Spinnor said:
Could the hidden dimensions of string theory be "hiding" in 4D spacetime?
Thank you for any thoughts.
The idea is that they are curled up on themselves. In theory, if you looked closely enough at something, you could see those higher dimensions. In fact, we are moving through them as we speak. When you wave your arm, it moves through the x, y and z dimensions in addition to the others, but the others are so vanishingly small that your arm wraps around their extent many, many times over a distance much smaller than an atom, which is why it makes no noticeable impact on the progress of your arm.
Have you read of the ant-on-a-garden-hose analogy?
An ant walks along the length of a garden hose. The surface of the garden hose is 2 dimensional -100 yards long and 1 inch around. From one hundred yards away though, the garden hose is so narrow, it can only be viewed as a 1 dimensional line. The ant is seen as progressing along this dimension.
Now, instead of walking straight along the garden hose, the ant walks slanted; his path is a helix or spiral, wrapping around the hose every few inches. He is now traveling through the 2 dimensions of freedom that the garden hose allows (one of which is virtually unlimited, the other of which is very, very short).
From 100 yards distance, we cannot see the 2nd dimension that the ant is moving through nor are we able to measure a significant slowdown in his progress along the hose. In short, we have no way of detecting the 2nd dimension of the hose.
