(no subject)
Other highlights of the morning that I forgot to mention included waking up from some seriously disturbing dreams, and discovering right before I left for work that one of the cats Does Not Approve of the new litter and had thus crapped on the kitchen floor (and kindly flipped the rug over to "bury" it.)
On the other hand, besides that time when I walked square into a water fountain, the rest of the day went fine.
I'm still working steadily away on The Elegant Universe, which is continuing to hold my interest and attention. If you pick it up, I recommend reading the footnotes, which often add a lot of depth (though I understand maybe one term in twenty in the footnotes that start "For the mathematically inclined reader ..."). Anyway, here's my latest crazy spin on the material, and this one's extra geeky. lifeinwords already got a sneak preview; I love that I spontaneously called across three time zones to share my wacky idea and I don't think she even blinked.
All right, so standard high school physics suggests that there are four dimensions, three spatial and one temporal. We move backward/forward, right/left, up/down, and forward in time. String theory, on the other hand, says that there are actually seven more spatial dimensions, for a eleven dimensions total. We aren't generally aware of the others, though, because they're sort of curled up (hey, that's how Greene describes them) and are tiny beyond our ability to experimentally verify. Greene manages, through some fairly involved analogies, to explain how our universe might appear to us if these extra dimensions existed at a macroscopic level. However, in noting that some physicists have theorized (though not been able to mathematically demonstrate) the possibility of other temporal dimensions, he gets a little stuck trying to illustrate what those might be experientially like. The one comment he makes is that one might move sideways in time, have an experience with a duration, but still end up back at what was (subjectively) the past (the moment at which one'd taken a temporal "left").
One thing that occurred to me (and I expect this holds no scientific water, but I find it fascinating nonetheless): combined, moving "sideways" into extra, macroscopic spatial dimensions that also had their own temporal dimension might be like the experience of going "under the Hill" described in Celtic mythology. See if this follows. So imagine that these extra dimensions do not intersect our own at every set of spacetime coordinates. There might be only certain moments in our spacetime where they'd meet and you could "cross over." So you do, and go gallivanting off on your excessively sf/f extradimensional jaunt. Remember, you're now subjectively out of your own set of home dimensions. Returning, of course, is the tricky part--see earlier point about these two "sets" of dimensions not intersecting at all points of our home set's spacetime. Once you find a time/place in your vacation spot that intersects with home, there's no way of telling where or when you'll step back out. Depending on the rules that govern the intersections, you may step back out a minute later, or twenty years later, or three centuries back and in Timbuktoo. (Where is Timbuktoo actually, anyway? Or maybe I should say, what is it actually?)
I like this idea--it's a good mental chewtoy. Which is what this whole endeavor is about, really: giving my mind a reason to stretch its rusty jaws.
On the other hand, besides that time when I walked square into a water fountain, the rest of the day went fine.
I'm still working steadily away on The Elegant Universe, which is continuing to hold my interest and attention. If you pick it up, I recommend reading the footnotes, which often add a lot of depth (though I understand maybe one term in twenty in the footnotes that start "For the mathematically inclined reader ..."). Anyway, here's my latest crazy spin on the material, and this one's extra geeky. lifeinwords already got a sneak preview; I love that I spontaneously called across three time zones to share my wacky idea and I don't think she even blinked.
All right, so standard high school physics suggests that there are four dimensions, three spatial and one temporal. We move backward/forward, right/left, up/down, and forward in time. String theory, on the other hand, says that there are actually seven more spatial dimensions, for a eleven dimensions total. We aren't generally aware of the others, though, because they're sort of curled up (hey, that's how Greene describes them) and are tiny beyond our ability to experimentally verify. Greene manages, through some fairly involved analogies, to explain how our universe might appear to us if these extra dimensions existed at a macroscopic level. However, in noting that some physicists have theorized (though not been able to mathematically demonstrate) the possibility of other temporal dimensions, he gets a little stuck trying to illustrate what those might be experientially like. The one comment he makes is that one might move sideways in time, have an experience with a duration, but still end up back at what was (subjectively) the past (the moment at which one'd taken a temporal "left").
One thing that occurred to me (and I expect this holds no scientific water, but I find it fascinating nonetheless): combined, moving "sideways" into extra, macroscopic spatial dimensions that also had their own temporal dimension might be like the experience of going "under the Hill" described in Celtic mythology. See if this follows. So imagine that these extra dimensions do not intersect our own at every set of spacetime coordinates. There might be only certain moments in our spacetime where they'd meet and you could "cross over." So you do, and go gallivanting off on your excessively sf/f extradimensional jaunt. Remember, you're now subjectively out of your own set of home dimensions. Returning, of course, is the tricky part--see earlier point about these two "sets" of dimensions not intersecting at all points of our home set's spacetime. Once you find a time/place in your vacation spot that intersects with home, there's no way of telling where or when you'll step back out. Depending on the rules that govern the intersections, you may step back out a minute later, or twenty years later, or three centuries back and in Timbuktoo. (Where is Timbuktoo actually, anyway? Or maybe I should say, what is it actually?)
I like this idea--it's a good mental chewtoy. Which is what this whole endeavor is about, really: giving my mind a reason to stretch its rusty jaws.