Brian Greene: How Can We Picture the Fourth Dimension?
Δημοσιεύτηκε στις 2 Νοε 2015
Left-right,
up-down, back-forth: These are the dimensional directions we're able to
perceive. Theoretical physics posits that additional dimensions could
exist beyond our perceptive reach.
Read more at BigThink.com: http://bigthink.com/videos/brian-gree...
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Transcript
- The possibility of dimensions of space beyond the three that we know
about is an idea that it cropped up in the early part of the twentieth
century and it has been with us ever since. Even our modern approach to
unified theory, something called string theory, evokes the possibility
of more dimensions than the three that we experience, right. So we all
know about left-right, back-forth and up-down, right. Those are the
three dimensions that are all around us. We all move through them freely
in day to day life. These other dimensions suggested by theoretical
considerations. There is no experimental evidence for any of what I’m
about to tell you. But the theoretical considerations suggest that in
addition to left-right, back-forth and up-down there may be other
spatial dimensions. It’s hard to picture like where could they be? There
doesn’t seem to be any room left and that’s really the point. They are
new places that our experience doesn’t allow us to access directly but
according to this theoretical ideas might be there.
I have a
little analogy that helps to understand this. Think of a garden hose is
one that we love to use. So think about a garden hose that’s nice and
long. Now from far away the garden hose is going to look one dimensional
because that’s the only part that you have the visual acuity to see
because the circular part is just too small for your feeble eyes to
detect. But then if you take a pair of binoculars from a faraway vantage
point now you see that there is a circular dimension, a circular part
that wraps around the garden hose that you missed when you just used
your feeble senses. So dimensions can be big, obvious and easy to see or
they can be curled up and tiny, much more difficult to detect. Now the
garden hose is an object in our universe. But this idea might apply to
space itself, right. So it could be that left-right, back-forth and
up-down are the big easy to see dimensions like the horizontal extent of
the garden hose. But just as the hose has a curled up dimension, maybe
space itself has curled up dimensions all around us, just curled up to
such a fantastically small size that we can’t see them with our eyes. We
can’t see them even with today’s most powerful microscopes. But the
possibility according to the mathematics well motivated by these
attempts of realizing Einstein’s dream of unified theory, the math
suggests this as a real possibility that there may be more dimensions
than the ones that we directly experience.
up-down, back-forth: These are the dimensional directions we're able to
perceive. Theoretical physics posits that additional dimensions could
exist beyond our perceptive reach.
Read more at BigThink.com: http://bigthink.com/videos/brian-gree...
Follow Big Think here:
YouTube: http://goo.gl/CPTsV5
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BigThinkdotcom
Twitter: https://twitter.com/bigthink
Transcript
- The possibility of dimensions of space beyond the three that we know
about is an idea that it cropped up in the early part of the twentieth
century and it has been with us ever since. Even our modern approach to
unified theory, something called string theory, evokes the possibility
of more dimensions than the three that we experience, right. So we all
know about left-right, back-forth and up-down, right. Those are the
three dimensions that are all around us. We all move through them freely
in day to day life. These other dimensions suggested by theoretical
considerations. There is no experimental evidence for any of what I’m
about to tell you. But the theoretical considerations suggest that in
addition to left-right, back-forth and up-down there may be other
spatial dimensions. It’s hard to picture like where could they be? There
doesn’t seem to be any room left and that’s really the point. They are
new places that our experience doesn’t allow us to access directly but
according to this theoretical ideas might be there.
I have a
little analogy that helps to understand this. Think of a garden hose is
one that we love to use. So think about a garden hose that’s nice and
long. Now from far away the garden hose is going to look one dimensional
because that’s the only part that you have the visual acuity to see
because the circular part is just too small for your feeble eyes to
detect. But then if you take a pair of binoculars from a faraway vantage
point now you see that there is a circular dimension, a circular part
that wraps around the garden hose that you missed when you just used
your feeble senses. So dimensions can be big, obvious and easy to see or
they can be curled up and tiny, much more difficult to detect. Now the
garden hose is an object in our universe. But this idea might apply to
space itself, right. So it could be that left-right, back-forth and
up-down are the big easy to see dimensions like the horizontal extent of
the garden hose. But just as the hose has a curled up dimension, maybe
space itself has curled up dimensions all around us, just curled up to
such a fantastically small size that we can’t see them with our eyes. We
can’t see them even with today’s most powerful microscopes. But the
possibility according to the mathematics well motivated by these
attempts of realizing Einstein’s dream of unified theory, the math
suggests this as a real possibility that there may be more dimensions
than the ones that we directly experience.
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