Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

Why is space three dimensions anyway? Why not six? A new theory is offered

Share
Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
Flipboard
Print
Email

Image result for box public domain image From Nancy Atkinson at Seeker:

Thomas Kephart from Vanderbilt University and four of his colleagues from around the world wanted to figure out why our universe seemingly has just three dimensions, especially since, as they wrote, “quantum gravity scenarios such as string theory… assume nine or ten space dimensions at the fundamental level.”

They combined particles physics with mathematical knot theory to try and work this out, borrowing the concept of “flux tubes,” which are flexible strands of energy that link elementary particles together.

In an environment of extremely high energy, the team said that the quark-gluon plasma would have been an ideal environment for rapid flux tube formation in the very early universe.

But, crucially, they noted that this would only work if the universe existed in three dimensions. If you add more dimensions, the process becomes unstable.

“Of all possible dimensionalities of space, our mechanism picks out three as the only number of dimensions that can inflate and thus become large,” the team wrote.

While this is all theoretical, Kephart said that the next step would be to continuing to develop their theory until it can make some predictions about the nature of the universe that can actually be tested. More.

They want to test their theory?  What a great idea! In an age of wars on falsifiability, that’s a refreshing new/old idea. Anyway, our universe seems pretty smart and can keep us awake.

Incidentally, Suzan Mazur, author of Public Evolution Summit, noted recently at HuffPost that D’Arcy Thompson (1860–1948), recently honored at a festival, offered a view on the question:

With researchers earlier this year at several universities—-University of Southampton (UK), University of Waterloo (Canada), Perimeter Institute (Canada), INFN, Lecce (Italy) and the University of Salento (Italy)—- publishing findings in the journal Physical Review Letters that we live in a 2-D, i.e., a holographic universe, it was interesting to come across biologist/mathematician D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson’s 1918 letter to philosopher/mathematician Alfred North Whitehead in a recent exhibition of Thompson’s work at the University of Dundee in which Thompson addresses the issue of “Three Dimensions of Space.” Thompson and Whitehead had developed a rapport some years earlier, as students at Cambridge.

Thompson reflects thoughtfully on the point, offering inter alia,

Another point that comes into my head, with reference to the case in general, is an old and simple saying of Tait’s. He used to say that, given a symmetrical individual in symmetrical space, how on earth could you ever teach him what right and left meant. He would obviously have no right and left and space itself has, obviously, no right and left. And so, I come back to my query. Has Space really three dimensions; or is this only a convenient figment of terrestrial, and large and clumsy, mathematicians? More.

Good thought. Read the rest. And if you need a puzzle to keep you awake, pick one of the following conundrums, like chocolates from a box:

Is zero even?

Absolute zero proven mathematically impossible?

Is celeb number pi a “normal” number? Not normal. And things get worse. Surely this oddity is related in some way to the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics.

Durston and Craig on an infinite temporal past . . .

Physicist David Snoke thinks that Christians should not use the kalaam argument for God’s existence

and

Must we understand “nothing” to understand physics?

Our physics color commentator Rob Sheldon kindly writes to add, “Among other reasons, my favorite mathematical reason for why we live in 3 dimensions instead of 2 or 4 or more, is that only in 3 dimensions can you tie your shoes. 2-D doesn’t have knots, and in 4D they always unravel. God is very considerate.”

Comments
Unlike gender and race, dimensions ARE purely human constructs. There is nothing intrinsic to the universe that requires any measurement of space or time. We settled on a Cartesian system because we're bilateral critters with two hands and two eyes. If coelenterates had developed enough intelligence they would have chosen a different way of describing the world.polistra
November 4, 2017
November
11
Nov
4
04
2017
11:59 PM
11
11
59
PM
PDT
Only half joking but, according to ancient occult Biblical and Sumerian physics, there are exactly 4 spatial dimensions (or faces): man, lion, bull and eagle. Seriously, since the possible number of dimensions is infinite, the fact that there are only 3 (or 4, if you believe in the occult tradition) shows that the universe could not have been created by chance. The curse of dimensionality precludes a stochastic origin.FourFaces
November 4, 2017
November
11
Nov
4
04
2017
06:10 PM
6
06
10
PM
PDT
The String Theory bs requires 11 dimensions... Uncaused cause requires an infinite number of dimension... Well... in reality the uncaused cause doesn't require anything... It is the only way to explain the restriction on dimensions...J-Mac
November 4, 2017
November
11
Nov
4
04
2017
05:43 PM
5
05
43
PM
PDT

Leave a Reply