10th Dimension
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http://www.popsci.com/popsci/science/article/0,12543,591747,00.html
: the number of variables needed to locate a particle 3 : a property of space, or the space-time continuum, related to extension in a direction.
If the following seems ridiculous, far-fetched or just outright outlandish to you, rest assured: It is. It will probably hurt your brain, as it has hurt mine, and as it most definitely hurts the brains of those who come up with this stuff for a living. The following asks you to accept ideas that are counter to the fundamental basis of our experience, the framework through which we comprehend everything from setting down a coffee cup to the arc of a home run as it sails into the upper deck. The basic point of what follows -- and by the way, what follows is not fanciful provocation but has been worked into contemporary consciousness by the brainiest physicists alive today -- is that everything that you have ever experienced has in some small but significant way been an illusion. Why? Because everything you have ever experienced you have understood as happening in three dimensions of space -- up-down, left-right and front-back. Yet this is not how things happen. Things happen in more than three dimensions of space; to see them in only three is to succumb to a trick that the universe is constantly playing on us.
Space as you know it is a lie. What follows is an approximation of the truth, or at least of various conceptions of the truth. There is no one model of the extra dimensions in the universe, no one statement of fact that all physicists can agree on and create in their computers. Alas, things are not that simple. There are at least two and possibly three completely different theories of what these extra dimensions should look like. And in each of these theories, the specific form of the extra dimensions -- their shape, whether it be Gehry-esque or nail-straight -- is unknown. But let's not let that intimidate us. Let's get started.
...
(much more at site)
(Thanks to TedS!)
: the number of variables needed to locate a particle 3 : a property of space, or the space-time continuum, related to extension in a direction.
If the following seems ridiculous, far-fetched or just outright outlandish to you, rest assured: It is. It will probably hurt your brain, as it has hurt mine, and as it most definitely hurts the brains of those who come up with this stuff for a living. The following asks you to accept ideas that are counter to the fundamental basis of our experience, the framework through which we comprehend everything from setting down a coffee cup to the arc of a home run as it sails into the upper deck. The basic point of what follows -- and by the way, what follows is not fanciful provocation but has been worked into contemporary consciousness by the brainiest physicists alive today -- is that everything that you have ever experienced has in some small but significant way been an illusion. Why? Because everything you have ever experienced you have understood as happening in three dimensions of space -- up-down, left-right and front-back. Yet this is not how things happen. Things happen in more than three dimensions of space; to see them in only three is to succumb to a trick that the universe is constantly playing on us.
Space as you know it is a lie. What follows is an approximation of the truth, or at least of various conceptions of the truth. There is no one model of the extra dimensions in the universe, no one statement of fact that all physicists can agree on and create in their computers. Alas, things are not that simple. There are at least two and possibly three completely different theories of what these extra dimensions should look like. And in each of these theories, the specific form of the extra dimensions -- their shape, whether it be Gehry-esque or nail-straight -- is unknown. But let's not let that intimidate us. Let's get started.
...
(much more at site)
(Thanks to TedS!)
Read/Post Comments (0)
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