Posted on 03/21/2011 12:42:01 PM PDT by LibWhacker
Today, looking out across a seemingly boundless cosmos filled with an unimaginable variety of exotic objects, it's easy to forget that the Universe we currently admire is the product of a violent event that occurred 13.75 billion years ago.
As we know, the leading theory for universal birth is the Big Bang, where everything came from nothing, in a single energetic burst of inexplicable creation. So, if we turn back the clock back 13.75 billion years, what would we see?
My instinct would be to say "energy, the Universe was filled with pure, violent energy," but according to some mind-bending work by Jonas Mureika from Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, Calif., and Dejan Stojkovic from SUNY at Buffalo in Buffalo, New York, the answer may be a little more complicated than that. In fact, it may be so weird that we can't even imagine what it would have been like.
According to an interview with PhysOrg.com, Mureika and Stojkovic have calculated that the early universe didn't only possess a hot, energetic primordial state of matter, but it also had a primordial state of dimensions.
If they're correct, the three dimensions of space and one dimension of time that make the four-dimensional spacetime we live in today isn't how it's always been -- the Universe may have existed in a lower dimensional state in the past.
The Universe, But Not As We Know It
The thinking goes like this: Shortly after the Big Bang, the Universe possessed only one dimension of space and one dimension of time. It was basically a straight line. As the Universe began to cool, and expanded, this one dimension of space became "wrapped up" in such a way to create two dimensions of space and one of time -- a plane, like a sheet of flat paper.
The transition from one to two dimensions of space was calculated by the researchers to occur when the Universe "cooled" to an energy level of 100 TeV (tera-electron volts, a measurement of energy commonly used in particle physics). A period of time after that, the Universe continued to expand and cool until it reached an energy of 1 TeV. At this point, the Universe got promoted to a higher dimension; three dimensions of space and one dimension of time, i.e., the Universe we live in today.
Mureika and Stojkovic think the Universe will eventually be promoted again, to a five-dimensional state, at some point in the future.
Evidence in Cosmic Rays?
This is all well and good, but isn't it just a fanciful notion that our universal dimensions are evolving to higher and higher states? Even though string theory predicts there could be many dimensions and those weird hypothetical Higgs singlets (yes, the ones that kill grandfathers) need to travel through a fifth dimension for their time-traveling shenanigans, what's the evidence for the Universe existing at lower dimensional states?
It turns out that Mureika and Stojkovic may have found some of that much needed evidence: When measuring cosmic ray particles with energies above 1 TeV, they appear to align themselves to a two-dimensional plane. "This means that, above a certain energy level, particles propagate in two dimensions rather than three dimensions," the PhysOrg.com article clarifies.
This effect would suggest these very high energy cosmic rays originated from a period of time before the Universe acquired three spatial dimensions.
It gets better. As gravity cannot exist in 1- or 2-dimensional space, if we ever detect a gravitational wave signal, there should be a very strong cut-off in gravitational wave frequency. This cut-off could represent the transition of when space changed from a 2-dimensional to 3-dimensional state. Gravitational waves can only exist in three-dimensional space!
Also, the particle physicists' Swiss Army Knife of particle accelerators, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), may be able to probe this 1 TeV transition when colliding particles beyond these energies -- if a two-dimensional signal is received, perhaps that is evidence of this dimension-energy relationship.
So What?
Apart from trying to prove the early Universe was a very weird one-dimensional straight line, how else would this research be useful?
There are a huge number of cosmological conundrums that don't seem to "fit" with our current knowledge of the Universe (hint: dark energy and dark matter), so the dimensional "evolution" of our Universe might be able to help.
But how could we even begin to comprehend what a "lower-dimensional" Universe would have been like? Well, that would be like trying to describe a three-dimensional object to a two-dimensional lifeform, in reverse, but I'll let Carl Sagan explain that bit:
Ping!
Sounds kind of like Flat Stanley!
If we get an additional dimension, am I going to have to buy more clothes?
If we get an additional dimension, am I going to have to buy more clothes?
Beyond it is another dimension - a dimension of sound, a dimension of sight, a dimension of mind.
So no you don’t need to wear clothes there, unless you want to.
Yeah, I've heard that before. I think I'll wait to see what other people are doing.
Probably not, but you better make sure you give the ‘correct’ answer when your wife/significant-other asks the question: Does this additional dimension make my butt look big?
What a giant leap of faith if you ask me.
Then, next month, they discover a tiny wrinkle which refutes everything they said. However, they will be just as unequivocal in the certainty of their next theory.
BTW, did you know that coffee is bad for you? Oh, wait. Now, it's good for you. Oops. My bad. Now, it's bad for you... until the next "study".
“Mr. Science has the really big question today, Bobby. ‘Was the universe created by a big bang?’ Hmmm. You know the Mr. Science motto, ‘Doing Is Knowing!”. We have here a five pound can of black powder. Let’s set it off and see! Wow. That blew a hole right through the roof. Are you OK camerman Steve? Once again, science triumphs over superstition! ‘Was the universe created by a big bang?’ The answer is ‘No, Insurance was created by a big bang.’ Remember viewers, Mr. Science will be at the Harrison Street Mall this Saturday from noon to four demonstrating The Big Bang Theory. Look for me in the hearing aid store.”
On the show "Scrubs", the black guy told the white guy, "the only difference between a black girl and a white girl is that when a black girl asks you if these jeans make my butt look big, you BETTER say YES!"
“Mr. Science has the really big question today, Bobby. ‘Was the universe created by a big bang?’ Hmmm. You know the Mr. Science motto, ‘Doing Is Knowing!”. We have here a five pound can of black powder. Let’s set it off and see! Wow. That blew a hole right through the roof. Are you OK camerman Steve? Once again, science triumphs over superstition! ‘Was the universe created by a big bang?’ The answer is ‘No, Insurance was created by a big bang.’ Remember viewers, Mr. Science will be at the Harrison Street Mall this Saturday from noon to four demonstrating The Big Bang Theory. Look for me in the hearing aid store.”
As opposed to now?
The giant leap of faith is considering sentient entities that exist beyond time - a logical impossibility because without time, there can be no separation between the acts performed by the said sentient being. If you bring in time, such entities themselves have a beginning.
If we get an additional dimension, am I going to have to buy more clothes?
—
No. The future universe will be fully clothed. Which is to say that the picture we have of this universe (of the galaxies known and plotted) bears a resemblance to a standing man with arms held out to his side.
yeah, but they will tell you (they possess knowledge) that such a being is not "bound" by logic either...(because they say so!).
No. You’d look rather flat from a fourth dimensional viewpoint.
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