The Fifth Dimension is a Dangerous Idea

A direct link to the above video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0J504RTYkU

I'm pleased to tell you that Urban Garden Magazine has now published Issue No. 6, and inside on page 70 you will find an article entitled "Why the Fifth Dimension is a Dangerous Idea" by yours truly. This magazine is available free in the UK in stores dedicated to indoor growing supplies and hydroponics. It's also available free online at www.urbangardenmagazine.com .

This article takes a lighter tone than most of my writing has so far, and I would like to thank editor Everest Fernandez for his valuable input in that regard. And to be clear, just because we're having a little more fun in this article doesn't mean I'm any less serious about this project as a valuable insight into visualizing the extra dimensions!

Persons familiar with this project will recognize some of my favorite recurring themes in this article. While we're talking about big ideas, I also wanted to quote a comment I just discovered at a blog called A Smartass Education, which is one of the blogs in my Interesting Links collection. This blogger posted a link to my animation, and, as usual, the comments were many and varied: some people get what I'm trying to do here, some people don't, that's the way it is. But a comment from "googleyes" really summed up things nicely, and I would like to end with a full quote from that user's comments about my way of visualizing the dimensions:

First you have to realize that these ten dimensions express a different perspective of space than our classical approach. The dimensions don’t assume a block of space in which time occurs, rather it considers single directions in space, and builds from one direction to others. This is actually a very genius approach if you think about it. A basic mistake of human thought is to assume things about reality. We assume there is this three dimensional world around us when all that we experience is our own passage through time (which can be seen as a direction in space). The famous Richard Feynman recognized time as a direction in space. Bryanton’s single spatial direction spans outward and becomes a larger space, but it doesn’t become a full block of space until the last dimension. This is actually accurate of an expanding universe moving away from the big bang, expanding and moving increasingly nearer to becoming empty space. It is hard for people to get out of a classical perspective, especially when they think their perspective is science based, but actually people rarely have a correct conception of, for example, what Einstein’s Relativity tells us about space and time. Actually this is true even among scientists. For example, Einstein and a few other scientists in his day recognized that the key conclusion one should draw from GR was that there is no real separation between past, present and future. Very few physicists today appreciate this fact. This video provides a timeless view of all times and all universes, and any such view should be taken very seriously.

Thank you to all of the people linking to this project, to A Smartass Education for being one of those links, and to googleyes, for your great comment.

And thank you, Urban Garden Magazine, for giving my project the opportunity to reach a new audience of deep thinkers and big dreamers who like to think about the nature of reality!

Enjoy the journey,

Rob Bryanton