The Case for Fewer Dimensions

http://nautil.us/issue/29/scaling/the-case-for-fewer-dimensions

by dnetesn • 11 years ago

51 21 11 years ago

nautil.us

the84722• 11 years ago

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Meh.

dhimes• 11 years ago

Looks like it might be Disqus.

isomorphic2• 11 years ago

When I visit with cookies disabled, I see the comments but not the article. So Disqus is working, but the site intentionally breaks without cookies.

ihuman• 11 years ago

Does this link work for you?

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Anauti...

the84722• 11 years ago

It does.

0942v8653• 11 years ago

How would you sign in to Nautilus Prime without enabling cookies?...

cows_i_have• 11 years ago

Dimensionality is a common problem in many sciences but this article is really crazy! Maybe we won't know some of the answers to these questions until we make our own black holes?

powera• 11 years ago

"As a result, gravity, which is a pushover on everyday scales, catches up with the other forces and becomes their equal at a sub-sub-subatomic distance known as the Planck scale (around a few trillionths of a trillionth of a trillionth of a meter)."

What? How is that not completely wrong? Gravity is at its most important on large scales. Or are they just badly describing a (known-to-be-broken) quantum gravity model?

T-A• 11 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_scale

isomorphic2• 11 years ago

I think they may referring to the relative strength of the forces at "everyday"--i.e., human--scales.

yk• 11 years ago

If you compare the strength of the gravitational attraction between the proton and electron in a Hydrogen atom to electro magnetic force, then gravity is negligible. Or as my physics teacher once put it, while picking up a book: "There is an entire planet pulling on the book, but I win."

So yes, Gravity is the most important force, but that is a consequence of the existence of positive and negative charges, not of the strength of gravity.

thaumasiotes• 11 years ago

Gravity is the force that acts on large scales because the other forces aren't present. That doesn't make it strong. It's easy to appear strong compared to nothing.

misja111• 11 years ago

Yes it must be wrong, and that's what the whole article is about.

We know that gravity can't be so important on small scales because the universe would fall apart if that would be the case. However, our current theories of physics do tell us that gravity is that important on small scales. So the interesting conclusion is that something must be missing in our current model of quantum physics.

phkahler• 11 years ago

The leaps here are just ridiculous. With one hypothesis (yeah I'm not gonna lie and call this stuff a theory) spcetime looks the same at all scales - the definition of fractal!!! Woohoo spacetime is fractal at small scales! Wheeeeee!!! Either something is really lost in translation here, or the people coming up with this stuff are. Either way I can read non technical articles on science or tech any more.

alphydan• 11 years ago

If you want to learn more about how space may have a fractal structure Laurent Nottale [0] developed a rigorous theory around it. It's definitely not considered mainstream, but him and his team are respected physicists. A more technical intro can be found here: http://elbereth2009.obspm.fr/~luthier/nottale/arIJMP2.pdf

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurent_Nottale

Jun8• 11 years ago

"If we could ascend into that higher domain, we would free ourselves from the straitjacket of ordinary space. We could bend our arm through an extra dimension to reach into a locked safe, or see the insides of a human body laid out before us."

This is often brought up in discussions on 4th dimensions but think about it: For the 4th dimensional being to see inside a closed 3D space, photons from that space should reach its visual organs. From the viewpoint of beings in 3D these photons would be "lost". This energy discrepancy should be detectable by placing 3D sensors around that space.

AnimalMuppet• 11 years ago

Not if they're replaced by other photons coming in from the 4th dimension into 3D space.

austinjp• 11 years ago

"You won't need eyes where we're going."

kazinator• 11 years ago

Perhaps there is less room at small scales because the whole simulation that is running the show has run out of floating point exponent space and is working off denormals. :)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denormal_number

jbb555• 11 years ago

It's starting to seem to me that none of this is real. That we are unable to see how things really work because we are a part of that thing.

I'm not saying that we are in a simulation. But imagine if we were. A simulation that calculated the state of every cell based on various rules. But these cells are NOT layed out in a grid that somehow maps to reality at all. That gravity and even spacial dimensions are just artifacts of how we interact with all of this. That in no sense does gravity cause anything fundemental to be attracted, it's just that when certain configurations of state interact they cause other effect that we perceive as gravity.

I'm not saying we are in a simulation, just that reality might be so different from what we are looking at that, the effects like gravity and matter and movement and dimensions don't really have any physical meaning at all except as how we perceive the interaction of states.

That abstract math might be the only way to every analyse this, and that at some level gravity and so on are meaningless, we have to find some way to model the abstract system states. And in some way investigating the physics that we perceive is meaningless.

Ok.. Enough. Does this make any sense?

1_player• 11 years ago

we are unable to see how things really work because we are a part of that thing.

I remember when I was 14, talking quantum physics with my father, I said "what if everything is governed by a set of equations that by their very nature say that it is impossible to know what they are or measure them." -- just some teenager ingenuity that may very well be true.

For fun I like to entertain the idea that after we die an extradimensional "me" removes a Rift-like device from them saying "wow.. What a ride, that felt _real_". Has any philosopher written about this?

The Case for Fewer Dimensions

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