Quantum string theorists have found that our visible universe has 11 dimensions, but it is the subject of much debate. Theories such as string theory and M-theory predict that physical space in general has in fact 10 and 11 dimensions, respectively. The extra dimensions are space like. We perceive only three spatial dimensions, and no physical experiments have confirmed the reality of additional dimensions. A possible explanation that has been suggested is that space is as it were “curled up” in the extra dimensions on a very small, subatomic scale, possibly at the quark/string level of scale or below. We’re all pretty familiar with the first three dimensions — after all, we experience those dimensions daily as we move about our world. But scientists and mathematicians have long gone three dimensions using thought experiments, conceptualizing a fourth dimension — and of course, to many more dimensions beyond. You may have heard of the fourth dimension via Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time, which mentioned the tesseract, a four-dimensional “hypercube.” In L’Engle’s work, the tesseract had properties that could bend space-time, though a real tesseract would simply be an object in four-dimensional space. Anyway, let’s not get carried away with tesseracts just yet. I stumbled across a wonderful video of Carl Sagan explaining the fourth dimension in a way that anyone can understand. He explains dimensionality as a notion, expanding from a two-dimensional “flatland” to our three-dimensional world, and onward to the fourth dimension. The 4th Dimension explained to the best of our human ability:
Posted on: Tue, 18 Feb 2014 07:48:54 +0000
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