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How many Dimensions are there?
How many spacial dimensions are there? Three right? Well that all depends on who you ask, ask a group of
philosophy students and you may get the answer infinity, ask a string theorist and the answer will change
depending on the day of the week. In fact according to string theorist there are 26, no 7, no I mean
11 spacial dimensions. It all depends on if another mathematician has figured out a way to manipulate
the equations and balance them more precisely adding or removing some of the dimensions.
I am always bothered by discussions of dimensions because of the poor arguments constructed to suggest
the possibility of more than 3 dimensions.
First, it is always argued that we shouldn't be able to observe any more than three dimensions. Why?
Argue that our eyes can't detect extra dimensions if you like, but why should instrumentation be incapable
of observing these visually unobservable dimensions? If atoms, subatomic particles, quarks, etc are the building
blocks of our universe than surely there should not be any limitation of these such particles existing within
any and all dimensions. Therefore, observing these dimensions with such instrumentation should be trivial.
The basis of the idea that beings of X dimensions can't observe more than those X dimensions comes from the
story Flatland, by Abbott. A fairytale of beings existing in two dimensions is told that are unable to look
up and thus observe the third dimension that we know of. While an interesting idea and analogy when extended to
ourselves it is flawed. The first wrong assumption is that visual inspection is the only method available.
Above I explained why that is false. The second assumption is the far worse assumption. It is that three
dimensional particles can create two dimensional objects. In the clever story we can look down at the flat-people
and interact and yet what they see is far different. However, if the building blocks of the universe as we know
them are three dimensional (atoms) than you can't create two dimensional objects with them. They may be really
thin, but they are three dimensional nonetheless. What does this mean? However many dimensions the most
fundamental particle of existence has, that is how many dimensions anything built with them most have. Just
like the 2D flatlanders couldn't be built of atoms. If there really were 7-26 dimensions, than atoms or
whatever more fundamental particle would have that many dimensions and likewise so would we. Therefore, we
should visually be able to observe that number of dimensions even without instrumentation.
How many spacial dimensions are there? Who knows, but in our Universe it is almost definitely three.
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