Do we actually live in a 4D spacial world + 1 time D but don't know it

[AstroKing]

I have been thinking about this for a while. At present trying to learn quaternions. My question is below regarding ants on toy globe.

Edited September 15, 2018 by AstroKing
Real question is below

[cubinator]

As I understand it, there are three "big" dimensions in the "fabric" of the universe, and those are the ones we can move around in with relative freedom. The "fabric" is curved and warped in a fourth dimension, and also moves outwards along it, and that is time. Then there are a bunch more really small dimensions that are like the width of the "fabric". We can't move around much in those because we're really big. But they have effects on the quantum scale, and we end up with the 10 to 11 dimensions predicted by string theory and whatnot.

I'm not sure what that implies for time (we don't know if the past is still there somewhere else, or the future for that matter). I do know that octonions have properties similar to the fundamental particles of the universe as we know them right now, and this could lead us to new breakthroughs.

[HebaruSan]

22 minutes ago, cubinator said:

Then there are a bunch more really small dimensions that are like the width of the "fabric". We can't move around much in those because we're really big.

I think that's still speculative. I'm not a physicist, but these authors are:

• http://a.co/d/1MXdrxe
• http://a.co/d/7gcbKdl

The most we have evidence for is 3 dimensions of space and 1 of time.

[James Kerman]

Also not a physicist but 5 dimensions sounds like the Kaluza–Klein theory, an early precursor to string theory.

[Rakaydos]

As I have heard it, Waves dont propagate correctly in universes with even numbers of spacial dimentions (2,4,6, ect) and 1 time dimention.

[AstroKing]

He is my question:

I really wanted to discus 4 (or more) spacial dimensions only and ignore time, I included time in the title to make that clear. 
Consider an ant living on a toy globe 1 meter in diameter. The ant considers his world flat because he cannot see the whole globe. On his journeys he tries to map the world and discovers that by walking in a straight line he has returned to the same point. The ant now thinks that he lives on a globe. Wanting to map the toy world he struggles with the idea of how to draw a representation of the globe onto a 2-D drawing and comes to the conclusion that to map the toy globe he cannot do it without distortion and sees how to project the globe onto the 2-D map. Meanwhile other ants are happy to think they still live on their flatland. The other ants still prefer their flatland way of thinking and say they can prove it too. The flatland proof is based on 3-D space instruments such as using a gyroscope.Thus two conflicting proofs (globe and flat) which both stand up to best scientific reasoning. The flatland proof is based on 3-D while the globe is measured round in a higher (4-D or more) space.

My question is how can the space (toy globe) be modified so that both are still true. I think we are looking at changing the toy globe into maybe a 4-D sphere or torus perhaps?

Sorry I have edited my question because my description was wrong. I got confused with the two proofs and separated them one into 3-D the other into 4-D

Edited September 15, 2018 by AstroKing
I got confused with the two proofs and separated them one into 3-D the other into 4-D

[NSEP]

This is likely mostly just speculative.

[wumpus]

13 hours ago, AstroKing said:

I have been thinking about this for a while. At present trying to learn quaternions.

Have you seen this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d4EgbgTm0Bg

I hadn't heard of quaternions until arstechnica had a write up on a post-doc's stalled career chasing them.  Since complex math is so absolutely critical for dealing with any wave-based math, I'd be fairly shocked that quaternions don't describe wave-based reality in 3-4-8 (slightly different math for 8) dimensions.

11 hours ago, Rakaydos said:

As I have heard it, Waves dont propagate correctly in universes with even numbers of spacial dimentions (2,4,6, ect) and 1 time dimention.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if the answer to "why chaos" isn't that "speed of light" waves propagate in even dimensions, but de Broglie waves (i.e. physical matter) have to propagate in some non-even fraction of that.  This of course says nothing about the 3 body problem, so isn't a full answer.

[kerbiloid]

Spoiler

We live in a 11-dimension space.

And there are 10 types of people: those who know this, and those who don't.

 

[Green Baron]

I don't understand that 2D proof of a 3D world with the use of 4 or more D measures around with gyroscopes  ?

A gyro keeps its orientation in space. Lets assume they have a fully cardanic one. The 2D ants will soon discover, that in whatever direction they go straight until they reach the starting point, the gyro will do a 360 along the axis parallel to the walking direction. Which should send a flash of insight through their ganglia "We must live on a 3D sphere !".

Both cannot be true, in whatever dimension you do your math, the 3D spatial world stays a 3D spacial world, as a plane remains a plane when seen from a 3rd dimension.

Or am i missing a complexity dimension here ?

 

Edited September 15, 2018 by Green Baron

[YNM]

23 hours ago, AstroKing said:

The ant considers his world flat because he cannot see the whole globe. On his journeys he tries to map the world and discovers that by walking in a straight line he has returned to the same point.

A 2D surface remains a 2D surface, regardless of it's curvature. It just means there's only a finite amount of surface to live on for these ants, because they live on a world where the curvature is positive throughout.

The same applies to our 3D universe's space.

It's only possible to determine that there's a higher dimension if they interact with the lower one - say, the 2D surface where the ant lives now features intermittent fingerprints from something invisible.

Edited September 16, 2018 by YNM
A slight clarification.

[AstroKing]

2 minutes ago, Green Baron said:

I don't understand that 2D proof of a 3D world with the use of 4 or more D measures around with gyroscopes  ?

A gyro keeps its orientation in space. Lets assume they have a fully cardanic one. The 2D ants will soon discover, that in whatever direction they go, the gyro will do a 360 along the axis parallel to the walking direction. Which should send a flash of insight through their ganglia "We must live on a 3D sphere !".

Or am i missing a complexity dimension here ?

 

The ants think they are on a 3-D toy globe and are not 2-D ants. The ants think they exist in 3-D. By doing scientific measurements using 3-D tools they show the toy globe to be flat in 3-D space but curved in some higher space. So really the ants think that something is strange and must be living in a higher space but cannot workout where they are. The space has the properties of a globe (eg like our Earth) they can walk around it and come back to the same point. My question is what shape space can be like this?  

[AstroKing]

15 minutes ago, YNM said:

A 2D surface remains a 2D surface, regardless of it's curvature. It just means there's only a finite amount of surface to live on.

The same applies to our 3D universe's space.

I did not mean to imply 2-D space, ignore any 2-D thoughts.

[YNM]

13 hours ago, AstroKing said:

I did not mean to imply 2-D space, ignore any 2-D thoughts.

You used to upgrade the analogy. I did the same.

Again, curvature of space has no connection to an extra dimension. It's just a curvature. It's just a way to express coordinates. Like polar coordinates vs. cartesian coordinates.

 

EDIT : Another one is the Klein Bottle - sure, it takes the 4th dimension to "properly display" it, but it's still a primarily 2D surfaced thing.

Our 3D universe, if it were to be positively or negatively curved, takes the 4th dimension to truly show it. But we don't need to be shown in a higher dimension to have that particular trait.

Edited September 16, 2018 by YNM

[AstroKing]

On 9/16/2018 at 5:42 AM, YNM said:

You used to upgrade the analogy. I did the same.

Again, curvature of space has no connection to an extra dimension. It's just a curvature. It's just a way to express coordinates. Like polar coordinates vs. cartesian coordinates.

So in a closed universe which has the possibility that travelling far enough across the universe you would end up where you started. The close universe infers curvature and could be described by an extra dimension. Is this dimension just abstract. If this could be verified then how can it be abstract. RE: "It's just a way to express coordinates" you can have a w,x,y,z coordinate system where w is an extra spacial dimension. So what you are saying is the curvature of space would NOT be "w" in a w,x,y,z system where xyz refer to classical three-dimensional space.

[YNM]

3 hours ago, AstroKing said:

Is this dimension just abstract.

Geographic coordinates are just 2D coordinates, and it's a closed loop (which happens to manifest itself as the surface of a 3D sphere).

Just scale it up.

[AstroKing]

12 hours ago, YNM said:

Geographic coordinates are just 2D coordinates, and it's a closed loop (which happens to manifest itself as the surface of a 3D sphere).

Just scale it up.

OK, What about the up/down to give 3D coordinates and the closed loop manifests as the surface of a 4D sphere. This is what I see and observe.

[YNM]

18 minutes ago, AstroKing said:

What about the up/down to give 3D coordinates and the closed loop manifests as the surface of a 4D sphere. This is what I see and observe.

That's it - there isn't. It's not necessary for those that inhabit the dimension.

Unless you start observing something that comes and goes seemingly at random, yet you're highly sure that they're a single object and no, your telescope hasn't cracked over, then it's possible there's a higher-dimension being, and there do exist a higher dimension.

[Bill Phil]

It appears that 4+1 would be unstable...

[justidutch]

2 hours ago, Bill Phil said:

It appears that 4+1 would be unstable...

Five is right out!

[YNM]

Anyway, some interesting food for thought :

(we're talking about the dimension here)