Why Do We Only Experience Four Dimensions?

[echolocator]

[SOLVED] Strings: 1 Universe: 0

If you enjoy potentially stupid questions, read on.

If strings vibrate in x dimensions and if all matter is made of strings, then why do we not share those dimensions? Why does the universe remain in four-dimensional spacetime?

Chances are I'm missing the point completely but confirmation of that would be useful nonetheless...

 

[Mentat]

Originally posted by echolocator
If you enjoy potentially stupid questions, read on.

If strings vibrate in x dimensions and if all matter is made of strings, then why do we not share those dimensions? Why does the universe remain in four-dimensional spacetime?

Chances are I'm missing the point completely but confirmation of that would be useful nonetheless...

Are you asking why we never experience the action of the other spatial dimensions?

 

[John]

The universe, space itself, has to be physically made of something. Think of the universe as being made of something physical and solid, like real strings that are three-dimensional, and we are in a web of strings. Think about traveling through that space, and our bodies are a bunch of particles and a lot of nothing. The particles that make us up only travel along the web of strings. Strings are like a real web in space.

But we know strings are only two-dimensional. The third dimension of a string, which gives it tension and strength, and makes it work is the Vacuum. So we have something that appears to be made of nothing. Space is like the matter of our body: it is points and a lot of nothing. Imagine a space of actual strings that are formed in three dimensions, with two dimensions of points and one dimension of vacuum. Strings are real and three dimensional, but one dimension is the vacuum, which is nothing, so it looks likes space. But it is a web of strings. When the particles that make your body travel along the strings that make up space, your particles, as it turns out, can only go in 7 directions. There are about 20 other secondary directions they can go in if your particles skip points and go between points.

You can see matter particles going in these directions and avoiding certain directions in particle colliders. Particle collisions never scatter in symmetrical fans, like an explosion in the macro world, but scatter in jets of particles following lines of underlying dimension. The seven extra dimensions of string theory are the underlying structure that space itself is made from, a structure that only allows travel in 7 easy directions and about 20 secondary directions.

 

[John]

A line is a series of points laid down side-by-side. If we construct a line or flat surface out of points, in other words if we lay points side-by-side until we have line or flat surface, but there is no distance between the points that we lay down, we never get off the first point.

There has to be a distance between the points, which is the amazing discovery of string theory. It says points have distance between them. They are not points, but really little strings. If you lay little strings down, you can construct a line. But the math of string theory tells us that there are ten dimensions.

If we use little strings to create a flat surface, like, you make a table top out of triangular tiles, each triangular tile represents three strings, then you discover if you travel from tile to tile or point to point you can only travel in three directions! If you can only go from point to point in three directions, then, these three directions become three underlying dimensions on the two-dimensional flat surface, according to my logic. This flat surface, then, really has five dimensions.

If we construct a cube out of points, which have separation, then we discover we can only go in seven directions when we go from point to point in the three-dimensional space. These seven limited directions become seven dimensions according to my logic. Seven extra dimensions gives us a total of ten dimensions, and the number of extra dimensions is in agreement with string theory, so my logic for why the underlying directions are dimensions could be right.