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To: MHGinTN
Yes, I'm reviving the old 'ether' notion, in a way.

You're not, really. The fields are just as free to undergo relative motion as the particles to which they are bound.

But what I would like to address is the possibility that the field of spacetime is influenced by the space and time bound up in mass. I'm not so much addressing discrete physical quanta, as in 'particles' of gravity, as I'm trying to address the notion of 'dimensional quanta' (wound up dimensional phenomena) bound up in discrete physical phenomena you call sub-atomic particles.

I don't really understand what you're trying to say, here; the notion of dimensions being bound up into physical particles makes little sense to me, I'm afraid.

Here's as near as I can come. Surely you've heard of "superstrings", the darlings of the popular press. These are one-dimensional objects that assume specific topological paths through an 11- or 26-dimensional space, of which all but 3+1 dimensions are "compactified" into a very tiny radius. In this scheme, a graviton would be a little loop through that space.

In some models, one or more of the "compactified" dimensions is much larger than the others. In this case, we can end up with a whole series of distinct types of gravitons with different masses! Some graviton strings might pass around the "large" extra dimension once before meeting back up with itself, some twice, some three times, or more. They can't transform into one another for topological reasons. But this additional length in the extra dimension allows it to have a significant momentum component along the extra dimension, which manifests itself in our 3+1 dimensional space as mass. Therefore, one prime experimental signature for "large" extra dimensions is the presence of such a series of heavy particles, known as a "Kaluza Klein tower of gravitons".

184 posted on 01/10/2003 8:31:42 PM PST by Physicist
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To: Physicist
Thank you very much for addressing this layman's questions. Oddly enough (or perhaps because you did such a good job explaining), I comprehend what you've presented. The reference to super-string theory (and I'm familiar with brane theory also) is interesting since I have 'constructed' in my own 'imagination' a scenario that takes a differed perspective to the 'extra wound up' dimensions Kaku describes. Again, thank you for the cogent explanation.
186 posted on 01/10/2003 10:00:48 PM PST by MHGinTN (A vacuum is really not an empty thing, especially if it can be imagined.)
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