11 dimensions according to newest string theory? Can they be empirically percieved?

Question

I believe we are now postulating that there are 11 dimensions. 9 in our universe, plus time, plus a dimension in which our universe co-exists with all other universes. Can we empirically or experimentally percieve any of the dimensions beyond the obvious three and time?

Answer 1

First off, there is not one extra dimension that connects our universe to the larger dimension, it is only an extra dimension that allows for ALL five of the string theories that we have, it is called M theory and was proposed by Ed Whitten.

Can we ever witness them? Probably not, there is a possibility that a string got caught in the sudden expansion of he universe, and is now on a macroscopic scale, but not likely.

Here is a paper I recently wrote for my english class describing M theory, it's long and not really important, it just might give some additional information.

M theory is a theory that explains why we have five simple, perfectly legitimate string theories by claiming that all five are reflections of the same idea. Many leading physicists believe that this is the much sought after 'Theory of Everything' because it solves the problems between Quantum Mechanics and the Standard Model. It does this by making the quantum foam, the basis of Quantum Mechanics, and the complete opposite idea of the Standard Model, almost completely irrelevant. It says that since these quantum undulations take place at such a small scale, so small that not even the smallest constituents of matter can detect them, that they have no effect on the macroscopic universe, that is distances greater than a proton. It states the inconsistencies between quantum mechanics and the Standard Model may be from using point particles as the building blocks of matter, String theory claims that instead of one dimensional point particles, vibrating strings make up the universe, a bit confusingly, these strings are also one dimensional, and they vibrate in ten different spatial dimensions and one time dimension. In order to understand most of the physics involved, one must open their mind to many confusing mysteries of the universe, and chances are they still won't click in your mind at an intuitive level. In order for any of this to make sense, there is some backstory that must be explained.
There are four forces at work in our universe today, they are, in order from strongest to weakest, the Strong nuclear force (strong, for short) Electro-magnetism, the Weak nuclear force (weak) and gravity. The strong force is responsible for holding protons and neutrons together inside an atomic nucleus, it is the strongest force by far, it's strength can be shown by what happens when we break it's hold in the nucleus, an atomic explosion. Electromagnetism is the second strongest force, it is the force of light and magnetism, electricity is a side affect of this force. The weak force is the force resposible for atomic decay, ie a neutron decaying into a proton, it's responsible for all kinds of radiation. Gravity is by far the weakest force, about 10^38 times weaker,
thats 1/1000000000000000000000000000000000000000, of electro-magnetism.
The Standard Model describes three of these forces, how it does this can be summed up into two simple tables:

The tables wouldn't copy

The gluon is the transmitting force in the strong force, it is the massless 'glue' that holds the nucleus of an atom together. The photon is the force particle of electricity and magnetism, which James Clark Maxwell discovered were related in the 19th century. When I say electricity, I don't mean the everyday electricity in your home, this particle communicates the electric charge of an atom, or a proton or neutron. Two particles of opposite charge exist in a cloud of photons that communicate between each other and attract each other, two of like charges are like, to use an exaple by Brian Greene "two ice skaters rolling bowling balls at each other." (Greene pg. 247) Weak gauge bosons are responsible for atomic decay, they come into existance, for only about ten millionths of a billionth of a billionth of a second, cause something to decay, then decay themselves. They have a very limited range, about 1/1000th the distance of an atomic nucleus. That is the Standard Model in a nutshell, there is, however, one gaping hole in these predictions, gravity. Gravity is not predicted by the standard model, it is too weak of a force to incorporate into these theories. Many attempts have been made to do this, all have failed. When gravity is introduced into the equation, they begin to not make any sense at all. For this reason, and another I am going to get to, the Standard Model cannot be accepted as the theory of everything.
At this point you may be asking "What about the proton and the neutron?" The answer is simple, protons, neutrons and electrons were long thought to be the basic constituents of matter, that's only one third right. The electron, as you can see above, is an elementary particle, but protons and neutrons are made of quarks. (a proton has two up quarks and one down quark, while the neutron has two down and one up) It is nearly
impossible to see a quark by itself, instead of inside another particle, because of Quantum Chromodynamics, which is the "rulebook" for the strong nuclear force, it describes the properties of gluons inside neutrons and protons. The strange quark and the charm quark are parts of other particles that do not need to be discussed in depth, while the top and bottom quarks, because of their mass, quickly decay into other types
of quarks. Also, the top quark is the only quark able to be studied outside of another particle because of it's mass. The process by which a quark gets stuck inside another particle is called hadronization, and the particles in which they become (ie. neutrons, protons and others) are called hadrons.
The main reason that the standard model is obviously not the theory of everything is that at distances smaller than an electron, all predictions stop working, they fall apart, just as they do when they try to incorporate gravity. A whole, entirely new and confusing set of rules had to be created to describe systems of the very small, or systems with extreme energies (high or low), and at very low temperatures. The theory of quantum mechanics is born. It explains that all matter can be described as waves. Everything, at a small enough scale, can be described that way. It was dicovered that photons are
both a particle and a wave when a man named Thomas Young conducted the double-slit expirement in the1800s. He knew that if you shine a light on a piece of paper with one slit in the middle, the wall behind it would show one line of light, and the rest shadow. Nothing new, but then he made two slits and amazingly the wall didn't have two distimct lines of light, it had many, he then covered the first slit and had only one line of light again. He thought through these results and landed on the idea that the only way something like this could possible happen, is if the photons bounced off of each other as they went through both slits. That defined light as both a particle and a wave, years later, the logic behind this decision was discovered to be completely wrong. It turns out that even if you slowed the stream of photons down to only one at a time, they would still make this exact same pattern, each photon going through a slit individually still made a pattern of lines and shadow, where there would have been
none had there been only one slit. It didn't make sense and is nearly impossible to grasp intuitively, why it does this. The same was discovered later of all other elementary particles. The answer lies in the heart of quantum mechanics, the uncertainty principle.
This is the part of quantum mechanics that is very, very confusing. The uncertanty principle is basically a law that states you can never, ever know exactly where something is, and how fast it's going at the same time, at a quantum level. Say an electron is trvelling through your laboratory, and you want to know where it's at and how fast it's going to determine where it will hit on a target. In order to discover it's location, you fire a barrage of photons at it, and watch as they bounce off to discover
where it's at. That barrage of photons disturbed the path of that electron's path through your laboratory, not alot, just enough to make your prediction of velocity and position wrong. No matter how you try to detect something's position, you will disturb it, so the closer you get to being certain of it's location, theless certain you are of it's velocity, and vice-versa. There is a very large logical jump I am about to make, so bear youreself. The reason that the stream of photons makes an unexpected pattern on the wall, is because each photon passes through both slits, in fact it passes through every concievable point in the universe before it makes it to that wall, but it always makes it to the same spot no matter which path it takes. If one were to try to watch the photon as it traverses all of these paths, the uncertainty principle would come in and make your observations completely wrong. Now you may be thinking "If that's true, then how come frisbees or baseballs don't go absolutely haywire when you throw them?" that's a perfectly legitamite question, and the answer is because thay have a great deal more particles connected, so every particle tries, but since not every other particle is going
the same way, the mass travels on the only trajectory that it can. In essence all possibilities cancel each other out except one, and that is the one in which we see. This led to the conception of probability waves, these are actually just the probability that any one particle will go in any one direction, this is explained by Schroedinger in the popular mind expirement called Scroedingers Cat. You may be familiar with it, but if you aren't I will refresh your mind, Schroedinger stated that if you leave a cat with something that has an equal possibility of killing it, in a box and leave it there for an hour, the quantum mechanics says that after an hour, the cat will be both dead and alive until someone opens and observes the result. This expirement was originally devised to point out the inconsistencies in quantum mechanics, but the answers still hold true.
The two examples above state that matter can exist simultaneously in two states, (dead cat/live cat) and be in more than one spot at one time, (a photon passing through both slits) but another, radical claim is that there are twin particles,and if you move one, no matter the distance between them, the other one will do the exact thing, flying in the face of Einstein, who said that the cosmological speed limit is the speed of light, which is 186,282 miles per second. That is absolutely true, it is impossible for anything to go faster than that speed, gravity goes just as fast, which means that information, in any form, cannot go faster than that. Which raises the question of whyanyone would even think about suggesting these particles. The really weird thing is that they exist. The reason that this is not the thoery of everything is the same as that for ths standard model, it simply cannot incorporate gravity into the equation, it's not possible without making the entire theory break down. The same occurs when trying to define more massive objects using this theory, so it cannot be incorporated with the standard model either. Perhaps the oddest of predictions, and the reason that it is incompatible with the standard model, is the proclomation that in all parts of the universe, energy fluctuations cause particles and their antiparticle to suddenly exist, then, just as suddenly, annihalate each other in a burst of energy. This prediction has also been tested to be true, these bursts of existance and destruction are occuring all the time, everywhere in the universe.
To summarize, the standard model describes the universe as static and quiet, while quantum mechanics quite simply contradicts this by sauing that all over, there are bursts of energy at a microscopic scale. The reason that this problem is never seen in day to day life is because the only examples where they have to interact is in a black hole, which is simultaneously very massive, and very small. Inside a black hole not just one of them breaks down completely, but both of them do. Another mystery that both theories fall short at is the beginning of the universe. When the entire universe was condensed to a nearly nonexistant point of indescibable denseness. Both theories can explain all the way back to about one attosecond after the big bang, but neither offers an explanation as to why the big bang occured, or what exactly happened before that important point in our history. The biggest gaping hole you may have noticed, is that neither of these theories even attempt to explain gravity, which would need to be explained on a quantum scale for any theory to have any possibility of being the theory of everything. So obviously, since there are parts of the unverse that neither theory can explain with any precision, neither of them are that theory, and, maybe, you can see why these two theories can never coexist peacefully. So how can there possibly be a theory that incorporates both of them, and gravity?
The answer is string theory. This theory takes the quantum fuzziness that is the bane of the standard model, and, quite niftily, blurs it into being able to fit, just barely, into the standard model. I short, it brings the standard model and quantum mechanics to a compromise by stating that the universe isn't as static as it had claimed, nor is it as frenzied as quantum mechanics states. It also has the ability to explain gravity on a quantum scale. String theory basically says that each and every particle (force or matter) is actually a one dimensional strand of energy vibrating in tiny curled up dimensions. These dimensions, instead of being expanded and stretched out like the three spatial dimensions we are used to, are actually curled up together in every point in the universe.The reason that we have not been able to observe these extra dimensions, is simply because of their size, a way to visualize this is to imagine something that has three dimensions, a rope spread out. Seen at a distance, it appears to have only two dimensions, it's thickness does not become apparent until viewed up close. The same idea is used here, the six curled up dimensions appear to be only one when viewed from any distance at all. It is not important to understand what
these extra dimensions look like, only what they allow the strings to do, the extra dimensions allow the strings to vibrate in ways that hadn't been thought of before. The idea is that all properties of every particle is determined by the way these strings vibrate, in ten dimensions, that is a lot of ways to vibrate.
As mentioned earlier, string theory has the potential to unite the standard model and qunatum mechanics. The quantum frenzy described by quantum mechanics are so
small that not even one dimensional strings would be able to pick up on them. This truth is hard to explain, while quantum mechanics says they are there, and there mere existance makes it impossible for the standard model to coexist peacefully,
string theory mediates and says that they do exist, they just don't count, they are unimportant in the grand scheme of things. Expirements using string theory as the basis of the universe has shown that there i a limit to how small it is possible to observe, as you probe deeper and deeper into the quantum flux, it is discovered that the results level out after a certain point, a point that is impossible to probe further. This may not make sense, like a lot of ideas put forth by physiscists, it is only important to
know that this is true, and since it is not possible to actually observe them at a direct level, the quantum frenzy is only seen from a distance, like looking at a party through a dirty glass roof, you cannot see the actual happenings, only that something is going on. So, since these problems only arise at a scale that is simply unattainable, they are smoothed out, and that smoother fabric of the cosmos is all we can use.
There is one very real problem with string theory, it solves many problems of the cosmos, and seems as though it can be the theory of everything, except that we have five. The problem with that is that we live in one universe, with one set of laws, how can there be five distinct and different theories of our one universe? It took a man named Ed Whitten to answer this question. He looked at this problem very closely, and realized that all of thes theories have very similar properties, he called these dualities, and one statement in one of the theories can be directly translated into another. He realized that all five of these string theories are different interpretations of the same underlying idea, that, in fact they are the same theory. That may not have been to difficult to realize, but real genius comes from the fact that he realized if you simply added an extra dimension
to the curls, then all of the theories become one. M Theory.
M theory can even solve the big bang problem it can explain what happened, what caused it, and even how it may happen again. It says that the entire universe is actually just one giant string, stretched into all the dimensions, and that it exists in a much more complicated universe, these 'membranes' are the thing that the strings are attached to. There may be many of these membranes in this all-encompasing universe, other eleven dimensional universes, parallel universes. The theory says that
these universes may have started getting closer, and closer, until they touch, causing the gargantuan amounts of energy and, by association, matter in our universe. Slowly,
the theory states, the universe is cooling down, and after awhile it will happen again, our universes will touch again, sparking another big bang. This continues forever, in both directions of time, a continuing cycle of creation and cooling. An interesting
possibility, the only way we may be able to ever expirementally confirm this is to find a string that was created in this dimensional shove, but on a macroscopic scale, thatis, a string in a teloscope, instead of a microscope. The implications of that happening are massive and far-reaching, the proof of M theory, the theory of everything.
Having solved those little conundrums, there is still one major problem, gravity comes back to haunt us, but string theory has a solution. That explanation isn't as
simple to grasp as one would hope. Expiremental evidence has proven that as one gets closer and closer to a photon, or a weak gauge boson, the stronger it is, and the closer you get to a gluon, the weaker it is. These two bits of information combined show that at a certain distance, ALL of these forces are equal in strength. That being known, it is expected that gravity will be as strong at that oint as well, no evidence supports that, just the fact that every scientific discovery has been elegent, so why not this. But gravity is far too weak, on all scales and distances, this has lead physicists to believe that gravity is that strong, we just can't feel it. It says that most of the force gravity exerts leaves this plane, this universe, this membrane, and goes to the next. That won't make sense without some more backstory. It is predicted that all of the strings are open, two ends to it, both ends conected to the membrane that is our universe, but the frequency of the string that is the expected graviton, is not an
open ended string, it is closed. That means it may not be confined to this universe, and it may move freely through the parallel universes. It is not bound to this universe. That would account for why we haven't yet found the graviton, and the reason for why it is so comparitively weak. There is a massive search fo the graviton, in order to prove or disprove this theory. Fermilab, a LHC (Large Hadron Collider) is currently the leading
candidate for this Holy Grail, but CERN in Switzerland is expected to be seven times more powerful. (An LHC examines all of the elementary particles by smashing two neutrons together at near light speeds, and watching what comes out. They are the sole means of proving the existance of any particle smaller than an electron, right now)
So, if your keeping score, M Theory has effectively solved every major problem theorhetical physicists have encountered to date. Quantum Mechanics vs. The Standard Model, the quantum description of gravity, and even the very beginning of the universe, and perhaps universes beyond ours. It seems that this remarkable theory must be correct, it just fits too closely, seems too right, not to be the Ultimate theory. Unfortunately that is not the case, (yet) the reason that this incredible theory has not already been given the title of the theory of Everything is because it is almost certainly impossible to prove. Many physicists disregard this theory based soley on that fact, calling it philosophy, instead of actual physics. The other reason why is because it is such an incredibly complex idea, mathematically as well as logically, that an entirely new mathematical language will have to be invented to even probe the subtelties with such an extreme theory, any and all mathematical proofs so far have had to be derived from approximations of the equations needed. It may turn out that we will never know if this theory is correct. Congratulations, if you made it this far, this is a very boring essay, I hope you learned something. As an ameteur physicist, and philosopher by association, I am going to have to have faith that such an eloquent, beautiful theory cannot not be right. Perhaps if it turns out not to be the theory of the universe, it is the theory of the one next to us.

Answer 2

There are two ways in which theories become 'facts'*:

1) People dream up a theory that works on paper and find situations in real life that match the theory

2) People see situations in real life for which there is no theory and write one of their own

In the case of string theory, the situation was already there (the weakness of the graviational force) and the theory was written to accomedate that such that it was still coherent with other theories. The hunt is now on for other experiments to further validate the theory, but essentially the evidence for string theory is that the gravitational force is much weaker than expected.

And as for percieving higher dimentions, well, this is only possible explanation for dark matter.... but again, further validation needs to be found.

* NOTE: The word 'fact' really just means an accurate theory for the purposes of the experiments that are performed to 'proove' it. The proof is that the theory doesn't conflict with the results. In this sence, the sun orbiting the Earth was perfectly factual at one time in history because the evidence for it matched the theory. Of coarse, now you would say that it isn't fact and that it is totally wrong, but this doesn't mean it was any less fact at the time. Remember, 'fact' is different to 'truth'. Facts can change, truth can't.

Answer 3

Not exactly.
The (super)string theory proposes 11 and even 26 dimensions.
This is a pigment of our wild imaginations and mathematicians' elucubrations.
It cannot be "proven", nor "experimented upon" at this time: we just don't know how!
But it is the base of philosophy in pure research, and we have to continue searching. One day, who knows?
When Einstein proposed his relativity and the union that made the Space-Time continuum, it was just a theory.
Now it is proven.
These new dimensions, mathematically, are "curled" on themselves so small that we can't "get in"!
Yet.
But wait!

Answer 4

11 dimensional string theory has not produced anything.

It is possible that the 7 dimensions of space that are not perceived are mathematical deception, and therefore string theory is a theory of nothing, as you will find if you read the wikipedia article on string theory all the way to the end.

Answer 5

My personal theory involves 373,248 dimensions which work to account for all the forces, particles, spatial dimensions, and connections to the larger Cosmos. Time is not a dimension it is a subjective artifact. The only time that exists is the eternal now.

Answer 6

No and so far no experiment has been devised that can show that they exist.