The Everything of Theory: Matter

[Brian O'Donnell]

How can we 'see' ten or more dimensions? Einstein used up our familiar 3D to show how matter warps space and time to create hollows in an imaginary stretched rubber membrane, dictating how gravity acts. But electrical charges are unaffected.
If we use a similar system of humps and hollows to model the way electric charges behave, where is the space it can happen? More dimensions become necessary when we involve weak and strong interactions.
The problem is that it is difficult to see all of these processes happening in the same space at the same time.

But what if the different processes follow each other in quick succession, billions of times every second?

The same space would vibrate according to the laws of general relativity and then vibrate, for example, according to those governing electro-magnetism. Any entity with mass would be pushed or pulled successively by gravitational and electro-magnetic forces, obeying inverse square of distance laws for mass and charge respectively. Light, which appears as an electro-magnetic wave one moment, would appear as a form of ultra-high frequency gravity wave the next moment.
This approach allows for a unification of differing types of force without changing scientific laws. Essentially, it is a transformation of space and time, mapping 10D on to 3D/4D and chopping time into successive fragments. Most of the laws of physics should be unaffected by such a transformation and with a bit of luck, some might even be simplefied.

I would greatly appreciate some feedback as to whether you think the above approach is valid and whether it is a better way of understanding what is happening in 10 or more dimensions.

[dleviwing]

Hi Brian;
First I would like to welcome you to ToeQuest.

May I suggest you review some of the current threads in the physics forums; absolute-rest by Analog is one such thread. To help you get a handle on “dimensions” you may like to access my thread “Dimensions and Entities” HERE .

I hope you enjoy the forums and look forward to you participation in the discussions.

[Brian O'Donnell]

The context of my opening post is the hope of string theories to build a ToE by uniting all particles, including those carrying gravity and the other three fundamental forces and therefore to unite the four forces themselves.

The first time I got an intelligible overview of this concept was after watching Brian Greene's string theory video at ted.com. The problem is that the idea needs 10/11 space/time dimensions to work, which immediately renders it impenetrable to normal humans like me.

A different way of imagining these extra dimensions is to think of variations in space-time in a heirarchy of time scales. Eg. waves in the sea have a high frequency and a low amplitude as the lap the shore but the tidal rise and fall shows a much lower frequency (very long wavelength) and greater amplitude.
Two phenomena are happening at the same time in the same place but on different time scales.

Alternatively, think of a radio frequency carrier wave modulating a much lower
freqency audio signal.

Does this, or my first post, help anyone to 'see' more than our familiar 3 spatial dimensions? Please feel free to comment below.

[dleviwing]

Brian;
I believe 40 years of failure to produce any real evidence or testable predictions is enough time to waste on String Theory. Anyone who bought Brian Greene’s book should ask for their money back. Don’t just believe what you read because someone has a PhD; ask for the real proof, the empirical data.

If you want the truth about string theory then read “The Trouble With Physics” by Lee Smolin

Does this, or my first post, help anyone to 'see' more than our familiar 3 spatial dimensions? Please feel free to comment below.

There are no more than 3 spatial dimensions; the extra dimensions are purely abstract mathematical ones that have nothing to do with reality.

[austintorn@aol.com]

I read that book, Dave; it was great. Lee was even a former string theorist himself before escaping back to reality. I like where he gets into what underlies space and those background independent theories, for string theory just makes up a suitable background dependence.

Brian, your first names matches, but I would keep your last name.

[Brian O'Donnell]

I also have doubts about string theory but I feel that there are too many babies to throw out with the bathwater. We need a multi-path approach to a ToE and it is important to keep the particle path open at the same time as trying to unite different types of energy or forces, or indeed novel approaches.

[dleviwing]

For your benefit Brian, I’ll repeat myself: The only useful aspect of string theory is the mathematics that provide a better description of the behavior of gravity. That has not changed since 1968 when I read the first paper on string theory.

The first six chapters of Lee’s book describes the requirements of an idea to be called scientific theory. String theory fails almost all of them. We don’t throw it out, we just set it aside and go on with our study of real experimental evidence and not with the mathematical magic of string theory.

[Brian O'Donnell]

Whether the universe is made up of strings, quarks, particles, waves, forces or anything else, the central problem remains as to how mass/gravity and charge/electromagnetism can exist in the same space at the same time.
One answer is to postulate an extra 3 dimensions. The commonly held belief is that gravity is a warping of space-time and that electromagnetism is a distortion of a field existing within space-time. A variation is to say that there are two separate kinds of field within one overall reference frame.
Whichever way you look at it, there are two separate frames of reference governing two separate kinds of matter. I think that in order to make meaningful comparisons and contrasts between the two, it is an essential pre-requisite to find a common frame of reference.

[Farsight]

It's pretty simple Brian. Instead of a rubber sheet weighed down by a cannonball, you imagine a rubber sheet with a knot tied in the middle. This creates a tension gradient, which alters the direction of propagation of a ripple in the rubber sheet. Scale this up a dimension into a block of rubber and you can liken the ripple to a photon, and the knot to a mass. See pair production to understand how a photon can be converted into an electron and a positron, wherein the electromagnetic field is isotropic "twisted space". This geometrical view says gravity is a gradient in the impedance of space, and curved spacetime is "what it does" rather than what it is. There's no need for ten dimensions, just 3+1 with "gauge change" along the lines of Weyl theory. It's a little like Kaluza-Klein but not quite. I've got a thread with a link to an unpublished paper giving details, and I'm working on a book version which explains it rather better. Contact me and I'll email it to you.

[Brian O'Donnell]

It's not quite so simple, Farsight. The explanation of photons radiating in a static space compacted by the presence of mass does not account for radiating gravitational waves or static charges within the same space.
I have just read your 'Relativity+' post where you go into more detail and I am most impressed.
The depth that a cannonball pushes down a rubber membrane represents a degree of compaction of space rather than a displacement at 90 degrees and acts in all three directions to give a spherical effect. Photons cause their own high frequency ripple riding over this compaction so that a beam of them will follow a curve compared with undisturbed space.
It is possible to incorporate gravitational waves into the model as long as they are low frequency compression waves.
The trouble comes with how static or relatively slow moving charges distort the same space. There are several hypotheses out there which treat electrons and so on as a form of standing wave, sometimes formed from smaller constituents, This also answers the question of how these particles can exhibit a spin although conventional theory requires them to be dimensionless points.
Good luck with your own researches - Brian.