eleven dimentions? Will a Stephen Hawkings please help me wrap my simple brain around this theory?

Question

Please no ten dollar words, a NOVA explanation would be appreciated.

Answer 1

If you know anything about string theory, then you have probably heard the entire universe is made up, at its core level of little vibrating pieces of "string", or as i prefer to think of them, the event boundaries of hyperdimensional spaces.... these are called "calabi-yau" manifolds, and are coupled to this dimension hyperbolically... it is easier to understand if you have read any of Bohm's Implicate/Explicate theories also...... once there was the void, then it tesselated and split, imagine the entire omniniverse as a circle, and then it twisted in half.... then there were light (baryonic) and there was dark (calabi-yau manifolds).... the manifolds are scalar vector matrices of higher dimensional order..... in the latest paper written by hawking/hertog from AIP.ORG they talk about dark matter and string theory in it.... dark matter comes about as the process of omniversal history, little "wraps" of itself within the higher dimensional matrices... imagine that every decision in the entire universe is wrapped up within the particle itself, it retains omniversal memory of all the twists and particle couplings it had ever had until it reaches the collapse of the state vector when the observer causes it to collapse..... the state vector collapse is brought about by the schrodinger wave function, which uses the square root of -1 as its main equation..... now, you say, but the square root of -1 is impossible! how can a real number be caused by a root that must be both simultaneously negative and positive at the same time.... anyways..... these "decision" grids are caused by the "sum over path histories" or Path Integrals (feynman)... they become wrapped up in each of the manifolds and determine the precise nature/name of each particle, and where it has been. though the observer alone can determine the precise nature/name of where it shall be going..... this is why dark matter gives us the values of the 90% of "unseen" energy throughout the universe, since each and every single split has remembered where it had been, and thus becomes Dark Matter in the implicate order..... Supergravity theory is the 10-dimensional theory

Answer 2

Your question may be moot. Keep in mind that a lot of serious physicists consider multidimentional space and string theory to be a bunch of hooey. It is a theory (or more accurately, several theories built around the same concept) that is thus far untestable, unprovable, and (since there are so many different variations on how it all might exist) unreconcilable.
Multidimentional space is one of those realms where pure science ends and philosophy takes over. It will be interesting to see in a few decades if the theory is fully embraced by the scientific community (like plate tectonics was, years after its proposal) or tossed out as a better theory replaces it (think of the Earth-centered universe theory).

Answer 3

Basically, we can't find what part of an atom makes it heavy. We think it's leaking into another dimension.

String Theory, the leading candidate for a somewhat plausible new theory for physics, can explain the leakage with a minimum of 11 dimensions.

Answer 4

If you were to pull a strand of your hair and look at it at arm's length, it would appear to be one dimensional... but if you took that same piece of hair and moved it closer, you would be able to ascertain that it hadat least two dimensions... now if you took a magnifying glass and looked at the same piece of hair, you would be able to see a three dimensional cylindrical strand of hair with tiny imperfections along it's whole length...

Scientist believe that space and time are situated simalarly, There are four fundamental forces... Gravity, Electromagnetism The strong nuclear force and the weak nuclear force. They have been able to unify the Electromag strong and weak forces, but gravity is still elusive... mainly because it is so weak. There's no way to test or manipulate the gravitational force because it would take a crazy amount of mass to manipulate it. Without getting too technical, scientist believe this is because the bulk of gravitational forces propagate in other dimensions and what we see in these four are the leftovers.

Answer 5

The short answer is, EVERYONE's brain is too simple to wrap around the idea of FIVE dimensions, let alone 11.

Answer 6

the answer is far to long for yahoo answers. Try looking up "the string theory" on google. It deals directly with your question.

Answer 7

It is very pretty math and that is about all. Don't try to visualize multi-dimensional space with more than 3 dimensions, since you can't.