Conceptual Dimensions

**Quantumologist** · October 17th, 2017, 05:20 PM

In Brian Greene's book The Elegant Universe he goes to some lengths to describe Lineland, inhabited by Linebeings, this being a one-dimensional world with one-dimensional things in it. While he's describing the analogy of Lineland, he brings a doctor to a Linebeing and describes the doctor as "reaching inside your exposed interior".

This book is great and covers a lot of ground on string theory and the science preceding it, which is always useful since it doesn't matter how many times you read about quantum mechs or from whose perspective, there's something else to be considering in it. Yet it springs to mind that a one-dimensional being won't have an interior to reach into. Since the brain operates naturally on a 3D format, it's understandably difficult to conceptualise other dimensions.

Kaluza was an unknown mathematician from Poland who added one dimension to Einstein's 3D+Time formula and found in doing so that he had replicated Maxwells' equation given in the 1880s to describe electromagnetism. After initial enthusiasm and a couple of changes of heart, it subsequently took Einstein 2 years to approve the concept for publication. 6 decades later, after unilateral dismissal from scientists chasing collaboration to create the Standard Model, more information had led to more questions and in the mid 1970s higher-dimensional research was again underway.

Where are we now? In connceptualising dimensions, are things getting any easier?

**exchemist** · October 18th, 2017, 05:34 AM

Originally Posted by Quantumologist

In Brian Greene's book The Elegant Universe he goes to some lengths to describe Lineland, inhabited by Linebeings, this being a one-dimensional world with one-dimensional things in it. While he's describing the analogy of Lineland, he brings a doctor to a Linebeing and describes the doctor as "reaching inside your exposed interior".

This book is great and covers a lot of ground on string theory and the science preceding it, which is always useful since it doesn't matter how many times you read about quantum mechs or from whose perspective, there's something else to be considering in it. Yet it springs to mind that a one-dimensional being won't have an interior to reach into. Since the brain operates naturally on a 3D format, it's understandably difficult to conceptualise other dimensions.

Kaluza was an unknown mathematician from Poland who added one dimension to Einstein's 3D+Time formula and found in doing so that he had replicated Maxwells' equation given in the 1880s to describe electromagnetism. After initial enthusiasm and a couple of changes of heart, it subsequently took Einstein 2 years to approve the concept for publication. 6 decades later, after unilateral dismissal from scientists chasing collaboration to create the Standard Model, more information had led to more questions and in the mid 1970s higher-dimensional research was again underway.

Where are we now? In connceptualising dimensions, are things getting any easier?

Thank you very much for this. I did not know about Kalusa and the relation between a 5D version of relativity and Maxwell's Equations.

But I take issue with your statement that Kalusa suffered "unilateral [I think you must mean universal] dismissal". If you read this article, you will see that on the contrary his idea was developed initially by Klein and then further in the 1940s. : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaluza–Klein_theory

Romantics often cultivate myths of scientists being neglected or dismissed by the "establishment". It fits the Romantic worldview of progress arising from dramatic revolutions, with underdogs being vindicated at last - preferably after their deaths. Although there are cases of this, usually the actual history is a lot more nuanced and prosaic.

Kalusa seems to have been a good chap: modest and anti-Nazi, even at some cost to his career.

**Strange** · October 18th, 2017, 06:03 AM

And, although the original Kaluza-Klein theory produced some incorrect results, it is still of interest and also spurred the development of String Theory (which has up to 11 dimensions).

**Quantumologist** · October 22nd, 2017, 01:51 PM

The dimensions as defined here https://www.universetoday.com/48619/...10-dimensions/ are described in terms which, despite authoritative assurance that we have no means (physical or otherwise) of accessing them, nevertheless refer to what would appear to us as observers were we able to do so. Splitting the terminology to make one set of references acceptable and another set of references unacceptable, then lumping them together 'for descriptive purposes' is like saying, "Here are the ingredients of this cake you are eating. Bear in mind that the cake actually does not exist in this reality, you are eating somethiing that has arisen from our understanding of reality, not from the actualisation. So while you may fondly believe that the cake is real, it is in fact the result of complicated equations you can't be expected to digest.'

A bit like having your cake and eating it, in other words.

Calabi-Yau spacial dimensions are described in Brian Greene's book where on page 208 he says;
"if you sweep your hand in a large arc, you are moving not only through the three extended dimensions, but also through these curled-up dimensions. Of course, because the curled-up dimensions are so small, as you move your hand you circumnavigate them an enormous number of times. - It all averages out so that after sweeping your arm, you are completeely unaware of the journey you took through the curled-up Calabi-Yau dimensions."

Which is saying in effect that while we live our entire lives (sweeping our arms about or not, the same rules apply) moving through dimensions other than the 3 (+ Time) we perceive, they are so small that we can't perceive them.
Unless you refer to the link pasted above, where clearly, you could, if you were deemed able to reach them.