What Are Curled-Up Dimensions and Their Implications?

[oldman]

Fortunately, things become simpler when the dimension is very tiny (e.g. if quarks can 'span' the entire dimension) -- you simply don't (directly) detect it at all!

Yes indeed, Hurkyl. But then it's hard to say what curled-up dimensions are "like" and, with the rest of folk beyond the standard model, one is left literally grasping at straws (or strings?), not having detected anything new lately!

Let's hope that the LHC soon turns up something new, if it doesn't blow us all to Hades.

 

[oldman]

Curled-up dimensions have been discussed in papers ...and probably others... the ubiquity of helices...

Add:

7. It's very old and all relative: "..a geometrically straight, but eccentric (line) line parallel to the axis of a twisted (crystal lattice) is in fact a helical line in lattice coordinates" Phil.Mag. 34, 1105 (1958).