Imagining the Tenth Dimension - A Book by Rob Bryanton

Imagining the Tenth Dimension - A Book by Rob Bryanton

The above link is to a flsh site that has an interesting segment on how to imagine the 10 dimensions of space-time. Its an intriguing listen - go take a gander at it if you have the time. It's interesting to contemplate the other dimensions and udnerstand that being creatures with senses that function primarily in 4 dimensions (move about in 3 and can dimly percieve the fourth) that reality can be thought of in terms of other dimensions that encompass all of creation. The flash site says there can be no more than 10 dimensions in at least the way he has defined them, but I thought Hawkins gave a proof for 14 - I could be wrong on that point. This got to me because of this story http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5686700 that I heard on NPR this morning. Apparently a Russian mathematician provided a proof that for any dimension that doesn't have a hole it you can reduce it to a point given this complicated proof that I don't understand, but this gives the Bryanton flash description some credibility in dimensional analysis. Its a bit freaky to think about the universe and existence reduced to a point but if you can represent it as such then our understanding of the nature of reality is taken one step further.

Another point he raises is that the universe as we know it has developed for a certain set of starting conditions from which the vagueries of quantum mechanics has evolved everythign we see now. This does not mean that there can't be universes out there with different starting conditions which have realities very different than our own. We are limited in being about to percieve them just yet. The possibility of time travel is merely one of dimensional looping and moving between possible universes which as described by Bryanton doesn't violate the principles of quantum mechanics.