I have to relate everything to what I already know, which is difficult because of practically zero math background. Can we do this w/o math? Ultimately we are leading up to higher dimensions, right?
Let’s see if I have a clue visually:
The point is, I am trying to understand certain concepts and then put them into terms that I can relate to. Any similarity to actual theories or reality is purely coincidental.
I like to (mis)use the terms interference wave pattern and surface tension. When looking at a wooden table, we see where the molecules in the surface of the table meet with the molecules of air surrounding it. We see the ‘interference wave pattern’ not the air or the wood molecules. Now extend the analogy to dimensions. Where two dimensions intersect, another dimension (a surface tension) ‘arises’. Each dimension itself, the surface tension between two others.
If we step through the transition of a dimensionless point into a three dimensional sphere we see that each dimension is ‘contained’ within the other. A point merges into other points, which come together to form a line, which join with other lines to form a plane, which may be the surface of a sphere.
The line is the surface tension between the point and the plane. The plane is the surface tension between the sphere and the line. The sphere is the surface tension between the plane and space-time. Now replace surface tension with the term boundary.
The three spatial directions (XYZ) and Time combine to form space-time (the fourth dimension). Up/down, left/right and forward/back and joins with time, which is movement through space, and along with other dimensions interfaces with both the macro scale of planets and galaxies and in the nowuseeit/nowudon’t micro scale of Quantum incomprehensibleness.
Or as a friend told me:
“The real universe is “4-D expanding through an 11-D manifold”- and all of this makes sense when you understand: “It’s a wrapped, temporal-volumetric expansion.”-Cyberia
And as S. Hawking says:
“It seems we may live on a 3-brane—a four dimensional (three space + one time) surface that is the boundary of a five dimensional region, with the remaining three dimensions curled up very small. The state of the world on a brane encodes what is happening in the five dimensional region.”
So can you relate the zero to the point to the curve, etc. to amplitudes and configurations for me?
I have to relate everything to what I already know, which is difficult because of practically zero math background. Can we do this w/o math?
Probably not, honestly. A lot of quantum mechanics is really too unintuitive to make sense of without math. In any case, I don’t want to mislead you into thinking that I’m enough of an expert to impart a serious understanding of quantum mechanics; I can clear up some basic misconceptions, but if you want to learn quantum mechanics, you should try to learn it from someone who’s actually familiar with and uses the equations.
No, I can’t answer that. I know next to nothing about branes, beyond the fact that they’re entities posited in string theory which may or may not exist, so if I try to determine what they relate to in any analogy I’d be speculating in ignorance.
So the parts have no physical presence, but the whole does?
It might help to think of it this way. There is area under a curve in a graph, but the area under a point in the curve is zero.
Thanx! Desrtopa.
I have to relate everything to what I already know, which is difficult because of practically zero math background. Can we do this w/o math? Ultimately we are leading up to higher dimensions, right?
Let’s see if I have a clue visually:
The point is, I am trying to understand certain concepts and then put them into terms that I can relate to. Any similarity to actual theories or reality is purely coincidental.
I like to (mis)use the terms interference wave pattern and surface tension. When looking at a wooden table, we see where the molecules in the surface of the table meet with the molecules of air surrounding it. We see the ‘interference wave pattern’ not the air or the wood molecules. Now extend the analogy to dimensions. Where two dimensions intersect, another dimension (a surface tension) ‘arises’. Each dimension itself, the surface tension between two others.
If we step through the transition of a dimensionless point into a three dimensional sphere we see that each dimension is ‘contained’ within the other. A point merges into other points, which come together to form a line, which join with other lines to form a plane, which may be the surface of a sphere.
The line is the surface tension between the point and the plane. The plane is the surface tension between the sphere and the line. The sphere is the surface tension between the plane and space-time. Now replace surface tension with the term boundary.
The three spatial directions (XYZ) and Time combine to form space-time (the fourth dimension). Up/down, left/right and forward/back and joins with time, which is movement through space, and along with other dimensions interfaces with both the macro scale of planets and galaxies and in the nowuseeit/nowudon’t micro scale of Quantum incomprehensibleness.
Or as a friend told me:
“The real universe is “4-D expanding through an 11-D manifold”- and all of this makes sense when you understand: “It’s a wrapped, temporal-volumetric expansion.”-Cyberia
And as S. Hawking says:
“It seems we may live on a 3-brane—a four dimensional (three space + one time) surface that is the boundary of a five dimensional region, with the remaining three dimensions curled up very small. The state of the world on a brane encodes what is happening in the five dimensional region.”
So can you relate the zero to the point to the curve, etc. to amplitudes and configurations for me?
Probably not, honestly. A lot of quantum mechanics is really too unintuitive to make sense of without math. In any case, I don’t want to mislead you into thinking that I’m enough of an expert to impart a serious understanding of quantum mechanics; I can clear up some basic misconceptions, but if you want to learn quantum mechanics, you should try to learn it from someone who’s actually familiar with and uses the equations.
OK, thanx! but can you answer this? Are amplitude configurations the boundries in my analogy?
No, I can’t answer that. I know next to nothing about branes, beyond the fact that they’re entities posited in string theory which may or may not exist, so if I try to determine what they relate to in any analogy I’d be speculating in ignorance.
Am I the only one who really wants to make a joke about zombies here?
I’d like to hear it! Even if I am the brunt of the joke.
Well, I didn’t actually bother to construct a joke at the time, but it would have been something on the order of:
“What does a zombie string-theoretician consider the fundamental non-perturbative features of string theory to be?”
″BRANES!”