Top Ten Tenth Dimension Blogs, October Report

Previous lists:
. April 08 . May 08 . June 08 . July 08 . August 08
. September 08 . October 08 . November 08 . December 08 .
. Top 100 Blog Entries of 2008 . May 09 . June 09 . July 09
. August 09 . September 09 . October 09 . November 09 .
. December 09 . Top 100 Blog Entries of 2009 .
. January 10 . February 10 . March 10 . April 10 . May 10 .
. June 10 . July 10 . August 10 . September 10 .

Based upon number of views, here are the top blogs for the last thirty days. As always, the number in brackets is the entry's position in the previous month's report.

1. Light Has No Speed
2. 10-10-10: Look Before You Leap
3. Complexity From Simplicity
4. Constructive Interference and the Quantum Observer
5. Cymatics, Gravity and Light
6. New Animation - The Forest
7. New Video - Magnets and Morality
8. Poll 65 to 68 - Thinking Big
9. Global Coherence
10. Thinking Bigger


And as of October 26th, 2010, here are the twenty-six Imagining the Tenth Dimension blog entries that have attracted the most visits of all time. Items marked in bold are new or have risen since last month.

1. Jumping Jesus (1)
2. What's Around the Corner? (2)
3. Mandelbulbs (3)
4. An Expanding 4D Sphere (4)
5. Just Six Things: The I Ching (5)
6. Creativity and the Quantum Universe (6)
7. Roger Ebert on Quantum Reincarnation (7)
8. The 5th-Dimensional Camera Project (8)
9. How to Time Travel (9)
10. Poll 44 - The Biocentric Universe Theory (10)
11. Dancing on the Timeline (11)
12. Vibrations and Fractals (19)
13. Our Universe Within the Omniverse (13)
14. Monkeys Love Metallica (16)
15. Poll 43 - Is the Multiverse Real? (12)
16. Alien Mathematics (15)
17. Consciousness in Frames per Second (18)
18. Seeing Time, Feeling Colors, Tasting Light (17)
19. Magnets and Morality (22)
20. Augmented Reality (14)
21. When's a Knot Not a Knot? (20)
22. The Quantum Solution to Time's Arrow (21)
23. Polls Archive 54 - Is Time Moving Faster? (24)
24. Flow (new)
25. Beer and Miracles (25)
26. The Big Bang is an Illusion (26)

Which means that this worthy submission is leaving our top 26 of all time list this month:

The Holographic Universe (23)

By the way, if you're new to this project, you might want to check out the Tenth Dimension FAQ, as it provides a road map to a lot of the discussions and different materials that have been created for this project. If you are interested in the 26 songs attached to this project, this blog shows a video for each of the songs and provides more links with lyrics and discussion. The Annotated Tenth Dimension Video provides another cornucopia of discussion topics to be connected to over at YouTube. And as always, here's a reminder that the Tenth Dimension Forum is a good place to converse with other people about these ideas.

Enjoy the journey!

Rob Bryanton

Next: Just Geometry

Extra-Dimensional Geometry

A direct link to the above video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qu1GD_AifpM

Last week, in Thinking Bigger, we talked about how difficult it is for our monkey brains to visualize extra dimensions. On that same topic, the above video accompanies Our Universe as a Dodecahedron, a blog entry published in May of this year, and it explores something called the Poincaré Dodecahedral Space: a proposed underlying structure to our universe. I'm fascinated to read the comments for this one at YouTube - this video triggered some strong debate from people with both scientific and spiritual viewpoints.

Here's another image from theories about the geometry of extra dimensions which we've talked about before: the ten-dimensional Calabi-Yau manifold.


Michael Brooks, in his CultureLab blog for New Scientist, recently wrote about a new book by one of the co-discoverers of the above manifold: Shing-Tung Yau (the book is written in collaboration with Steve Nadis). Here's a few paragraphs from what Mr. Brooks had to say about "The Shape of Inner Space":

In case you're wondering, the geometric form known as a Calabi-Yau space (seen above) exists in multiple dimensions and is the pedestal on which string theory has been built. And in case you want to know more than that, one of the inventors (discoverers?) of the Calabi-Yau space, the geometer Shing-Tung Yau, has written a book that explains it all in exquisite detail.

The Shape of Inner Space is a hymn to geometry. Without geometry, Yau points out, we cannot account for the forces of nature. Einstein's general theory of relativity is, essentially, nothing but geometry. Yet geometry is the poor relation of modern science.

Yau is aiming to put that right. "I would go so far as to say that geometry not only deserves a place at the table alongside physics and cosmology, but in many ways it is the table," he writes.

Earlier this month, in Global Coherence, we talked about how the hard determinist viewpoint seems to be at odds with my approach to visualizing the extra dimensions. A youtube user calling themselves Der3k7r summed the viewpoint up quite nicely:

Free will is an illusion. Say a person can make a "choice". Whatever that choice may be, they would have always chosen that path because of given circumstances and how they are. Whether it be seemingly insignificant as deciding to scratch your nose, or significant like choosing a spouse.

I responded:

If that's what you believe then you're entitled to your belief. The conclusion you've reached is very much part of what the twentieth-century scientific community trained people into believing: that we are insignificant, meaningless cogs in a predetermined machine that will run down until a hopeless future of maximum entropy for our universe.

You may be surprised to hear me say that part of the hard determinist viewpoint does have a certain resonance for me: but I think it's a mistake to say that we don't have free will. As we've seen in the above explorations, there is ultimately a timeless perspective where everything becomes "just geometry" within the extra dimensions, and within that realm of timelessness it really is accurate to say that "everything that can happen has already happened". But down here in spacetime, we are each constantly navigating within that geometry, and our choice, chance, and the actions of others all contribute to cause us to be selecting one reality over another in a winding path that I would say is definitely not predetermined.

So enjoy the journey!

Rob Bryanton

Next: Just Geometry

Dancing in the Omniverse

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

This music was created by Scope DJ, a music producer from the Netherlands working in the musical genre called "hardstyle". If you listen to the piece at about 0:59 and again at about 2:15 you may recognize the voice that appears: yep, it's me. I've been sampled by Scope DJ, immortalized in a slamming dance track that might give a few people something to think about while they party on the dance floor. Scope DJ's music is available in MP3 and WAV formats at www.hardstyle.com/scope-dj.

Here's the original video that the sample came from: one of my more popular YouTube videos, called Imagining the Omniverse.

A direct link to the above video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6D3CgF8_qk

Scope DJ's real name is Dennis Koehoorn. I contacted Dennis and asked him how he came to use my voice and the "omniverse" concept for his piece, and here's what he said:

I've always been extremely interested in the phenomenon of multiple universes, dimensions et cetera. It makes so much sense to me that I can't figure out why they shouldn't exist. Your vlog gave me more insight on this topic. Since I was always interested in topics like these and also always wanted to make a track about it - even though the main audience may not learn anything about the topic from just listening to the track - I decided to use your vlog as a source.

I am glad you are taking this well, I can imagine someone NOT liking someone else using their voice without asking...

Best regards,
Dennis

Hey Dennis, by all means, I put my vlogs up on YouTube because I want to get these important ideas out into the world. But I do own the copyright to these videos, so I trust that if you make any significant money from your mp3/wav sales or licensing of this track that you'll do the right thing and shoot me a small cut of your profits as a licensing fee, fair enough?

Last blog entry was called Thinking Bigger, and Scope DJ's "Omniverse" certainly fits into that vein. We're going to continue with related concepts in our upcoming blog entries: Extra-Dimensional Geometry, Just Geometry, Thinking Biggest, Psychedelics and Spacetime, and Tangential Thinking.

Finally, just a reminder that the long awaited followup to my first book is still available. "O is for Omniverse" is a collaboration between myself and visual artist Marilyn E. Robertson. Go to http://www.omniverse.tv for more info.



Enjoy the journey!

Rob Bryanton

Thinking Bigger

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

This is the video accompanying my text blog from earlier this year, Our Universe Within the Omniverse.

Ah yes, our old friend the omniverse. Connecting the idea of there being extra dimensions with the idea of there being an omniverse containing the many different forms of multiverse and parallel universes that various cosmological theories have advanced would certainly fall under the category of Thinking Bigger, wouldn't you agree? To be clear, not all multiverse theories posit the necessity of there being extra dimensions, but (as I've always said) when you add extra dimensions it becomes much easier to visualize how there could be other universes just as real as our own, existing within their own versions of spacetime, and yet completely inaccessible from "here". "Here" is our unique universe's position within the multiverse landscape.

In my most popular blog of all time, Jumping Jesus, I embedded Google Video windows showing the amazing Frank Theys documentary "TechnoCalyps" (yes, that's how he spells it). My facebook friend Sean Dickinson recently sent me a link to a ten minute YouTube clip from that same movie which I think does a nice job of expanding these Thinking Bigger conversations beyond physics and beyond technology, through the questions of Simulism and into the realms of the spiritual and the mystical.

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

Some theorists propose that there is only one dimension, and this is an idea we've played with before. In entries like "An Expanding 4D Sphere" and "Our Universe as a Point", we've tried to show how ultimately each dimension is enfolded by the next: the 2D circle contains the 1D line, the 3D sphere contains the 2D circle, the 4D hypersphere contains the 3D sphere, and so on. By the time we're talking about hyperspheres constructed from four or more spatial dimensions, we're rapidly moving beyond what our monkey brains are capable of visualizing! But if our reality is defined at the tenth dimension, that tenth dimension contains a 9D hypersphere as a subset, which contains an 8D hypersphere as its subset, and so on. Wheels within wheels, spheres within spheres, a logic that continues all the way to the tenth dimension: and if a theorist says there is only one dimension, then I would say they are somehow pointing towards the enfolded nature of all of these structures considered simultaneously.

We're going to continue this line of reasoning in these upcoming entries: Extra-dimensional Geometry, Thinking Biggest, Psychedelics and Spacetime, and Tangential Thinking.

Till then, enjoy the journey!

Rob Bryanton

Next: Dancing in the Omniverse

Global Coherence

A direct link to the above video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzGBDBEx_pI
Not long ago the amazingly energetic Dr. Mark Filippi of somaspace.org invited me to attend the 2010 Coherence Conference, which took place at the University of Bridgeport in October 2010. Unfortunately, my schedule didn't allow me to participate, but there were four basic questions Dr. Mark asked everyone to consider prior to the conference, and I'd like to share my responses with you now. This conference focused on the burgeoning field of "Health 2.0", and brought together a wide range of speakers from various disciplines to discuss the importance of coherence as it relates to people's well-being. Since I'm not a health professional, I'm sure there would have been a lot of eye-opening discussions for me, but I'm also sure that my own approach would have added some new ideas to the discussion.

I'm particularly interested in the idea that our reality is shifting as people become more and more connected to each other: definitely a coherence-related concept! Here's the questions that Dr. Mark, as chair of the event, asked all participants to respond to:


1. Define coherence in your terms
Here's how I first learned about the concept of coherence: our reality is constructed through constructive interference from a fifth dimensional probability space, which contains a wave function which can be thought of as the constantly evolving map of possible pasts and futures that connect each of us to our current "now". Those past and future paths are "coherent" with our current now, while the pasts and futures of the universe that are logically/causally incompatible are "decoherent".

Coherence, then, connects us to the multiverse as per Everett's Many Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics. Speaking philosophically, coherence as a goal is finding ways for each of us to better connect to the preferred versions of the universe that already exist within the underlying patterns of timelessness which, to avoid confusion with the multiple definitions of the word "multiverse", I've come to prefer to refer to as the "omniverse".

My project, Imagining the Tenth Dimension, has been an ongoing exploration of how we fit into these underlying patterns. I recently posted a video to YouTube called "Strength of Gravity, Speed of Light" which shows one example of how my project is about trying to find the common meeting ground between physics and philosophy, between science and spirituality.



A recent blog entry which goes even further out on a limb with these ideas is called "Love and Gravity". In that one I look at what would more commonly be called "new age" phrases and relate them to my approach to visualizing the extra spatial dimensions our reality comes from. Those phrases are:

The universe loves you.

Your body's natural inclination is to want to heal, to want to thrive.

There are forces outside of our reality which are trying to move us towards a better future.

2. What are the key applications of your definition?
Understanding how each of us is at the center of our own unique version of the universe gives us a way of understanding our connectedness to the reality we are observing, and our connectedness to others we are interacting with as that reality is being observed. We each have more power than twentieth century science has traditionally taught us to believe, and the new science of epigenetics is a prime example of that. Who would have believed twenty years ago that studies could prove that changes in diet, lifestyle, and attitude can change which genes are expressed, and even influence what genes we pass on to our offspring? A YouTube video I posted at the end of August called "Placebos Becoming More Effective?" relates to this discussion.




3. What do you see as the major impact of your application within your field?
I am a generalist, interested in exploring the common meeting ground between ancient spirituality and modern science. I'm always careful to point out that I'm not a physicist and I'm not pretending to be one, but my visual approach to understanding the ten spatial dimensions (plus one of time, but since I agree with the many physicists who say that ultimately "time is an illusion" I prefer not to count it as a dimension) that our reality comes from has fired the imaginations of millions of people around the world.


4. What do you see as the major impact of your application outside your field?
"Outside my field"? Since I'm a generalist, that term's a bit hard to define. For persons who insist that spirituality has no place in science, or religious fundamentalists who say that science is delusion, or hard determinists who say free will is an illusion, my project will not likely convince them to change the conclusions they've already reached. Other than that it's difficult to pin down exactly what the phrase "outside my field" would mean, since the main goal of my project is to find ways to be as inclusive as possible in discussing where our reality comes from, and the significance of our individual roles as participants in that process.

For more about how my idea of our reality coming from a fifth dimensional probability space is receiving more mainstream consideration this year, please watch my video for "The 5th Dimensional Camera Project".



I've titled this entry "Global Coherence". Here's a link to a description of "The Global Coherence Initiative", something that Jack Canfield (famed author of the enormously popular Chicken Soup for the Soul series) describes as "perhaps the greatest experiment in the history of the world". Is the world changing for the better as more and more people become connected to each other, embracing the possibilities of shared intention? Check out the link if you'd like to know more.

And as I always like to say, enjoy the journey!

Rob Bryanton

Next: Thinking Bigger

Poll 65 to 68 - Thinking Big

A direct link to the above video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbJ4btYu6Ko

It's been a while since we paused to look at some of the poll questions here at the tenth dimension blog, let's do that today. If you're interested in some of the older poll questions, check out this link: Poll 1 to 52.

On my twitter page, I describe myself this way: "Rob is interested in thinking about the big picture of reality". That would be a common thread within these four poll questions we're looking at today: in various ways, they're all about "thinking big".


Poll 65
Poll 65: "Is there only one possible ending for our universe? 1. Yes, that's why everything is inevitable and free will is an illusion. 2. Yes, but randomness and free will provide many paths to get to that single ending. 3. No, there are many possible endings." (Poll ended June 2 2010) Only 12% said "Free will is an illusion, while a fairly even split chose the other two responses: 41.5% said "Randomness and free will provide many paths, and 46.5% said "No, there are many possible endings".

My pick from these choices would have been number two, which lost out to number three by a fairly narrow margin. I wonder how many people would have selected number two if blogger's poll function had allowed me to be as wordy as this?

2. There is only one possible final state which lies beyond the "ending" for our universe, and it's the same as just before the "beginning" of our universe: enfolded symmetry. But because there are many possible paths (or "world lines") that we can travel to get to that final state, it may appear from within our spacetime continuum that there is more than one possible "ending", even though that's ultimately not the case.

I would say the original version of answer number two sums this same idea up with less words, but since I myself have used the phrase "one of the many possible endings for our universe" in my original tenth dimension animation, I would be the first to admit that I haven't always made my position as clear as I could have on this topic. Related concepts were explored most recently in my new video for "Strength of Gravity, Speed of Light", which we discussed further in an entry from a few weeks ago called "Cymatics, Gravity and Light".


Poll 66
Poll 66: "The dodecahedron is a fundamental underlying shape to our reality." Poll ended June 18 2010. 61.9% agreed while 38.1% disagreed.

We're going to discuss this idea again next week in an entry called "Extra Dimensional Geometry", as we look at the just published video for a blog entry called "Our Universe as a Dodecahedron".

This question relates to a postulate put forth by Henri Poincaré in 1900 which became a famously difficult problem to solve, with a number of proofs being offered and then rejected throughout the twentieth century. The Poincaré Conjecture should now be more correctly referred to as the Poincaré Theorem since it was officially accepted in 2006 that Grigori Perelman had successfully solved the problem. This was a very big deal in the world of mathematics, although Grigori has refused to accept any of the accolades offered to him for his proof: as the most recent example on July 1st 2010, he turned down the million dollars that had been awarded to him by the Clay Mathematics Institute's Millennium Prize Project for his solution.

For more background about the above poll question, check out this link to an article on the Poincaré Dodecahedral Space.


Poll 67
Poll 67: "All memories are formed during fifth-dimensional branching in our spacetime tree." 73.6% agreed, while 26.4% did not. (Poll ended July 5 2010)

This poll question relates to a blog entry called Entangled Neurons, in which we looked at a new scientific study indicating that quantum entanglement is intrinsic to the process of memory creation. Regular readers of this blog will know that my project tries to get people to accept that quantum effects, often portrayed as being unimaginably strange, make more sense when we accept that they come from the additional degree of freedom offered by the fifth spatial dimension. Please go back and read Entangled Neurons, I don't have anything to add here other than I'm pleased to see that almost three quarters of the visitors to my blog were willing to accept my proposal here.



A direct link to the above video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o87TkFOR_Js

Poll 68
Poll 68: "Now that some Oxford University scientists have shown support for Rob's concept of our reality coming from a 5th-dimensional probability space, we can see that this idea will one day be embraced by mainstream science." 85.1% agreed, 14.9% disagreed. (Poll ended July 22 2010)

Do the branching world-lines and parallel universes of Everett's Many Worlds Interpretation occur within the fifth dimension? That's the big idea my project has proposed. In the video for my blog entry The 5th-Dimensional Camera Project, we see Oxford's Dr. Simon Benjamin showing graphics very similar to the ones from my project: he talks about how our currently observed reality is derived from a branching tree-like structure in the fifth dimension, and those branches are the potential result of a combination of chance and choice. I'm grateful to Jon Ardern and Anab Jain, who showed Dr. Benjamin my original tenth dimension animation.

Is this the thin edge of the wedge? Will more mainstream scientists be starting to embrace my approach to visualizing the extra dimensions, because of the intuitive leaps it allows between previously compartmentalized realms of physics, cosmology and quantum mechanics? Only time will tell. But hey, if time really is an illusion then the world where this has happened already exists within my fifth-dimensional probability space, and all I have to do is find a way to get there!

Enjoy the journey,

Rob Bryanton

Next: Global Coherence

New Video - Magnets and Morality

A direct link to the above video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFx7IT-dZGc

In the above video, I say that I'm talking about some new scientific research that moves beyond what I had been previously thinking about with this project. Nonetheless, a number of people commenting on this video at YouTube appear to be assuming that this is some wild new flight of fancy I've concocted from my own imagination. Let's be really clear here - this video, which is based upon my blog entry of the same name (Magnets and Morality, published this past April), reports on a serious medical study indicating that when magnetic pulses were focused on the junction between the temporal and parietal lobes in test subjects, those people seemed less likely to be able to apply moral judgment to observed outcomes.

Imagine this: if you and I were watching a boy scout help an old lady cross the street, and the old lady stumbled and fell, then a person with impaired moral judgment might assume that the boy scout did not have good intentions towards the old lady. Likewise, if we were watching a business man carry large bags of money to the bank, then a person with impaired moral judgment might not care how the businessman got the money: with this more limited viewpoint, the only thing that matters is the outcome.

Is this a modern malaise? And could the number of people in large cities, bathed in increasingly large amounts of electromagnetic energy twenty-four hours a day be suffering (to lesser or greater degrees) some symptoms related to the above study? This is an issue worthy of further consideration.

Last week, in 10-10-10: Look Before You Leap, I asked people to set aside a moment tomorrow on the tenth day of the tenth month in the tenth year of this century to think about their own participation in the reality they are helping to create. How's your moral compass? It's always good to do a little self-evaluation from time to time, to make sure you're heading in the right direction, and who knows what you might find?

I'd like to thank George Peterson, who in the comments for that previous entry reminded me that 101010 in binary translates to 42: the number Douglas Adams suggested was the "Ultimate Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, The Universe, and Everything". Too much pressure to put on tomorrow? I agree. And as regular readers of this blog know, my own ultimate answer is simply that we should always try to enjoy the journey!

Rob Bryanton

Next: Poll 65 to 68 - Thinking Big

New Animation - The Forest

A direct link to the above video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VeILNHXU9zo

When I was contacted at my tenth dimension forum by "redmirian" (Nigel Evans. a science teacher -head of chemistry- at a Bloxham School in Oxfordshire in the UK, I told him I would love (with his permission) to develop an animated presentation showing how his approach fits with my own way of visualizing the extra dimensions.

After several attempts at creating something more complex, I ended up doing what you see here in an easy-to-use program called Anime Studio Pro. Using the stock cartoon trees that come with the program, I built a forest one tree at a time and then animated my camera motion through the forest to help portray Nigel's analogy. I hope you enjoy the results!

Next: New Video - Magnets and Morality

10-10-10: Look Before You Leap

More and more people are becoming convinced that we are perched on a precipice, a tipping point, a convergence, an approaching singularity, a break from the old into the new. Back at the start of the year I posted this poll question: "With which prediction do you more agree? 1. 10/10/10 (October 10th 2010) is going to be a very significant date for our planet. Or 2. 10/10/10 will be an unremarkable day."

In March we discussed the results of this poll in an entry called "Will 10-10-10 Be Significant?".

Now, as we're only ten days away from this curious date, I'd like you to think about setting aside a moment at the tenth hour, tenth minute, tenth second, on the tenth day of the tenth month in the tenth year of the century, to contemplate how much has changed, and how different our lives are now from ten years ago. Is your life better or worse now? Regardless of your evaluation, change is a significant part of our lives, more so all the time.

Nova Spivack has been talking lately about "The Now" becoming an increasingly dense and increasingly narrow focus in our collective experience. I've talked before about Nova's groundbreaking work in the semantic web and providing tools to help us navigate through the potentially overwhelming Stream of information entering our lives. Is the amount of information in the world really doubling at an exponential rate? Read this article featuring Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who says we are currently creating an amount of information every two days that equals the entirety of information created from the dawn of civilization until 2003!

How much longer can we keep up this acceleration? Where is this acceleration taking us? My song "The End of the World" suggests that people have always been suggesting that something significant is just about to happen, and in my book and this blog I've played with the idea that Everett's Many Worlds allows for the possibility that there are parallel worlds where those people turned out to be right, they're just not the version of the universe we currently happen to find ourselves in.

What do you think?

Do you believe we're approaching a tipping point? As more and more people become connected together like a gigantic "hive mind" of a tightly focused Great Big Now (as Nova Spivack calls it), will we collectively ascend to something greater? I would say that's the hope we all have to share. On 10-10-10, take a moment to think about whether you're helping to move this world to be better or worse than it was before you got here. And enjoy the journey!


A direct link to the above video is at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2Y9m34iJVY

Rob Bryanton

P.S.: The picture we saw at the start of this entry is part of a collection called "(Really) Stunning Pictures and Photos", check them all out at Smashing Magazine. The description attached to the picture when it was posted at Pixdaus says the shot was taken on Norway’s cliff Prekestolen (also known as Preacher’s Pulpit), but according to other people commenting on the picture it's actually found at Odda, Norway, and it's called Trolltunga (The Troll's Tongue). Either way, people insist this is not photoshopped, and is an actual geological formation found in Norway. How far out on the Troll's Tongue would most of us be willing to go?

Next: New Animation - The Forest