The Tenth Dimension

I've always been fascinated with physics, although it comes as a far second after math. In the pecking order of natural sciences taught in Philippine high schools, physics is followed by chemistry then by biology. Biology is fine with me, although I abhor botany. Not to imply that my high school biology teacher sucked (because he was okay actually), but my chemistry and physics teachers were very good teachers.

I guess I like chemistry and physics because of the structural aspect. They are governed by rules much like mathematics. And I guess you don't have to go very far with these two subjects before you encounter some application of mathematics. Physics however is much more mathematical (at least based on what I've seen from my college analytical physics courses), and that is what draws me nearer to it than chemistry. I've been teaching college math for some time now, and there's always a disguised physics problem hiding nearby in the list of exercises.

The other draw that physics has for me is because it's so cutting edge. I would admit that there's a lot to it that I don't know, and I feel it would be so cool to understand at least a little of what relativity is all about, and light and energy and waves. It doesn't help that I'm so much a Star Trek fan, and so my regular viewing fare consists of tachyons, warp speed, spatial fluctuations and quantum singularities. I don't know what they all mean, but hey, I still think it would be nice knowing what these are.

And so it was a pleasant surprise to chance upon the link below. Just how much of it is based on rigorous scientific formulation needs to be seen, but it's stimulating to watch nonetheless. I've long been aware of the interpretation of time as the fourth dimension. The first three dimensions don't need much explanation since we are embedded in it. Or rather, our perception of our physical reality is 3-dimensional. After all, we can attribute length, width and depth to objects we perceive.

Imagining the Tenth Dimension


The notion of certain dimensions being composed of points corresponding to different initial conditions is particularly intriguing. Each dimension is analogous to two points connected by a segment. In one such dimension, the idea that the conditions of the corresponding big bang define each point is an interesting supposition. Wow, different big bang conditions!

I always thought that we could infinitely extend the number of dimensions. If from 2 dimensions we could go to 3 dimensions, and from 3 dimensions we could go to 4 dimensions, couldn't we go from 234 dimensions to 235 dimensions? It's all inductive, I would think.

So why settle for ten dimensions? Is it because for 11 dimensions, nobody has come up yet with an "imagination" for it? In mathematics, it is always possible to go to any number of dimensions, although of course it's all abstract. We then have n-dimensional vector spaces and hyperplanes, and points with n coordinates and their corresponding Euclidean distance formula.

Will inductive extension not hold for jumping from 10 dimensions to 11 dimensions? For the truly knowledgeable, the answer may be apparent, but I'm too lazy to think it up right now, or I am just not confident to make that judgment on my own.

At this point, I can always take comfort in the fact that while I do not know everything, what's important is that we keep an open mind and try to be receptive to new ways of thinking. It is only when we challenge our current modes of thinking and think out of the box that we will be able to make radical advancements in what we collectively know as humans.