BHack

If your anything like me, you'll find this very interesting:

http://www.tenthdimension.com/flash2.php

Click "imagining the 10th dimension" on the left. The flash animation explains it in a very simple way. Though actually trying to wrap your head around the concepts is... difficult at best. Our brains are wired around 3 dimensions.

Discuss

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loyalguard

Wow, freakin' awesome! I have the most feeble and unscientific of minds and I actually understood that. It's started to get shaky around the 7th dimension but the way they review each one clears it up. The tenth dimension stuff is freaky. Surely you think that using the process of diagraming dim 1-9 that we can imagine going past 10 but you can't...weird...

...if you haven't see this, please check it out!

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loyalguard

I'm sorry...I'm still captivated by this. Isn't is weird that there are 10 dimensions, exactly 10?

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RocketPunch

wow, very interesting

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tau_neutrino

wow, neat. The mathematics behind string theory are amazing. M-theory (which, IIRC, seeks to combine the the current models of superstring theory) involves 11 dimension. Don't ask me how this works

Another good reference to quantum physics is "Hyperspace" by Michio Kaku, PhD. It attempts to explain what concepts in quantum physics using terms that nonphysicists can understand, and it's actually quite interesting.

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TacticalGamer TX LAN/BBQ Veteran:

loyalguard

Looks like I've got some good beach reading this summer between your and BHack's recommendations. Thanks!

I think I have a new motto:

Dot, Line, Split, Fold, Repeat...

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BHack

Read through the forums on that website. The author of the book is quite active in them.

There is a thread in there about the significance of 10. Apparently, it's a pretty cool number.

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xTYBALTx

Ten dimensions? Pfffft, that's nothing! The Mooninites have five thousand dimensions. And they totally rock!

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Kerostasis

There may well be a good mathematical reason why dimensions stop at 10 (or 11), but this isn't it.

First of all, what makes 6 different from 9? They fill exactly the same function, and it would be perfectly reasonable to have only one of them, or yet a third dimension that does the same thing again.

Second, in the 7th dimension you have all possible timelines from a given set of initial conditions defined as a point. All possible timelines from a different set of conditions is a second point, defining a line. Ok, so far so good. Now you add a third set of conditions. How do you know its not on that same line? It must be different in some qualitative way, causing it to veer off in a different direction. Ok, now add another set of conditions. What if this one is different in a NEW qualitative way? How do you know this one doesn't veer off in a separate direction, requiring an additional spatial dimension? 2 points define a line, 3 a plane, and 4 points a 3-dimensional space.

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sordavie

Have you guys read "Flatland: A romance of many dimensions" by Edwin Abbott? Basically, this flash site is just how Abbott explains it in his novel. They even call the 2 dimensional guys flatlanders. He wrote it in 1884. It's a good read, and it comes in the Dover Thrift series for like $1.50.

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tau_neutrino

That book is great, you can probably find it at a Half Price Books store for less than a dollar.

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TacticalGamer TX LAN/BBQ Veteran:

Zephyr

If twenty years down the road String Theory turns out to be a complete pile of garbage...this will be so funny to read.

But yeah, I can see why and how it works and it seems possible to me.
-Zephyr

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ScratchMonkey

I remember Flatland.

Has anyone read physicist Robert Forward's SF novel "Dragon's Egg", about life on a neutron star?

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sordavie

Hm, actually this guy seems to have gotten the higher dimensions wrong. He conceptualizes them as alternate possibilities. However, that's not how string theorists conceptualize the other dimensions according to my housemate (who's done some graduate work in physics). It's not exactly clear how we should conceptualize the other dimensions, but the standard idea is that they are spatial dimensions that are so small, we do not have the ability to measure interactions with them. They are, however, spatial just like length, height, and width and not alternate possibilities on the timeline or alternate timeline possibilities.

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Kerostasis

I was hoping someone who knew more than me would make that point. Conceptualizing possibilities as alternate dimensions just doesn't sit right with me, but I don't have the technical knowledge to prove it.

Although I have heard theories that there may be a second time dimension, somewhere.

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