Tenth Dimension Polls Archive 2

Poll #2: Was Kaluza right? Is our physical reality really being defined at the fifth rather than the fourth dimension?
(poll ended Nov. 9 2007)
I was somewhat surprised to see that three quarters said "Yes, we're in the fifth", while one quarter said "No, we're in the fourth". Kaluza's groundbreaking proposal, submitted to Einstein in 1919, suggested that the field equations for gravity and light could be united if they were calculated in the fifth dimension. Einstein eventually gave the idea his full endorsement, and after some additional input a few years later by Oscar Klein, the resulting Kaluza-Klein Theory is well known. While that may be the case, the general public hears very little about the fifth dimension, which is why I was surprised to see such a strong showing for the fifth dimension in this poll. It would appear that since I've been banging the "our reality comes from the fifth dimension" drum for almost two years now, that meme may be more familiar to regular visitors to this blog than it is to the general public!

Next: Poll 3 - Will dark energy/dark matter eventually be the proof of extra dimensions?

Tenth Dimension Polls Archive 1

I've been enjoying Blogger's "Poll" function, and had been leaving all of my old polls up on the page, but it has been pointed out to me this can cause problems for visitors with slower internet connections. So, in the interest of providing an enjoyable experience for all, I'm pulling down the older polls and placing screen grabs of the final results here. Thank you to everyone who cast their votes in these old polls, and for continuing to do so in the new ones, I appreciate your participation!

Poll #1: What is "Imagining the Tenth Dimension" about?
(poll ended Oct 25 2007)
A useful starting point. About half of our visitors voted for the answer I'm aiming for ("All of the Above"), while a third said this project is about Physics and Cosmology, and a fifth said it's about Philosophy and Spirituality. There weren't a huge number of participants in this first poll so a single additional vote would still have caused these relative percentages to jump around somewhat, but nonetheless this helped to make the point I was hoping for: people come to this project with their own sets of interests, some have more specific areas they respond to, some are generalists. All are welcome, but of course this means not everyone will come away from this with the same impression of what it is I'm trying to do here.

Next: Poll 2 - Was Kaluza right about the fifth dimension?

Dark Matter, Dark Energy, Dark Information

96% of our universe is invisible and undetectable. Isn't that astonishing?

According to the experts, it breaks down like this: 4% is the energy and matter that creates our perceived universe. 22% is dark matter, and 74% is dark energy. How can it be that our universe, as unimaginably huge and ancient as it is, can only be four one hundredths of what's really creating the reality we're in? This is a very, very large elephant in the room for modern science.

A number of articles have been published recently suggesting that the Large Hadron Collider, when it goes on line later this year, could reveal some new insight into why most of our universe is "missing". Some suggest that the LHC's ultra-high energy conditions could even reveal information about the extra dimensions. What if both turn out to be correct? What if, as I've been saying, dark energy and dark matter turn out to be the proof that higher dimensions really do exist, and are not just mathematical constructs existing solely in the minds of theorists?

"No matter what dark matter and dark energy are, these two phenomena are likely not independent of each other." - Dr HongSheng Zhao, of the University of St. Andrew's School of Physics and Astronomy, commenting on his recent papers published in Astrophysical Journal Letters and Physics Review.

It's All About Gravity
Gravity is a bending of spacetime. Gravity is the only force that exerts itself across the extra dimensions. Gevin Giorbran described gravity as coming from the grouping order of our universe. Randall and Sundrum suggest that gravity is a localized effect, and that in other regions of the higher dimensions gravity would have different values, and create other universes completely different from our own. I believe these are all ideas that tie into my way of visualizing how our reality is constructed.

When quantum computing expert Seth Lloyd asks us to think of the big bang as being the very first binary yes/no, his ideas relate strongly to Giorbran's idea of grouping order - out of all possible states, a fluctuation creates the initial conditions, and a particular universe is born. Other universes with different basic physical laws would be born out of different initial conditions, different groupings, all of which exist as potential. Information Equals Reality.

What does this have to do with dark matter and dark energy? Gravity. Gravity, when exerted from the dimensions above the fifth, can become a repulsive force: think of a first dimensional line, think of the third dimension, and you can imagine how an attractive force from the third dimension would appear to be pulling that first dimension from every side. But the attractive force of gravity, for us, comes from the fifth dimension: when 4D spacetime is bent, what is it being bent through? The fifth dimension, where Kaluza proved that the field equations of gravity and light are united.

It's All About Information
In the biggest picture of all, information equals reality. The mystery that confronts science is that we can't see where the dark matter that has kept our universe from flying apart too quickly, and the dark energy that now causes our universe's expansion to accelerate, are coming from. I believe that's because they come from the dimensions above spacetime, and that thinking of those highest dimensions as being weighted towards the "information" side of the information/reality equation makes it easier for us to imagine how this could be true.

Enjoy the journey,

Rob Bryanton

Gevin Giorbran - Gone but Not Forgotten

A direct link to the above video is at http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=-SI5MgGnP1g

My good friend Gevin Giorbran passed away unexpectedly this week. Gevin had some amazing insights into the nature of reality and the ultimate fate of the universe, this and much more can be found in his book "Everything Forever: Learning to See Timelessness".

At the core of Gevin's ideas is a beautiful and simple concept, one which ties together very nicely with my own thinking about how our reality is constructed, and Gevin and I had many lively conversations about the ramifications of this over the past year. The above video was recorded in December, and our intention was to do more of these in the months to come but now that is not to be. Please take a look, and also go to Gevin's website www.everythingforever.com for more insight into this man's marvelous mind.

Is Gevin enjoying the journey even now? That's a painful question to consider, but I do believe that we are all patterns in the information that is reality, and parts of the pattern that once was Gevin Giorbran now continue on through his writing, and our memories of him - whether that be through videos like the one in this blog or other more personal memories.

But is the very specific pattern that was Gevin still with us now on this particular timeline, or has that pattern been subsumed back into the larger whole, the Omega state of enfolded symmetry that he wrote about so beautifully? That is a large question indeed.

I will continue to support Gevin's ideas: I believe he was a visionary thinker whose theories will one day be confirmed by the mainstream, and I am grateful to be able to say that I knew him as a friend.

Enjoy the journey!

Rob

Shadows of higher dimensions

I am a three-dimensional shadow
of my fourth-dimensional spime
which is selected from a fifth-dimensional wavefunction
of branching chance and choice, parallel universes of Everett's Many Worlds,

Which is a subset of a sixth-dimensional spacetime tree
created from all possible timelines
for our particular different-initial-conditions universe
which is confined within a seven-dimensional brane.

Other different expressions of matter/energy/information
can be found in the seventh/eighth/ninth dimensions
and the tenth dimension is the unobserved fabric of quantum indeterminacy,
where information waits as potential to create
the multiverse of all possible universes in the dimensions below.


Matter and energy, reality and information, everything fits together,
and my selfish genes and selfish memes make me as I am right now:
A three-dimensional shadow of my fourth-dimensional self.

Enjoy the journey,

Rob Bryanton

For more about how all these ideas fit together, check out the Tenth Dimension FAQ.

Hypercubes and Plato's Cave

Edit: We've explored the visual ideas in this entry from a number of perspectives since it was published, here are some more recent entries:
Playing Games in Extra Dimensions
O is for Omniverse G to J
What's Around the Corner?
When's a Knot Not a Knot?
Imagining the Omniverse - Addendum
The Holographic Universe
Slices of Reality
Why Do We Need More Than 3 Dimensions?
Time in 3 Dimensions


A direct link to the above video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xN4DxdiFrs

One of the most common questions about this way of visualizing dimensions is whether the four dimensions of spacetime really are four spatial dimensions, or just three spatial plus one of time. I argue that for us "time" really is in the fourth spatial dimension which we, as creatures built from chemical reactions obeying the laws of entropy, are experiencing in a unique way. This relates closely to a phrase that is being uttered by many physicists nowadays: "time is an illusion". Saying that time is an illusion doesn't mean that we don't experience time from moment to moment, but rather it means that what we are experiencing as time is only a tiny window into a much greater underlying fabric, which ultimately encompasses the multiverse of all possible universes and quantum indeterminacy.

Hypercubes
The above youtube video shows what is commonly known as a four-dimensional cube: a hypercube, or tesseract. Before you click on the "play" button, we are not really "seeing" the hypercube, because a 4D object needs to be rotated for us to appreciate its higher dimensionality. In other words, without adding a time element to our appreciation of the shape shown in this animation, a significant part of what makes this a unique shape remains unseen.

In the above animation, we are looking on our computer screen at a flat 2D representation of a 3D shadow of a 4D object. Confused? If you go to the bottom of this blog entry there is another youtube movie, again showing a rotating hypercube. In this one, if you move your eyes so close to the monitor that your left eye sees the left half of the image and your other eye sees the right, your brain (with a bit of practice) can then merge those two halves into a stereoscopic visualization, from which you can get a hint of what we're really talking about here: "shadows" of a 4D shape being seen from the 3rd dimension.

Plato's Cave
Are you familiar with the allegory of Plato's Cave? It tells of some hypothetical people who spend their lives trapped in a cave, unable to see out into the real world, and all that they can surmise about reality is based upon the shadows cast upon the cave's walls as objects or people pass by the entrance to the cave. Trying to visualize higher dimensions is a similar exercise: our 3D reality is created by higher dimensional patterns, and what we witness from moment to moment, from day to day, from big bang to entropy and beyond those two extremes, is really just shadows of those higher-dimensional shapes and patterns. Ultimately, all of those shapes and patterns exist as potential within the underlying fabric of quantum indeterminacy.



Enjoy the journey,

Rob

For a more expanded version of this blog entry, click here.

Hypercubes and Plato's Cave +

Edit: We've explored the visual ideas in this entry from a number of perspectives since it was published, here are some more recent entries:
Playing Games in Extra Dimensions
O is for Omniverse G to J
What's Around the Corner?
When's a Knot Not a Knot?
Imagining the Omniverse - Addendum
The Holographic Universe
Slices of Reality
Why Do We Need More Than 3 Dimensions?
Time in 3 Dimensions


A direct link to the above video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xN4DxdiFrs

One of the most common questions about this way of visualizing dimensions is whether the four dimensions of spacetime really are four spatial dimensions, or just three spatial plus one of time. I argue that for us "time" really is in the fourth spatial dimension which we, as creatures built from chemical reactions obeying the laws of entropy, are experiencing in a unique way. This relates closely to a phrase that is being uttered by many physicists nowadays: "time is an illusion". Saying that time is an illusion doesn't mean that we don't experience time from moment to moment, but rather it means that what we are experiencing as time is only a tiny window into a much greater underlying fabric, which ultimately encompasses the multiverse of all possible universes and quantum indeterminacy.

Hypercubes
The above youtube video shows what is commonly known as a four-dimensional cube: a hypercube, or tesseract. Before you click on the "play" button, we are not really "seeing" the hypercube, because a 4D object needs to be rotated for us to appreciate its higher dimensionality. In other words, without adding a time element to our appreciation of the shape shown in this animation, a significant part of what makes this a unique shape remains unseen.

In the above animation, we are looking on our computer screen at a flat 2D representation of a 3D shadow of a 4D object. Confused? If you go to the bottom of this blog entry there is another youtube movie, again showing a rotating hypercube. In this one, if you move your eyes so close to the monitor that your left eye sees the left half of the image and your other eye sees the right, your brain (with a bit of practice) can then merge those two halves into a stereoscopic visualization, from which you can get a hint of what we're really talking about here: "shadows" of a 4D shape being seen from the 3rd dimension.

Plato's Cave
Are you familiar with the allegory of Plato's Cave? It tells of some hypothetical people who spend their lives trapped in a cave, unable to see out into the real world, and all that they can surmise about reality is based upon the shadows cast upon the cave's walls as objects or people pass by the entrance to the cave. Trying to visualize higher dimensions is a similar exercise: our 3D reality is created by higher dimensional patterns, and what we witness from moment to moment, from day to day, from big bang to entropy and beyond those two extremes, is really just shadows of those higher-dimensional shapes and patterns. Ultimately, all of those shapes and patterns exist as potential within the underlying fabric of quantum indeterminacy.

Spimes
When Bruce Sterling talks about "spimes", he is talking about data that can be attached to a 3D object along a 4D timeline that gives us a 4D shape - RFID tags attached to items from a store's inventory give the store a "spime" representing each object's history, its locations in time and space from manufacture to sale. When I talk about the "long undulating snake" representing a particular person's body from conception to death, that's really just another spime. And at any particular moment in time, the person I see in front of me or the pair of pants I see at Wal-Mart can be thought of as really just a 3D shadow being cast from the 4D spime representing that person or object.

This is why it makes so much sense to think of time as really being in the fourth spatial dimension. Physicists use phrases like "time reversal symmetry" and "closed timelike curves" to reveal more about the fourth dimension as just another spatial dimension that could be manipulated and navigated within. It's also important to realize that our experience of time, the fourth dimension, as being continuous is an illusion. Our fourth-dimensional line is actually being constructed one planck length at a time, and any attempt to look at the universe in finer intervals than that kicks us back out to that underlying fabric of quantum indeterminacy in its unobserved state, which I refer to as the tenth dimension.

Shadows of Higher Dimensions
Because we are made out of 3D atoms and molecules, each higher spatial dimension is increasingly difficult for us to visualize. Like the hypercube, we can look at other visualization tools that help us to imagine those higher dimensional shapes, and the Calabi-Yau manifold is a good example of that. Garrett Lisi's E8 rotation may well be another, as it contends that all of the forces and particles within our universe are derived from an 8 dimensional matrix. And of course, my 11-minute animation contends that my way of visualizing reality could be a way for us to imagine how our 3D physical reality is derived from vibrating superstrings in the ten dimensions: but as I have always tried to make clear, my unique way of imagining the dimensions is not the proof for superstrings, it just has many interesting tie-ins.

String theorists say that for us the fifth dimension and above are curled up down at the planck length. This is why my animation talks about the 2D creature on the mobius strip, twisting and turning in the dimensions above but from his experience he is just traveling in a straight line. We 3D creatures feel like we're traveling down a straight line of time in the fourth dimension, but that line is being constructed one planck length after another from probabilistic outcomes available to us as a result of chance and choice in the fifth dimension. Let me say that again: we are really twisting and turning in the fifth dimension, but we think we're traveling on a straight line in the fourth dimension. This can be related to Everett's Many Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics, which says we are merely observing one state out of many possible states, all of which are contained within the quantum wavefunction: the many other versions of the universe where you and I made other choices continue to exist as potential within the multiverse. I'm proposing that those other outcomes are just different fifth-dimensional twists and turns.

"Time is an Illusion"
Now that a team of scientists at Oxford under the direction of physicist David Deutsch have published a proof equating the probabilistic outcomes at the quantum level with the parallel universes resulting from choice and chance out at the macro level (saying that both are equivalent and part of the same continuum from the quantum to the macro), what I'm portraying has more theoretical evidence to support it. The important insight that I'm adding here is that by realizing that the wavicles (simultaneous waves/particles) are in the fifth dimension, we tie in Kaluza's revelation about gravity and light in the fifth dimension, and we can see how those other parallel universes are just as real as our own but inaccessible/decoherent to the wave function for our own universe in its currently perceived state.

Many Worlds and many theories
What I'm portraying here is a way of visualizing the higher dimensions that ties together many different schools of thought: quantum mechanics and Everett's Many Worlds Interpretation are at the core, but there are many other possible tie-ins. String theorists say our universe is created by the interaction of a 3D brane and a 7D brane, my way of visualizing says that our 3D-universe-and-all-of-its-possible-timelines is locked in at the seventh dimension. Is our universe as we witness it just shadows of higher-dimensional holograms, a concept proposed by physicist Juan Maldacena as an extension to string theory? Whether our perceived reality is the shadows of superstrings, or a hologram, or an E8 rotation, or many other possible explanations, remains to be proved.

When physicists say that time is an illusion, they are saying that time as we experience it is just a shadow of what's really happening: just like the image of a hypercube being projected on a flat computer screen, we are looking at shadows cast by higher dimensional shapes as we go from instant to instant in our 3D universe.



Enjoy the journey,

Rob