I watched a video on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qU1fixMAObI) about extra dimensions, and it was pretty cool. Except then they started explaining things really weirdly and skipping dimensions and stuff, so I decided to rewrite their theory. I've actually been thinking about this for a while, and I came up with stuff for up to the 5th dimension, mostly based on what I wanted to happen in my story and also some on the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy books. Anywho, here's what I had before the video:
A point is 0 dimensions. Stretch it out and you get a line, or 1 dimension. Stretch that out and you get a plane, or 2 dimensions. Then you can stretch that out into 3 dimensions, what we're used to. All that is pretty boring. Then if you take space and "stretch" it out, you get more than one version of said space, along another axis: the 4th dimension. This is what we call "time."Each object is a kind of long blobby thing extending along the 4th dimension. If it were stationary, it would be a straight blob. If it started moving, it would bend. I came up with a version of the 4th Dimension/Time theory that seemed to solve all the time paradoxes- if all the long people-blobs and object-blobs that are stretched out along the 4th dimension are "already there," how could you change anything by going back in time and shooting your grandpa? All that would do is turn out to be what already happened.One way to think of this greater-than-3-dimension stuff is to get rid of all the lower dimensions until you have 3 again- at this point that would leave us with a 2D world, so imagine some cartoon characters on a piece of paper, and then make them thicker along the line perpendicular to the paper. As they move across the paper, their 3D worm thing bends and has a diagonal segment.After lots more thought and discussion and thinking up cool scenes for my story, I decided the 5th dimension is full of future branches of possibility. If someone didn't know what color of shirt they would wear the next day yet, that day would branch into several days, each holding that person with a different shirt color. Because something that simple would require a different branch, there would be tons and tons of different possible futures all tangled up "in front" of us along the 4th dimension, spread out across the 5th.Back to the grandfather paradox, if you went back in time and shot your grandpa, there would be another branch in which you weren't born. So the guy that shot your grandpa didn't come from that branch. He came from another one, and he's "you" at this point, which starts messing with your concept of "I." :O Of course, the "you" from the possibility where you were born is now in the branch that he wasn't born, but that's not a problem because he just has his blob thing circle back around and into that branch. If you manage to get back to your own time and possibility, that blob would just have a kind of squiggly thing in it.That's as far as I got. But after seeing the video, I put 2 more in (more like 1.5). Imagine the 4th and 5th dimensions as a flowchart on a piece of paper, with each point being a _possible_ moment. Then make tons of those papers with flowcharts and stack them. Each paper is a universe, with all its possible happenings. That means that if you move "up" or "down" (along the 6th dimension), you go to a different universe.Then, following what's been happening each time you move up a dimension number, you can take everything from the previous one and condense it to a point on the axis of the new dimension. It's not really just a point though. Think of 3D space, with the x, y and z axes. You could take an x/y plane and move it along the z axis, and it would only touch it at one point. It's like that, but several dimensions higher. So take every single possible universe, each one containing all the possibilities that branch out from all the moments in time, and then each moment holding its own version of 3D space. All of that is like a plane, intersecting the 7th dimension. So how do you have _another_ one of those? That's where I got stuck. The movie on YouTube got stuck at 10, but they skipped the 6th and then pretended the 8th and 9th were for teleporting between each other for no reason.So to summarize:0 nothing - a point1 depth - a line2 width - a plane3 height - normal space4 moments - the world moving through time5 possibilities - different outcomes, branches in time6 infinities - different possible universes with different beginnings as well as outcomes/endings7 all the infinities, containing all their different outcomes and branches, all the moments in these branches, and all the 3D space we would perceive is included in just _one_ position along this axis.So this doesn't end up like string theory (http://xkcd.com/171/), there is an application to making up stuff. That's always good. Here we go: Everything (as we see it) is "moving," or according to this, extended, along the 4th dimension. We can move at will (pretty much) through the 3rd dimension, so what if we could move through the 4th in other ways, or move along the 5th without actually causing the event that branches out? Then if follows that you could switch between universes as well.
Juju, obviously string theory cannot be proven or disproven, neither can a lot of the fundemental theories of physics which include relativity, it seems like they work briliantly, however they've yet to be properly tested.
I agree I didn't make any sense in the last paragraph, but that's because I can't put what I'm thinking into words correctly. It is either because I do not know the proper words, or there are none.The belief in a diety is something else that I poorly wrote, what I meant is, since there is no proof of string theory's existance or its nonexistance, then disbelieving it for no stated reason is quite nonsensical. There is also no proof in god's existance, or no proof that he does not exist, so what I mean is that if there is no stated reason for belief in god it's hypocritical. As I was writing this paragraph out, I found this is flawed since you could think you can have a proper reason for belief in a diety due to a "miracle"Rusky, let's say you draw a square on a blackboard. You can see inside the square and all of the edges at the same time. Now draw a circle next to the square. Again, you can see the inside and all the edges. Imagine the square had eyes on one of the edges, and he was looking at the circle. The square's field of vision will be in 2 dimensions, so try as hard as the square might, it cannot see further than the plane it is drawn on. Can the square leave the plane? No, since it doesn't exist on the third dimension (not to mention it's not alive).Also, note the fact that I said that if your definition of dimensions is correct. Plus, what you think of dimensions can easily coexist with my thought of dimensions, so argueing about it is something that I now see as irrevelant.And Juju, trust me, I tried as much as I could to stop being so confrontational >____>The square and circle could move along the third dimension if someone smashed the chalkboard and pulled their pieces out. If you got in a magic time machine, it could pull you and the air around you along the 4th dimension, but following the chalk board analogy, it'd have to be 4-dimensional.
Rusky, I think you misinterpreted my example, my example was in spacial dimensions… Technically, since the square can see, the err, photons? have to travel. Which takes up time. Also, seeing as a chalkboard is still 3dimensional, it's a pseudo-plane. Just to simplify things.
And if somebody came and destroyed the universe, we wouldn't move along the fourth dimension. We'd be annihilated.Not if the universe broke into big chunks.
Anyway. I still don't get what problem you see in this.