Common Criticisms part 1

A direct link to the above video can be found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gj_Zgdr9R_8

Henry of the popular youtube channel minutephysics has recently been making comments trying to get people to stop watching my channel, and since then we've seen hundreds of negative comments suddenly being posted by his followers on my videos. Since there are a great many other YouTube channels devoted to discussion of the ways that physics and philosophy, science and spirituality might have interesting connections, it leads me to ask one simple question: why?

This is the start of a series where we will look at ten reasons that have been posted recently by Henry and his followers on my YouTube Channel:

Reason #1: Because it's wrong.
Since I've always said this is "a new way of thinking about time and space", and that "this is not the explanation for string theory", this is the easiest claim for minutephysics to make. He doesn't agree with this new way of thinking, and as the self-declared spokesman for the world of physics he feels justified in saying my ideas are not worth discussing. But what does it mean to say something put forth not as a scientific theory, but as a creative way to visualize the ten spatial or space-like dimensions theorists have told us our reality is derived from, is "wrong"? If I show you an image of a bowling ball on a rubber sheet and say "this is a way of thinking about gravity", would your response be there are no bowling balls and rubber sheets in space, so that visualization is worthless? Sometimes a picture conveys an idea quite well without requiring people to understand the calculations that make the idea correct. And if I draw you some pictures that give you a way of visualizing ten spatial dimensions, each one orthogonal to the next, then I've introduced you to an idea you might want to learn more about. Isn't that a good thing?

Next: Reason #2: Because it's dangerous.

The World Ends in Two Weeks

The world ends in two weeks - in some part of Everett's Many Worlds multiverse. But will it be the part that you and I are observing? That's what my song The End of the World is all about. Enjoy!



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

Poll 94 - Shadows and Symmetry

Poll 94 - "Rob Bryanton says 'the brighter the light, the darker the shadow. Our universe arises from a breaking of an underlying symmetry." Do you agree with him?"  Poll ended June 25 2012.  81.3% agreed, and 18.7% did not.

Well, well, it would be interesting to run this poll again now and see if people are changing their opinion on this one yet. Here's a link to a Scientific American article published a few days ago, with the title Supersymmetry Fails Test, Forcing Physics to Seek New Ideas. It discusses the latest revelations from the Large Hadron Collider, which appear to rule out an idea which was has dominated science for decades, because particles predicted by Supersymmetry are simply not appearing at energy levels predicted by "SUSY" (as Supersymmetry is affectionately known).

Here are a few paragraphs from the article:

Supersymmetry has dominated the particle physics landscape for decades, to the exclusion of all but a few alternative theories of physics beyond the Standard Model.

“It's hard to overstate just how much particle physicists of the past 20 to 30 years have invested in SUSY as a hypothesis, so the failure of the idea is going to have major implications for the field,” said Peter Woit, a particle theorist and mathematician at Columbia University.

The theory is alluring for three primary reasons: It predicts the existence of particles that could constitute "dark matter", an invisible substance that permeates the outskirts of galaxies. It unifies three of the fundamental forces at high energies. And — by far the biggest motivation for studying supersymmetry — it solves a conundrum in physics known as the hierarchy problem.

Please follow the link to read the whole article, which was written by Natalie Wolchover and Simons Science News.

Where does this leave my poll question? The fact remains that science believes equal quantities of matter and antimatter should have been created at the beginning of the universe, and supersymmetry was just one possible explanation for the actual imbalance that we observe. Does this strengthen the argument for extra dimensions? Is, as I've suggested with this project, the underlying symmetry state not a function of space-time, but rather a function of an underlying ultimate ensemble which is very much "outside" of space-time? That is what I continue to propose.

So. Even with Supersymmetry now falling off the table for likely theories of reality (and make no mistake about it, this is big news!), the symmetry state that I'm describing doesn't require supersymmetry, but it does require extra dimensions. As science marches on to deeper and deeper understanding of the world around us,  those extra dimensions appear more inviting than ever as the real explanation for the mysteries that remain.

Enjoy the journey!

Rob Bryanton

The Power of No

Here's a paragraph from my book. I wrote these words in 2005, but if anything they feel even more relevant today:

The “Power of No” should never be underestimated. Any time a connection fails to be made, or an acquaintance is ignored, or an opportunity is not taken, potential fifth-dimensional paths are being closed off. Discussions of “free will” often focus on the paths that a person deliberately takes, but paths that are not taken due to choice, or indifference, or ignorance have effects that can be just as far-reaching in a person’s life.

A direct link to the above video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eN24Sv0qS1w

With this project, and most recently with my vlog entry "Imagining the Fifth Dimension", I've tried to show how, for each of us, our unique "now" is really a moving point within a fifth-dimensional probability space. Imagine, if you will, that this probability space is like when you're in a building with spotty cell-phone coverage: sometimes moving just a few feet to the left or right is all it takes to get a good connection. Likewise, sometimes all it takes is a small attitude adjustment to change your trajectory within your probability space, to make connections that move you to a better or more fortuitous version of "you".

Attitude affects outcome. Is that phrase just wishful thinking? Creative visualization is a technique used in competitive sports all the time, because it really works. Business consultants advise their clients to project confidence and optimism, even when things are not going so well, because attitude affects outcome in establishing new business connections. Healthcare professionals know that the patient with a negative or depressed attitude is less likely to recover quickly.

Here's an article published in the New York Times a few months ago that puts an interesting nuance on this idea: "The Positive Power of Negative Thinking". It talks about studies that show people who have visualized themselves as already having reached their goals can actually become less motivated! If that's the case then there are an awful lot of self-help programs out there that have not been as successful as their creators would want us to believe.

But what we're talking about here does align with those studies. Saying "No" to something is fine if it's really not a path we want to travel. However, when we realize that sometimes we exercise the Power of No through inaction or failure to understand the implications, we begin to see how we could be closing doors and windows that would have taken us to important opportunities.

And how many times in a day do we miss the little synchronicities, the surprise connections, the golden circumstance because we weren't paying attention, we were distracted, we were bogged down in the day-to-day problems that never seem to end? Finding ways to become more engaged, more excited by the wonder and novelty of this world and the universe around us has always been one of the central themes of this project.

Enjoy the journey!

Rob Bryanton

P.S.: Speaking of making connections, I'm thrilled to report that my YouTube channel has now passed 28,000 subscribers and is about to hit 8 million total views. Thank you all for your kind support for this project.

Draped Across the Fifth

One of the common arguments used in the last few years to disprove the existence of free will is the evidence that the conscious awareness of making a decision to take an action is preceded by a number of seconds of neurochemical activity which is occurring without us being aware of it happening. Amazingly, this means scientists can have a subject hooked up to monitoring equipment, and be able to tell what response the subject is going to give to a simple test well before the subject is aware of having made their decision to respond.

Here's a video some of you will already have seen. It shows Marcus Du Sautoy (Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford and current Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science) participating in an experiment conducted by John-Dylan Haynes (Professor at the Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience Berlin). This particular experiment shows that Du Sautoy's mind is made up about six seconds before he himself is aware of having made a decision!


A direct link to the above video can be found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6S9OidmNZM

After the demonstration, Professor Haynes sums up the conclusion that I hear from critics of my project all the time: "It seems that what our experiments reveal is that it's like there's a mechanism unfolding, a deterministic mechanism that leads up to your decision at a later point in time, and that it was inevitable, it could only go one way."

My response to this has been to say that rather than disproving free will, this proves that our consciousness is better thought of as being "smeared" across more than the tiny spacetime window that we observe from instant to instant. This is another way of describing our fifth-dimensional selves. Now, here's a fascinating news story about what I would say is the same concept viewed from the opposite perspective: it talks about new scientific evidence that subjects are able to predict what question is going to be asked in controlled experiments where even the scientists running the experiment don't know what the question is about to be.

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/health/2012/10/22/evidence-of-premonitions-hinted-at-in-new-study/

What I've been trying to get people to visualize then, is that while our awareness is necessarily centered on the physical "here and now" of our flipbook universe, the space-time frames occurring one planck unit after another that give us the illusion of a continuous reality, our minds are also constantly engaged at lesser or greater degrees with something larger, something that is outside that fourth dimensional "now" our physical bodies are moving within.

In other words, you and I are not just a moving point following the "arrow of time" in the fourth dimension: we are draped across the fifth.

Something from Nothing

In October 2012 New Scientist Magazine published a special issue that was devoted to this burning question - "what is reality?".

Having published a video called "Imagining the 'Zeroth' Dimension" in late August, there were definitely some quotes from that issue that caught my eye:

"These are very difficult issues," says philosopher of science James Ladyman of the University of Bristol, UK, "but it might be less misleading to say that the universe is made of maths than to say it is made of matter."

Difficult indeed. What does it mean to say that the universe is "made of mathematics"? An obvious starting point is to ask what mathematics is made of. The late physicist John Wheeler said that the "basis of all mathematics is 0 = 0". All mathematical structures can be derived from something called "the empty set", the set that contains no elements. Say this set corresponds to zero; you can then define the number 1 as the set that contains only the empty set, 2 as the set containing the sets corresponding to 0 and 1, and so on. Keep nesting the nothingness like invisible Russian dolls and eventually all of mathematics appears. Mathematician Ian Stewart of the University of Warwick, UK, calls this "the dreadful secret of mathematics: it's all based on nothing" (New Scientist, 19 November 2011, p 44). Reality may come down to mathematics, but mathematics comes down to nothing at all.

  - from the article "Reality: Is Everything Made of Numbers?", by writer and New Scientist consultant Amanda Gefter

So a question that is often asked is how do we get "something" from the "nothing" of the unobserved quantum fabric?

According to prevailing wisdom, a quantum particle such as an electron or photon can only be properly described as a mathematical entity known as a wave function. Wave functions can exist as "superpositions" of many states at once. A photon, for instance, can circulate in two different directions around an optical fibre; or an electron can simultaneously spin clockwise and anticlockwise or be in two positions at once.

When any attempt is made to observe these simultaneous existences, however, something odd happens: we see only one. How do many possibilities become one physical reality?

This is the central question in quantum mechanics...

  - from the article "Reality: How Does Consciousness Fit In?", by writer and New Scientist consultant Michael Brooks

If reality is ultimately math, and math is ultimately derived from "nothing", or zero, then this quote from Jan Westerhoff can have a very interesting interpretation.

In our search for foundations, we have gone round in a circle, from the mind, via various components of matter, back to the mind - or, in the case of the Copenhagen interpretation, from the macroscopic to the microscopic, and then back to the macroscopic. But this just means that nothing is fundamental, in the same way there is no first or last stop on London Underground's Circle Line. The moral to draw from the reductionist scenario seems to be that either what is fundamental is not material, or that nothing at all is fundamental.

- from the article "Reality: Is Matter Real?", by Jan Westerhoff, a philosopher at the University of Durham and the University of London's School of Oriental and African Studies, both in the UK

Which takes us back to Imagining the "Zeroth" Dimension, and the lovely mind flip that Gevin Giorbran described for us - if everything is ultimately derived from an underlying symmetry state, and a universe such as ours is derived from a breaking of that symmetry, then that can lead us to a way of imagining how there is an underlying "nothing" of all possibilities in perfect balance, and zero becomes the biggest number of all. Please watch this video for more on this fascinating idea.

 
A direct link to the above video can be found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emlcwyvnsg0

Imagining 10 Dimensions - the Movie

Depending upon what kind of a device you're using, many visitors to this blog will be able to see ten little numbered boxes across the top of this video - clicking on a number will jump you to that part of this movie where that number is discussed. I notice that in some browsers these numbers are covered up by the title of the video which drops down. If you're encountering that problem try going to this direct link to the above video, which is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gg85IH3vghA Enjoy!

Point-Line-Plane Still in Jeopardy?

Last entry I told you about a wikipedia entry which had been permanently deleted, concerning the point-line-plane postulate. Since this postulate is the accepted way of visualizing any number of spatial dimensions, and its logic is easily related to the line-branch-fold that I based my project on, I've talked about it a number of times since 2008, which was when I first happened across this entry. It was kind of amazing to me to see how quickly it disappeared from google once the deletion occurred, it was like this postulate was now a figment of my imagination.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point-line-plane_postulate
Today I'm happy to report that the wikipedia entry is back! Thank you to everyone who pointed out to the wikipedia administrator who made the deletion that this was a mistake, and that the point-line-plane postulate is a real thing, an accepted concept from basic geometry. It's interesting to me that one of the arguments put forth by the admin who deleted the entry was that it didn't have any supporting links to other "reliable sources".

I see now that the restored entry has just been flagged for possible deletion because it doesn't include any links to "reliable secondary sources". Several friends sent me a link to an Andrews University online course in basic geometry that lists this postulate:
http://www.andrews.edu/%7Ecalkins/math/webtexts/geom01.htm#POST

Does somebody with wikipedia experience have any suggestions on how to keep this entry from being removed again? I helpfully went in yesterday and added the above link but it was almost immediately removed by a bot. I've undone the bot's revision but I expect it will be removed again as I don't have a wikipedia account. This time the admin in question is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Wcherowi. Unlike the previous administrator who had a music background, Wcherowi does have an interest in math and geometry, so the "notability" arguments this admin has raised today need to be dealt with directly or this entry is most likely doomed once again. Anyone else with supporting links and a wikipedia account who can help out here?

Thanks!

Rob

Wikipedia Shenanigans

Over the last few years I've repeatedly referred to something called the "point-line-plane postulate". In a nutshell, this postulate says that you can use the logical relationships we're familiar with from a point (which we can call dimension "x"), a line (dimension "x+1") and a plane (dimension "x+2") as a way to visualize any number of spatial dimensions, simply by taking that "x+2" dimension, conceiving of it in its entirety as a point, and repeating the process.

On October 6, 2012, a wikipedia administrator called "Explicit" deleted the wikipedia article on the point-line-plane postulate. Here's a link to Explicit's page on wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Explicit

As you'll see if you go to the above link, this person describes themselves as an expert on "music-related articles, where I focus on biographies, albums, songs and discographies relating mostly to R&B, hip hop and pop articles." What possible reason, then, could this person have to delete an article about a basic postulate from geometry?

Not sure how long this link will work, but here's the wikipedia page identifying Explicit as the one who removed the entry:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk%3APoint-line-plane_postulate

Since there now appears to be no way to view the previous versions of the point-line-plane postulate page, I accept that what Explicit deleted may already be a page which had been recently modified in some offensive or unacceptable way. But to delete an article that has been up on wikipedia for years? I have to wonder if Explicit even bothered to look back at the revision history, to see that this article was long considered by the wikipedia community to be fine. What's going on here, Explicit? I'd love to know.

Update: After publishing this article several friends have sent me this link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point%E2%80%93line%E2%80%93plane_postulate
which includes this explanation from Explicit (a music expert) on why they deleted the entry:

there are no reliable sources for this article since it is mathematically incorrect in several ways, as is the You-tube video from which it comes

I have 2 questions for Explicit:

- this is a geometric postulate which has been on wikipedia for at least the last four years, that was when I first stumbled across it. It is referenced on a number of other sites, in what way are you qualified to say this geometry postulate is "mathematically incorrect"?
- this postulate was posted by other experts long before I came across it, for you to say it "comes from my video" is absurd. What's next? Are you going to delete wikipedia entries referring to Everett's Many Worlds Interpretation just because I talk about this concept in my videos?

It seems clear now that someone recently added a link to one of my youtube videos on this wikipedia entry and that's what made Explicit delete this entry. Explicit, if you are truly interested in the dissemination of knowledge, then revert this page back to whatever the previous version was and stop trying to suppress this information. To remove this legitimate entry does a disservice to the wikipedia community as a whole. Shame!  

Update 2:
Thanks to Redmonkey who in the comments for this entry sent a link to a typical entry about this postulate, this one from a University website: http://www.andrews.edu/~calkins/math/webtexts/geom01.htm#POST

New video - Imagining the First Dimension

A direct link to the above video can be found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MV47Mcmo25I

Discovery Channel on Rob Bryanton

Check it out! There's a new article posted at Discovery Channel News online, written by Trace Dominguez, praising my latest video:
http://news.discovery.com/space/imagining-the-tenth-dimension-gotta-see-videos-120816.html

Thanks for your support, Trace! What you see below is just a screen grab, which of course means none of the links are functional. For that, follow the hot link above to the Discovery Channel website, and let's now watch the fun unfold in the comments section as a new crop of naysayers argue it out with the people like Trace Dominguez who understand the usefulness of this visualization tool. As I've always said, this is not as an explanation of the math behind string theory, but it is a way for the human mind to catch a glimpse of something extremely vast, something that some will tell you is unimaginable: ten spatial dimensions, each one orthogonal to another.

Enjoy the journey! Rob Bryanton

Imagining the Tenth Dimension - 2012 Version

A direct link to the above video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqeqW3g8N2Q
Modern theories tell us that there are ten spatial, or "space-like" dimensions to our reality. My name is Rob Bryanton. With this project, I have developed a creative way to use a variation of what's known as the "point-line-plane postulate" to visualize those ten dimensions, a concept that most would have thought impossible for the human mind to comprehend. How can we do this?

One
We start with a point.

Like the "point" we know from geometry, it has no size, no dimension. It's just an imaginary idea that indicates a position in a system.

A second point, then, can be used to indicate a different position, but it, too, is of indeterminate size.

To create the first dimension, all we need is a line passing through any two points. A first dimensional object has length only, no width or depth.

Two
If we now take our first dimensional line and draw a second line crossing the first, we've entered the second dimension.

The object we're representing now exists within a plane that has length and width, but no depth. Way back in 1884, a fellow named Edwin Abbott wrote a book about a race of two-dimensional creatures called "Flatlanders". Whether these imaginary creatures could really exist or not, they’re useful for thinking about what it would be like to live in a flat, two-dimensional world.

If we were to watch a balloon passing through the Flatlander's world, for instance, it would start as a tiny dot, become a hollow circle which inexplicably grows to a certain size, then shrinks back to a dot before popping out of existence. But what would the flatlander actually see? Imagining the extremely limited viewpoint of a creature confined within this 2D plane gets even stranger than that.

Three
Now let’s move to the third dimension. This should be the easiest for us because every moment of our lives that's what we're in.

A three dimensional object has length, width, and depth. But here's another way to describe the third dimension: if we imagine an ant walking across a newspaper which is lying on a table, we can pretend that the ant is a Flatlander, walking along on a flat two-dimensional newspaper world.

If that paper is now folded in the middle, we create a way for our Flatlander Ant to "magically" disappear from one position in his two-dimensional world and be instantly transported to another.

We can imagine that we did this by taking a two-dimensional object and folding it through the dimension above, which is our third dimension.

It'll be more useful for us as we begin to imagine the extra dimensions if we can think of the third dimension in this way: the third dimension is what you "fold through" to jump from one point to another in the dimension below.

To be clear, no matter what dimension you are "folding",  it provides a way to move instantaneously from one distant position to another. A "wormhole" is the scientific term for this concept.

Four
Now let’s look at the fourth dimension. Just like any other spatial dimension, it’s made up of two opposing directions, but we 3D creatures only experience this dimension in one of those directions. Why is that? It's because you and I are made out 3D atoms and molecules, and we derive our energy from chemical reactions which move in one direction only. But science shows us that time's reverse direction is just as valid, and in fact the standard definition of anti-matter is that it's matter which is moving backwards in time!

So rather than saying the fourth dimension is "time", let's use the word "duration". If you were to imagine your body's duration as a shape in the fourth dimension, you could think of it as a long undulating snake, with your embryonic self at one end and your deceased self at the other. But because our reality is observed one quantum frame after another from the third dimension, we are like our second dimensional Flatlanders.

Just like that Flatlander who could only see cross-sections of objects from the dimension above, we as three-dimensional creatures can only see cross-sections of our fourth-dimensional self. And just as you and I require the fourth dimension to change from state to state, think about how for a 2D flatlander, "time" would be one of the two possible directions in the third spatial dimension.

Five
Quantum mechanics tells us that the particles that make up our world are derived from waves of probability simply by the act of observation. It is for this reason that I like to refer to the fifth dimension as our "probability space", and this relates very nicely to a theory which is now gaining acceptance: advanced in 1957 by Hugh Everett III, his theory is commonly known as the “Many World Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics“. It was Everett who showed us that these parallel outcomes reside within a space which is "orthogonal" to space-time, and the versions of the universe that we don't observe are just as real as the ones we do. What's orthogonal, or at right angles, to space-time? With this project, this leads us to the conclusion that Everett's Many Worlds reside within the fifth dimension.

One of the most intriguing aspects of this approach to visualizing each new dimension as being orthogonal to the previous one is that it means we can be observing one dimension and be unaware of our motion in an additional one. Here’s a simple example: if we make a Möbius strip (take a long strip of paper, add one twist to it and tape the ends together) and draw a line down the length of it, our line will eventually be on both sides of the paper before it meets back with itself. It appears, somewhat amazingly, that the strip has only one side, so it must be a representation of a two-dimensional object. And this means that a two-dimensional Flatlander traveling down the line we just drew would end up back where they started without ever feeling like they had left the second dimension. In reality, they would be looping and twisting in the third dimension, even though to them it felt like they were traveling in a straight line.
 
The fourth dimension feels like a straight line to us, moving from the past to the future with what some have called the "arrow of time". But that arrow is, without us even being aware of it, actually twisting and turning in the dimension above. So, the long undulating snake that is us at any particular moment will feel like it is moving in a straight line in the fourth dimension, but there will actually be, in the fifth dimension, a multitude of paths that we can branch to at any given moment. Those branches will be influenced by our own choice, chance, and the actions of others. We move through those branches one planck frame at a time, and this is why some physicists say that the fifth dimension is "curled up at the planck length" - because from our reference frame, that's how it appears.

Six
It's important to note, though, that Everett was also very clear that causality could not be violated as we observe one outcome or another. So right now, there is zero probability that you or I can suddenly be in the world where (for instance) Michael Jackson is still alive. And yet the Many Worlds Interpretation says those versions of the universe really exist within the quantum wavefunction. So how could we get there?

We would need to "fold" our 5D probability space through the sixth dimension. I like to call the sixth dimension our universe‘s "phase space“. Why? A phase space is defined as "a space in which all possible states of a system are represented, with each possible state of the system corresponding to one unique point in the phase space." So those points representing the versions of our universe where Michael Jackson is still alive are inaccessible to us from our current position within the fifth dimension, but they still exist within our sixth-dimensional phase space.

Seven
Now, as we enter the seventh dimension, we are about to imagine a line which treats our entire sixth dimensional phase space as if it were a single point. You could say that this point represents what Einstein was thinking about when he said the separation between past, present and future is only an illusion. Some would call this point infinity for our universe: all possible outcomes, all wrapped up as one single, timeless "everything".

So if we intend to draw a seventh dimensional line that passes through this point, we need to be able to imagine what a different "point" in the seventh dimension is going to be, because that's what our line needs to pass through. But how can there be anything more than infinity? The answer is, there can be other completely different infinities, other different "everything"s, created through initial conditions which are different from our own big bang.

Eight
Different initial conditions will create different universes where the basic physical laws such as gravity or the speed of light are not the same as ours, and the resulting branching time lines from that universe's beginning to all of its possible endings will create a "phase space" of all possible states different from the phase space associated with our own universe. Think about this: what if the 7D line we just drew represented all possible universes with different values for gravity, with our universe some place on that line? Lower gravity than ours would be in one direction and higher gravity in the other. Would that line be a way to get to every possible universe? No! In order to represent other universes with the same value for gravity as ours but with other basic physical constants changed, we need to "branch off" to the possibilities contained within the eighth dimensional phase space of all possible physical realities. And this would be true no matter what variables we were adjusting within the seventh dimensional line: we would still need the additional degree of freedom afforded by the eighth dimension to get to every possible physical universe.

Nine
Now. How do we get to the ninth dimension? The same logical rules we’ve been using would apply - if we were able to instantaneously jump from one eighth dimensional point to another without passing through the intermediate points, it would be because we were able to "fold through" the ninth dimension.

Within this approach to visualizing the dimensions, then, the ninth spatial dimension is beyond any physical reality, and is much more about information, a seething foam of possibilities which could represent impossible universes which exist only as concepts, or selection patterns which could be the beginning of a path toward a universe such as ours or any other. And to complete the logic we have used from the outset, we now take the entire ninth dimension and conceive of it as a single point.

But this is where we hit a roadblock: if we're going to imagine the tenth dimension as continuing the cycle, and being a line, then we're going to have to imagine a different point that we can draw that line to. But it can’t be done! By the time we've imagined an ultimate ensemble of every conceivable information pattern as a single point of indeterminate size, there's no place left to go.

Ten
M-Theory says that our reality is defined from ten spatial dimensions plus time. And that’s what we’re talking about here: a tenth dimension without time. As soon as anything 'tries' to happen within the tenth dimension, we are spilled back into the dimensions below, as subsets are carved out from this ultimate ensemble, this omniverse, this timeless and unchanging "everything" which underlies our reality or any other. And that is a beautiful and fascinating idea for us all to ponder.


I hope my project, "Imagining the Tenth Dimension - a new way of thinking about time and space" has given you some valuable food for thought, and that this will be the beginning of your exploration into understanding the underlying structures of our reality that the great scientists of our day are introducing us to. It's important to note that this project has reached millions of people around the world because it can also be related to many other belief systems, and not just mainstream science. I've created many other videos as part of this exploration of the wide-reaching implications of this visualization: here's a list of some good starting points which look at each of the dimensions in more detail. You can also read more about these ideas in my blog, or in my books: Imagining the Tenth Dimension, O is for Omniverse, and Imagining the Fifth Dimension. Thank you all for watching, and enjoy the journey!

New video - Scientific American on Rob Bryanton

A direct link to the above video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfOiGMPtGF0 Next: Dimension Folders - The Movie

Under My Skin

 A couple of weeks ago I heard from an Imagining the Tenth Dimension fan named Brian Cox. He wrote:

Hey Rob, I really wanted to thank you for the videos you posted. I watched "Imagining the Tenth Dimension" about three years ago, and it touched me in a very profound way. It very genuinely changed the way I look at, well, just about everything. Ever since, 10D theory is something I've obsessed over. Well, in concept anyway, I'm not much of a mathematician. Anyway, I got this tattoo recently, and I thought you would enjoy seeing it.

Here's the picture he attached:

Wow, that's definitely a first for me! I'm very flattered that Brian thought enough of this project's "point-line-branch-fold" concept to want to make it a permanent part of himself. Brian is a welder from Chatsworth, CA (not to be confused with Professor Brian Cox of Wonders of the Universe fame).

I do agree with Brian that this way of thinking about how our reality is created can get under your skin, so to speak, and filter its way into a more general understanding of the world around us. Thank you Brian for showing me in a whole different way how my new way of thinking about time and space really can get "under your skin".

In the comments on my most-viewed YouTube movie, Imagining the Tenth Dimension Part 1 of 2 (now at over 2 million views!), over the last couple of days I've been discussing the relationship between my project's line-branch-fold imagery, and the point-line-plane postulate. Here's a few of my comments:

The "point-line-plane postulate" is the accepted methodology for visualizing any number of spatial dimensions, and is related to my approach. No matter what dimension you start at, if you can define its phase space or set of all possible states and think of that as a point, you can call that dimension "x". Find a point not included within that first phase space, and you can draw a line in "x+1". Find a point not on that line: a plane in "x+2". Think of that plane as a point, and repeat.

A YouTube user who in previous comments had called my video "inflated BS" replied that while he didn't think I was completely wrong, he felt this approach is only valid for imagining any three dimensions, and is a very limited way of describing any dimensions beyond the first three. I responded:

I'm glad to hear you're not saying I'm wrong.

The point-line place postulate is point (dim x) line (dim x+1) plane (dim x+2), repeat. The visualization I use here is point (dim x-1 perceived in its entirety as a single entity, or "point") line (dim x) plane (dim x+1) fold (dim x+2), repeat (so 3 is a fold which becomes a point, and 4 is a line in this video).

The same user then commented that "my" point-line-plane postulate is misleading because the fourth dimension's not really a line, it only appears that way if you think of the entire third dimension in a particular state as a point. Fair enough! I replied:

I want to make sure you're clear that the point-line-plane postulate is not my invention, you can google it and find lots of references to it. The important thing about this postulate is that it can be repeated to visualize ANY number of spatial dimensions because once you've visualized a "plane" in a particular dimension then you can call that a phase space of all possible states for that dimension, which then becomes a "point" in the next dimension and you can repeat the process indefinitely.

The idea that line-branch-fold can start at any dimension is not something that's made clear in my first video, and for good reason: people introduced to this visualization for the first time already have a lot to digest. It would only confuse them to suggest that it's equally valid (for instance) to think of the entire fifth dimension as a point, the sixth dimension as a line, the seventh dimension as a branch, and the eighth dimension as a fold which becomes a point in the ninth dimension! Again, thank you to Brian Cox for sending me the above picture, and thank you to all the Imagining the Tenth Dimension fans who continue to make this project so popular around the world.

Enjoy the journey!

Rob Bryanton

Next: Dimension Folders, the Movie

Happy Sixth Anniversary!

Six years ago today, only a few days after I had put up my Tenth Dimension website, my project went viral and I discovered the meaning of the "digg effect". Last year, in a July 3 entry called Five Years Ago Today, I wrote in more detail about that amazing day. Where are we after six years? Coincidentally, here's a new video I put up on YouTube a couple of days ago, which celebrates an online article published by Scientific American that says some very complimentary things about my project: 

 
A direct link to the above video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfOiGMPtGF0

There continues to be lots of exciting things happening in the worlds of cosmology, quantum theory and string theory, and I will continue to report on the ones that potentially tie into my project in these pages, searching for the connections that show how Everything Fits Together. Coming up in a couple of weeks, I'm going to be publishing a new video that updates the animation that vaulted this project to popularity and continues to attract new fans every day: Imagining the Tenth Dimension 2012 is coming soon.

And of course tomorrow is scheduled to be an official announcement from CERN, amid rampant speculation that the LHC has uncovered evidence pointing toward the existence of the Higgs particle.  Personally I suspect that the evidence announced tomorrow will still be only a hint, a shadow open to interpretation, so we can expect lots and lots of debate about this subject in the months to come. What will come to pass?  Wait and see!

Next time, we'll go from the cosmic to the personal, with an entry called Under My Skin. Till then, enjoy the journey,

Rob

Top Ten Tenth Dimension Blogs - June 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 . October 10 .
. November 10 . December 10 . Top 100 Entries of 2010 .
. January 11 . February 11 . March 11 . April 11 . May 11 .
. June 11 . July 11 . August 11 . September 11 . October 11 .
. November 11 . December 11 . Top 100 Entries of 2011 . 
. January 12 . February 12 . March 12 . April 12 . May 12 .


Based upon number of views, here are the top blogs for the last thirty days.

1. Poll 87 - Many Worlds, Fossils and Dinosaurs
2. Poll 89 - Is Many Worlds as True as Natural Selection?
3. Poll 90 - Neutrinos and the Laws of Physics
4. Time Crystals
5. Imagining the "Zeroth" Dimension
6. Imagining the First Dimension
7. Cadbury Eggs and the Sixth Dimension
8. Poll 91 - Free Energy Within Ten Years?
9. New video - Connecting Zero to Ten
10. New video - Wrapping It Up Part One.



And as of June 26th, 2012, 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. The Pencil Visualization (2)
3. What's Around the Corner? (3)
4. New Video - Imagining the Eighth Dimension (8)
5. Is Reality an Illusion? (5)
6. Mandelbulbs (4)
7. Bees and the LHC (7)
8. Quantum Weirdness and Water (14)
9. 10-10-10 Look Before You Leap (10) 
10. Gravity and Love (9)
11. The 5th-Dimensional Camera Project (6)  
12. Brain Pickings (25)
13. Time Travel Paradoxes (12) 
14. Vibrations and Fractals (11)
15. Gravity and Light from the Vacuum (18)
16. An Expanding 4D Sphere (13)
17. Light Has No Speed (16) 
18. Just Six Things: The I Ching (15)
19. Thrive Movement (19)
20. Changing Your Brain (17) 
21. Duality and Consciousness (new)
22. Roger Ebert on Quantum Reincarnation (20)
23. Poll 85 - No Quantum/Classical Divide? (new)
24. Photons and Free Will (22)
25. Our Universe Within the Omniverse (21)
26. Magnets and Morality (23)


Which means that these worthy entries are leaving our top 26 of all time list this month.

 Simultaneous Inspiration (24)
 How to Time Travel (26)


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. Also, a lot of people are enjoying discussing these ideas with me on my facebook page: facebook.com/rob.bryanton .

Enjoy the journey!

Rob Bryanton

What makes 7th and 8th Dimension Unique?

Here's an excellent question that was passed on to me from "Sevireth" via YouTube's messaging system. With Sevireth's permission, I'm publishing their question and my response.

I am trying to propagate your system of visualizing the higher dimensions to other people, but due to limited time and attention provided by a conversation (and everybody having ADD nowadays, especially on the internet) I have to come up with laconic ways of describing each dimension. In this way I come up with easy to present and understand concepts of what moving in each dimension makes a quantum observer observe changing around them.
It goes as follows: movements in first three dimensions usually need no explanation, so there's little to that.
Movement along the line of 4th dimension will make an observer see the universe around them change — turn younger or older depending of direction within the dimension. Actually -seeing- is only allowed in space-time, not just space, due to light taking its sweet time there's all that too.
Movement in the 5th dimension will allow the observer to choose a 4D path among all of the possible ones, will allow them to see the twists and turns of the 4D line caused by choice, chance and choice of others.
Movement in the 6th dimension is not principally different from movement in the 5th, it's still changing the same universe, but here the observer is not hindered by cause-and-effect relations, and is capable of freely choosing to observe any possible state of the given universe.
Movement (of a 6D universe at this point) along a line in the 7th dimension will change the universe itself — to a different one, with different physical constants. If a universe were to move too far in the 7th dimension, it would break apart, as at a certain point physical laws will become too screwed up to allow a coherent system to represent itself. Even though somewhere even farther on that line universes exist, they're just bizzarely different.
Moving a universe in the 8th dimension will change it just as well, but this time in some other way; if we assume movement in 7D will change, say, the constant of the speed of light, then moving in the 8th dimension will change the strength of gravity or some other important constant. As you mentioned in your videos, 7th and 8th dimension are more about the scope of reference, the values an observer chooses to observe changing.

This is where my imagination hits a wall. I realize it's not really possible to move in or even observe the 10th dimension, but I don't quite understand the ninth. I grasp something along the lines of "the ninth dimension somehow deciding which systems of physical laws would represent a coherent universe and which won't", but how a point (a 6D universe) would change if it were to shift its position in the 9th dimension? Would a universe that previously worked just fine fall apart because it's physical laws, however sensible a moment before, suddenly stop making sense only because they're in a different 9D position?
If it only provides an additional degree of freedom — like the 6th dimension does, allowing us to ignore limitations of causality — then what limitations does it allow to transcend? What ARE limitations of the 7th and 8th dimensions?

Here's my answer:

Good job! Here's how I think about it.

We always have to keep in mind with each of these dimensions that there are different "versions" or "states" for each. There's not just one third dimension, there's a series of third dimensions that make up a 4D duration. You understand this but we have to keep that in mind as we move through the extra dimensions (physicists prefer "extra" to "higher" because it's not like if we look into the sky we're seeing higher dimensions and down to the ground we're seeing lower ones, it's just semantics really but that's something to keep in mind).

The other thing that happens consistently is with each version of a dimension if you can think of it in its entirety, or as its "phase space", then that becomes a point in the additional spatial dimension, which is at right angles to the one you're currently examining. So the entirety of 3D space becomes a point in the fourth dimensional duration. The entirety of a 4D timeline connects to a probability space of 5D causally connected outcomes. The entirety of a 5D "spacetime tree" becomes part of the 6D phase space of all possible states for a physical universe such as ours, which includes all the non-causally connected durations. This 6D phase space becomes a point in the 7th dimension. If that point were to move, it would be moving to a point representing some other universe with different physical laws, or a universe which somehow remains coherent while some aspect of its physical laws is changing. Ignoring for a moment that some physicists have produced evidence that  our universe's laws may have changed somewhat back at the very beginning before settling in, we know that our universe is now an unmoving point within the seventh dimension and beyond, because our universe has locked in physical constants which do not change.

So from here on we're not talking about our own universe because it's "locked in" at the seventh dimension, and that's interesting to compare to the string theory idea that our universe is embedded within a d7 "brane", or membrane.

So let's imagine a line in the seventh dimension connecting to a point representing some other universe. If there was just one constant (like gravity) changing along that line, then other universes with the same gravity as ours would not be on that line. If some or all of the constants were changing proportionally along that line, there would still be lots of other universes not on that line, so we need the additional degree of freedom afforded by the 8th dimension to be able to freely slide through this 8D phase space representing all possibly physical universes.

So now we get to the 9th dimension, and it's just like thinking about the limitations of the previous ones. Our "flatlander ant" needed the third dimension to pop from one position to another within his 2D plane. As I'm moving through 4D space-time I can't suddenly be on the other side of the planet because there are things which are impossible - I would need to use the fifth dimension to pop from one point to another without traveling through the intermediate duration. Or we would need the 7th dimension to pop from one 6D universe's phase space to another. So likewise, the 9th dimension is what you move through to pop from one position to another within the 8D phase space representing all possible physical universes, and the 9th dimension includes patterns which cannot be expressed as physical universes at all.

When you take the entirety of the ninth dimension's phase space and perceive that as a single unchanging point, you are in the tenth dimension, which is ten dimensions of space without time. M theory says there are ten spatial dimensions plus time and counts that as 11. I say time isn't really a dimension, it's just a direction, and as soon as you add "time" to the tenth dimension you are spilled back into the other dimensions to create a universe such as ours or any other.
That's my two bits, good luck!

I appreciate your interest, and you're ongoing support, Sevireth. Many thanks!

Enjoy the journey,

Rob

New video - We are All Quanta

A direct link to the above video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvGXyturX3Q

Also check out this recent video from my YouTube channel - Duality and Consciousness:
A direct link to the above video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SpT5btw_paY

Next: What Makes the 7th and 8th Dimensions Unique?

Where'd All the Dark Matter Go?

Here's a link to an article published at phys.org, entitled "Serious blow to dark matter theories? New study finds mysterious lack of dark matter in Sun's neighborhood". The following image and caption also accompanied the article:

This annotated artist’s impression shows the Milky Way galaxy. The blue halo of material surrounding the galaxy indicates the expected distribution of the mysterious dark matter. New measurements based on the movements of stars show that the amount of dark matter in this region around the Sun is far smaller than predicted and have indicated that there is no significant dark matter at all in our neighbourhood. The blue sphere centred on the Sun’s position shows the approximate size of the newly surveyed volume, but not its precise shape. Credit: ESO/L. Calçada

 The opening paragraph of the article pretty well sums it up, for more please follow the link:

(Phys.org) -- The most accurate study so far of the motions of stars in the Milky Way has found no evidence for dark matter in a large volume around the Sun. According to widely accepted theories, the solar neighbourhood was expected to be filled with dark matter, a mysterious invisible substance that can only be detected indirectly by the gravitational force it exerts. But a new study by a team of astronomers in Chile has found that these theories just do not fit the observational facts. This may mean that attempts to directly detect dark matter particles on Earth are unlikely to be successful.

And the final note appended to this article gives us this very specific information:

Theories predict that the average amount of dark matter in the Sun's part of the galaxy should be in the range 0.4-1.0 kilograms of dark matter in a volume the size of the Earth. The new measurements find 0.00±0.07 kilograms of dark matter in a volume the size of the Earth.

Hmm, quite the head scratcher! It's almost like the act of observing dark matter changes its nature, from something indeterminate and amorphous to something much more specific. Now what, what does that remind us of?

Does Everett's Many Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics allow for the possibility that observation causes something to not be observed? At first, this seems like a contradiction. But with this project we've talked often about how this logic works when applied to our physical reality: if all possible outcomes connected to "now" really do exist within the underlying quantum wave function, then observing one outcome doesn't mean the others somehow disappear, it only means that we're not observing them. By observing the version of the universe where I had an apple and half a protein bar for today's breakfast, it's now impossible for me to observe the version where I had bacon and eggs this morning.  But Everett's theory says that those "other" versions of the universe really do continue to exist even though we can't see them.

So what's unique about our solar system that would cause dark matter to disappear within our vicinity? Well, how about the fact that there are so many lifeforms actively engaged with the quantum wavefunction, not just passively observing random outcomes but sometimes actually choosing one path or another? Could such a concentration of observers be "adding focus", so to speak? Since the beginning of this project I've always maintained that dark matter will eventually be used to confirm the physical existence of the other universes that are "just around the corner in time", as I say in my song The Unseen Eye.

Think about this: the standard imagery used to describe gravity is to think of space-time as a flat rubber sheet, and to think about massive objects causing depressions in that sheet. And the standard description of the cosmological horizon is that no matter where an observer is in the universe, they will find themselves to be right at the center. So if I take these ideas and now think of our universe's fifth-dimensional probability space as a flat rubber sheet, here's what I'm visualizing: vast expanses of that sheet will lie undisturbed, as a superimposition of possible states. But here and there we'll see places where the sheet is distorted, and if we could observe the entire universe with the same degree of accuracy that the astronomers in the above article were able to achieve within the vicinity of our solar system, that would be our guide to finding the scattered locations throughout the universe where life has taken hold. And according to these new findings each of these distortions would be where there is less dark matter as a result of those concentrations of quantum observers!

Is this a flight of fancy, a conjecture, with no math to back it up? Of course! As always, please keep in mind this project is a creative exploration of ideas, food for thought being tossed out for other minds to munch on.

Enjoy the journey!

Rob

Next: New Video - We are All Quanta

Creating Wormholes - Getting Closer

Point. Line. Plane. Repeat. That's the point-line-plane postulate, the accepted methodology for visualizing any number of spatial dimensions.

Line. Branch. Fold. Repeat. That's the logic my project uses, and it really is the same idea, particularly in the way that you can start at any arbitrary dimension with any step in this three-step process, and continue on up from there.

But one of the sticking points for my project is this commonly asked question: how do you fold a dimension?

And the answer I usually give is to point people to the wikipedia article on wormholes, and the accompanying picture shown here which depicts a dimension being folded over on itself to create an instantaneous connection between two points that would ordinarily be widely separated. In my 2008 blog entry on the subject of wormholes I proposed that wormholes passing through one dimension or another would have different effects, based upon the logic of how one dimension's degree of freedom is different from another's based upon the logic of my approach to visualizing the dimensions. As you'll see in the article below, some wormholes have been proposed that would take us instantaneously to other universes with different basic physical laws, while others would allow us to jump to other points in the space or the space-time of our own universe.

Still, there are people who remain unconvinced. "Wormholes are science fiction", they say, "not something that can actually be done". And to the extent that no one has created a stable wormhole yet, that's correct, but wormholes are still a burgeoning area of research, as theoretical physicists develop and refine the ideas first put forth by some of the great minds of the twentieth century, including Einstein and Wheeler.

Now I'd like to show you some of the opening paragraphs from a recent New Scientist article, written by Marcus Chown, entitled Intergalactic Subway: All Aboard the Wormhole Express. Please click on the link to read the whole article.

You probably won't be surprised to learn that no one has yet come close to constructing... a wormhole. One reason is that they are notoriously unstable. Even on paper, they have a tendency to snap shut in the blink of an eye unless they are propped open by an exotic form of matter with negative energy, whose existence is itself in doubt.

Now, all that has changed. A team of physicists from Germany and Greece has shown that building wormholes may be possible without any input from negative energy at all. "You don't even need normal matter with positive energy," says Burkhard Kleihaus of the University of Oldenburg in Germany. "Wormholes can be propped open with nothing." 

The findings raise the tantalising possibility that we might finally be able to detect a wormhole in space. Civilisations far more advanced than ours may already be shuttling back and forth through a galactic-wide subway system constructed from wormholes. And eventually we might even be able to use them ourselves as portals to other universes. 

Wormholes first emerged in Einstein's general theory of relativity, which famously shows that gravity is nothing more than the hidden warping of space-time by energy, usually the mass-energy of stars and galaxies. Soon after Einstein published his equations in 1916, Austrian physicist Ludwig Flamm discovered that they also predicted conduits through space and time. 

But it was Einstein himself who made detailed investigations of wormholes with Nathan Rosen. In 1935, they concocted one consisting of two black holes, connected by a tunnel through space-time. Travelling through their wormhole was only possible if the black holes at either end were of a special kind. A conventional black hole has such a powerful gravitational field that material sucked in can never escape once it has crossed what is called the event horizon. The black holes at the end of an Einstein-Rosen wormhole would be unencumbered by such points of no return. 

Einstein and Rosen's wormholes seemed a mere curiosity for another reason: their destination was inconceivable. The only connection the wormholes offered from our universe was to a region of space in a parallel universe, perhaps with its own stars, galaxies and planets. While today's theorists are comfortable with the idea of our universe being just one of many, in Einstein and Rosen's day such a multiverse was unthinkable. 

Fortunately, it turned out that general relativity permitted the existence of another type of wormhole. In 1955, American physicist John Wheeler showed that it was possible to connect two regions of space in our universe, which would be far more useful for fast intergalactic travel. He coined the catchy name wormhole to add to black holes, which he can also take credit for. 

The trouble is the wormholes of Wheeler and Einstein and Rosen all have the same flaw. They are unstable. Send even a single photon of light zooming through and it instantly triggers the formation of an event horizon, which effectively snaps shut the wormhole. 

This article continues with an excellent overview of the different advances in this field, bringing us to more detailed discussion of these most recent theories around the promise of us actually being able to create stable wormholes.

What's a wormhole? I would describe it as "what happens when you fold a dimension". What a simple idea, and yet what profound implications for the future that idea holds!

Enjoy the journey,

Rob

Next: Where'd All the Dark Matter Go?

Poll 93 - One Inevitable Future?

Poll 93 - "Martin Rees says 'if the Earth's history were re-run, it could end up with a quite different biosphere.' This means that for each of us our future is not inevitable, and both choice and chance are part of this equation." Poll ended May 30, 2012. 89.8% agreed while the remainder did not.

At first glance it might seem that this poll is asking the same question as the previous one, since both use the same quote from Sir Martin Rees. The previous poll asked for people to agree or disagree with this statement: "In his book 'Just Six Numbers', cosmologist Martin Rees says this: 'if the Earth's history were re-run, it could end up with a quite different biosphere.' This demonstrates that there is not just one inevitable timeline for our universe."

Why ask such similar questions? What I was trying to discern was whether visitors to this blog would be more inclined to disagree if I specifically brought "choice" into the discussion. After all, couldn't someone still argue that free will is an illusion while acknowledging that the quantum wave function and cosmology allow for randomness to occur? As it turns out, the responses to both of those polls saw very similar results, and if anything we saw a slight increase in agreement when the word "choice" was added.

Clearly, this skewing has more to do with the fact that people who are fans of my "new way of thinking about time and space" are the ones more likely to be answering these poll questions. I do find it interesting, though, to see the scientific studies which indicate that our decision-making processes happening "behind the scenes" choose one action over another substantially sooner than when our conscious minds feel they are making the decision. For these studies to say free will is an illusion, though, they have to ignore the probabilistic nature of our quantum reality, insisting that only one possible outcome exists, so no matter how far back in time we trace the electro-chemical processes that resulted in a decision being made, we have to assume that only one outcome could possibly have occurred.

There is a way to acknowledge these probabilistic outcomes that we've talked about before: it's called decoherence. There is a wave function of possible outcomes. One outcome is observed, at which point the other outcomes no longer matter because they are now "decoherent" to the universe we are observing. But the very same logic works for discussing free will: by choosing to turn left at this intersection, I am now not part of the universe where I chose to turn right. Everett's Many Words Interpretation says both universes continue to exist, while the dogma embraced by the majority of quantum physicists in the twentieth century was that the wave function is collapsed, and those other possibilities disappear.

Which viewpoint is correct? I'm with Everett on this one, which will be no surprise to anyone familiar with this project. Why does it matter? Because Everett was willing to accept that these branching timelines were still probabilistically connected. Which means that even if I made a decision that turned out to be wrong today, I can still choose a different action tomorrow, and eventually end up in the universe where I did make the right choice right from the beginning. Until some major "cusp" event occurs which splits me apart irrevocably, I continue on as a part of a probabilistic cloud of possible "me"s that Everett says really do exist. For me, that gives me hope for the future, and a reason to believe that what's occurring right here and right now is not just randomness. Embrace your probability space!

And enjoy the journey.

Rob Bryanton

Next: Creating Wormholes - Getting Closer

Top Ten Tenth Dimension Blogs - May 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 . October 10 .
. November 10 . December 10 . Top 100 Entries of 2010 .
. January 11 . February 11 . March 11 . April 11 . May 11 .
. June 11 . July 11 . August 11 . September 11 . October 11 .
. November 11 . December 11 . Top 100 Entries of 2011 . 
. January 12 . February 12 . March 12 . April 12 .

Based upon number of views, here are the top blogs for the last thirty days.

1. Poll 85 - No Quantum/Classical Divide?
2. Scientific American on Rob Bryanton
3. Poll 86 - Impossible to See the Third Dimension?
4. Poll 88 - Is the Sixth Dimension Our Phase Space?
5. Poll 89 - Is Many Worlds as True as Natural Selection?

6. Poll 87 - Many Worlds, Fossils and Dinosaurs
7. Poll 84 - The Multiverse and Many Worlds
8. Poll 90 - Neutrinos and the Laws of Physics
9. New Video - Imagining the Ninth Dimension
10. Time Crystals



And as of May 26th, 2012, 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. The Pencil Visualization (2)
3. What's Around the Corner? (3)
4. Mandelbulbs (4)
5. Is Reality an Illusion? (5)
6. The 5th-Dimensional Camera Project (6)  
7. Bees and the LHC (8)
8. New Video - Imagining the Eighth Dimension (20)
9. Gravity and Love (7)
10. 10-10-10 Look Before You Leap (9)
11. Vibrations and Fractals (10)
12. Time Travel Paradoxes (14)  
13. An Expanding 4D Sphere (11)
14. Quantum Weirdness and Water (19)
15. Just Six Things: The I Ching (12)
16. Light Has No Speed (13) 
17. Changing Your Brain (15) 
18. Gravity and Light from the Vacuum (new) 
19. Thrive Movement (new)
20. Roger Ebert on Quantum Reincarnation (16)
21. Our Universe Within the Omniverse (17)
22. Photons and Free Will (22)
23. Magnets and Morality (18)

24. Simultaneous Inspiration (20) 
25. Brain Pickings (new)
26. How to Time Travel (21)


Which means that these worthy entries are leaving our top 26 of all time list this month.

. Creativity and the Quantum Universe (23)
. Dancing on the Timeline (24) 
. Complexity from Simplicity (25)
. What is Reality? (26)  


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. Also, a lot of people are enjoying discussing these ideas with me on my facebook page: facebook.com/rob.bryanton .

Enjoy the journey!

Rob Bryanton

Next: Poll 93 - One Inevitable Future?