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Dimensions

  
 
akira
15:58 / 22.10.01
If the 1st Dimension is energy, the second opposite forces, the 3rd form and 4th Time what exactly is 5th Dimensional, or 6th or 7th or 8th or 9th?
I think I understand 5th Dimensional, but its hard to explain. Its 6th Dimensional I'm really stuck on.
 
 
Rex City-zen
19:58 / 22.10.01
We live in a ten dimensional superstring universe which we perceive in four dimensions (and from another angle 26...more later).This leaves the enigmatic missing 6 dimensions.
But...1+2+3+4= 10
This probably made no sense...
(leaves thread scratching his head)
Sorry.
 
 
Frances Farmer
20:24 / 22.10.01
If you're going to talk about dimensions in exactly those terms, then we might as well clarify a couple of things.

1. There are dimensions of Physics.
1a. There is an 11th-dimensional Superstring theory. In 11th-dimensional Superstring theory, last I read, there's exactly one dimension of time and ten of space. Four of the ten spacial dimensions are expanded, six of them are 'curled' up. Aside from the differentiation between 'Space' and 'Time', 11th-dimensional Superstring theory makes no distinctions between spatial dimensions, beyond curled versus expanded.

1b. There are classical/Newtonian theories detailing a 4th-dimensional topology for the universe. They are similar to 11th-dimension Superstring ideas -- three spatial dimensions and one of time -- but they do not include an additional expanding spatial dimension, nor do they include the possibility for curled-up dimensions to exist.

2. There are dimensions of Mathematics.
2a. The most common postulates involve a Point, Line, Plane, and Volume.

Roughly, you could create a bridging analogue between the two, saying each builds on it's predecessor -- the Point having no precessor, with Volume being the sum of all things resulting in "Time", or something we are within, as opposed to something we manipulate from the "Outside".

K, I'm rambling... But just trying to, uh, clarify. Providing any of that is even correct -- I'm a bit fuzzy on the stuff.

Yeah.

I'll bet things are quite clear, now.

Oh, yes -- and if you're into finding association between Physics -- particularly Quantum Mechanics -- and magic, you might keep your eye out for a Quantum Mechanic pheonominon called "Action-At-A-Distance".

Also, in other scientific/mathematical fields, you might look into Chaos' "Active-Walk Theory".
 
 
SMS
00:14 / 23.10.01
quote:Originally posted by Silver Surfer:
If the 1st Dimension is energy, the second opposite forces, the 3rd form and 4th Time what exactly is 5th Dimensional, or 6th or 7th or 8th or 9th?
I think I understand 5th Dimensional, but its hard to explain. Its 6th Dimensional I'm really stuck on.

It doesn't sound like you're talking about a dimension, but rather a set
containing energy, opposite forces, form, and time. You then assign each an index 1,2,3,4, an obvious sequence that begs the question, what would have index of 5,6,7,8 ... ? How many members does this set have? Perhaps an infinite number, like omega, power set of omega, aleph omega.... In which case we would really need to understand how these elements are generated, or else it won't do us much good.

energy, opposite forces, form, time

What do they have in common? They all seem be from the realm of forms, and they all seem to have counterparts

mass, opposite accelerations, the physical world, space.

The wonderful thing about these counterparts is that none of them are ultimately distinguishable from the original set.

Could this be the set of all half dichotomies that are, in reality, unities? What else could go in there? Goodness, Free Will, and so forth?

Or perhaps it is something different. How do you use this set to organize your thoughts?
 
 
Mister Snee
04:56 / 23.10.01
I've always tried to keep this simple for myself.

"Dimensions", in their classical sense, represent a measurable coordinate axis in spacetime. (That is to say, "depth" is a dimension, whereas "the dimension of the ten-foot alien spider women" is not.) Your eyes are pulling in the first dimension (let's call it width -- why not?). This is one, single dimension and as such is not a pair of coordinates but a point on a rule. The second dimension, which I consider to be height, allows you to have a two-dimensional graphspace with X and Y coordinates to specify location. That's all well and good, but of course if you take only the second dimension without the first dimension then now you have a single-dimensional point-on-a-line again -- only this time it's on Y instead of X.

Um.

Anyway, the third dimension is depth, classically. We'll call it Z. Now, the same thing applies to Z as to X and Y -- take away X and Y and Z is a single-dimensional line. X, Y, and Z can be plotted as a set of three coordinates. This is where our ability to spatially intuit the dimensions ends... um...

Then we have the fourth dimension. The numbering becomes arbitrary at this point, per se. The fourth dimension (in my simplified little Newtonian view) is ye olde classic "rubber sheet". It's a fourth dimension of measurement of the location of any given spatial point -- X, Y, Z and, oh, I dunno, A. A is a single dimension (up and down, a single value) representing your "4-dimensional depth", as it were. This, classically, is set by the gravity in your 3-dimensional coordinates (or gravity is an affect of the 4th-dimension value of your 3-dimensional coordinates, that value being affected by the proximity of massive bodies, or something else of the sort). It affects the speed at which you pass through time (work with me, here -- it's scientifically accepted [and mathematically compensated for in orbiting computers] that time passes slightly more slowly in lower gravity).

That was enough for me for a while. Then I read how relativity is actually supposed to work (I'd treated Einstein as so much bunk up until that point -- I just couldn't figure out how on Earth he was drawing his nutty conclusions regarding the relationship between the speed of light and the passage of time) -- that is, that everything is moving at the speed of light, but its speed is divided between four dimensions. Thus, subtract your current 3-D speed (including planetary and galaxial rotation and movement ) from the speed of light, and that's the speed with which you're rocketing across yet another dimension, the one this theory treats as the fourth -- a sort of one-dimensional linear "timeline". Since light doesn't seem to age it's reasoned that all its speed is in the 3 dimensions and none in the 4th... hence the "arbitrary" decision that it's the fastest attainable speed before time "stops".

Fair enough, and I liked the sound of it right away -- but it conflicts with olde faithful, the rubber sheet. I couldn't figure out which I liked better, and I still can't. I can't seem to find a way to unite the two (to delegate either the "rubber sheet depth" dimension and the "position on linear timeline" dimension to a fifth dimension) -- if the "depth on the rubber sheet" controls your speed through a linear timeline, then fine, we can call that linear timeline a fifth dimension on which you have a measurable coordinate... but if we're all moving at the speed of light anyway, through the first three dimensions and then the linear timeline, the rubber sheet must not enter into it. Where, then, does that leave gravity? And where has my favourite theory gone?

I'm having a mutually-exclusive paradigm conflict, and it hurts terribly.

I meant this to be a brief explanation of how I see the whole dimension Thang, but it's inevitably reverted back to the crisis I've been suffering from since relativity was explained to me.

Fix me, for god's sake, someone fix me!

And then there's something I read in Discover a few years ago.

http://www.math.rochester.edu/newsletter/spring98/bees.html
http://www.math.niu.edu/~rusin/known-math/97/bees

quote:
Barbara's hypothesis that honeybees have direct access to the quantum world would be revolutionary in both biology and physics. It would violate a sacred principle in quantum mechanics, that the process of measurement changes the very phenomenon that you are measuring. According to flag manifold geometry, a dancing honeybee is interacting with the quantum world without disturbing it and using this information to organize its dance. Is it possible that honeybees have found a way to do this? Needless to say, Barbara has a long way to go before she has convincing evidence that honeybees have this strange ability.


Christ, a sixth dimension! Quantum bees! Someone please save me before my head caves in.

I'm serious, I can feel cerebral pressure decreasing.

  
 
Mister Snee
04:57 / 23.10.01
By the way, I'm sorry about that post.
 
 
the Fool
05:36 / 23.10.01
If the 4th dimension is time, I think the 5th is possibility.

Imagine.

If you consider time in the same way we currently experience 3d space, then the invisible dimension of the 'spatial' time continuum is possibility. Our standard 3d universes are like particles inside time constructs built across possibility terrains. velocity becomes probability - the 'distance' between two possibilities is its probability.

Beyond that with probability as 'spatial', who knows. I think your dealing with beyond god concepts by then. Imagine a reality where a single movement covers an infinite number of possible universes from beginning to end and all possibilities not included in the previous statement, even the concept of movement is redundant. The terrain built of a billion gods, all infinite, all interwoven.

Maybe.
 
 
Frances Farmer
03:46 / 25.10.01
quote:

"Dimensions", in their classical sense, represent a measurable coordinate axis in spacetime. (That is to say, "depth" is a dimension, whereas "the dimension of the ten-foot alien spider women" is not.) Your eyes are pulling in the first dimension (let's call it width -- why not?). This is one, single dimension and as such is not a pair of coordinates but a point on a rule. The second dimension, which I consider to be height, allows you to have a two-dimensional graphspace with X and Y coordinates to specify location. That's all well and good, but of course if you take only the second dimension without the first dimension then now you have a single-dimensional point-on-a-line again -- only this time it's on Y instead of X.


Yes-yes-yes-yes! It's not a matter of one dimension being distinguished from the next, it's a more a matter of the possibilities that open up in implication as you plot more and more points.

quote:
Anyway, the third dimension is depth, classically. We'll call it Z. Now, the same thing applies to Z as to X and Y -- take away X and Y and Z is a single-dimensional line. X, Y, and Z can be plotted as a set of three coordinates. This is where our ability to spatially intuit the dimensions ends... um...


Erf. Wait. So,

With X you have a single point. A single coordinate. Practically nothing.

With X and Y, you can now graph a line. You have the points implied along the line.

With X, Y, and Z you can now graph a plane. You can imply the space enclosed within the three lines.

So wouldn't it take a fourth dimension of space to provide depth? Or am I missing something?

'Cause, anything you could possibly plot with three dimensions (or points) is going to be inherently flat, right?

quote:
Then we have the fourth dimension. The numbering becomes arbitrary at this point, per se. The fourth dimension (in my simplified little Newtonian view) is ye olde classic "rubber sheet". It's a fourth dimension of measurement of the location of any given spatial point -- X, Y, Z and, oh, I dunno, A. A is a single dimension (up and down, a single value) representing your "4-dimensional depth", as it were. This, classically, is set by the gravity in your 3-dimensional coordinates (or gravity is an affect of the 4th-dimension value of your 3-dimensional coordinates, that value being affected by the proximity of massive bodies, or something else of the sort). It affects the speed at which you pass through time (work with me, here -- it's scientifically accepted [and mathematically compensated for in orbiting computers] that time passes slightly more slowly in lower gravity).

That was enough for me for a while. Then I read how relativity is actually supposed to work (I'd treated Einstein as so much bunk up until that point -- I just couldn't figure out how on Earth he was drawing his nutty conclusions regarding the relationship between the speed of light and the passage of time) -- that is, that everything is moving at the speed of light, but its speed is divided between four dimensions. Thus, subtract your current 3-D speed (including planetary and galaxial rotation and movement ) from the speed of light, and that's the speed with which you're rocketing across yet another dimension, the one this theory treats as the fourth -- a sort of one-dimensional linear "timeline". Since light doesn't seem to age it's reasoned that all its speed is in the 3 dimensions and none in the 4th... hence the "arbitrary" decision that it's the fastest attainable speed
before time "stops".


But, if time hasn't any 4th dimensional attributes in this context, how is that it can be affected by gravity (as in a black hole)? If gravity provides for time, and light is subjectively timeless, then how is that light can be subjected to gravitational force?

Oooweee! I'm getting dizzy.

Remind your friends: Don't drink and post.

quote:
Fair enough, and I liked the sound of it right away -- but it conflicts with olde faithful, the rubber sheet. I couldn't figure out which I liked better, and I still can't. I can't seem to find a way to unite the two (to delegate either the "rubber sheet depth" dimension and the "position on linear timeline" dimension to a fifth dimension) -- if the "depth on the rubber sheet" controls your speed through a linear timeline, then fine, we can call that linear timeline a fifth dimension on which you have a measurable coordinate... but if we're all moving at the speed of light anyway, through the first three dimensions and then the linear timeline, the rubber sheet must not enter into it. Where, then, does that leave gravity? And where has my favourite theory gone?

I'm having a mutually-exclusive paradigm conflict, and it hurts terribly.

I meant this to be a brief explanation of how I see the whole dimension Thang, but it's inevitably reverted back to the crisis I've been suffering from since relativity was explained to me.

Fix me, for god's sake, someone fix me!


I know what you're saying... The answer's got to be both! It's time for some grand unifying fields, baby!

quote:
And then there's something I read in Discover a few years ago.

http://www.math.rochester.edu/newsletter/spring98/bees.html
http://www.math.niu.edu/~rusin/known-math/97/bees



Christ, a sixth dimension! Quantum bees! Someone please save me before my head caves in.

I'm serious, I can feel cerebral pressure decreasing.

[/QB]

Er... Is this in exception to 11th-dimensional Superstring theory?
 
 
Perfect Tommy
07:10 / 25.10.01
When I was younger, I came up with some kind of theory in which I imagined that I knew what was going on up to 6 dimensions (I suspect I was 11 and had just read A Wrinkle in Time, but maybe it was during my first algebra or calculus class a year or three later because I think the zeroth dimension was brought up in one of those and that I'm not making it up):

0th dimension - A point. No movement possible.

1st dimension - Like the x-axis on a graph; it's a line with zero thickness, and moving back and forth along it is a bunch of points. The 0th dimension given wiggle room.

2nd dimension - A plane (x and y), upon which you can have lines, or it's made up of an infinite number of lines, or something. The 1st dimension given wiggle room.

3rd dimension - A space, in which you can have planes (or figures, which are really just very complicated planes that are hard to plot). The planes have space to move around in.

4th dimension - We appear to be 3-dimensional, but we have "wiggle room" in that we experience change, like the points and lines and planes had in earlier dimensions, so it's time.

5th dimension - Does anyone remember Back to the Future II? When Marty ended up in the evil alternate 1985, Doc Brown drew a diagram on a chalkboard like this:

1955---------------1985
|
|------------------alternate 1985

to show Marty why he had to travel back in time to change the present into the correct present. The 5th dimension is the chalkboard on which all the possible timelines can be plotted...

6th dimension - ...and the 6th dimension has the IMpossible timelines, because it is the "plane" on which all the various kinds of timelines or universes (pi is equal to 3.0, gravity is a repulsive force, Plank's constant is 42) could be plotted (many of which would have been stillborn and collapsed at their respective big bangs, much less have had conditions allowing life). Maybe I would have decided the 7th dimension was the one that has different types of math and logic so that yes can be equal to no and black is white, but I'd gotten confused and bored by that point so I just now made that up/stole it from a source I forget.

Uh, yeah, anyway. The point (ha!) being that I figured a "dimension" meant "something in which 'things' have wiggle room" whether those things are points or sets of physical laws.

quote:Originally posted by Frances:
But, if time hasn't any 4th dimensional attributes in this context, how is that it can be affected by gravity (as in a black hole)? If gravity provides for time, and light is subjectively timeless, then how is that light can be subjected to gravitational force?
I can't remember where I read this (I think maybe it was Art & Physics by Leonard Shalin(?)), or how accurate it is: Light is all straight lines--it's spacetime that's curved.

(Please don't ask me to explain what that means, I'm just the messenger~)

[ 25-10-2001: Message edited by: doubting thomas ]
 
 
Lionheart
15:01 / 25.10.01
Frances: Mr. Snee messed up in his post.

A point has NO dimensions.

A line has one dimension.

A plane has 2 dimensions (length and width.)

A cube has 3 dimensions.

Hmm... There seems to be a problem now. With those dimensions from euclid geometry you end up with the conclusion that cubes are 3d. Which means the only possible 3d universe is a cube.

But with non-Euclidean geometry you will have other results.....

Hmmm...

By the way, does anybody here know that the Pythogorean theorem can be applied to more than 2 dimensions?

in a 2d world: C^2=A^2+B^2

in a 3d world: D^2=A^2+B^2+C^2

In a 4d world: E^2=A^2+B^2+C^2+D^2

And so on and so forth.
 
 
SMS
15:48 / 25.10.01
Pythagorean Theorem can be applied to as many dimensions as you want, so long as you have the usual topology on R^n. But this is assuming these are all spacial dimensions. A temporal dimension IS DIFFERENT from a spacial dimension. In the equations, I can't quite remember off-hand, a temporal dimension has an extra minus sign.

The Back to the Future thing. No. That's wrong. Extra spatial dimensions are just like the ones we experience. I don't know what it would mean to have extra temporal dimensions, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't mean other possible timelines (although it may imply it). If anything, it would mean a time-plane.

We'd be more productive talking about sets, here. There would be less confusion.
 
 
Perfect Tommy
16:27 / 25.10.01
quote:Originally posted by All-Loving SMatthewStolte:
Extra spatial dimensions are just like the ones we experience.
How do they stay at right angles to all the other spatial dimensions, then?

And, yeah, I guess I really meant time-plane... what I was after was, that if linear time was allowed wiggle room, it would describe a plane, made out of an infinite number of lines.

(Note that I don't mean to accidentally defend my position... it was something I thought up a long time ago.)

[ 25-10-2001: Message edited by: doubting thomas ]
 
 
captain piss
19:33 / 25.10.01
quote:Originally posted by doubting thomas:
[QB]

And, yeah, I guess I really meant time-plane... what I was after was, that if linear time was allowed wiggle room, it would describe a plane, made out of an infinite number of lines.

QB]

The last I heard there was an emerging theory of there being two dimensions of time - the linear timeline that physics has always taken for granted thereby becoming a plane, opening up a can of worms in its implications for the idea of cause and effect. Dunno what the latest on this theory is- it was definitely a cover story in NewScientist in the last 2 or 3 years.
The theory relied on time being able to have a plus or minus sign in equations, which resulted in all kinds of nasties like objects being able to move faster than light.

My impression was that mainstream physics currently holds with there being 10 spatial dimensions (with 7 of them being curled up so tightly we can't see them) and one dimension of time- or 2, obviously, if you hold with the above.
 
 
the Fool
23:07 / 25.10.01
If time were to have a conceptual 'spatiality' (for lack of a better word to describe experiential 4th dimensionality) then multiple timelines are still not true 4th dimensional constructs, because time is still 'linear' (or even zero dimensional, like we experience time now, really) within them.

Think invisibles vol3#1 the way time bleeds across possibilities. Multiple events are experience simultaneously as consciousness is nolonger limited 3d spatial restrictions.

I think there are serious issues with identity at this point. If events bleed into one another, would not identity bleed into one another. We all become the same being.

A giant psychic 4th dimensional consciousness construct. A god perhaps, or at least a god from this limited 3 dimensional perspective.
 
 
the Fool
23:59 / 25.10.01
Actually, I don't think we become the same thing or at lest not really. I think we become intermeshed, and self-identity is increased to include inifinite permutations of self (stepping 'sideways' through time). At the edges of self or what in this current reality we consider self we bleed into everyone else. So perhaps identity remains into the 4th dimension. There could still be and 'I' and a 'you'. Self becomes the 'atman' or hyperself of hindu metaphysics. But there remains 'other' or Brahman/Non being.

Possibly, I'm also probably talking a load of shite.
 
 
SMS
00:23 / 26.10.01
quote:Originally posted by doubting thomas:

How do they stay at right angles to all the other spatial dimensions, then?


Oh, I don't mean that 4-space is the same as 3-space, just that, if you were to give each dimension names a, b, c, & d the collection of {a, b, d} is indistinguishable from {a, b, c} and so forth.
 
 
Mister Snee
14:38 / 26.10.01
quote:Originally posted by Lionheart:
Frances: Mr. Snee messed up in his post.



Er?
Where?

quote:Originally posted by Lionheart:
A point has NO dimensions.
A line has one dimension.
A plane has 2 dimensions (length and width.)
A cube has 3 dimensions.



That's exactly what I said.

Unless I missed something somewhere, or misstated something...
 
 
Lionheart
00:56 / 27.10.01
You said that a point has 1 dimension.
 
 
Mister Snee
01:00 / 27.10.01
Ahh, you're right. Bad sentence on my part.
By "a point on a rule" I meant that your location in a single dimension is a point on a single axis -- that is, a single dimension is a straight rule.

My bad.
 
 
01
18:24 / 27.10.01
Just read the bee article. Holy smokes. Sounds cool. Shamanic bees. If they are unknowingly{?} tapping into the quantum level, wouldn't it make sense that every other living creature is as well. Sixth dimension? Sixth sense.
 
 
Tucker Tripp
06:43 / 29.10.01
I agree with 01. What about thinking of it in terms of how we percieve. As many of you (I think) may agree there is more to the world than what might be call "Ordinary Reality" or some other similar summary of that idea.

What if all interpretations or states of conciousness other than this can be considered other dimensions? Then there are infinate dimensions and there is no point in trying to define them specifically because there may not be only one set of dimesional definitions. It seems more likely to me to be something defined by experience.

Eg. Two different people go to the same country, (even party) at the same time but have different expeeinces. For each person the country or party has specific definitions but neither definition is totally "true".

Therefore, I think the issue of interpretation of subjectivity relative to experience enters clearly into this debate.
 
 
cusm
17:09 / 29.10.01
Hmm... Subjectivity as frames of reference.

I believe it was Maxwell's equations that failed with rotating magnetic fields in different frames of reference, the mathmatical discrepency requiring quantum mechanics to patch. I could be off there, its been some years since university physics.

This does however, tell me that frame of reference is important, as perception is in quantum mechanics. It is in crossing from one subjective view to another where math starts to break down...
 
  
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