Strings: One Dimensional? How?

[Xerxes]

God no. You saw how good my pedagogical thread on topology was:)

Ah no, don't belittle yourself here, you did fine. But, as you admit, you did it with a physicist's skim on it, and also while drunkenly skinning a rabbit! Cool!

 

In physics we have this process called ``dimensional regularization''....{blah, blah}

I didn't understand a word of that, sorry. Do I need to? I doubt it, I haven't even read the Boy's Own Illustrated Guide to String Theory.

This is very much how I view math. There's some I understand and some I don't...I only keep the piece that's easy to understand because it's all I need anyway.

Fine. I find it sad, though, it is an interesting subject in its own right, not that that I am formally trained or anything.

 

Talk to Jim:

Yeah, someone else suggested I look at that, it's way too advanced for me.

[Sayonara]

Now that we've thouroughly addressed how bad of a person I am, how about my beautiful explanation of dimension?

 

It's not at all about how bad you are (although you are quite the blackheart, I hear). It's just that if anyone is going to take flak for being mean we'd rather it was us (staff) and not you (members).

[BenTheMan]

someguy---

 

have a look at this vid: http://www.tenthdimension.com/medialinks.php. Maybe it will clear up some of the misconceptions about dimensions and such.

[BenTheMan]

although you are quite the blackheart, I hear

 

Ahh yes. maybe you've been talking to other moderators around the internet. I'm only a ``blackheart'' if you're a crackpot, and I generally take much more time than I should in responding to honest questions (cf a few posts ago), EVEN to crackpots. It is only when a crackpot refuses to answer my questions or dismisses my questions altogther that my heart becomes TRULY black.

 

I absolutely hate people who think that THEIR theory explains problems that the most brilliant people in the world work their whole lives just to understand. This is beyond irreverant to me, and I will let them know (often with great vigor) when I find a flaw in their argument.

 

(PS---To whom it concerns...If you are a crackpot, then you should study Lorentz Invariance. 9 times out of 10, this is what is wrong with your idea.)

[someguy]

The pattern seems to be that the dimension of an ambient space is always greater than that of its embedded objects. There are theorems out there to this effect, you don't need to worry about them, though.

 

I would have thought that the ambient space is of equal dimensions than the embedded objects. I'm trying to find situations where it is greater and i'm not sure really if i found any but at least most objects seem to me to be equal in dimension to their ambient space. i can't think of any objects that exist in space in three dimensions but not in time. so then, maybe some object that exists in only two dimensions of space plus one of time.. and for that, i'm considering waves as possibly being such objects, and perhaps light could be consider to exist "outside" of time. but, even if this were true, i would still consider the vast majority of objects to be 4 dimensional just like their ambient space.

[Sayonara]

Ahh yes. maybe you've been talking to other moderators around the internet.

Not in the least. I just love that word.

 

I absolutely hate people who think that THEIR theory explains problems that the most brilliant people in the world work their whole lives just to understand. This is beyond irreverant to me, and I will let them know (often with great vigor) when I find a flaw in their argument.

Attacking arguments with vigour is encouraged

 

i can't think of any objects that exist in space in three dimensions but not in time.

Perhaps it is not a question of existence, but of the perception of the higher dimensions.

 

If higher dimensions contain lower dimensions, then it follows that anything that exists in any given dimension also exists in the dimensions above it. But those higher dimensions are not necessarily observable by that object in the same way that they are observable in that higher dimension.

 

An accessible example would be flatlanders, who move in the third and fourth dimensions but are unaware that the path they are taking can, to beings in the third dimension (like us), seem quite odd.

[someguy]

someguy---

 

have a look at this vid: http://www.tenthdimension.com/medialinks.php. Maybe it will clear up some of the misconceptions about dimensions and such.

 

this video seems flawed to me, it assumes we have freedom of choice, and therefore many different possible outcomes of history that actually end up existing. the problem with this is that it requires that our choices are not physical in origin and that there must be something else, something non-physical, like a soul, that makes decisions. However all other things to my knowledge follow strictly certain rules of nature that physics continuously tries to discover. having multiple possible outcomes of reality (dependent on the existence of a specie with freedom of choice also) means that there are exceptions of this rule. and it also seems to me that in that case in order for that 5th dimension to exist the universe requires a being capable of making choices and which is not bound by the natural laws of physics. I can't believe that human beings (or other such species) are quite that important to the fundamental state of the universe. So, though i don't believe in fate, I do believe that there can only be one possible outcome of the universe which will be determined in the end by the laws of physics in some "random" way, and therefore the 5th dimension couldn't possibly be a collection of different scenarios of events that have all played out, 4 dimensions already is that.

 

what else i find weird about the video is that it begins speaking about a dimensionless point, an imaginary point. and then it grows the point into other dimensions and then says that everything in the universe is just like that point. but how can everything be nothing? it doesn't seem logical to equate the infinite universe, being infinite in size, and then turning around and speaking of the same object as being infinitely small, so small in fact that it is imaginary? or even having limits at all, allowing it to be stretched or connected into a line or even to be viewed as a finite point. but this i can accept a little more as being a crude representation of these dimensions whereas the 5th dimension part i can't see how that could be possible. If there is one i feel it needs to be something different, but we may never perceive it and only perceive how it affects our ambient space.

 

maybe the video is too simplified and is missing out important information or something, but it seems to me like it must be misinterpreting the 5th dimension, and further ones, and i'm far from being an expert in string theory but I have a feeling that this view of dimensions could be changed and reinterpreted differently without conflicting or changing anything about string theory. do you think so?

 

still it was a cool video to watch thanks for the link.

 

 

 

If higher dimensions contain lower dimensions, then it follows that anything that exists in any given dimension also exists in the dimensions above it. But those higher dimensions are not necessarily observable by that object in the same way that they are observable in that higher dimension.

 

An accessible example would be flatlanders, who move in the third and fourth dimensions but are unaware that the path they are taking can, to beings in the third dimension (like us), seem quite odd.

 

 

granted. so then, do you think it can be possible for a 2 dimensional object to exist in our 4 dimensions? or must it be in its own lesser ambient space? (and therefore by being a subcategory type thing part of our 4).

 

then instead of searching for lesser dimensional "objects" we would need to be searching for lesser dimensional ambient spaces and still we're stuck wondering instead if those things can exist rather than the objects inside them.

 

I can live with the fact that i may never be able to conceive or perceive higher dimensions like you said in your post, but i've got to believe that i could perceive "objects" of lesser dimension, no?.

[Sayonara]

I think I confused myself to be honest. Since I posted that I have been trying to construct some idea of an entity with erratic duration, in any way that makes sense.

[someguy]

I absolutely hate people who think that THEIR theory explains problems that the most brilliant people in the world work their whole lives just to understand. This is beyond irreverant to me, and I will let them know (often with great vigor) when I find a flaw in their argument.

 

I know this was not originally sayonara's statement.. but i just wanted to point out that this would mean that you would have hated einstein. But i feel you, and i know what you mean, but i don't quite share your hatred unless that same person is just being stubborn and unreasonable (and hopefully that person isn't me because probably if einstein would have spoken to me of his theories he would have needed alot of patience with me). though i also support your vigorous refuting. Because one thing is certain, science is wrong (or rather, imprecise) and will continue to be wrong forever, no matter how smart people were and how hard they worked at it. And the only way they will ever get proven wrong is by a skeptic who refuted the best and most brilliant that worked on it all their lives. if not we would still be using the books plato wrote, perhaps the most brilliant man alive at the time who spent all his life on science.

 

I don't know.. i kind of like a fresh point of view even if it is easily refuted, sometimes it can jump start some other idea that is not so easily refuted.

 

 

I think I confused myself to be honest. Since I posted that I have been trying to construct some idea of an entity with erratic duration, in any way that makes sense.

 

lol. stupid dimensions.

[Xerxes]

Because one thing is certain, science is wrong

Oh? In what sense, please say.

and will continue to be wrong forever, no matter how smart people were and how hard they worked at it.

Then damn and double damn, I wasted half my life on this failed enterprise called science.

I don't know..

Well, we agree on this at least. (Prat)

[someguy]

Oh? In what sense, please say.Then damn and double damn, I wasted half my life on this failed enterprise called science.

Well, we agree on this at least. (Prat)

 

well i can't say for certain what is wrong about science today but obviously if it is to progress some of it must be wrong or rather imprecise. I can show you what was wrong yesterday and yesterday you would have told me that science must be right also? if you think science as it is known today is already right then ya you are wasting your time in this failed enterprise called science you should just read the books already written because in that case no new ones will ever be published and you'll never figure out anything new. by your post i take it that you believe that science simply builds upon itself without ever looking back whereas in actuality every once in a while what was previously "known" must be erased and something revolutionary installed and this is called a paradigm shift and if you look at the history of science this occurred a whole bunch of times. you don't think it will ever happen again? and you don't have to be such an ass.... or do you.

[Tom Mattson]

But when I draw one on a piece of paper, my dog will ostensibly look different from your dog. Sure they have some of the same characteristics, but they are certainly different. Just like my representaiton of Dirac matrices look different from yours---that's ok, they still DO the same thing, they still ACT on the same space, they just LOOK different. He wasn't so amused.

 

So you're saying that your drawing of a dog can fetch your slippers?

[BenTheMan]

So you're saying that your drawing of a dog can fetch your slippers?

 

It depends on the basis:)

[Hypercube]

The point is that everything in the universe consists of at least three dimensions; paper is technically three dimensional, as is a line drawn on the paper, since the lead has depth. Nothing in the known universe is less then three dimensional, I'm not talking mathematically here, I'm talking physically. And if you think about it, how can something consist of only one dimension? If that were true, they would have a dimensional *length* of zero, and that cannot physically happen.

[Royston]

well i can't say for certain what is wrong about science today but obviously if it is to progress some of it must be wrong or rather imprecise. I can show you what was wrong yesterday and yesterday you would have told me that science must be right also?

 

<sigh> Approximations doesn't mean 'wrong', take Newtonian mechanics for example, it makes predictions and it works for all manner of scenarios, but the equations are still approximations, just because a theory is incomplete doesn't mean it's 'wrong', there is a difference.

 

Hypercube, I don't understand your 'point', lets take an example such as calculus, simple differentiation is one dimensional...a point particle on a plane, vector calculus is two or more dimensions and so on. I'm not versed in string theory, but it's a mathematical construct, so to say one dimension can't exist physically AFAICS, is completely missing the point.

[someguy]

I realize that that that's my wrong was "wrong" rather than just wrong.