h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

10^-32m. One day somebody is really going to have to sit down and explain to me the whole more-than-four-dimensions thing, though. Just when I think I've found a way of visualising it, it slips away again...

Anyway, thanks for the article, very well-written and very interesting.
Matthew.

I agree a very interesting article,nice done. I had heard about string theory b4, they said it was 21st century technology now or something. So this is all tied in with the unified field theory then?

ack! I can't even seem to get past three dimensions, visually or otherwise. I mean, I understand the idea of a dimension referring to a spatial quality. Beyond that,however, there's really nothing you can point to and say "that's a dimension"; or is there ?

The thing about string theory is that it is using mathematical dimensions. Since we (human life critters) only use the four (height, width, depth, and time), we only see the four. But for something like a charmed quark, who knows? The other 22 may be vastly useful. And, indeed, our pitiful four may seem laughably primitive. Suppose the universe is inhabited by 26th dimensional beings who constantly occupy and pass through our bodies and lives in the form of quantum particles or waves? There's no reason to think that we'd notice them or they us, any more than we notice bacteria. Perhaps 4th dimensional life is considered an embarrassingly unpleasant side-effect, for which they have to apologize in polite 26th dimensional society ("Oops - I just humaned" "Gezundheit").

Perhaps...though I'm not convinced that time is, in fact, a dimension, in the sense that we use the word (dimension, not time.) I found a picture of a four-dimensional object in OMNI magazine years ago; it's pretty interesting. I once built similar model out of toothpicks and hung it from the ceiling; guess what? It spun on its own! I don't know what this proves, but it was lots of fun
Here's a web address to a picture of the "hypercube" --> http://home.earthlink.net/~dreymers/hcube1.html.

Oops - I just humaned.
http://home.earthlink.net/~dreymers/hcube1.html

Yes, really interestig article. Well done and all that! I've read about strings before and find it all rather confusing for my poor old addled brain. I think I've got the idea though but will never again look at a plate of spaghetti without feeling slightly bewildered.

I'm currently in the middle of Brian Greene's "The Elegent Universe," the book in which he reveals the secrets of the String Theory. All devlishly interesting. I love it. It's amazingly well written, and this guide entry is only a step below the mastery level Greene himself exibits. For those of you interested in learning more about strings, do a search at http://www.Amazon.com or http://www.bn.com for "The Elegant Universe."

Time is OBVIOUSLY a dimension. This is how we get all the various antimatter theories. Picture yourself descibed on a cartesian volume, you are defined by x,y,z. At any point in this plane, you may be at a different point. So we use x,y,z,t to define your position in space-time. Relativity introduced a fourth spacial dimension, deonted as w, to curve the x,y,z dimensions towards, which explains, currently, gravitational effects. A Russian Scientist has claimed that, using fractal iterative methods, he has uncovered an extra set of three spacial dimensions which are 90 degrees out of phase with our own, occupying what we would call the same "space" but at right angles. He also claims that the time-dilation effects of gravity can be better explained by visualising time in two or three dimensions, rather than one.

The thing I LOVE about physics is, no matter how bizarre you think life gets, scientists somewhere are proving it gets worse!

Personally, I don't see the "fourth dimension" in the image provided. It's nothing more than a cube within a cube. The one thing that could throw you off is the bizzare coloring.

A better explaination of the fourth dimension- time- for the lay-man would be something like this... If you were going to meet a friend somewhere, you'd set up a location... let's say, the corner of 9th street and 10th avenue. That specific location is destingiushed by 3 dimensions... an x,y, and z. The corner is located at an x and y location(ie Latitude and Longitude), while the z determines where in the third dimension, up and down, you're going to meet. Obviously you're going to meet at the z coordinate that coincides with the ground.

That's all fine and dandy, but if you head out to the corner of 9th and 10th on Tuesday, you may be waiting for a while for your friend to show up, considering he may assume the meeting is next Friday. Without establishing a 4th coordinate, time, you can't establish a true location. You're meeting won't work out unless you have the x,y,z, and t. Does that clarify at all?

Another way to look at it, although somewhat more jargon-ridden, is that space and time are one interlaced being. Einstein's proposal for how gravity works is that the fabric of space-time is curved around each celestial body, a notion that makes a bit of sense. When you think about it, locating a celestial object requires specific coordinates... again, an x,y, and z. If space and time are interlaced, however, you'll need a fourth coordinate, t. That's the only way you could effectively locate the object. Since space and time are one (fairly)continous stream, portions of each are interwoven to form spacetime. That's why you need all 4 dimensions in locating something in the fabric of spacetime.

Wow, now I sound extremely nerdy... but this topic fascinates me.

In New Scientist magazine, 11 September 1999 (No 2203), an article mentions research at the University of Tsukuba in Japan, where a 5-dimensional cube is shown in 3 dimensions on a computer screen. A device allows movement of the hypercube in the normal 3 dimensions, and by changing the pitch and roll of the device 'selects which 3D "slice" of a 5D hypercube appears on the computer monitor'. Sadly the article was not archived on the New Scientist website.
Still doesn't help me understand superstrings though!

well now, my understaning of string theory is that the strings are everything, and the particles etc. that we "see" are a result of the how the strings are vibrating. That probably didn't help much but that's how I understand it.

i see y your nick name is geek

Yeeeeaah??

Maybe you're right about the whole 26D entities thing, and maybe we 4D creatures are just bacteria to them. Insignificant and useless.
But the point is, how many bacteria (that sounds wrong) are trying to figure out how many dimensions we humans reside in (or if we even really exist)? And even if there are a few bacteria out there with incredibly high IQ's, what is it going to help them to know?

Come on, own up! You made up that bit about the Russian Scientist, didn't you? Because that's got to be total rubbish!

The first bit (up until you mention this fictional Russian) I've heard so much that I've confused myself into thinking that it must be true. But the next bit...

Get out of here!

Maybe if you gave him a name (Dr Boris Kareskykov, perhaps), and told me that he was "little known", you could have had me fooled. But I'm not a dummy!

Next you'll be telling us that this perpendicular dimension is where Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny come from.

Yeah sure.
And this news just in; an Italian Film Director from the 26th dimension has announced that, using I-Ching hexagrams and goat entrails, it is possible to prove that all of the worlds physicists know the square root of bugger all about anything. He also claims that the sphincter loosening properties of vindaloo can be better explained after 20 pints of lager.

The article in OMNI explained it like this:
A point = 0 dimensions, a line (one dimension) is made up of a series of points, the next dimension (2) is a plane, made up of a series of lines, and if you take a plane and extend it you get the third dimension, represented as a cube.
In the same fashion, if you were to extend a cube (mathmatically) on all sides into the fourth dimension, you would be "looking" at a four-dimensional object. This is what the hypercube represents. However, since we can't see a four-dimensional object with three-dimensional vision, it must be represented symolically. So, in the same way a two-dimensional drawing of a cube on a plane (piece of paper) represents a three dimensional object, the hypercube is a three-dimensional representation of a four-dimensional object (you have to imagine the picture as a three-dimensional model for this to be effective.)
The same article went on to discuss the mathmatical implications and some problems with using this model, which I did not understand and cannot reproduce, since I am not a mathmetician. You'll have to look that one up for yourself.

My point about time being a dimension is that beyond the three spatial dimensions, which is to say "outside" of space, time may not have any meaning. It's only within space that time can be used as a reference for meeting someone on the street corner.
Not to say that it is *not* a dimension - I also am fascinated with the subject, but not having taken the time to study it, my knowledge on the subject is limited to vague memories of some experiment long ago with an atomic clock and a supersonic jet.

it depends. are these creative, co-operative, tool-using bacteria capable of transcending their limitations? then maybe they could signal the 26D creatures in some way. why they'd want to, I can't imagine, but that would be up to the individual bacteria, wouldn't it

dimensions are intellectual constructs. there is no such thing as a dimension, in the same way as there is no such thing as a cosine. it's a mental toy that over-neotonized monkeys use to describe their universe. kind of like god. who cares if there's 26 dimensions (or gods), 4, or none? all that I get, personally, is experience.

I suspect it's the same with bacteria and 26th dimensional hyper-beings.

Alexei Leoponid. Fractal algorithms invented in 1970-something to "map worlds" as he put it. Fled from the Communists before the fall of the wall, via Poland. Currently residing in Yorkshire. He has no internet presence, preferring the printed media for publication of his works. His only single author work is called "The Living Proton" and is currently out of print, although I'm sure if you scoured enough second hand bookshops you could find a copy.

It's all very true. The whole deal with fractals is that they represent "partial dimensions," in essence unvierses made up of 4.532 dimensions or something. Extrapolate this wide enough, and yes, you find that the Star Trek like "out of phase" (although this is a very crude analogy) dimensions are there. Think about phase in electromagnetic fields - if you put a signal 180 degrees out of phase with something, it cancels out. 90 degrees out of phase, you can make them add together OR you can arrange mains feeds so that they never interfere with each other. True, these three new dimensions are little more that purely theoretical, but when you get right down to it, so are the ones you live in.