Posted on 02/19/2002 9:19:22 AM PST by RightWhale
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=7456
PRESS RELEASE
Date Released: Monday, February 18, 2002
American Association for the Advancement of Science
In search of extra dimensions: Hang on -- a new reality may be around the corner
BOSTON, MASS. -- "Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a persistent one," according to the late Albert Einstein. But, "if everything is an illusion and nothing exists," humorist Woody Allen has observed, "I definitely overpaid for my carpet."
Hang onto your carpet receipts:
Our understanding of reality -- that is, a world where events happen over time within a three-dimensional space -- may be turned on its head by the year 2005, scientist Maria Spiropulu said today during the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Annual Meeting.
"The way we think about things is about to change completely," said Spiropulu. "This is truly a revolution in the way we understand our world."
Spiropulu, a 32-year-old scientist with the Enrico Fermi Institute at the University of Chicago, is hot on the trail of extra dimensions. She's using new methods to prove, experimentally, whether our reality is more complicated than we previously assumed.
"We are very close" to a new reality, she said. "Right now, we imagine space and time as a static question, and we solve equations as a function of space and time. But, what we're learning is that, at the very large scale or the very small scale, space and time are dynamic. What is happening at those scales, we cannot explain. So we have to wonder, do these scales hold some extra dimensions?"
Traditionally, physicists have mathematically explained all that happens in the world by using a "standard model." In this system, all matter is made of lightweight "leptons" (such as electrons and neutrinos) and quarks. Three forces manipulate these particles: electromagnetism, and strong and weak nuclear reactions.
But, this traditional approach doesn't explain gravity, the fourth force. The conventional rules of quantum mechanics have been successfully married with Einstein's Theory of Special Relativity, which explains the behavior of very fast objects -- but not with his Theory of General Relativity, the guidebook to gravitational force. Mathematical gobbledygook usually results from trying to combine quantum mechanics and general relativity. Consequently, we still don't know, for example, what happens to particles sucked into a black hole.
In an effort to uniformly explain all events, physicist Gunnar Nordstrom (1881-1923) first introduced the notion of an extra dimension at the beginning of the 20th century. Perhaps, he thought, gravity happens in a realm we don't understand and can't mathematically define. Some 10 years later, Theodor Kaluza (1885-1954) and Oskar Klein (1894-1977) took Nordstrom's ideas another step forward: An extra dimension may be curled up like an unimaginably small ball, they said, on the order of the Planck scale -- the smallest unit of length in the universe (10 to the minus 33 centimeters).
The idea of an extra dimension was resurrected yet again in the late 1990s, as scientists began to ask whether Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation reliably predicts gravity's behavior below the centimeter scale, Spiropulu explained. Physicists were energized in 1997 by the discovery of possible links between the standard model and "superstring theory" -- the notion that a series of extremely tiny, vibrating strings may lurk beneath the level of quarks and leptons.
Researchers Nima Arkani-Hamed, Savas Dimopoulos, and Gia Dvali then caused further excitement, by suggesting that at least one of these tiny dimensions might, in fact, be large enough to measure. Still, no one has produced undeniable proof of superstrings, and many questions persist.
Since then, Spiropulu reported to AAAS attendees, experiments have shown that Newton's Law is valid down to the 200-micron level. That is, gravity "follows the rules" at that scale. But, the physical reality below this level remains a mystery. Somewhere within the Planck scale, or at extreme energy levels, an incredibly small extra dimension may finally combine gravity and electromagnetism, Spiropulu suggested.
"We're very close into the energies where we can see effects of a very low-energy Planck scale," she said. "If an extra dimension is mirroring the Planck Scale, that means that gravity and the electromagnetic theory is going to be unified tomorrow."
Gravity, Spiropulu said, may soon be unified in an "unexplainable hierarchy of scale."
Various scenarios or "frameworks" are emerging to describe a mysterious sister world where, as Alice in Wonderland once remarked, "nothing would be what rings, because everything would be what it isn't."
Our three-dimensional world includes the coordinates X, Y, and Z, extending infinitely throughout the universe. But, some researchers have proposed that extra dimensions may be finite, and compacted around a sphere, pole, or other geometrical shape. Others have said that quarks, the standard-model particles, may have "technicolor" cousins in another realm. Or, quarks and neutrinos may exist in a mirror-world, as "squarks" and "sneutrinos."
To learn more about what's happening at the very small scale, Spiropulu and her colleagues are staging high-energy particle collisions. Extra dimensions, she explained, would leave behind a "signature," and she hopes to detect it. The classic signature might be a graviton -- the carrier of gravity -- capable, perhaps, of trickling to another dimension. In her experiments, protons (the hydrogen nucleus is a proton) going at almost the speed of light smash head-on into anti-protons. "What comes out," she said, "is a graviton, escaping into an extra dimension, and leaving a viable signature in your detector."
In particle collisions, the conservation of energy and momentum can be measured, so that what goes into the initial experiment must jive with what's left over, post crash-test. "If it doesn't add up and you have significant imbalance," she explained, "that is a viable signal that there is an extra dimension where, if these theories are valid, gravity may become very strong, and other weird properties might kick in. The idea is that there may be a form of super-gravity in the extra dimension."
Spiropulu shared the latest experimental findings at the AAAS meeting, including a completely new -- and what she described as "totally innovative strategy" -- worked out by Harvard's Nima Arkani-Hamed and others for "dynamically generating an extra dimension and then testing it," rather than the opposite, more conventional strategy: Searching for proof of an assumed extra dimension.
"We're looking at some really neat, new ideas," she concluded. "We hope by 2005 to have great results on this topic."
In one sense, all our synapses are already connected in that they--and we--must follow all the known rules of mass/energy so far discoved.
If you mean could we--our "mind"--be connected in a larger extra-dimensional construct--for example, that "unexplainable hierarchy of scale" mentioned in the article--this "mind" connection making us "one" is entirely feasible given these latest details of our extra-dimensional quest.
Like a child watching the bubbles in the soda bottle seemingly emerging from nowhere, the scientist sees our universe emerge from "nowhere" into being. The discovery of extra dimensions may create a new concept of that "nowhere"--and reveal the source, not only of the universe, but also some inner secrets of the human mind--and the stunning majesty of the Divine Force behind it all.
Pssst, I know.
But, there were leptons in the article, but no lectroids.
I don't understand the Sufi mysticism of The Rubiyat, but I don't think it is pessimistic, as it appears at first glance, e.g.:
Heaven--the vision of fulfilled desire,I think he was saying that he cannot know and will therefore drink the beauty of life.And hell--the shadow of a soul on fire
Or, be wine a metaphor for God's grace and therein lie a deeply spiritual devotion, as many seem to say? (And as music can serve such a metaphor as well as wine can, and it is the grace of God that elevates a man from a savage beast--the screen name again.)
What do you think, Stoch?
I wonder what Sufi scholars think.
Hey, Everybody. I didn't mean all those bad things I said about Islam. I take it all back. What does The Rubiyat mean?
Some consider The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam to be a deeply spiritual study in the same tradition as Rumi.
The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam Explained by Paramhansa Yogananda (author of Autobiography of a Yogi) is an interesting book along these lines. From the Editor's Preface:
Westerners believe, and have in fact been told so again and again, that 'The Rubaiyat' is a love poem, one written in celebration of earthly joys. Such is not the case...
Throughout the East, Omar Khayyam is recognized as a mystic, and his poem accepted as a deep spiritual allegory--too deep for ordinary comprehension.No doubt, like everything else, it can be understood on more than one level.
One thing's certain. The FitzGerald translation is some of the most beautiful poetry I have ever heard.
Don't forget Schroder's cat is both alive and dead.
"For us believing physicists, the distinction between the past, the present, and the future is only an illusion." Albert Einstein.
When James Lipton asks me, “If Heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive?” my answer's going to be, “Come on in! Everybody's here!”
Perhaps "scale" is a "dimension".
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