What’s the evidence for the existence of higher dimensions?
What’s the evidence for the existence of higher dimensions?
By Engineer Saviour – Blaze Labs
In physics, the inverse square law relation is quite common. This relation is valid for the gravitational attraction between matter, for the electrical forces between charges and for magnetic forces between moving charges. A force that varies with the square of the distance means that the force will increase with the square of the distance if we reduce the distance, and it will decrease with the square of the distance if we increase the distance.
Electromagnetic energy decreases as if it were dispersed over the area of an expanding sphere, 4π R2 where radius R is the distance the energy has travelled. The amount of energy received at a point on that 3D sphere diminishes as 1/R2. This clearly shows the origin of the inverse-square law.
Here is a table showing the volume and surface area of hyperspheres of different dimensions:
| Dimension (n) | Shape | Volume | Surface Area |
| 2 | circle | πr2 | 2πr |
| 3 | sphere | (4/3)πr3 | 4πr2 |
| 4 | 4-sphere | (1/2)π2r4 | 2π2r3 |
| 5 | 5-sphere | (8/15)π2r5 | (8/3)π2r4 |
| 6 | 6-sphere | (1/6)π3r6 | π3r5 |
| 7 | 7-sphere | (16/105)π3r7 | (16/15)π3r6 |
As a result, a force that varies with the square of the distance can be considered as a conventional 1-dimensional force vector (x-axis) that is scattered into 2 additional dimensions (y, z) due to the 3-dimensional nature of space. The square power of the distance indicates the projection of such a force over a 3D spherical surface area. But what happens if the force is also acting in higher order dimensions? What if the force is originating force is being projected on a higher dimensional surface area? Are there forces which vary to other powers than the inverse square law?
The Casimir force related by the above equation is known to vary as the inverse d4, which is two orders of dimensions higher than the more common forces, and coincides with a force projected over the surface area of a 5D hypersphere (see table above). Such force that varies with the fourth power of the distance can be thus considered as a force vector that is scattered in a 5-dimensional space. Therefore, it is evident that the field that originates the Casimir force is a 5-dimensional field, that it is in fact a hyperspace field that produces the corresponding effects in our restricted 3D vision of our universe.
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I think it is interesting!
Yes, just because something is separated by space-time, it does not mean that it is not more closely connected on some other level.
Not sure about retrocauality. the little i have read sounds counter intuitive.experiments in quantum entanglement extimate the speed of information travel bettween entangled particles to be messured at a miniumum of 10,000 times that of light. surely it is more likely that they are directly linked in another dimenstion.
read one theory which says they are oposite ends of a wave… whares the rest of it then? and what when 3 or more particles are entangled
the exciting thing for me is the thought that if you could think of high state = 1 low state =0 then you could have manned missions to space enjoying instantanious communications with earth however far away they go. subspace indeed lol
That’s right. It is referred to as quantum entanglement. Entanglement may be a result of retrocausality (where the effect precedes the cause).
interesting. And they are using parical pairs in security devices i hear. obviously understanding of dimensions would help us understand this amazing link though which distance is no object and there is no “speed” of data bettween the 2 particles. therefore the 2 particles must be directly physicaly linked on some dimensional scale. have i got that more or less right? the idea that changing the state of a particle in newyork, will instantaniously change the state of its pair, wharever that may be. sugests that there is no physical “space” between the 2… philisophicly speeking it lends itself to the “time is an illusion” school of thinking.
Yes, Thinking ‘outside the box’ is very important for making progress.
A normal CPU won’t work at that atomic scale. They are reaching that limit though which means newer methods of making processors are needed.
With such a small barrier, a phenomenon known as quantum tunnelling would occur. In a normal CPU this would just cause problems. There are now several types of quantum computers being worked on which can utilize this effect.
There is also a material used in sensors known a QTC (quantum tunnelling compound) which uses this odd quantum behaviour)
Fair play
I get what your saying. just trying to try a change of perspective.
personaly I oft find thinking about a question in a different way helpes move me forwards.
though they are mathmatical constracts. so much of everyday life uses technology which may be afficted by these issues.
i heard talk of cpu’s whare the electrical pathways are an atom apart. and an atom wide. what wouls happen a atom (or particle) appeared bettween to paths. or out of one….
so to say it doesnt necessarily represent reality may be so. but we need to make it fit.
The universal observer would be independent of all the dimensions including time, so we are not it. We can’t directly observe other dimensions, higher or lower than space-time just because of the way we are made.
The other dimensions are mathematical constructs which may or may not be accurate representations of reality.
RM what im saying is Imagine there are 11 dimentions.
now imagine the ones we see as 1 2 3 and 4(t) are actually 8 9 10 and 11(t) time being the 11th dimension. not the forth. the other 7 are bellow what we se as 1 dimensional. and thus just as obscure to us as if they were higher.
that would make us the universal observer.?
whould it affect much else. also if time were the highest dimension, and our 3 dimensions the higher 3, we couldent see the other 7 and more then you can “see” a quark.
makes sence to me
the reason as to why we humans cannot see the higher dimensions are nothing but because our eyes are just architectured to view the 3d world. our retina can only reconstruct 3d images.our senses are limited to a very small range of reality.. probably only to a very small fraction of it.
I don’t really understand what you are saying.
here is a mad idea. RM would appreiate your input.
what if WE are the universal observer. and there are dimensions bellow what we term at 1d which just as if they were above us. we just cant wrap our brains round em.
Rather than reality showing or having a certain number of dimensions, or even such nonsense as “we are living in a n-dimensional universe”…
it is that we are using (not only mathematical) models with any possible number of “dimensions” trying to give some abstract (simplified) view on reality, that stands the test of verification and validation.
However, any model involving +3 dimensions is (for most people) hard to imagine, as with an increase in dimensions involved it get’s more and more difficult to unambiguously visualize given information, especially the interrelation of dimensions (more precisely: actual values of model instances) with regard to any phenomenon (with a real correspondence or merely theoretical) that we might consider.
These higher dimensions are not in 3D space and therefore touching things does not cause them to collide. The ideas of membranes or ‘branes’ is a mathematical one so that scientists can work with the formula and ideas. Since these are higher dimensions our whole universe would be like 2D on the surface of a brane and thefore and objects are interacting on this surface don’t make any parts of it touch other branes.
I have a question on the 11th dimension. They say that membranes exist in this dimension that are radiants of the 1st dimension (correct me if i misunderstood). Then they said that these “planes of radiant”, or something, where 3 dimensional (ie dognut shape, sphere, cube, etc.) and moved and rippled.
If I remembered all that correctly, then they said two of the planes on these membranes rippled and touched together at different times, causing the big bang (ripples make it so matter spreads randomly, not one solid connection, but a series of them).
After all this they said that the universe didn’t push everything away from that, but made infinite space inside the 11th dimension, where there it was taking no space.
Is it possible that those 3d membranes could be 3d objects that simply touched with enough energy to spring into a universe? Can we do this by simply touching 3d objects (ie membranes) together? If these “new” universes take up no space in our universe but make infinite space somewhere else, how do we know it happened?
Sorry for the length and if I sound confusing wording, I just want to know if I’m sprouting a new universe everytime I’m touching something. 🙂
It is definitely possible that there are extra dimensions out there that we would NOT be effected by. For example, two lines can be skewed if they are in three dimensional space; and two planes can be skew if they are in four dimensional space (share one dimension but simply occur in that dimention at different times; given the acceptance of time).
varsha i am with you on the last comment.
the question of what qualifies as a dimension needs to be answered.
to me a dimension issomething which can be used to measure anything in the universe, but also can messure the universe itself.
so length width depth and time work.
energy? everything in the universe has it or is it. and the universe itself is a finite amount of it. gota count hasent it?
again. spin. every particle seems to spinn. as does every galaxy and possibly the universe itself.
any others?
whos with me? who is against me? why?
what if the universe which appears to be this complicartd to yhe world is just something as small as an atom to the unknown universal obsrever? did you get what i meant? probably a crazy thought.
reading his i realize that we are mere on lookers of the queer absolutely strange UNIVERSE! GOT A DOUBT! IS My head spnning or the earth.
sorry but i just can’t imagine how to calculate a volume of a circle ,and how can we simply be able to calculate vols of higher dimension .
and in my own understanding the oly difference between a
3d hollow sphere and it’s corresponding 4d one is that the latter is solid (consisting of infinitew frames varying in sizes between null and the max volume that of the 3d sphere)
another stupid question … sorry again
and the multiverse (which no seems to be considered fact) are the multiple (or parallel) universes observable by the universal observer? if not it does mean thin in a way there is still freedom of movment through time even if the universal observer seems time as fixed. but tis an interesting conundrom.
fair play. though recently i have seen people say that atomic spin is being considered.
But the but about the universal observer is the bit i need explaining.
If he sees all of the univese, all of our future as simply one of his observable dimensions. is time irrevocably fixed. can we afect it?
if not existance kinda becomes pointless.
It’s OCCAM’S Razor, your “gist” is absolutely correct, and you’re forgiven for your speling.
🙂
Keep in mind that dimensions are something imposed by the observer to quantify something. (be it a force, an object, whatever) When evidence of a higher dimension is indicated it is really stating that someone has found an observable effect that can only be explained by something happening that we can’t fully observe. Despite this lack of observation it can be represented by mathematics which are not limited to our sense of perception.
As for three dimensions of time existing, no one is saying that they don’t, however we as observers are unable to perceive of more than one. The simple reason why three dimensions of time aren’t universally accepted is that they are not needed to explain what we can observe. Scientists like using the theory of Occum’s Razor, that the simplest solutions tend to be the correct solutions. (pardon me if I mis-spelled the theory’s name or mis-quoted it in its entirety, but I do believe that is the gist of it)
The concept of adding dimensions came about to simplify the mathematics (or rather to make the mathematics work in the first place) to describe all of the forces that we can perceive. In order to fully understand the reasoning behind this you would have to understand tensor mathematics, which is far to large a subject to discuss here, but there are many books on multi-dimensional space that may be able to explain it in more detail.
Technically, dimensions are just ways to describe something, so technically the number can be infinite: length, width, depth, color, energy, mass, sound, etc… could all be labeled as dimensions, but the dimensions that are being discussed by all of these theories actually are the minimum number of dimensions to fully describe the existence of a thing. Many of the dimensions I listed above can be derived from other dimensions, and therefore are not part of the minimum set. This may be hard to grasp, but remember that color and sound are both simple interpretations of vibrations, which are nothing more than movement of 3D things.
The reasoning behind the 11 or 13 or 26 dimensions that some theories use vary by the theory, but are usually based on part of the mathematics being stable (for lack of a better term) when that number of dimensions are used. In other words, that number of dimensions are theorized because it makes the math work correctly. As of yet, I don’t believe anyone has found an observable effect that requires x dimensions to work, but theories that accurately describe observable effects require x dimensions to not contradict themselves.
Sounds like someone doesn’t understand what they just read. lol.
Evidence? Why provide evidence? Dimensions are a model, just like everything else mankind knows about the workings of the universe. They are a hypothesis which can neither be proven nor disproven, simply because the 4-dimension theory says “there is time, and we call it the 4th dimension”. What exactly a dimension is, for this purpose remains undefined. You scientists crack me up..
oh something else kust occured to me.
the universal observer. does he see every possibe variation of time ( in science fiction terms, is there really a whole bunch of universes whare every posibility is played out) and he simply sees them all as one thing with no distinction. or does he just see a static universe with no varioation along our 4th demension. meaning the future is set and nothing we do changes anything in the long run. it would explain why we can only persave time running in one direction. if everything is set but kinda makes existance pointless. from my point of view lol
what i dont get about all this talk on dimentions is the idea that we should not be able to see them. why? if you had 1 eye you may not be able to see 3d space but you could feal it.
is it possible the missing dimentions needed for so much of the current theorys are simply being over looked?
we have out 3 planes (dimentions) to discribe an objects given position at any infinitly small period of time. we only have one time dimension? why? 3 make scence to me. just as just having one axis would let you know how long something is and nothing else. surely more time axis would allow you to know how much time there is in a given area of space time (i understand that this can very) also the idea of traveling sideways in time always makes scence to me.
ok. energy you can messure it is it a dimension? it seems that a particales energy affects so much it should be, and if so only one energy dimension or can there be more?
direction? everything in the universe is moving, i understand that velocity and speed are not true dimensions as they are calculations based on the other dimensions. but to properly discribe something direction would beem inportant. ok not got a full mental grasp on that one but it feals right,
oh and “spin” or direction of movement reletive to self. or whatever you want to call it. seems increasingly important in string theory and the like,
so cummon on tell me what a jerk i am. but more importantly. tell me why im wrong.