Paul's Comments

This is a rather esoteric question, and most of you probably wouldn't think of it. (Who am I kidding when I say 'most of you'? Outside of the spammers who try to infest my blog with worthless material - at my expense - there are probably less than 20 people other than myself who read what I write here. Oh well, there's always the future and I may look back with surprise on some of the insights I have had in the past.)

Well, notwithstanding the peanut gallery in the back of my head, the question I want to make is a simple one, and I believe it has a reasonable answer. How many dimensions exist? How many dimensions do you need to encompass everything?

Right now, it's a certainty that there are no less than four. Height, width, length, and duration. It's when you go beyond the 4th dimension of time that you have problems. Our current problem is we lack the capacity to go in any other direction in the 4th dimension except forward. And that we currently lack the capacity to reach any dimension beyond the 4th. So for some people, they might not even believe there are any other dimensions beyond 4. But, as every dimension that we noted before had to have one beyond it in order for that one to exist, this implies that there should be at least 5 dimensions because we needed 4 dimensions to move through the first three, it might be arguable we need a 5th dimension in order to move through the 4th.

But then, beyond that, how many dimensions are there, or how many could there be? Is there a limit? For example, in temperature, there is no upper limit, things can get as hot as we can make them, up to and including the 2 million degrees heat which occurs during a nuclear explosion, as is pointed out in the book The Andromeda Strain. It may be possible to get even hotter than that in some cases. Usually it's not necessary, even the surface of the sun only needs to run at about 10K Fahrenheit to operate and I think only 6K inside. Or it might be the other way around.

But the lowest possible temperature you can get to is, if I'm not mistaken, 0 Kelvin, something like -271 degrees, what we call "absolute zero". (I just looked it up, and I was close. It's -273.15, but that's celsius. It's ?459.67 ?F). You can't get any colder than that because all molecules stop moving and if there's no further motion, there's no colder you can go. Remember, heat is determined by molecular motion; the faster the molecules move, the hotter it is. If they completely stop, they can't get any colder, e.g. there is no such thing as "600 degrees below zero." Or at least, that's the theory right now; 10,000 years from now that may change.

So, going back to my original question, how many dimensions are there? Some people give a large number. Some say it's infinite. (Sometimes I think claiming anything is 'infinite' is a fancy way of saying 'it's too big for me to count,' sort of like those people in certain primitive societies whose number system consists of 'one, two, many.') I think a few people have pinned it down to a number like twenty, or eleven. Some have asked the question, is the number arbitrary, if it is eleven, couldn't it be nine, or twelve, or 42? (I threw in 42 because I like the symmetry and the connection to Douglas Adams book 'Life, the Universe, and Everything' where the most important answer in the universe is, of course, 42. The question is the one that's hard.)

I've been doing some reading and I listened to it before, and the guy who has the website for his book at tenthdimension.com which he argues, and rather successfully from my point of view, that basically ten dimensions covers everything. So here's where I try to argue that there are, in fact, ten dimensions.

Summarizing his ideas, and adding a few comments of my own, here's how we get ten dimmensions:

0. Dimensions. A point.
1. Dimension. A line. You can get to any 0-dimensional point by moving it along the line. You move a 0-dimensional point through the 1st dimension.
2. Dimensions. Two lines crossing. "A split" You can get from any point on one line or move any line to any point on the other by moving the lines. You move a 1-dimensional line through the 2nd dimension.
3. Dimensions. The two lines so they could touch at any point. Draw two dots on a sheet. They are points on a two-dimensional surface (the top of the sheet) and you can make them touch by "folding" the sheet to move the two points together. Now any point in 2 dimensions can be at any other by moving it through the 3rd.
4. Dimensions. A line representing Duration. (Time). A particular point now has a height, a width, a thickness, and now, a duration. You move from one point in the 3rd dimension to another through the 4th. This is the current time line you exist in.
5. Dimensions. Two time lines crossing. You could use the 5th dimension to go to any point in time by moving or "folding" the 4th dimension through the 5th. This allows you to go to any point in the current time line, whether in the past or the future. You move from any point in the 4th dimension to another through the 5th dimension.
6. Dimensions. Fold the two time lines so they could touch at any point. This is where you could cross, not into your past, but into an entirely different time where you didn't exist, or where your life was radically different from what it is in this world. You could move to an entirely different 5th dimensional line by folding it through the 6th. This is essentially all possible time lines as they have existed. You move from any point in the 5th dimension to any other through the 6th.
7. Dimensions. A line connecting all the possible time line folds. This treats any 6th dimension as a single point, and would allow you to choose any possible timeline which could have existed from the beginning of the universe until its end. You go from any point in the 6th dimension to any other through the 7th. This is all possible combinations of all possible time lines in this universe.
8. Dimensions. Two 7th-dimension lines crossing. This is where you could have different types of universes, where the value of the speed of light is different, or isn't a constant. Or the value of gravity is different, or variable. This is all possible variations of the universe.
9. Dimensions. Fold the two 8th dimension lines so they could touch at any point. You could move from any point in any 8th dimension to another through the 9th dimension. This is all possible types of universes that could exist.
10. Dimensions. All possible points in all possible timelines in all possible universes in all possible types of universes are a single point in the 10th dimension, and we can get from any 9th dimension point to another through the 10th dimension. And this, apparently, encompasses everything possible.

I like the simplicity of this because it seems to make sense. Of course, it could be completely wrong. That hasn't stopped people from believing in a lot of things that are totally wrong, but at least I have a reason for doing so, because the logical premises underlying this concept, at least for now, do seem to be correct.

The only reason I wrote this article is that I wanted to remember the reasons why there are ten dimensions. I kept forgetting where the website that had the video was, and I couldn't remember the arguments for why there were a total of ten dimensions to cover everything.