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The Case for Fewer Dimensions
11–20 of 23 posts
Re: The Case for Fewer Dimensions
#12"If we could ascend into that higher domain, we would free ourselves from the straitjacket of ordinary space. We could bend our arm through an extra dimension to reach into a locked safe, or see the insides of a human body laid out before us." This is often brought up in discussions on 4th dimensions but think about it: For the 4th dimensional being to see inside a closed 3D space, photons from that space should reac…
Not if they're replaced by other photons coming in from the 4th dimension into 3D space.
Re: The Case for Fewer Dimensions
#13> Please sign in to Nautilus Prime or turn your cookies on to continue viewing this site. Meh.
How would you sign in to Nautilus Prime without enabling cookies?...
Re: The Case for Fewer Dimensions
#14"As a result, gravity, which is a pushover on everyday scales, catches up with the other forces and becomes their equal at a sub-sub-subatomic distance known as the Planck scale (around a few trillionths of a trillionth of a trillionth of a meter)." What? How is that not completely wrong? Gravity is at its most important on large scales. Or are they just badly describing a (known-to-be-broken) quantum gravity model?
I think they may referring to the relative strength of the forces at "everyday"--i.e., human--scales.
Re: The Case for Fewer Dimensions
#15Re: The Case for Fewer Dimensions
#16"As a result, gravity, which is a pushover on everyday scales, catches up with the other forces and becomes their equal at a sub-sub-subatomic distance known as the Planck scale (around a few trillionths of a trillionth of a trillionth of a meter)." What? How is that not completely wrong? Gravity is at its most important on large scales. Or are they just badly describing a (known-to-be-broken) quantum gravity model?
If you compare the strength of the gravitational attraction between the proton and electron in a Hydrogen atom to electro magnetic force, then gravity is negligible. Or as my physics teacher once put it, while picking up a book: "There is an entire planet pulling on the book, but I win."
So yes, Gravity is the most important force, but that is a consequence of the existence of positive and negative charges, not of the strength of gravity.
Re: The Case for Fewer Dimensions
#17Perhaps there is less room at small scales because the whole simulation that is running the show has run out of floating point exponent space and is working off denormals. :)
Re: The Case for Fewer Dimensions
#18The leaps here are just ridiculous. With one hypothesis (yeah I'm not gonna lie and call this stuff a theory) spcetime looks the same at all scales - the definition of fractal!!! Woohoo spacetime is fractal at small scales! Wheeeeee!!! Either something is really lost in translation here, or the people coming up with this stuff are. Either way I can read non technical articles on science or tech any more.
If you want to learn more about how space may have a fractal structure Laurent Nottale [0] developed a rigorous theory around it. It's definitely not considered mainstream, but him and his team are respected physicists. A more technical intro can be found here: http://elbereth2009.obspm.fr/~luthier/nottale/arIJMP2.pdf
Re: The Case for Fewer Dimensions
#19"As a result, gravity, which is a pushover on everyday scales, catches up with the other forces and becomes their equal at a sub-sub-subatomic distance known as the Planck scale (around a few trillionths of a trillionth of a trillionth of a meter)." What? How is that not completely wrong? Gravity is at its most important on large scales. Or are they just badly describing a (known-to-be-broken) quantum gravity model?
Gravity is the force that acts on large scales because the other forces aren't present. That doesn't make it strong. It's easy to appear strong compared to nothing.
Re: The Case for Fewer Dimensions
#20"As a result, gravity, which is a pushover on everyday scales, catches up with the other forces and becomes their equal at a sub-sub-subatomic distance known as the Planck scale (around a few trillionths of a trillionth of a trillionth of a meter)." What? How is that not completely wrong? Gravity is at its most important on large scales. Or are they just badly describing a (known-to-be-broken) quantum gravity model?
Yes it must be wrong, and that's what the whole article is about.
We know that gravity can't be so important on small scales because the universe would fall apart if that would be the case. However, our current theories of physics do tell us that gravity is that important on small scales. So the interesting conclusion is that something must be missing in our current model of quantum physics.