[PatrickHenry]

Links for further reading, pics, and author info are in the original article. Bold and underlining added by me. I can't guarantee that the formulas, especially the Greek letters and exponents, copied correctly, so please rely on the original article.

[PatrickHenry]

SciencePing

An elite subset of the Evolution list. See the list's description at my freeper homepage. Then FReepmail to be added or dropped.

[Izzy Dunne]

But an ant, for instance, sees the cable as a 2D object, because it can crawl along and also around the cable.

Here's a link to a a NOVA program about that very topic:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/elegant/program_d.html .

Chapter 7 of the 2nd hour talks about the ants on the cable.

You can watch the whole three hours online.

[DuncanWaring]

[Bear_Slayer]

Space is nothing more than 'space' the absence of objects. My limited understanding of dimensions is that they are ways to describe objects and their relationship to one another within space. i.e. height, width, depth, time.

Why is it that the last few years we have seen new, wierd 'dimensions'? I don't get it.

[Rocky]

Very interesting article. Thanks for posting it.

[VadeRetro]

[I'm worried that the formula didn't copy correctly.]

As the Sunni muslims like to say, "No Shiite!"

Now, WRT the inverse-square law of gravity, it works for me.

Until manana!

[<1/1,000,000th%]

Wow! Bump for later.

[Intolerant in NJ]

Bump.....

[Doctor Stochastic]

Check the Einstein and Hilbert discussion here.

[spintreebob]

This is ridiculous. Three dimensions are based on 90 degree angles. The choice of 90 degrees, rather than 60 degree or any other increment of angularity is strictly arbitrary. It is arbitrary in the same sense that the weight of a kilogram or the length of a foot is arbitrary.

[aruanan]

Einstein's radical new theory made gravity consistent with the two basic ideas of relativity: the world is 4D - the three directions of space combined with time - and no physical effect can travel faster than light.

In spite of the fact that the measured gravity of the sun points not toward its apparent position (if gravity moved at the speed of light) but toward its instantaneous position?

[<1/1,000,000th%]

This article didn't consider 2 pieces of data that I would have liked to see discussed. These are the seemingly contradictory mysterious attraction towards the sun (MATS) experienced by the Pioneer and Voyager spacecraft, and the acceleration of distant galaxies away from us.

Historically it reminds me of events like Boltzmann's estimate of the age of the earth using thermodynamic considerations. I didn't look up his answer but it was only on the order of 20-30 million years. Since no one was aware of radioactivity, he couldn't account for the heating that caused.

Another event was the cloud chamber experiments from the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries where discrepancies in particle velocities and masses kept popping up. Electrons looked like they had variable masses. This finally made sense in light of Special Relativity.

It makes me think there is another property or force that hasn't been discovered yet. There's probably several of them. And when will my warp drive be ready???

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

Today, increasing numbers of physicists are seriously questioning whether we are like tightrope walkers, unaware of the true number of dimensions in space.

Just because an ant can walk around the circumference of a cable, does not mean it is aware of that being an additional dimension. By the same token, just because humans lack the proper equipment to eprform the same feat, does not mean we are unaware of that additional dimension.

[Cold Heart]

BTTT

[SunkenCiv]

Note: This topic is from 2005!