-
Email An Imagineer
Blog Search
Loading...We have shown throughout The Imagineer’s Chronicles there are many observations suggesting space is composed of four *spatial* dimensions instead of four-dimensional space-time.
The expansion of the universe is one of them.
Most cosmologists believe our universe is undergoing a radial spatial expansion based on a discovery made by Edwin Hubble that distant galaxies are moving away from us. They also believe the universe began with a "Big Bang" because if one traces the motion of these galaxies back in time they merge at point in the past.
Alexander Friedmann developed the theoretical foundations for this expansion when he realized a solution to Einstein’s field equations describes an expanding universe, which starts from a point (called a singularity) whose radius expands with time to become the universe, as we know it today.
This observation, that the universe is expanding and Friedmann’s solutions provide the foundation for the Big Bang Theory and the Standard Model of Cosmology and Particle Physics, which for the past 25 years has given us a complete mathematical description of the particles and forces that shape our world. It predicts with such accuracy the observable microscopic properties of particles and the macroscopic cosmologic properties stars and galaxies that many physicists believe it is the ultimate theory of mass and energy.
One can understand how an expansion of universe could explain the observations made by Hubble by using an analogy of an ant living on a surface of a balloon. First, one must imagine that the ant can only move on the surface of a huge balloon, which to the ant’s understanding is the total extent of universe. At an early stage of the balloon-universe, the ant measures distances between separate points on the balloon, which serves as his standard. As the balloon is inflated, the distance between the same points is measured and determined to be larger by a proportional factor. The surface of the balloon still appears flat, and yet all the points have appeared to recede from the ant, indeed every point on the surface of the balloon is proportionally farther from the ant than it was earlier.
Similarly, galaxies in our universe would appear to recede from us as if the universe was expanding for the same reason that the points on the balloon receded from the ant as his or her universe expands.
As mentioned earlier the Standard Model successfully answers many of the questions regarding the cosmological structure of the universe and the creation of subatomic particles based on the existence of an expanding universe.
However, for all of it successes it has one very obvious shortfall in that it does not answer the question or define "What is the universe expanding into?"
But there are some who say that it would not make any sense to ask what our universe is expanding towards for the same reason that it would not make any sense for the ant in the earlier example to ask what his "universe" is expanding towards. This is because the ant is confined to the two-dimensional surface of the balloon; the existence of a universe outside of that surface would not affect him.
This would be true if physicists and cosmologists had not used the concept of the dimensional interactions, which they associate with a physically expanding universe to develop the abstract mathematical basis for Standard Model of cosmology and particle physics. However, because the Standard Model is based on the assumption that the universe is expanding, what it is physical towards must have an effect on our universe. Therefore it should be able to define what it is expanding towards.
However, even though we are confined to our three-dimensional universe we can get an understanding of some of the properties of the dimension it is expanding towards by observing the effects of this expansion on our universe.
For example, we know that three-dimensional space is must be expanding towards a higher spatial dimension not a time or space-time dimension because the observations made by Hubble indicate the universe is undergoing a spatial expansion.
This is one of the many reasons for assuming, as was done in the article “Embedded Dimensions” Oct 22, 2007 that our three-dimensional universe is embedded in four *spatial* dimensions is because it would allow cosmologist to define the direction of the observed spatial expansion of our three-dimensional universe.
However this is not possible in a universe consisting of only four dimensional space-time because time or a space-time dimension it does not possess the spatial properties required to define its observed expansion.
Later Jeff
The "Shadows" of four spatial dimensions
Copyright 2008 Jeffrey O’Callaghan
(In a PDF format)
going where we are not,because we left it behind us.
It sounds interesting but I am not sure that I agree with you completely….
Hi! I was surfing and found your blog post… nice! I love your blog.
Cheers! Sandra. R.
Sign: zdbrw Hello!!! zzxwt and 4996hzsuhdmnnr and 5226 : Thanks. We look forward to hearing from you again and for your opinions on the world of work.