Dimensional Organisms

[tyme]

So, we are organisms of three dimensions. QM shows us that there are more than ten dimensions. Anyway, this thread is a question. If you believe in fourth dimensional organisms, do you also believe in higher or even lower dimensional organisms. Might sound weird but if there are indeed fourth dimensional beings, could there also be organisms that are limited to two dimensions?

[ajb]

QM shows us that there are more than ten dimensions.

You mean that string theory suggests 9+1 dimensions?

 

If you believe in fourth dimensional organisms,

We appear to be four dimensional when you take time into account.

 

...do you also believe in higher or even lower dimensional organisms. Might sound weird but if there are indeed fourth dimensional beings, could there also be organisms that are limited to two dimensions?

Well, not as we currently understand life.

 

In string theory we have to understand why we see 3+1 dimensions. There are essentially two ways of doing this.

 

i) Compactification. This means that the extra dimensions are curled up tightly.

ii) Brane worlds. Here we live on a 3+1 membrane and all non-gravitational fields are constrained to live on this brane.

 

Either way, I cannot see chemistry as we know it extending to these extra dimensions. Of course you may mean something more exotic here by extra dimensions.

[tyme]

In string theory we have to understand why we see 3+1 dimensions.

 

I like to think of the first and second dimension as nothing other than points in geometry & that our shared universe is three dimensional, everything has a width, length and height does it not. Time is the fourth dimension but yet again time might be nothing other than a tool used to tell the current date and the minute of an hour. Time might not be time at all but some other unknown force that is affected by gravity.

Edited February 22, 2015 by tyme

[ajb]

I like to think of the first and second dimension as nothing other than points in geometry

Points are zero dimensional, so I don't understand what you are saying here.

 

...& that our shared universe is three dimensional, everything has a width, length and height does it not.

Yes, okay.

 

Time is the fourth dimension but yet again time might be nothing other than a tool used to tell the current date and the minute of an hour.

How is this fundamentally different to length?

 

Time might not be time at all but some other unknown force that is affected by gravity.

Gravity effects space and time.

 

Anyway, we are straying off the initial topic. What you are asking is deeply related to what we mean by a dimension, but this is mathematics and physics.

 

As we understand it, it is not clear how chemistry would generalise to higher dimensions, again as we currently understand chemistry. Thus it is not clear what we would mean by 'life' existing in higher dimensions, sat for example in the 'bulk space' of string theory.