A Theory Of Everything?
Page 4
MEETING A HIGHER DIMENSIONAL BEING
To understand some of the mind-bending features of higher dimensions,
imagine a two-dimensional world, called Flat land (after Edwin A.
Abbott's celebrated novel) that resembles a world existing on a flat
table-top.
If one of the Flatlanders becomes lost, we can quickly scan all of
Flatland, peering directly inside houses, buildings, and even concealed
places. If one of the Flatlanders becomes sick, we can reach directly
into their insides and per form surgery, without ever cutting their
skin. If one of the Flatlanders is incarcerated in jail (which is a
circle enclosing the Flatlander) we can simply peel the person off from
Flatland into the third dimension and place the Flatlander back
somewhere else.
If we become more ambitious and stick our fingers and arms through
Flatland, the Flatlanders would only see circles of flesh that hover
around them, constantly changing shape and merging into other circles.
And lastly, if we fling a FlatlFlatlanders would only see circles of
flesh that hover around them, constantly changing shape and merging into
other circles. And lastly, if we fling a Flatlander into our three
dimensional world, the Flatlander can only
Now imagine that we are "three dimensional Flatlanders" being visited by
a higher dimensional being. If we became lost, a higher dimensional
being could scan our entire universe all at once, peering directly into
the most tightly sealed hiding places. If we became sick, a higher
dimensional being could reach into our insides and perform surgery
without ever cutting our skin. If we were in a maximum-security,
escape-proof jail, a higher dimensional being could simply "yank" us
into a higher dimension and redeposit us back somewhere else. If higher
dimensional beings stick their "fingers" into our universe, they would
appear to us to be blobs of flesh which float above us and constantly
merge and split apart. And lastly, if we are flung into hyperspace, we
would see a collection of spheres, blobs, and polyhedra which suddenly
appear, constantly change shape and color, and then mysteriously
disappear.
Higher dimensional people, therefore, would have powers similar to a
god: they could walk through walls, disappear and reappear at will,
reach into the strongest steel vaults, and see through buildings. They
would be omniscient and omnipotent. Not surprisingly, speculation about
higher dimensions has sparked enormous literary and artistic interest
over the last hundred years.
MYSTICS AND MATHEMATICIANS
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, in The Brothers Karamazov, had his protagonist Ivan
Karamazov speculate on the existence of higher dimensions and
non-Euclidean geometries during a discussion on the existence of God. In
H. G. Wells' The Invisible Man, the source of invisibility was his
ability to manipulate the fourth dimension. Oscar Wilde even refers to
the fourth dimension in his play The Canterville Ghost as the homeworld
for ghosts.
The fourth dimension also appears in the literary works of Marcel Proust
and Joseph Conrad; it inspired some of the musical works of Alexander
Scriabin, Edgar Varege, and George Antheil. It fascinated such diverse
personalities as the psychologist William James, literary figure
Gertrude Stein, and revolutionary socialist Vladimir Lenin.
Lenin even waged a polemic on the N-th dimension with philosopher Ernst
Mach in his Materialism and Empirio-Criticism. Lenin praised Mach, who
"has raised the very important and useful question of a space of
n-dimensions as a conceivable space," but then took him to task by
insisting that the Tsar could only be overthrown in the third dimension.
Artists have been particularly interested in the fourth dimension
because of the possibilities of discovering new laws of perspective. In
the Middle Ages, religious art was distinctive for its deliberate lack
of perspective. Serfs, peasants, and kings were depicted as if they were
flat, much the way children draw people. Since God was omnipotent and
could therefore see all parts of our world equally, art had to reflect
His point of view, so the world was painted two-dimensionally.
Renaissance art was a revolt against this flat God- centered
perspective. Sweeping landscapes and realistic, three dimensional people
were painted from the point of view of a person's eye, with the lines of
perspective vanishing into the horizon. Renaissance art reflected the
way the human eye viewed the world, from the singular point of view of
the observer. In other words, Renaissance art discovered the third
dimension.
With the beginning of the machine age and capitalism, the artistic world
revolted against the cold materialism that seemed to dominate industrial
society. To the Cubists, positivism was a straitjacket that confined us
to what could be measured in the laboratory, suppressing the fruits of
our imagination. They asked: Why must art be clinically "realistic?"
This Cubist "revolt against perspective" seized the fourth dimension
because it touched the third dimension from all possible perspectives.
Simply put, Cubist art embraced the fourth dimension.
Picasso's paintings are a splendid example, showing a clear rejection of
three dimensional perspective, with women's faces viewed simultaneously
from several angles. Instead of a single point-of-view, Picasso's
paintings show multiple perspectives, as if they were painted by a being
from the fourth dimension, able to see all perspectives simultaneously.
As art historian Linda Henderson has written, "the fourth dimension and
non-Euclidean geometry emerge as among the most important themes
unifying much of modern art and theory."
UNIFYING THE FOUR FORCES
Historically, physicists dismissed the theory of higher dimensions
because they could never be measured, nor did they have any particular
use. But to understand how adding higher dimensions can, in fact,
simplify physical problems, consider the following example. To the
ancient Egyptians, the weather was a complete mystery. What caused the
seasons? Why did it get warmer as they traveled south? The weather was
impossible to explain from the limited vantage point of the ancient
Egyptians, to whom the earth appeared flat, like a two-dimensional
plane.
But now imagine sending the Egyptians in a rocket into outer space,
where they can see the earth as simple and whole in its orbit around the
sun. Suddenly, the answers to these questions become obvious. From outer
space, it is clear that the see the earth as simple and whole in its
orbit around the sun. Suddenly, the answers to these questions become
obvious. From outer space, it is clear that the earth tilts about 23
degrees on its axis in its orbit around the sun. Because of this tilt,
the northern hemisphere receives much less sunlight during one part of
its orbit than during another part. Hence we have winter and summer.
In summary, the rather obscure laws of the weather are easy to
understand once we view the earth from space. Thus, the solution to the
problem is to go up into space, into the third dimension. Facts that
were impossible to understand in a flat world suddenly become obvious
when viewing a unified picture of a three dimensional earth.
THE FOUR FUNDAMENTAL FORCES
Similarly, the current excitement over higher dimensions is that they
may hold the key to the unification of all known forces. The culmination
of 2,000 years of painstaking observation is the realization that that
our universe is governed by four fundamental forces. These four forces,
in turn, may be unified in higher dimensional space. Light, for example,
may be viewed simply as vibrations in the fifth dimension. The other
forces of nature may be viewed as vibrations in increasingly higher
dimensions.
At first glance, however, the four fundamental forces seem to bear no
resemblance to each other. They are:
Gravity is the force which keeps our feet anchored to the spinning earth
and binds the solar system and the galaxies together. Without gravity,
we would be immediately flung into outer space at l,000 miles per hour.
Furthermore, without gravity holding the sun together, it would explode
in a catastrophic burst of energy.
Electro-magnetism is the force which lights up our cities and energizes
our household appliances. The electronic revolution, which has given us
the light bulb, TV, the telephone, computers, radio, radar, microwaves,
light bulbs, and dishwashers, is a byproduct of the electro-magnetic
force.
The strong nuclear force is the force which powers the sun. Without the
nuclear force, the stars would flicker out and the heavens woulforce,
the stars would flicker out and the heavens would go dark. The nuclear
force not only makes life on earth possible, it is also the devastating
force unleashed by a hydrogen bomb.
The weak force is the force responsible for radio active decay involving
electrons. The weak force is harnessed in modern hospitals in the form
of radioactive tracers used in nuclear medicine. The weak force also
wrecked havoc at Chernobyl.
Historically, whenever scientists unraveled the secrets of one of the
four fundamental forces, this irrevocably altered the course of modern
civilization, from the mastery of mechanics and Newtonian physics in the
1700s, to the harnessing of the electro-magnetism in the 1800s, and
finally to the unlocking of the nuclear force in the 1900s. In some
sense, some of the greatest breakthroughs in the history of science can
be traced back to the gradual understanding of these four fundamental
forces. Some have even claimed that the progress of the last 2,000 years
of science can be understood as the successive mastery of these four
fundamental forces.
Given the importance of these four fundamental forces, the next question
is: can they be united into one super force? Are they but the
manifestations of a deeper reality?
Given the fruitless search that has stumped the world's Nobel Prize
winners for half a century, most physicists agree that the Theory of
Everything must be a radical departure from everything that has been
tried before. For example, Niels Bohr, founder of the modern atomic
theory, once listened to Wolf gang Pauli's explanation of his version of
the unified field theory. In frustration, Bohr finally stood up and
said, "We are all agreed that your theory is absolutely crazy. But what
divides us is whether your theory is crazy enough."
Today, however, after decades of false starts and frustrating dead ends,
many of the world's leading physicists think that they have finally
found the theory "crazy enough" to be the unified field theory. There is
widespread belief (although certainly not unanimous by any means) in the
world's major re search laboratories that we have at last found the
Theory of Everything.
Sheila Na Gig
Send e-mail to mapona@yahoo.com
Copyright © 1999 Sheila Na Gig.
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