Six-Dimensional Space-Time Theory 330
eldavojohn writes "PhysOrg is covering an interesting year-old paper that proposes an alternative six-dimensional theory of space and time. George Sparling's proposition, based on Einstein's general relativity and Elie Cartan's triality, is a twistor space (which I've only read of in Roger Penrose's latest work). The gist is that space-time is modeled not by four dimensions but by six, and that the extra two dimensions are time-like. Sparling is hoping that tests from the Large Hadron Collider will help prove his theory. The paper is heavy but the PhysOrg article summarizes it nicely."
No humsn has a right to think wrong! (Score:5, Funny)
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Time is four-dimensional, so there are 7 dimensions! So sayeth the TimeCube [timecube.com]!
Come on, you idiot mods! If ever there was an appropriate time to bring up timecube.com, this is it. Is it that it's the first post? Use your brain and actually critically examine the content of a post before modding, please. This isn't a GNAA troll, he didn't once say "frist post", "fust poost", or "frost piss" anywhere in the message body, and the TimeCube guy is a fairly old and well known example of what happens when you let a billion people put whatever they like on the internet.
Re: No humsn has a right to think wrong! (Score:3, Interesting)
(I tried to look it up at the TimeCube page, but those who clicked the link will understand why I had trouble finding it.)
Re: No humsn has a right to think wrong! (Score:5, Informative)
for those who are still interested in such things, another site: fixedearth.com [fixedearth.com] is similar, although it seems this guy has at least *tried* to do some research.
Stick that in your pipe, Einstein (Score:3, Interesting)
Einstein he may not be, but the author of the Time Cube holds some great patents
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_Ray [wikipedia.org]
According to the paper... (Score:4, Funny)
If ignorant of the almighty
Time Cube Creation Truth,
you deserve to be killed.
Killing you is not immoral -
but justified to save life on
Earth for future generations.
Academic taught singularity
within universe of opposites,
has lobotomized your mind.
You are Enslaved by Word -
no whip or shackle required.
You do not have the freedom
to discuss/debate Time Cube.
Academia destroys your mind
by suppressing opposite view.
God equals self masturbation
of mind - for opposites create.
You are educated singularities.
YOU DESERVE DEATH -
FOR SINGULARITY EVIL
in the Universe of Opposites.
No God Can Make Himself
as singularity is death, not life.
Planets nor human are entities
as they equal Zero Opposites.
You are educated singularity
stupid and evil, unfit for life
in the Universe of Opposites.
Missing something. . . (Score:5, Funny)
There's, "Controversial and Open to Alternative Explanations", and then there's, "Insanity".
Spelling and language skills tend to decay the further toward the "Insanity" end of the spectrum one travels. Interestingly, I've read Right Wing screeds which don't fare much better in the language department. Learn to discern.
-FL
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Maybe not flambait (sic), but definately on some acid trip. Reminds me of some of the stuff written in the sixties (like Pink Floyd's early stuff) ;-)
InnerWebOblig... (Score:2)
I bet you'll never guess which movie that came from (googling is cheating!)
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Leonard Part 6? Lithgow was great in that... And the bit where Cosby drives through a mountain... priceless.
Heavy paper. (Score:5, Funny)
Three time dimensions (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Three time dimensions (Score:5, Funny)
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I'm ridin' spinors (Score:4, Funny)
Sparling wrote:
Or as Three 6 Mafia put it: "I'm ridin' spinors, I'm ridin' spinors, they don't stop..." [ytmnd.com]
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The Dig (Score:4, Interesting)
(watch me get modded down for mentioning Dig)
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Re:The Dig (Score:4, Insightful)
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640k dimesions are enough! (Score:4, Funny)
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Jeez, I always thought there were Gigs and Gigs (billions and billions)....
-InnerWebRe: (Score:2, Funny)
Re:640k dimesions are enough! (Score:5, Funny)
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Heinlein has already demonstrated that the ancients had established the upper limit. It is approximately 1.0314E+28 dimensions. This is
(6 raised to the 6th power) raised to the 6th power
which can be expressed as 6**6**6 or 6^6^6.
Note that the ancient symbol denoting exponentiation was more similar to today's typographer's "enspace" than any other symbol in current usage. This has led to the unfortunate confusion of the large number 6^6^6 with the much smaller quantity 666. All this is thoroughly expla
Whew! (Score:5, Interesting)
Speaking of which, anyone interested in some rather funny dimensional hijinks, you might want to check out Flatland the classic book [gutenberg.org], or one of the movies [flatlandthefilm.com] being made about the story.
Ryan Fenton
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Who cares. (Score:2, Funny)
Number of the Beast (Score:5, Insightful)
Definately sounds like Jacob Burrough's theory (from the book by R A Heinlein)
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The number of the beast is 666, not 6.
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In the book it was interpreted at 6^6^6
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And a universe for every slashdot meme.
Well, that's just fantastic (Score:5, Funny)
Who modded that insightful? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Who modded that insightful? (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:Who modded that insightful? (Score:4, Interesting)
Time is a line of in a field of possibility for our space and time, which in turn is a sliver of all potential variance in all spaces and times.
Each is a coordinate in being able to find an object, and an object can stretch across each.
Ryan Fenton
Consequences of three dimensional time? (Score:4, Interesting)
I read the article, but I really don't understand the consequences of the theory. What would it mean for there to be more than one time dimension?
I'll have to settle for completely off-the-cuff, wild speculation: Could that help explain human temporal perception (you can "feel" time slow down or time flies by when having fun)? Can our consciousness span more or less of these other dimensions of time at need? Would this help explain the apparent causality problem of neuromuscular control (humans seem able to send the neural command to catch the ball before our senses could have delivered the signal that it should be caught)?
Could the existence of extra time dimensions have implications regarding the existence of free will?
How does this relate to the "one-graviton level" for quantum collapse / observation (if at all)?
As you can see, I'm just an amateur toying with the Duplo blocks of popularized physics, but I still find the notion fascinating.
Time's fun when you're having flies (Score:3, Insightful)
Or to put it succinctly, time flies like an arrow, but fruit flies like a banana (thanks Noam).
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Noam?
I think that remark was originally Marxist. Groucho Marxist.
Re:Consequences of three dimensional time? (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course mathematical models sometimes help us frame ideas about physical reality that we have trouble otherwise perceiving. Lorentz and Poincare developed much of the mathematics of special relativity as a mathematical model of electrodynamics using an "apparent time" that they viewed as an artificial mathematical construct necessary to make the model work. Einstein provided the insight that this "artificial" time was actually a real effect by making a conceptual shift about what simultaneity means, and special relativity was born.
For now the extra time-like dimensions are simply artificial creations of a mathematical model, we still await an insight to explain how they fit in with our own pereceptions of the universe.
Re:Consequences of three dimensional time? (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course, I'm an experimentalist, not a theorist, so I'm really just talking out of my elbow here.
Why call them consequences ? (Score:2, Insightful)
Do you ever think of yourself "well, this object is 3m away on the x axis, 4m away of the y axis, and 5 m away on the z axis" ? Or do you just think to yourself "this object is about 7m away" ? And then, your other senses tell you what direction the object is ?
So why assume whatever it is we call "time" is actually time, when instead it could be just as well the "time-like total distance", and we just lack the sensory equipment to differentiate (or orie
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And actually the 'distance' between two objects in our 4 dimensional space is distance = x + y + z - ct
where t is the time it takes light to travel to that point.
Also on your last point, there aren't any scientifically confirmed cases of anything supernatural, so there's nothing that needs explaining.
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Either things move through time like they move through space (i.e. when they move somewhere they're no longer at their old position which would require some kind of metatime
Things don't "move through space" in a space-time model, rather they trace out a curve through the comined 4-dimensional space-time (and by trace, I mean "exist as", there is no progression here). In the 6-dimensional version presumably it would simply be a curve in this 6-space. There is no need to invoke a "meta-time". Indeed, despite our natural intuition that time is some absolute thing that is somehow "outside the universe" marking of its progression, special (and then general) relativity was about fo
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I'm not sure about this: Conventional movement means that you have a mapping from one-dimensional time to 3-dimensional space, which means that in 4-dimensional spacetime you get a one-dimensional manifold (i.e. a curve). The obvious generalization to three time dimensions would be that you have a mapping from three-dimensional time to three-dimensional space, which in six-dimensional spacetime would result in a three-dimensi
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No it wouldn't, as "you" exist within the system, and so all decisions that you make are still "yours". For example, if I take a 'normal' human being, put them at the edge of a cliff, and ask them to jump, I can predict that they will decide against jumping, before I've even asked them to. So does that mean that they didn't decide to jump just because I already knew they wouldn't? Of cause not, it was still t
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What "causality problem" are you alluding to? I don't think there's any suggestion of FTL nerve impulses in the neuroscience community. If you just mean the old saw about being able to catch a dollar bill that you drop between your fingers, remember that it doesn't work if someone else does t
Re:Consequences of three dimensional time? (Score:5, Interesting)
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What? I have never heard of any causality problems related to human reflexes. There is a measurable delay and no contradiction of fundemental physics in biology like this. I think you might have read one too many flakey new age texts.
Re:Consequences of three dimensional time? (Score:5, Insightful)
Could that help explain human temporal perception (you can "feel" time slow down or time flies by when having fun)?
No
Can our consciousness span more or less of these other dimensions of time at need?
No
Would this help explain the apparent causality problem of neuromuscular control (humans seem able to send the neural command to catch the ball before our senses could have delivered the signal that it should be caught)?
No
Could the existence of extra time dimensions have implications regarding the existence of free will?
No
You're welcome.
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If you are interested in stuff like this, you will like Zen and the Brain [mit.edu] and Zen-Brain Reflections [mit.edu] by James H. Austin [mit.edu]
Game engines may use 5D to do 3D space (Score:5, Interesting)
The dimensions may not be quite what you think. This paper sounds to me very like technology which is already being used in games engines and robotics applications, eg for lighting models and collision detection.
The idea is that there are various things that make rotations of objects much nicer to handle than translations. But if you add some extra dimensions, you can turn the translations into rotations. It's to do with conformal projection. Translations on a 2D plane are difficult to handle (at least in the framework of Clifford algebra), but if you map that plane onto the surface of a sphere in 3D, then you can identify the 2D translations with rotations on the surface of the 3D sphere. Similarly, you can exchange 3D translations for rotations in 4D, if you create a new dimension which allows you to have an origin for your rotations which is lifted outside "real" 3D space. It turns out to be nice to be able to do rotations about a point at infinity, too, which you can achieve by doing the same trick to go up to 5D. A consequence is that each no-D point in 3D gets represented by a 2D surface in the 5D, a line gets turned into a 3D hypersurface, etc.
The nice thing about rotations is that you can do them with spinors, and you can use spinors to rotate lines and planes directly without having to break them down into points. In the 5D system you can also use geometric algebra to compute directly whether and how different hypersurfaces meet, again without having to compute points and normals and things, which is good for collision detection.
It looks to me that this article is doing pretty much the same trick, turning 4D into 6D, that the geometric algebra people are using turning 3D into 5D.
Here's a paper [science.uva.nl] from a group at Amsterdam university discussing some of this stuff, using it for a ray-tracing program. See also the previous two papers in the series, here [science.uva.nl]. They've also just got a book out, "Geometric Algebra for Computer Science" [geometricalgebra.net] (links to Amazon etc) [geometricalgebra.net].
There's also a company called Geomerics [geomerics.com] based in Cambridge in England that has used the technology to develop a new lighting engine, which it has just released for the Unreal platform.
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It would certainly mean lots of extra funding for scientists who are pushing that hypothesis.
Interesting claim (Score:5, Interesting)
I thought Gravity was the 4th dimension (Score:5, Funny)
OK - I'm just messing with you. I have no idea - but I looked through a textbook at a UC Berkeley bookstore years ago with that title, with the picture of the logarithmic spiral, and liked the idea.
SIX dimensions?!? (Score:5, Funny)
And get off my lawn!
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Submitted for your approval (Score:5, Funny)
As usual, Rod [wikipedia.org] predicted this:
"There is a sixth dimension beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, and it lies between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area that might be called the Twilight Zone."
QFA (Score:4, Funny)
I think I saw that happen to a dude on UFC then he tapped out with his remaining arm.
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Why 3 dimensions of space? (Score:3, Interesting)
Obviously from a practical point of view it is useful for use to measure things using a coordinate system with three sets of perpendicular axes but why do we think that is more than a useful logical construct? Why do we think it tells us that the very nature of the universe really stems from three distinct "dimensions"?
There doesn't seem to be any real distinction between up/down, left/right, and forward/backward. Couldn't they all be something that is part of one "space" dimension?
Re:Why 3 dimensions of space? (Score:4, Interesting)
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There is quantum theory. Ok, maybe it doesn't "suggest" a discrete space, but it sure as hell made it a lot more likely than it would seem with Newtons universe or relativity theory.
Re:Why 3 dimensions of space? (Score:5, Funny)
Ephesians 3:14-19
Cubic deja vu (Score:2)
Your 4 dimensional space makes you EVIL! SIX dimensional ultra-hyperbole is absolute but ignored by stupid/evil educators.
Dewey B. Larson? (Score:2)
don't see why anyone gets so excited by this (Score:2)
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Number of the Beast (Score:5, Informative)
It's not a bad concept, but it does get rather silly when the selected locations include Barsoom, Oz, and the "Future History" realms of Lazarus Long. A bit like the plot in Frank Zappa's "The Adventures of Greggery Peccary", it attempts so much that none of it really comes off right. The main difference is that Zappa intended it that way (and backed it up with interesting, non-repeating music) and I don't think Heinlein did. He did intend it to be campy, but it's way beyond that.
I am willing to bet he is neither the first nor the last to propose this, but at least I can point out "prior art" where I see it.
Mal-2
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Or depending on your method of selection, any one of the six acting as a time dimension, and any three of the remaining 5 acting as space dimensions.
Order of selection, in this case, is not important.
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Try to imagine... (Score:2)
*stabs out eyes*
Project deadlines may now be met! (Score:4, Funny)
Great news for project planners everywhere!
How do we redraw gantt charts to represent these extra dimensions ?
Time doesn't exist? (Score:2)
Um, "Number of the Beast"? (Score:2)
interpret (Score:2)
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Personally I would prefer an explanation using marshmallow fishing rods and ringing alarm bells.
Yet another hypothesis of Three-Dimensional Time (Score:5, Interesting)
iirc he suggests that 3-dimensional space is curved in one of the extra time dimensions to form a finite, boundless 4-dimensional hypersphere, and 1-dimensional time is curved in the other extra time dimension to form a finite, boundless 2-dimensional circle.
He makes some falsifiable predictions based on his theory (from http://specularium.org/index.php?option=com_conte
9. Predictions from the Hyperwarp 6D model
a) No more generations of particles can exist. (Subject only to falsification)
b) No Higgs particle exists. (Subject only to falsification)
c) As it seems that no known natural process except, perhaps, neutron star or black hole collisions could cause a sufficiently large quantity of matter to undergo a sufficient acceleration to produce graviton bosons in detectable quantities, we shall never easily detect gravity waves (subject only to falsification).
d) The principle of t-axis neutrality does permit the existence of a number of exotic bosons corresponding to configurations such as :
d-quark/positron, or d-antiquark/electron or any type of quark/antineutrino or antiquark/neutrino
Within Hyperwarp 6D theory a "leptoquark boson" does not really represent a fifth force of nature, anymore than weak (W-, W+, or Zo) bosons represent anything other than a special case of electromagnetism. See Leptoquarks and Neutron Stars paper.
e) Spacetime singularities larger than fundamental particles do not exist. The quantisation of particle properties in terms of spacetime curvature implies a quantisation of spacetime itself and the top quark represents the maximum possible curvature at any point.
f) Neutrinos can annihilate against neutrinos in head on collisions. Antineutrinos can likewise annihilate against antineutrinos. Such collisions could create photon pairs or pairs of neutrinos of other generations. This controversial proposition lies open to experimental confirmation. It may also contribute a solution to the solar neutrino problem.
This is not new.. string theory proposes 11 (Score:3, Interesting)
(for those not familiar, the grand unification equation is an extension of the equations/theorems which allow us to convert between electromagnetic and kinetic forces, and would allow us to translate between all 4 major forces by adding gravity and the force which holds atomic nuclei together)
because of how new string theory is, i dont think there are enough findings to distinguish weather this new hypothesis might be a subset of string theory, though i could be wrong.
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A 6-D precursor to string theory you might be mistaking this for was called Kaluza-Klein theory, if memory serves.
One other proponent of three time dimensions, again if I remember correctly, was neo-Gurdjieffian J.G. Bennett, who christened the extra timelike dimensions "eternity" and "hyparxis" in his "The Dramatic Universe".
The Dig (Score:3, Interesting)
(Warning: spoiler follows.)
The aliens there had discovered much time ago the two extra time dimensions, and a way to transition from space-time to 3-time (I don't remember whether this is the in-game name for the concept, but you get the idea). That worked, they discovered that in 3-time they are practically immortal, and as a result the whole alien species transitioned, losing the ability to come back, since there was no one left in space-time to activate the portal. After some centuries in 3-time, however, the aliens perceived it was a mistake, due to their livings losing all meaning since in 3-time nothing changes, ever. In the end, the humans discover this history, reopen the portal, and allow the aliens to come back into standard space-time.
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Timecube.com wrote:
Universe would disappear... (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, if we were to ever understand the true nature of the universe it would immediately disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre. Some people say that this has already happened...
(Thank you Douglas Adams.)
Re:Einstein was a fraud (Score:5, Funny)
Also, Tesla had to use the energy he'd stored up from the wheel (in a huge bank of capacitors - creating this was such a feat that the unit for capacitance is now named in his honour) to actually drive the wheel and restore the Earth's proper rotational period. Of course, the transfer wasn't without loss, which is why years divisible by 100 do not have leap days any longer.
Re:Cranks love their Tesla (Score:5, Insightful)
That's an easy one:
- spectacular (unlike subatomic particles physics ones which are observed only indirectly, over sensor arrays and computer imagery), high energy experiments, plus
- his own tendency to perform publicity stunts and make bombastic, yet sherlock-holmes-esque mysterious announcements (because... Tesla was independent, not academic researcher and was always on a hunt for venture capital) about his future work, plus,
- on top of it all his failure to accomplish something he announced, which could had been very revolutionary in every sense (perhaps most notable being social sense) of that word, apparently not because it was physically impossible, but because he was pulled back by "The Man", gave him an aureole of saint-like hero in eyes of a common man (as well as kooks).
There are numerous examples that oral traditions attach mythical supernatural (or at least greater than actual) powers to beloved heroes in collective folk memory. Tesla is one of most recent of such characters and perhaps first that transcended national and ethnic barriers (after all, in his own mind his public was global). Other notable popular hero figures are, of course, Einstein, Mahatma Gandhi, Bruce Lee, Mother Theresa,
Scientists love their Tesla, too (Score:5, Insightful)
All of that may have various degrees of truth to it, but you're being quite unfair by not mentioning that another key factor was that the things Tesla actually accomplished and demonstrated, many of which have found their way into our current common base of technology, were quite spectacular in terms of utility, innovation, and being leading edge for the time.
Many researchers, academic and independent, spend their entire lives trying to come up with just one useful idea. Tesla produced them regularly and dependably.
I often wonder what Tesla would have come up with if he was living and working in our current technological / scientific environment. In my view, the man seemed to think so far "out of the box" that you couldn't even find the box from where he was.
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