The "Five" Dimensions

Dimensions were brought to light in His Dark Materials in The Amber Spyglass on page 836. "It reminded [Mrs. Coulter] of a certain abominable heresy, whose author was now deservedly languishing in the dungeons of the Consistorial Court. He had suggested that there were more spatial dimensions than the three familiar ones-- that on a very small scale, there were up to seven or eight other dimensions, but that they were impossible to examine directly." There are five dimensions that have so far been scientifically "discovered" that I could find. The Zero Dimension is the point, very much like the period at the end of this sentence. It exists only in time, not in space, because it is infinitely small. In time, it is the moment between past and future.

The First Dimension is a line, which contains an infinite number of points, and temporally, represents the future.

The Second Dimension is a two dimensional plane, like a rectangle, which contains an infinite number of straight lines, and temporally represents the Present.

The Third Dimension is a solid, like a cube, which contains an infinite number of planes, and temporally represents the past.

The Fourth Dimension (time) is the space-time continuum, or reality. The infinite number of solids in the universe are in relationship with each other through time and energy. Temporally, the movement of the third dimension is continued to form a wave, "fractally" constituting the space-time continuum.

Apparently, there are technically somewhere between seven and ten total dimensions, but I was unable to find out what these last ones are beyond the first five. For further explanation of them, you can go to www.fractalwisdom.com/FractalWisdom/dim.html. However, most scholars agree that our physical environment and pragmatics of the human body allows us only to see three dimensions. Our consciousness is limited by our perception. According to physics professors Andreas Karch at the University of Washington and Lisa Randall at Harvard, "We just happen to be in a place that feels 3D to us....In our world, forces such as electromagnetism only recognize three dimensions and behave according to our laws of physics, their strength diminishing with distance. Gravity, however, cuts across all dimensions, even those not recognized in our world... [b]ut...the force of gravity is localized and, with seven branes (branes=any dimensional object in string theory), gravity would diminish far more quickly with distance than it does in our three-dimensional world. We know there are people in our three-brane existence. In this case we will assume there are people somewhere nearby in a seven-brane existence. The people in the three-brane would have a far more interesting world, with more complex structures...With gravity diminishing rapidly with distance, a seven-dimensional existence would not have planets with stable orbits around their sun.... I am not precisely sure what a universe with such a short-range gravity would look like, mostly because it is always difficult to imagine how life would develop under completely different circumstances....But in any case, planetary systems as we know them wouldn't form. The possibility of stable orbits is what makes the three-dimensional world more interesting." To read more on this article of multiple brane and dimensional existence, go to http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2005-09/uow-psu092805.php