Common Criticisms part 7

A direct link to the above video can be found at http://youtu.be/RJ2vlFNarjU

This is a discussion of ten proposed reasons for why critics of Imagining the Tenth Dimension are saying people shouldn't watch my videos. See part 1 here. See part 2 here. See part 3 here. See part 4 here. See part 5 here. See part 6 here.


Reason #7: The "fifth dimension as probability space" has nothing to do with mainstream science.
Our goal with this project is to end up visualizing not just a multiverse landscape of the different possible universes (some string theorists say there are ten to the power of five hundred of them!), but the probabilistic outcomes that quantum mechanics tells us must exist for each of those universes. Yes, I've said in my videos and book that my approach is not something you will currently be taught in a physics class (watch the end of my video Imagining the Fifth Dimension for more about this), but it's still a powerful idea and I believe its time will come. Einstein accepted Kaluza's proposal that our reality is derived from the fifth dimension, and yet that's also something you don't hear often from the mainstream. In fact, Kaluza's idea that general relativity and its depiction of gravity, along with Maxwell's field equations for electromagnetism could be resolved at the fifth dimension has always been an important part of my reasoning that the ongoing "now" of our observed reality comes not from the fourth, but from the fifth dimension.

Likewise, Hugh Everett said that his branching "many worlds" occur within a space which is orthogonal to space-time, but it's only my project at this point that says that means the other parallel universe outcomes described by Everett's theory are within the fifth spatial dimension, because that's what's "orthogonal to the fourth".

And as an aside, I want to mention something you will find throughout the videos I've created: when I describe an idea which is my extrapolation, you will hear me say "with my project..." so that my audience is clear on which are mainstream ideas and which are my creative thoughts on how to fit different schools of thought together into the bigger picture I'm trying to portray. And even if "fifth dimension as probability space" is unique to this project, it's still one of the central ideas I've been exploring for the last thirty years. Do I feel passion for this idea? You bet I do, and YouTube has helped me to share that passion with others around the world.

Common Criticisms part 6

A direct link to the above video can be found at http://youtu.be/pnNGT3ae5go

This is a discussion of ten proposed reasons for why critics of Imagining the Tenth Dimension are saying people shouldn't watch my videos. See part 1 here. See part 2 here. See part 3 here. See part 4 here. See part 5 here.


Reason #6: The fourth dimension is not a spatial dimension, it's a temporal one.
If there are ten spatial (or "space-like") dimensions, and theorists tell us "the fifth dimension and above are curled up at the planck length", then what are they really talking about? How is it possible to have three spatial dimensions, then add one temporal, then six (or seven) more spatial dimensions extending from that? It would make more logical sense if they said "the fourth dimension and above are curled up at the planck length", because then you would be continuing with an ordered hierarchy of spatial dimensions, one after another, and leaving time out of the discussion until you were done counting spatial dimensions. But that's not what they say. Why? With my project, I insist it's because we have a unique perspective on the fourth dimension. As creatures made out of 3D atoms and molecules deriving their energy from entropy-increasing chemical reactions, we experience the fourth dimension as having only one direction: the direction which moves us away from the lowest entropy beginning of our universe towards the highest entropy ending of our universe. But that doesn't mean the opposite direction isn't just as valid! With my project, I explain that if the ten dimensions are spatial, or space-like, then the first three are spatial, the fourth is a spatial dimension constructed from two opposing directions but which you and I experience in a unique "uni-directional" way, and the fifth dimension and beyond are spatial. Counting 3 apples, 1 orange, and 6 apples, and then saying I have ten apples would make no sense. Likewise, the fourth dimension is not just time, it's an enfolded structure often referred to as space-time. General relativity shows us how space-time can be bent and stretched, folded or warped with a wormhole or a black hole. It includes the dimensions below, and adds two new opposing directions just as you would see when you added any other additional spatial dimension, and that's how the point-line-plane postulate is used in these discussions. This is why I say it makes sense to include the fourth dimension in our counting of the spatial dimensions. But saying there is only one label you can put on the fourth dimension (or any dimension) is what both Henry and I discourage. These ideas can be quite easily related to the concept of 4D Minkowski Space, or what's known as the "Block Universe" theory. Here's a famous quote:

The views of space and time which I wish to lay before you have sprung from the soil of experimental physics, and therein lies their strength. They are radical. Henceforth space by itself, and time by itself, are doomed to fade away into mere shadows, and only a kind of union of the two will preserve an independent reality. – Hermann Minkowski, 1908

Do scientists say a 4D Minkowski Space is the same thing as a 4D Euclidean Space? No, but they're not that different. In fact one label they use is that it's "pseudo-Euclidean". But here's the thing: Minkowski's Block Universe - with every point (x,y,z,t) within it corresponding to a unique "state" for our universe - is what we're thinking about with this visualization, rather than 4D as a one-way "arrow of time".