Can we see the invisible?  Of course not because if we could it would not be invisible.

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However, one of the primary goals of science is to extend our knowledge of nature’s processes by "seeing" the invisible.

For example, Isaac Newton showed the position of a planet could be predicted if one assumed that mass generated an attractive gravitational force on all other objects that was directly proportional to their combined masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them.

However, no one can "see" a gravitational force.  How then can scientists be sure that the "thing" called a "gravitational force" really exists?

The answer is they cannot.  They can only assume that it does based on the fact that using it they can make accurate predictions of a planets position.

But history has shown, assuming the existence of something based only on its predicted powers is fraught with danger.

For example in the Ptolemaic or geocentric system of astronomy, the existence of epicycles were required to explain the retrograde motion of the Moon, Sun, and planets.

It was not until scientific investigations were stimulated by Copernicus’s publication of his heliocentric theory did scientists realize epicycles did not exist.

This is true even though many Greek, Indian, and Muslim savants had published heliocentric hypotheses centuries before Copernicus.

However, why did it take almost two thousand years for science to realize that their ideas were correct?

One reason may have been that the existence of epicycles was based solely on their predictive powers and not on the observations of the environment.  If the scientists who assumed the existence of epicycles had taken the time to see or observe how objects moved on earth, they would have realized there was a problem with that concept because, at least on earth, objects do not "naturally" follow a curve path.

However, because the scientific community was still able to make accurate predictions of a planet’s position based on the existence of epicycles they were able to ignore these observations and suppressed the correct Greek and Muslim ideas for almost 2000 years.  This happened even though it was a more logical and accurate predicative methodology.

For the past 100 years scientist have used two theories to define the universe.

Einstein theories use the unobservable concept of a space-time manifold to explain the macroscopic universe while Quantum Theories use probability functions to explain particle interactions, which are not based on physically observing those interactions.

However, similar to the geocentric model of the solar system the acceptance of these theories is not based on observations because no one has ever observed a probability or a space-time dimension, but only on their the predictive abilities.

But as mentioned earlier history has shown, assuming the existence of something based only on its predicted powers is fraught with danger.

It has been shown in "The Imagineer’s Chronicles" one can, by extrapolating the observable properties of our three-dimensional environment to a fourth identical *spatial* dimension explain and predict the quantum properties of mass and the relativistic properties of motion.

For example, the article "Why is mass and energy quantized?" Oct, 4, 2007 showed that one can predict the quantum or particle properties of mass and energy in terms of a resonant system or "structure" generated by a matter wave on a "surface" of a three dimensional space manifold with respect to a fourth *spatial* dimension.

However, even though we may never be able to see a fourth *spatial* dimension we can observe how dimensions interact in our three-dimensional environment to give us an observational basis for understanding how it would interact with it.

This is not possible in terms of time a space time dimensions because we do not observe time as having observable physical properties

We as scientists we should remember that we can never prove the existence of the invisible.

Later Jeff 

The "Shadows" of four spatial dimensions

Copyright 2009 Jeffrey O’Callaghan

(In a PDF format)

1 Comment to “Seeing the invisible”

1. Isaac Newton — 04/06/2009 @ 11:06 am
   

   Very nice blog and very interesting information. I’ll definitely favorite it.

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