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The Man Who Invented the 26th Dimension
StartsWithABang (3485481) writes Based on all the experiments we've ever been able to perform, we're quite certain that our Universe, from the largest scales down to the microscopic, obeys the physical laws of three spatial dimensions (and one time dimension): a four-dimensional spacetime. But that's not the only possibility mathematically. People had experimented with bringing a fifth dimension in to unify General Relativity with Electromagnetism in the past, but that was regarded as a dead-end. Then in the 1970s, an unknown theoretical physicist working on the string model of the strong interactions discovered that by going into the 26th dimension, some incredibly interesting physics emerged, and String Theory was born.
Einstein was a genius.
Here at discount dimension warehouse you can get 27 dimensions for the price of 26. We honor all competitors empirically undemonstrated theory coupons. More dimensions for your money.
Not to detract from his contributions to science, but the photo of him in the Medium article makes him look like some sort of Parakeet Wizard. How he stayed sane with 40 parakeets in his house is something I will never understand.
Decades from now, people will look back on it and laugh--putting it beside Phrenology and others in the "Hall of Pseudoscience."
seems like this is 40 years old too late to be news.
Why not postulate an infinite number of dimensions?
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
String theory is math. Math is not science. This should not be in the "science" section of /.
Not only does a 2nd time dimension allow for actual time travel (in a one dimensional universe you can't change the order of anything - you need a 2nd space dimension to hop over or around someone in front of you - so a second time dimension allows for time travel).
But also it make it a lot easier to understand why we do not SEE the 5th or higher dimension, let alone confirm it with scientific instruments.
I can look up/down, North/South, and East/West, but I can not look past/future. So it makes sense that I also can not look t2+/t2-.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
How could be unknown if "A study in 2009 ranked him as the 14th most influential physicist in the world for the period 1967-1973.", or was he unknown at the time, which is common for anyone before popular ideas? Unknown in the general public is anyone but Einstein.
General relativity will never be reconciled with quantum mechanics until singularity is taken out
is his name. Not sure why the summary left it out.
I thought there had to be more than 3 macro-scale space dimensions to allow the whole 'finite but unbounded' thing. You know, so you can't sail off the edge of space?
The scientific model is quite simply:
1) Develop testable hypothesis (aka theory)
2) Develop experiments/observations to test hypothesis
3) Perform experiment/observations
4) Repeat
Anyone who participates in any of these steps is performing science. It took a while to find practical tests of String theory given it's extreme generality, but several have been suggested and a few have even been performed, ranging from the scale of planetary motion to LHC data.
Just sayin'.
Gotta be over 9000
Another rubbish theory consigned to the dust bin....
So the inventor of multi dimensions, founder of string theory is unknown?
Perhaps you wanted to make a sentence like " at that time unknown scientist ... "?
After all people with the surname Lovelace are very well known in the geek community. Hm, have to check if they are actually related.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Statements like that make me cringe. News at 11: Not everything mathematically possible is physically possible, it's the other way around.
CLI paste? paste.pr0.tips!
Couldn't bear to even try and read the medium.com linkspam.
Woit has written a book called "Not even wrong" about string theory and how it's not science in his opinion. He actively blogs about string theory hype. He's not a string theorist and although he does have a PhD in physics he's not published anything scientific in decades. He teaches math and writes anti-string rants as a hobby.
I'm not asking you about evidence that you have found. I'm merely asking you to imagine evidence that you might find some day, which would confirm or disprove your "theory."
I'm not asking you to tell me about an experiment that you have performed. I'm merely asking you to discuss an experiment that you might some day be able to perform, if say, you had a modest grant of ten trillion dollars per second and ten thousand years to work on putting your experiment together.
The questions about a scientific theory simply don't get any easier than this. Have you ever wondered why creationists don't seem to be able to grasp what the word "theory" means? Maybe it's because people like you, have been teaching them that the word "theory" MEANS NOTHING. Indeed, I wonder why I even see you two, as two different groups. Your concept of Science sure looks the same to me.
Everyone, please join me in henceforth, addressing all String Theorists with honorary titles such as Pastor, Minister, Your Holiness, etc.
Even worse: he proposes that our universe is only 3 spatial dimensions, when it's well-accepted that this is a consequence of inflation. Originally, we had ten dimensions in balance; but the force between them gave out, and six of these contracted while three expanded. The three expanding dimensions make up our growing bubble of space--the universe--while the six shrinking are not major forces in our universe, but possibly have an impact on the quantum level (see: quantum foam).
Thus we have three-dimensional space-time, and six dimensions of no note. It's like having a few rich people and some non-notable Ska.
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Was his name Buckaroo Banzai?
No one "invented" 26-dimensional spaces. Might as write a headline about the man who invented the number 26. Weird that the article is pretty decent.
You're making a false assumption.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Unscientific
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
String theory was devised as a mathematical model that seems to describe a workable universe which may, or may NOT be our universe. Problem is that we know that the Standard Model cannot be the complete picture but so far we have no experimental data to use as a starting point to figure out what lies behind it. When we finally do get a hint of new physics some of the new math being invented by String Theorists is going to be very useful weather or not String Theory itself correctly describes our universe.
If you're nominating time as a dimension, space-time would be four dimensions. Three dimensions would be just space.
"All problems in computer science can be solved by another level of indirection" - David Wheeler
"All problems in physics can be solved by another dimension" - Some jackass
Is 26 dimensions better or worse than 26 levels of indirection?
26 happens to be a very important number kabbalistically .. it is the numeric value of the 'name of god' (jehovah, for those not afraid of being stoned) which represents the complete manifested universe. im just saying - kinda neat.
Yes four-dimensional space-time, not three-dimensional space.
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No! Time is not a dimension, at least not like the three spatial dimensions. The combo ct is convenient in e.g. the distance metric -c^2dt^2+dx^2+dy^2+dz^2 and related but tat's all.
It's what makes "Ludicrous Speed" possible.
I would have a sig but I am too busy updating programs and restarting my computer
Well, 26 dimensions, a (string) theory, and no way to explain ANY of the simplest massive particles.
Electron, Proton, Neutron, Meson.
Nothing that accounts for their mass, stability, angular momentum, charge. Not withour some
pretty questionable math (renormalization, time directions: t- tau + x - vt and t-tau + x + vt , subtract
the infinities and plug in the experimental value...)
and some really questionable connections to philosophy ( we have to do these operations in a
certain order because... ).
Math is fun, but should not be taken too seriously, especially when working with reality....
Kindal like bad magic, twisted spells, and abnormal psychic phenomena...
I can say without hesitation that he was not playing with a full deck.
Well yeah; he was a theoretical physicist.
Decades from now? Some of us are doing that now.
If you throw enough indirection and meta-ability into your model, it becomes analogous to a Turing Machine that can "run" and match just about any conceivable universe. It's almost at the level of Creationism in that instead of: it's that way because "God did it", you have "because my meta model (language) can be re-programmed to match that too". I smell a cop-out.
Either that, old-fashioned parsimony perhaps should be downplayed and emergent-behavior explanations be considered. But "God did it" is then a valid candidate.
Table-ized A.I.
He attracted some attention
When he found the 26th dimension
But he ain't got rhythm
So no one's with him
The loneliest man in town
That is one marginally plausible way of connecting theory with observation, but there is no direct evidence for it (or any of the alternative models).
You're getting trapped in semantic games. Let's be clear about what we mean by "truth". The basis of empirical truth is observation. The basis of rationalistic truth is logic, as opposed to observation. Rationalism lends itself to exact proofs, which do not necessarily describe the real world. Empiricism is true only to the limits of our observational abilities. Science is empirical, mathematics is rational. You can prefer either system but you're not doing yourself or anyone else any good by conflating the two. To the degree that String Theories do not make real-world predictions, they are neither empirical nor scientific. The "whole of physics" is therefore testable by definition.
Relativity was tested in 1919, fourteen years after Einstein's 1905 paper. Tests were immediately conceived for various aspects, the trouble of verification (i.e. observation) was precision. Observational evidence of relativity, notably Michaelson-Morley, predated the theoretical explanation. To some degree this is true of string theories, to some degree it is not. To the degree to which string theories do not refer to observations, or possible observations, they cannot be considered to be (empirically) true.
If you have fuzzy definitions of truth, truth is a nebulous concept. This is not the case in either science or mathematics. Please spend some time reading about the subject.
by a Greek physicist. It's a matter of available labels.
How did this dreck get up-modded?
If he invented the 26th dimension, then it did not previously exist and probably still does not. If he discovered it, then it previously existed and probably still does. Both within reasonable uncertainty bounds, of course.
"Computers are useless. They can only give you answers."
-- Pablo Picasso
The link in the articel seems to be broken and show chaotically formated text.
Please correct.
"Life is short and in most cases it ends with death." Sir Sinclair
But why couldn't you use 10 dimensions and just make them *larger*?
Ours goes up to 11.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Universities teach dead stuff. For example, Latin.
I come here for the love
((Fifth Dimension) ^2) + One Direction
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
K.I.S.S. or Keep It Simple Stupid' - Occam's Razor. The solution isn't more dimensions its less. By using an FTL model you can reduce the four dimensions used by General Relativity to Three. The thing is that three works better and it fits better with actual observation. It can even be made to fit with the general relativity mechanic by allowing a physical dimensional time but only on quantum scales.. .
They deduced dimensional time from the observation of dimension like time - and time like space in the dilation caused by travel at relativistic speeds. Unfortunately they didn't notice that the vector of movement defines a direction - giving a free dimension - so at the speed of light dimension like time is just an ordinary dimension of space. It can be generalised to say that the 'speed' of light is actually a 'velocity'. KISS wins.
Below the speed of light Special Relativity is one of the most accurate theories in physics - above the speed of light..
What % of this is libel mmell http://slashdot.org/comments.p... ? 100% libeling others accusing them of pedophile activities perhaps? Do you work for, or own/have interests in, a marketing (or affliated with advertisers based company or consultancy) oriented capacity mmell? Answer those questions
sub:Search Origins-Cosmology Vedas interlinks :source,fields,flows,reflectors add to protective Index. The Prime Concepts offer higher Dimensional Knowledge. Search space cosmology vedas interlinks. Support East-West Interaction-Vidyardhi Nanduri
String theory has the origins-Cosmic Dance of Lord SiVA. Basic concepts