## Monday, November 08, 2010

### Extra Dimensions of Ttme, Travelling salesmen/forerunners, and "monumental restructuring of our intuition"

They say that confirmation  (or rejection) of string theory as the fundamental "Theory of Evrything"
will not likely happen in our lifetime..

...but anything can happen, and may likely be likely.
Sometimes suddenly and
The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Brian Greene
www.colbertnation.com
 Colbert Report Full Episodes 2010 Election March to Keep Fear Alive
serendipitously.

And who are the "they"of "they say"?
I hope they, of all people, know that if anything can happen, anything can happen.

And often that "anything" is predicted and prophesied by those branded as heretics or populists...or just plain nut cases.
That is the point to point out.

Often, when someone has suggested , or found, something so revolutionary that  it messes up our fundamental assumptions about the world, life and reality...we assume they are nutsoid.

But you  know what happens when we assume (ass-u-me)...........
that our intuited reality is ultimate reality.

"A feeling is stronger than a thought,"  the travelling salesman said.
But often the travelling salesman is right..even if accidentally so.
Especially if they don't  know the math or reason why they are right.
Just because someone is wrong about how they are right doesn't mean we are right to deny that they
are right. (:

Let's meet two forerunners to string theory  (which, of course, if postulated 200 years ago would have been ridiculed, but now is the "obvious" candidate for The Grand Theory, implies  that "the universe, at base, is music" and that everything is made of tiny vibrating and loopy violin strings)..

These no-names are not household names, as they should be.
Luther didn't start the Reformation, either...and you likely don't know the names of his four forerunning ancestors either.

Ever heard of  Leonhard Euler?

He discovered a formula in the 1800s..the Eueler beta-function.. that seemed to work:
$\mathrm{\Beta}(x,y) = \int_0^1t^{x-1}(1-t)^{y-1}\,dt \!$
for $\textrm{Re}(x), \textrm{Re}(y) > 0.\,$

..but no one knew how or why..so it was shunned and shelved..

Until  1968 when Gabriel Veneziano stumbled upon  its  secrets, and two dudes named  Nielsen and Susskind in 1970   officially offered solid evidence  that the crazy forerunner was right: what we see as fundamental partcles are actually tiny vibrating strings..

In 1919 , he was bold enough to say aloud that there may well be more than three (spatial) dimensions.

...an "insanity" which now makes sense of string theory.
In fact, string theory requires it as a given assumption.

Here's a challenge given: Challenge givens.

Extra dimensions of space?  Nine of them?  Most curled up in a little ball?

But could it be that one of the secrets to confirming string theory could be another unthinkable?
Can we intuit our intuition so that we trust it enough to question it?.

Here's the thesis:

Maybe string theory requires extra dimensions of time, as well.
(hang that, and related proposals on a church door, and see if they are called theses or feces)

• And maybe the Bible, especially a theology of the Kingdom and kairos, has been consistent with this all along.
• And maybe George Eldon Ladd of Fuller Seminary was an accidental travelling  forerunner..because time running 'backwards" in these extra dimension could makes sense of Hebrews 6:1-5: "we have already, in this age/world, tasted the powers of the future age.world."
• And maybe the possible "Luther of physics" (or huge heretic,,time will tell)  is right about  Einstein being wrong: faster than the speed of light is possible...and (I don;t know if he has considered this) perhaps that includes the direction  and dimensionality of time itself

Brian Greene, in "The Elegant Universe," (embedded below, or here)  introduces the possibility  of extra time dimensions, but only covers it in two paragraphs (pp. 204-205)  It's time for someone to pick up the torch and write two tomes, and see what happens...

"Given the requirement of extra dimensions, is it possible that some are additional  time  dimensions, as opposed to additional space dimensions....[which would] clearly require an even more monumental restructuring of our intuition" (pp. 204-205, emphasis mine)
-

Monumental restructuring of our intuitions?
So what's the big deal?
Let's test-drive  that possible impossibility (remembering the "driving in England" principle) before time runs out.

We  might even wind up with Frank Tipler:
" Christianity is a branch of physics"

Time will tell.

"Space travel," a character in Ray Bradbury's "Martian Chronicles" said,  "has made children of us all."

Maybe time travel, even extradimensionally, will make children, physicists,  and
sense  of us all, as well.

And/or maybe he...and all of us...are just travelling salespeople who are full of strings, skubala and shekinah.

See: