foam that if you translated to a 4d univers, you would simply pick up the needed dimension on the fly. It may even be that our experiences in 3D space are simply the illusions of dreams in the 4D space, and we exist in both places already.
You never know...
This explains Tilman's crest, then.
http://video.adultswim.com/tim-and-eric-awesome-show-great-job/the-universe.html
The article is about string theory (I think more properly called "M-Theory" these days but not sure). It is the outcome of a lot of very crazy math and complicated equations that are hard to visualize.
But, what this theory sorely lacks is evidence. By which I mean any evidence at all. It is popular in the physics world because it can resolve the discrepancies between quantum mechanics (for which there is quite a lot of solid, verifiable evidence) and general relativity (for which there is also quite a lot of evidence). Everyone wants to be aboard THAT train...so it gets a lot of attention... ...but it still lacks evidence. And without the evidence it is just so much hot air.
So, don't lose any sleep over this one. The proof just isn't there.
Dimension of us never got around.....
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
That means that... our whole solar system... could be, like, one tiny atom in the fingernail of some other giant being! This is too much! http://www.metacafe.com/watch/an-n_RQb4tJmhY2n/animal_house_1978_smoking_pot_with_professor_part_2/
Where did the 4D universe come from?
There's been some speculation that the universe is a 3D hologram on a 2D surface. So maybe it could be 3D universes all the way down.
No, actually, I dont see at all. Someone call in an autistic savant to deal with this.
There's actually some math that proves this theory.
Baseless claim/theory with zero evidence + inability for anyone anywhere to disprove it = book deal + huge $$$ grant + discovery channel special
You know, like the theory that the entire universe is a gigantic is a simulation similar to the matrix. There was a very elaborate, college-funded experiment to test that actually (as seen on slashdot)
The main problem I have with this the 4D universe could (and would) still interact with our 3D hypersphere. Consider a black hole in our 3D universe. It has an event horizon, the 2D surface of which is analogous to the 3D hypersphere. Mass from our 3D universe does cross through that surface and has a profound effect on the structure and behavior of whatever mass is "living" in that boundary. Thus we would expect to see objects instantly materialize as they cross into our 3D hypersphere, and interact with our mass, etc. Even if somehow that 4D black hole is totally, completely insulated from the rest of its 4D universe, and thus there currently isn't any 4D mass breaking the plane of the hypersphere, we should still see remnants of where 4D mass had passed through at some point in the past. For example it would have had gravitational effects, displaced and interacted with mass, etc.
As far as I'm aware, cosmologists have never observed any structures in the universe which could only be the result of some totally external influence. At some point a chunk of 4D mass would have had to have intersected the brane and punched a hole through a galaxy or imparted more mass or energy in some crazy way that would stand out like a sore thumb.
Better known as 318230.
And if so can they eat each other and collide like galaxies.
"Afshordi's team realized that..."
Here. Let me correct that: "Afshordi's team imagined that..."
"Thought experiments" are NOT experiments, NOR are they "science". When Einstein used so-called "thought experiments" he was using them as a teaching tool to explain his theories, but we have now a large pool of people who live on research grants doing "theoretical" science and lots of "thought experiments" (which used to be called "day dreaming" and was a good way to avoid doing real work). I refuse to recognize any of this drivel as "science" until it actually involves experiments and data harvested from those experiments... until then it's just subsidized day dreaming with as much value to society as children putting on costumes and playing "make believe". Why four dimensions and not ninety four or perhaps three hundred four? Even if some wild imagination convinces you that at least four dimensions are needed and some razor tells you to keep it simple (and you therefore restrict your daydream to four) that does not mean the real universe conforms to your desires... there could be exactly 62 dimensions for reasons you will never even be able to imagine. The pseudo-intellectual garbage being peddled to the public as "science" these days is truly mind blowing... and meanwhile there are an uncounted number of real, solid scientific problems to be solved by means of actual science that would improve the lives of millions of people. IMHO Afshordi and team deserve no accolades and no particular attention; they'd benefit society more as day laborers picking fruit or as janitors mopping hospital floors. I love SCIENCE but I detest quasi-scientific junk being passed-off as something of value and tarnishing the reputation of real science. There's been so much of this junk showered upon the public that the public now has a lower opinion of completely valid and serious science and scientists than it had four or five decades ago. One big step backward for science, one grand faceplant for all mankind.
Bah Humbug! (sad, weak smile)
Or maybe, you know, they are up against Godelian limitations of their own mathematical systems which they are falsely projecting onto reality. Maybe their whimsical fancies aren't, you know, ACTUALY REAL. How about some hard evidence for all their conjectures? You know, OBSERVATION OF DATA which is able to be INDEPENDENTLY VERIFIABLE in a repeated way.........you know, like SCIENCE and stuff.
that we know so little about the universe, how it really works, and what's really in it that there may well be many more things that can easily cross an event horizon than things that are prevented from crossing one; we simply may be completely unaware of the existence of these other things. We are three-dimensional beings only capable of making three-dimensional instruments which have a very limited ability to measure a very small subset of the details of reality ... for all our creativity and ingenuity we may vary well be missing most of what exists and we may even be biologically incapable of even imagining very real components/aspects of the mechanisms and structures of the universe.
Incidentally, I think bad science education (illustrating space as a surface and gravity as dips in the surface) and popular/unpopular media (like Disney's "Black Hole") have probably led to people thinking of an event horizon as a "horizon" on a warped "surface" rather than, for example, a sphere of some radius
Reading the comments to this post, no one really comprehends "dimensions." Just be.
'Astronomers measured that expansion and extrapolated back that the Universe must have begun with a Big Bang — but that is just a mirage,'
I am sure a black hole forming would count as a big bang..
You have 5 Moderator Points!
Which Helpless Linux zealot/MS basher do you want to mod down today?
Though time is commonly refered to as the 4th dimension, its one way nature sets it apart from geometric space which we free to move about and back at will. I believe this is because it is made out of energy, motion. Therefore change is primary and our endeavor to order it results in time. Subjectively we could consider taste, smell or color to be extra dimensions. Quantumly? perhaps spin, charm, truth &beauty could be considered extra dimensions.
God is the 4D dude who bought the Make Your Own Universe Kit and set it running in his mom's basement.
If you tick him off by not kissing up to him etc., he'll delete you from his "ant farm". So, sing those hymns, guys! "You are the grandest and mightiest, oh wondrous Father of all we know!"
He can see you yanking off also, and will blind you if caught; he hates the yanking while he's having sandwiches, ruins his appetite.
Table-ized A.I.
I'll stick with the turtles story, thanks anyway.
You are welcome on my lawn.
In the 4D universe is a book called Cubeland and the readers struggle to understand how creatures might exist in a hypothetical space limited to just width,height and depth. Ie. How their digestive tract is just a tube through them.
that the 3D universe is not a closed system. This implication is profound because this would mean that the 1st and 2nd law of thermal dynamics does not apply to our universe. All modern physics is based on the idea that energy / mass is conserved. This theory also implies that this universe is living on the surface of a 4D sphere, which yields a curved space geometry. However, this is contrary to observation. Interesting theory, but I'm not convinced...
One could extrapolate that the 4D universe is just a black hole in a 5D universe then. Maybe go up to as many dimensions as String theory expects.
In theory, theory and practice are the same; in practice they're different. (Yogi Berra & A. Einstein)
I was thinking about that 2D hologram theory too. Your idea makes me start to think that maybe all of the "big bang black hole math" actually boils down to nothing -- and -- we're just in a cycle of 3D big bangs/big crunches.
The math makes me hopeful that intelligent creatures like us might be able to holographically survive into the next cycle !
This is an illustration of where mathematical models can run amok.
Every kind of model has its limits. Bohr, for example, envisioned atoms as a nucleus of positively charged protons and neutral neutrons, with orbiting electrons. The model works well because it's something people can grasp. But the model has its limits, and there are many aspects of quantum behavior that cannot be explained by the Bohr model. The model is still useful because it does lead to many accurate scientific predictions.
A newer mathematical model, quantum mechanics, seeks to be even more accurate in its predictions than Bohr's model. It succeeded in many ways, and like the Bohr model, has led to many interesting discoveries. But it too has its limits.
In pure mathematics, exceeding three dimensions is effortless. Calculations involving four or more dimensions can easily be solved. But just because the mathematical model can do it, doesn't mean that the physical reality it attempts to model, can also do it. A model is designed to represent reality, but it is not itself reality. I suspect that all such mathematical models of the universe, which point to other dimensions, will eventually be shown to be purely mathematical.
Answer me that smart guy.
So the big bang is just a mirage?
Maybe it's all just sabotage!
(with many apologies to the Beastie Boys - this was just the first thing that popped into my head when I read the mirage line)
This is it. Then we get into Branes.
It gets the name from 'membrane'...sort of like a defined more by its edge than what it is made of or what is inside of it...
I don't buy it. Not to be reductive but I think the whole '4-D' thing is hogwash and a lazy way to keep adapting the same equations. IMHO.
**maybe** you can say 'time' is a 4th 'dimension' but only abstractly...and really time is just our perception of change in the universe...how forces change matter...if there was no change we'd have no 'time'...just like when 'time' is frozen on Star Trek
Nope. Branes are kicking the 'ex nihilio' can further up the publishing and thesis chain. "Where did the branes come from?"...'super branes' of course...it's a cop out...kill me now
Black Holes are bubbles of nothingness in quantum foam. The really are true 'black bodies' were the event horizon destroys everything and scatters the forces left behind across it's plain which makes it bigger.
Believe it or not, what I just typed goes against alot of Stephen Hawking's work on Black Holes but it's true. We've been chasing our tails with over-analyzing black holes b/c the implications of them being true 'black bodies' means that the universe dies a heat death, meaning that **other** parts of Cambridge dogma are wrong.
Physics needs get over this notion that when cosmology can't explain something we just gather it and put it in a bigger bag with a new label on it and call it a theory.
**SOMETHING** started the universe...who cares if it was God or something else...I hate that people use science to prove or disprove something like religion...it's just as bad either way...misuse of science...like using a slide rule as hammer
If we can accept that the universe exists without demanding to know how it started we can get a wholly better **description** of how it behaves...how black holes behave, for example...
instead we chase our tails around imaginary dimensions...branes are a pointless theoretical persuit
Thank you Dave Raggett
That's the combination of my luggage!
thanks man...I mean thanks for reading and taking my idea seriously
i am a lifelong scientist and i'm trained academically as a research designer and do mostly HCI and cybernetics work but I have always loved this stuff!
i **love** what we are learning, especially in the last 10 years, but it seems something rotten out of Cambridge has an axe to grind
Thank you Dave Raggett
So, there is a chance for 4D women out there?
Hmmm.
By way of analogy, could the event horizons of black holes in our own universe host a 2D universes?
Why would an N dimensions black hole create a N - 1 dimensions universe? why not create an N dimensions universe or a N - 2 dimensions universe?
you know i'm like soo fed up with all these bogus physics headlines. srsly. why dont they instead acctually present the math in a simple way? why not report (in a simple manner) how making a derivative of a 4 dimensional vector space or something yield a three dimensional space?
as an example: a 3d sphere moving thru a 2d sheet of paper will yield first a dot, then a growing circle which then shrinks again to a dot (as seen on the 2d sheet of paper).
simple. no need to invoke any religious undertones, like maybe our earthy paradise was created from a hell that only gods can go to. holy f#ck.
me thinks, to be eligible for a phd the candidat needs to explain a "difficult" concept to a room full of sheepels before getting his/her phd. if they fail, then he/she fail the most important part of the education: kiss.
And a 5D universe created the 4D universe (etc etc), so what? Pointless to write up a story as if it isn't just pure theory. Basically the summary is a lie in the way it presents the "information".
Damned Necros were right all along.
Now I feel sorta bad killing the guy, he just wanted to get crushed to death and I stuck a knife in his head.
All they talk about is branes......
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
This is totally flawed. In a 4D universe, an event horizon would be a 3D space. Good so far, but there it stops.
Because, how could you fit a universe in an event horizon? The event horizon might be big enough - but event horizons does not hold onto anything. The event horizon is merely a mathematical border. Stuff does not stay there, it falls right through.
Take a look at black holes in our universe. They have 2D event horizons. Do they have 2D universes (flatland) embedded in them? Nope. Nothing stays at the event horizon. Stuff falls into black holes, the event horizon is merely the area where you can't see it anymore because light cannot escape from there. It is not an area where things stay - by definition, nothing can "stop" at the event horizon. It just keeps falling in.
Another funny thing with event horizons is that they aren't static. The event horizon is where light cannot escape "to infinity". But it can go a bit up, before it falls down again. So if you are close to a black hole, you can see what people farther away consider the "event horizon". When you are close, you see an event horizon closer to the black hole. I.e. the sphere from where light cannot get out to you, is closer to the black hole. Even if you fall in, you will never seem to cross any event horizon - it will always be ahead of you. So where were this "embedded universe" supposed to be again?
While a 4D black hole would have a 3D event horizon, there would be no 3D constraint there. Matter existing in this region would be free to move in the fourth dimension - which it definitely would do by immediately falling into the black hole. Spacetime at the event horizon is not dimensionally limited. In a 4D universe, space is still 4D even at a 3D event horizon. Similiar to how 3D space exist where we have normal 2D event horizons.
The idea seems silly in the extreme - just because a three dimensional border region can exist in 4D space - why should our 3D universe be located there? And also - anything located in such a region would fall to the center of the black hole in fractions of a second - no possibility for a "universe" to last millions of years.
Captcha: shredder. How very fitting...
Mind you, I just thought about this as an uneducated random thought. I certainly don't understand the physics well enough to make a real comment.
With that said though, I've wondered for a while if we're just experiencing what its like to be on the inside of a black hole thats suddenly expanded due to some sort of fluctuation in gravity.
For all we know, its an illusion and we're still in a singularity from a higher dimension.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Popper's criterion of demarcation: "statements or systems of statements, in order to be ranked as scientific, must be capable of conflicting with possible, or conceivable observations"
Where did this 4D supernova originate from ? A 5D universe ? This is fun but to my untrained eye, fairly pointless.
... hurts my brane.
No Inflation Taxation without Representation
We already live in a 4-D universe, aka Time is the 4th D in every 4 vector position. On top of that from Relativity we already use higher dimensions that are hard to measure to explain Relativity. A similar set of dimensions (8 are needed) to explain QM. 3 spatial, 3 in k-space, time and of course phase. Of course QM limits any object to only having 5-D at one time. If we are in a 3-D universe... well we're not in a 3-D universe... from basic physics we are at least in a 8-D universe from present observations. Of course day to day we only see 3-D and exist in 4-D with the others appearing only in special situations. So the assumption that we are a compressed 3-D universe on a brane sounds a bit doubtful to me at first, but give me time, I'll mull it longer. The author should take some of these other dimensions into account when forming a theory of a 4-D blackhole.
The actual pdf Paper which is free to download explains it much better than the layman summary.
They actually did their HW and maybe its correct:
There is this platonician belief that numbers have a live in an of itself. And that mathematics are the language of the universe. Here is an interresting article about it : http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2009/02/08/a_talk_with_mario_livio/?page=1 Mathematics are a way to describe the universe, to make a (conceptual) model. The thing is some scientists seem to confuse the model with the reality it is trying to portray. This can be called platonicism, and it seems most physicist are, as opposed to engineers.
Lol
In no particular order:
Hawking proved... No, he did not. Hawking has a mathematical description that's consistent with quantum mechanics and general relativity, but that doesn't mean the universe actually works this way. There have been a large number of highly promising theoretical constructs that have never been observed in reality and are believed to not exist. Hawking radiation may be one of them. Most physicists believe Hawking radiation exists and is a real phenomena, but it has never been observed in reality. (We have, however, observed analogues to Hawking radiation from acoustic 'black holes'.)
Highly charged particles are emitted at the poles of a black hole... No, they are not. Those jets are made of matter that was about to cross the event horizon until they suddenly and violently thought better of it. The area around an accreting black hole is perhaps the most violent spot imaginable in the universe; it should be no surprise whatsoever that once something has gone around the accretion disc a few million times it would have enough kinetic energy to go like hell off in another direction as soon as it collides with another particle. One of the billiard-balls rockets across the event horizon and the other uses its kinetic energy to escape from the accretion disc. (This is handwaving a lot of astrophysics, but is basically accurate.)
the black hole itself is also rotating at the speed of light... No, it is not. Black holes have to obey the cosmic speed limit just like everything else. Also, not all black holes possess angular momentum. General relativity gives perfectly satisfactory predictions for stationary black holes.
The information, that is the quantum state, of mass and energy that is eaten by a blackhole is later ejected as what could be termed high energy 'noise'; x-rays and gamma rays. Not in the slightest. Hawking radiation is about the longest-wavelength (which means lowest-energy) stuff in the universe. The reason for this is really simple: although it started off as unbelievably energetic, it had to expend virtually all of its energy escaping from where it was created a nanometer beyond the event horizon.
No offense, but you need to sit down with a good book on general relativity. (I like Sean Carroll's Spacetime and Geometry. YMMV.)
Does anyone have any serious articles that say such things could exist?
Observation fo graity and magnetics to obey inverse square laws from atomic to galactic scales. Some deviances such fast galactic rotation can be explained by a inverse law devience or hidden matter. Some of these hyperdimensional brane theories predict a deviance of gravity at microscopic scales.
Don't black holes in our Univers continue to expand? The mass these things chomp up isn't all emmited by gamma rays right? Isn't that mass contributed to the 2d space on the event horrizen eventually or does it never technically get there? I guess my question is, if this guy is correct...where is all that additional mass? If we're surrounding a 4d black hole on the event horrizon why aren't we happily getting more and more mass as it chomps away?
The abundances of hydrogen, helium and lithium. The cosmic microwave background. The maximum age of stars. The observably different conditions at high red-shift. The agreement between observed large scale structure and that expected in a Big Bang + dark matter + dark energy universe.
(Disclaimer - I haven't read the article. Maybe they discuss this.)
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
can't understand..
May as well invoke magic, this hypothesis has not a shred of proof nor verifiability; and its core purpose, to explain a uniform CMB, is actually falsified by recent measurements.
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This illustrates the way science works. Someone proposes a model and we look to see if it predicts reality. This ones doesn't. No scientists ever claims the model is reality, but journalism and elementary school teachers. Models with only three dimensions do a poor job of predicting reality. Those with four dimensions are clearly better as seen by general relativity and related works. Now, most people would like to have an explanation for reality. If it appears to work a certain way, they like to thing that's the way it works. It's totally understandable. If you're going to pick something to believe, why not follow Occam's razor and pick the simplest model that is accurate? Without that, you can't talk about gravity or light or radio waves, because those are all models and you don't believe in models. Models are always simplifications that help us understand how the world behaves. Just because some scientists proposes a model you don't agree with, doesn't mean something has run amok.
i t create doesn't matter where the universe began. You can always take it back until you reach the conclusion the created came from the Creator. That makes sense. where did the 4D black hole come from? where did it all begin? did something come from nothing? or was the universe as we know it created? through science we know the universe is changing. We also know the universe has a beginning. it has a point of origin. it is some 14 billion light years ago. there is a model the astronomers use to describe it. it all goes back to "In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God..."
Since topology and differential geometry work entirely well within an N-D 'surface' without recourse to embedding in and {N+1}-D space, I don't see why we have to believe in a notional 4-D space in which the 3-D spatial universe were embedded, and it multiplies actors....
are you hinting at the Platonic notion of forms and how according to him a 'real' thing is better than the idea of the thing therefore 'god' exists?
i am surely butchering the whole thing but I think you might know what I mean...
personally, when we covered that in Intro to Philosophy back in college, I never understood why something being 'real' is in any way better than not...it's utterly dependent upon context...a real tiger in your shower is probably almost always worse than just the idea of it
to me its a distinction w/o a difference...
IMHO we can't 'prove' we are real (and not just a simulation) any more than we can 'prove' god does or does not exist...
as I said above the intellectual exercise is nice...I could also add that I agree mostly w/ the other respondent below...
Thank you Dave Raggett
probably not science. If they come up with a repeatable experiment or cosmic observation that indicates the existence of a fourth spatial dimension then the interesting theory becomes real, otherwise its just more fiction cloaked in complex math. What could be more plausible would be to consider space to be defined by 6 dimensions, three for gravity and three for the electrostatic field. Now crush the gravitational field so much that it essentially becomes one dimension and they may have something.
Greed is the root of all evil.
Well, there goes the worm hole space folding ideea. To fold 3D space would mean to fold the hypersphere surface. That would mean squeezing the volume of a 4D black hole which is already as compressed as a... black hole... Stretching the hypersphere surface would also be an option but that would probably mean affecting the fabric of spacetime in our 3D universe with all kinds of relativistic side effects.
I like that you mentioned Conway's Game of Life. I really like it as an anology.
So forgetting 'god' questions & w/e for a minute...
I was trying to think of a way to go 'one abstractin layer down' as a sort of heuristic for programing a machine to make random choices, in an autonomous independent agent kind of scenario.
So assuming humans make choices in 3 dimensions (no reason whatsoever to think this way but hear me out...)...to go 'one abstraction layer down' is 2 dimensions
To me that sounds alot like Conway's Game of Life.
The idea is, say we're making a Sim's type game. Human avatars (to continue your analogy) and I want to **program** my avatar to make truly random choices (from my programmer's perspective) but have them function within a system that also is programmed to maintain the avatar character (keep them fed, make them wipe their ass, etc)...so this Sim's automaton can sustain their existence but no other user would ever be able to predict their behavior beyond the basics for any character.
I'm trying to program that let's say...
Using my 3d>2d heuristic, I would have to have a 'sub-martingale game' running underneath my Sim's character's existince.
This 2d game IMHO would look alot like Conway's simulation...precisely b/c of what you said above, it is binary ("is about cells being empty or full, nothing more, nothing less...")
In this 2d game, for each decision is either 'do or not'...each cell can be filled or empty...binary. In the 3d game, when the Avatar geospacially reaches some sort of decision node (player finds a bike...ride bike or do not ride bike)
In the 2d sub-game that would look something like two gliders interacting in a conway game. When they interact, they can, theoretically reconfigure to form a gosper gun, or a bigger glider, or obliterate each other...these interactions could (theoretically) be used to guide the 'choices' of avatar
ex: the autonomous avatar is represented in 2d by a two antithetical gliders that also function as a gosper gun that shoots crawlers. so here is this sort of mobile Conway yin/yang glider that moves in the 2d space in some relation to the 3d avatar
when the 3d avatar encounters some decision node in the game, that is represented in 2d by some kind of interaction with the 2d yin/yang glider and something else that can make the 2d yin/yang glider shoot out new gliders in a new direction...or make a fountain...something...
is any of this making sense? what do you think man?
Thank you Dave Raggett