here, to assist in your time wastage are some awesometastic links.
the 10th dimension – click on “Imagining the Tenth Dimension” on the left and watch the short explanation. mind totally boggled. w00t!
coke advertisement – (no, not that kind, scarf) from collision detection, the amazing thing is not the fact that coke refers to GTA (the all-evil game, etc.), but the fact that they refer to it without stating it explicitly – viewers “get it” effortlessly.
the water photos are of flowing water on the side of a boat.
the 10th dimension is mind boggling indeed. makes me want to do some good old algebra!
but maybe more than the underlying concept, it’s the clarity and design of the explanations. a complete algebra lecture with this much coolness, that would be the best.
but i digress. AWESOME pictures as always!
what a variety of styles. and places. damnit :P
and the “flowing water on the side of a boat”, waw! i can’t imagine how you shoot that! well done.
that 10th dimension thing just blew my mind! it’s so cool that they could boil down such a complicated theory to a friendly flash animation. :) and the coke thing is great. a nice little twist on a familiar concept.
That reminded me of that sound quiz you posted. Just like that, some people wont be able to follow the idea after some dimensions.
Anyways, I think that the first 5 (0 included) are as far as you can go with certainty. And here’s why:
The first 5 simply hold the concepts of the first five dimensions (points, lines, form, time, and possibility). If you look closely, after possibility branches, it repeats the same concepts in order. Thats exactly why it needs to stop there.
Using those simple concepts, you can make infinite dimensions. At one point, they mentioned multiverses (other universes like ours that have different laws, etc). This is a viable theory. Scientists looked at the various laws of physics and realized that they are extremely fine-tuned. A slight change and the universe probably wouldnt have formed the way it is now. Since “fine-tuning” is usually associated with intelligence, this pointed towards the possibility of a creator. So by simply theorizing that there are many universes with different tunings, the need for a “creator” is eliminated. But then the mere idea of multiverses adds the questions of how many, whats in between them, how big, and so on.
Still reading this? Nice, we’re almost done.
Its known that life and the elements as we know them are simple. Atoms combining with one another and so on. From simplicity, complexity is formed. You cant have complexity without simplicity, but you can have simplicity without complexity.
SO, using a computer, they made a game called “Life” which applied three simple rules (I believe this also was a board game, but im not sure). Anyways, the rules were that if one dot had two other dots close to it, it would be fine. If it had 3, it would die, and if it had 1, it would also die. Too much and too little are always bad. So they loaded this concept into a computer and ran a simulation starting with just 3 dots. Overtime, it kept building. Millions of dots in many different patterns, moving, everything. It was just like watching a bunch of microbes reproduce under a microscope. This leads us to the final idea:
It is said that humans have brought the computer to have the intelligence of a desert gecko. It may sound insignificant, but considering that it took us half a decade to acoomplish what nature took millions of years, that is pretty impressive. As time passes, it will grow to a huge level…..which may raise the question: What if everything we know is part of a simulation? I know you might think “man, diny’s been watching the matrix again,” but you’d be wrong. The Wachowsky brothers didnt just fart the idea out their heads. Maybe they had this same question and added a little scifi twist to it to make people watch it.
So, if it is a simulation, then that means that all this would be part of another, and another, and maybe another, and another, and so on. So you have a hell of a lot of dimensions. The moment that flash animation mentioned multiverses, thats when I thought anything more than the basic 5 was redundant.
And on top of that, as much as “folding” seems tempting, I can get my head around it. Everything we know works in straight lines. Waves, energy, light, gravity, and so on. Cables bend but they are basically a staight line. We know that gravity bends light, but folding it? If space does fold, then I dont think it can be made to fold. Not only would you have to fold it, but then put it back the way it was (responsably speaking) But thats dwelling too much into territory that I shouldnt really be dwelling into, so this paragraph is just me trying to wrap my head around the idea…….unsuccessfully. All the other paragraphs, though, still ring sense in me.
Haha, I wrote “we’re almost done” when I wasnt even halfway done. I blame not planning on what to write and just writing what came to mind at the time about the subject.
and finally i get around to viewing this thing.
ok.
the idea of multiverses does not mean that there actually are 5 or 6 other universes out there with different laws, etc; it refers to the concept of the possibility of multiverses, based on the initial conditions. so there is one universe, but there are many different ways that it can develop. if we take a newborn, for example, he/she will be a blank slate (olya dont ruin this example for me, we can discuss that one later :p). so let’s be a little simplistic and pretend the newborn is a blank slate. from birth, it can become an infinite variety of people, but it will still be only one person. the variables – environment, parental choices, accidents, etc – will all contribute to the shape of the line from birth to death. and so it is the same with universes – it is one universe, but the line from big bang to apocalypse is infinitely variable (this is dimension 7).
idea of a creator and fine-tuning – this can be seen as an evolutionary-type mechanism, where the universe implodes and explodes and sometimes things grow on some planets, other times they dont. the fact that we are here right now does not mean that this universe was fine-tuned for us, but instead that we evolved and adapted to the conditions. it’s like saying a dark, damp basement is fine-tuned for mold. the basement wasn’t created for the mold; it was simply created, and the mold came along and said, hey this is nice, i think im gonna grow here, just because i can. so it is with humans – we evolved from amoebas because in this particular universe, in the past few billion years, conditions happened to be such that things progressed the way they did, and here we are. it is a possibility that during other times, the universe had similar conditions, and there was a possibility of humans evolving on some planet, and then it got hit by a meteor and nothing came out of it. we are the mold in the dark corner of the universe, and intelligent life in some form probably has occured in the past and will occur in the future, in other corners of this or other universes.
simulation would still be part of its parent dimension. let’s say our world is a simulation run by, oh i dont know, mice. so mice are actually alive somewhere outside our universe, which is itself sitting in a petri dish, and are controlling and observing it. this means that our whole universe is a subset of a dimension in the mice’s universe. so our dimensions would be the same as the dimensions in their universe, we just wouldnt know about it. and if you mean to say that maybe this simulation is actually a whole different universe, meaning a whole universe ran on a computer with adjustable variables, then we cannot ever find that out, and have to deal with the information and dimensions that are given to us. hm yeah this one is tough.
folding – i think of it as taking a dimension, making it into a point, and multiplying it into a line. so you take a line, make it into a single point, and take infinity of those points to make another line. folding is then going from one initial line to another along the newly-formed line of infinite points. unless i didnt get it. which is usually the case.
alright, my head hurts now, thanks a lot, both of you.
Thats not what I meant by the whole fine-tuning thing. I know that we developed out of “amoebas” and that the universe wasnt “for us” as in everything is specifically for us to be here and thats it. I meant the rules of physics and how they behave in the specific way which caused the chain of events leading up to our existance. Change, for example, how gravity behaves, and you’d end up with a hell of a lot of different life. Look how humans change both in space (weightlessness) and under high pressure (those olympic sled dudes get shorter with the years). So change something small and you change everything.
As for the multiverse, the most common one is the one that you mention. I see those as part of the 5th dimension (possibilities, etc).
Simulation, also agree. But if you consider the possibility, then there could also be many different simulations. And even if all these simulations are part of one universe, you can still then apply the multiverse idea.
So even if you consider the wildest “what ifs” and speculate about a hell of a lot, I still think that you only need the first 5 (point, line, form, time, and possibilities) because they would all apply to the infinite number of “what ifs” and it just keeps rotating if you think that a point is the sum of everything.
I found a documentary that elaborates on a bunch of the things I talked about: Naturally, as it is with this subject, I take it with a grain of salt, but it does have a few cool (interesting) points to think about.
Part 1: http://dl1.dumpalink.com/media/Kxfjwu7AY5jg/9C0gu5ZLCyfR.wmv
Part 2: http://dl1.dumpalink.com/media/Kxfjwu7AY5jg/98ERUK6qkyYR.wmv
Part 3: http://dl1.dumpalink.com/media/Kxfjwu7AY5jg/BbM7Q4RwDaUu.wmv
Part 4: http://dl1.dumpalink.com/media/Kxfjwu7AY5jg/VMaYJnXaPv7u.wmv