infinite dimensions

created by thefez

(idea) by siren (5.7 mon) (print) ? (I like it!) Mon Jul 24 2000 at 3:01:26

please forgive my pedantry, but this is a topic of personal interest to me. The person who codified space-time was Hermann Minkowski in an address delivered at the 80th assembly of German Natural Scientists and Physicians at Cologne on the 21st of September in 1908.

His paper, entitled "Space and Time" opens with the following paragraph

The views of space and time which I wish to lay before you before you hvae sprung from the soil of experimental physics, and therin lies their strength. They are radical. Henceforth space by itself, and time by itself, are doomed to fade away into mere shadows, and only a kind of union of the two will preserve an independant reality

Minkowski had been a teacher of Einstein and his views strongly shaped Einstein's work.

(idea) by Kefabi (2 y) (print) ? (I like it!) Mon Feb 12 2001 at 22:19:58

I've been reading The Elegant Universe which is an amazing book. It starts off explaning the problems with Newtonian Physics, explains how Special and General Relativity solved those problems, what Quantum Mechanics is (but not the how or the why, because no one knows the how or the why), and how the superstring theory came about.

I just got to the part about a multi-dimensional universe. The book states that there must be at least 11 dimensions for the math in the superstring theory to work out correctly. Four are tangable and we can directly experience those (three space, one would be time), and the other 7+ must be smaller than what we can currently detect. A few thoughts instantly popped into my mind, and I didn't know where to write them, so I figured Everything2 would be good. What follows are all my own thoughts.

Could there be an infinite number of dimensions? The possibility hasn't been ruled out. Perhaps there are four we deal with in everyday life, another four extremely small dimensions, smaller than what we can detect, and then even 4 smaller dimentions to those dimensions, and so on forever? I don't know how the math works out on all this, but that thought brought up a few thoughts of it's own. And since each dimension gets smaller and smaller, perhaps their effect on our dimensions is less and less so that their effect on our dimensions is a sum of all the smaller ones? You know, like the limit as n approaches infinity. And if so, can't each of those smaller dimensions evolve in a way very similar to ours, since their "strings" in the supersting theory also have an infinite number of dimensions to oscolate in? And if so, then maybe our four dimensions are just part of another four larger dimensions except that those greator ones also cannot be detected because they are past the bounds of our known universe? then the four dimensions we live in are just a tiny speck in the very huge number of universes out there, many much bigger than our universe, many much smaller, each with their own worlds and life forms and cultures perhaps studying physics and with some college kids sitting in class pondering thoughts just like mine.

Many questions, no answers but something that had been on my mind for a few hours while I was supposed to be listening in Econ class or doing math or whatever else.

Of course I understand that the proceding thought are totally science-fiction. but none of it has actually been "disproven." Highly unlikely, but still possible. Many times I wish I had been born a few thousands years later when they had all the answers to this. If I could just find a nearby event horizon to stand next to for a few hours and let a few hundred earth years pass, that would be just perfect...

printable version
chaos

A point on an infinite plane of probability	Superstring Theory	Fourth dimension	Hilbert space
Quantum mechanics	The Elegant Universe	Why matter cannot reach the speed of light	Spaceland: A Romance of Two Dimensions and a Timeline
Two-party system	Event Horizon	Field of Dreams	dimension
hyperverse	Hermann Weyl	L-space	functional analysis
spacetime	The Man who Mistook His Wife for a Hat	how Wiener found his way home	Jack Rabbit
Capitals of the World	EIPT	Tao	Metal Slug X

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