What Is A Dimension And How Many Are There?

What's the real meaning of a dimension? Are there more than 3?

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
What if you could slip in and out of the
world you're currently in. Are you talking about like opening
a door to another dimension, because you know that's just
science fiction, right, is it really? Are you sure there
could be more to the world than the world we
see around us? You know, like there's this three D
world we live in, but maybe this world that we're
in actually kind of extends somewhere else. It's certainly true

(00:31):
that we know very little about how the universe works,
So there's the possibility to sort of blow things open
and discover that the universe is rich in ways we
hadn't imagined. And one of the highest candidates in my
mind is this concept that there might be other dimensions
to space and time. Well, I'm excited about this podcast.
I feel like it's going to add a whole new
dimension to our conversation. I feel like you worked way

(00:55):
too hard, but I laughed the theme the theme. So, Hi,

(01:20):
I'm Jorge and I'm Daniel, and we're at the authors
of the book We Have No Idea and this is
our podcast. Daniel and Jorge explain the universe today on
the podcast Extra Dimensions, Dimensions, dimensions and also non extra dimensions.
The ones you know and love and shake your booty

(01:42):
too on Friday nights. What is a dimensions? Right? There's
essential dimensions and then there's extra dimensions. I feel like
there's some sort of judgment you're making their like extra
like second class dimensions or not necessary dimensions, or if
you have to cut them away, you know, you could
just prune them out of your life without King twice.
You don't need him to make a podcast apparently. Actually,
I think, as you'll discover when we break this down,

(02:03):
explain what dimensions are. All the dimensions that exist are
absolutely essential for physics to work, and you know, physics
is for and fundamental. If physics doesn't work, nothing works. Yeah,
And these days I feel like we kind of need
an emergency dimension too, just in case, you know, you
mean you want a trap door you can slip into
some emergency dimension where nobody can hear, yeah, or you know,
just throw some extra heat from global warming or that

(02:27):
would be awesome, just like a venting dimension. Just dimension
you want to just have like a black circle on
the on the floor of your office where you can
press a button and suck anything you want into into
another dimension. But this is a really mind blowing topic
and really kind of challenges your what you know about

(02:48):
the world around you. We were curious about what people
out there thought about extra dimensions and how many of
them are there. Yeah, So I went around and I
asked people. I said, what is the dimension and how
many do you think there are? Here's what they had
to say. I'm not sure. If I was watching Interstellar,
I heard it was five dimensions, so I was like,

(03:10):
but realistic, realistic? I don't know. I heard of a
four dimensions, faith dimension. I don't know if anything beyond that.
I don't know a lot of the fifth dimension, the
sixth dimension, the movies we have seen right right, So
I mean using time as a conundrum, that can be
many dimensions and you can go from one dimension. No,

(03:30):
I don't know scientifically. I just know like fictionally, like
when they say there's like different dimensions, and I think
of like kind of like time traveling. But and I
don't know how many dimensions there are, all right, not
a lot of deep knowledge about dimensions, yes, definitely some
deep misunderstandings about what dimensions are. Some people out there

(03:51):
seem to have some concept, you know, that dimensions are
not universes, that they're not parallel places you can go to,
but that they're like a direction in space. So we
have some knowledge but also a lot of misconceptions. So
that totally motivates this podcast. We should really break this
down and explain from the beginning what is a dimension? Yeah,
because in science fiction you always see them talk about

(04:11):
dimensions that if it's like another parallel universe, you know,
like it's just like ours, but it's in another dimension,
creature from the other dimension. But that's kind of hard
to use normally, right, like in doorway to another dimension
and the version of you in another dimension. That's right,
it's really used to mean parallel universe. Yeah. Why do
you think science fiction writers started using that word dimension

(04:34):
for this concept of a parallel universe. I don't know,
And um I have a lot of things to say
about that, but I don't want to because I love
science fiction and I don't want to get on the
on the bad side of science fiction writers. UM. I
think a lot of times they don't have as deep
a grasp of the science as they think they do,
and they imagine they understand it, and so they end

(04:54):
up misusing a word. UM Like, I read a lot
of science fiction with the higgs boson in it, and
the higgs bos one in those fictional universes has nothing
in common with the higgs boson in our universe except
for like how it's spelled on the page. So I
think they appropriate terms the here in science and this
use them as for whatever plot device they need. Well,

(05:17):
let's break it down. So in science fiction and that
other mentioned means like a parallel universe, but in physics
it means something else, doesn't mean a whole another universe
means just another direction of space. Right, that's right. You
can think of the question what is a dimension as
another way of saying, like, how many numbers do you
need to specify where you are? Right? Imagine that you're

(05:39):
some being that lives on a string is a one
dimensional world. What that means is that there's only one
direction you can move, and so you can specify exactly
where you are in that world with just one number,
which is how far along you are in that string. Right.
Imagine like a ruler, a single ruler, and if you say, hey,
meet me at six point five, there's no other place
at six point five, right, You just need a number

(06:00):
to tell you where you are. On that string. It's
kind of like your coordin and it's in a GPS map,
Yeah exactly. Like in a flat map, you only need
two numbers right up and down to know where you
are on a flat map, Yeah exactly. So in one dimension,
need one number. In two dimensions, which is like a surface,
like a flat piece of paper or the surface of
the Earth, you need two numbers, right, for two dimensions.

(06:21):
So that's why you need like longitude and latitude. If
you're on a two dimensional surface like the surface of
the Earth, and you just tell somebody your latitude, like
meet me at this latitude, there's an infinite number of
places that have that latitude, it's not enough to specify
your location. So in two dimensions you need two numbers.
That's what dimension means, right, Being in two dimensional world
means you need two numbers to specify it, and so

(06:44):
three D means three dimensions means you need three numbers
to specify where you are, like not just wearing the map,
but also how high up you are. Yeah exactly. So
if you're flying an airplane, right, you need to know
exactly where you are longitude and latitude, but also your altitude. Right,
you need to know that would be important. Yeah, to
know that would be you don't crush two place together
or into a mountain or something, right, because you can

(07:06):
be at the same longitude and latitude but different altitudes
and so be quite safe. Right. So three dimensional world
needs three dimensions to specify where you are. So it's
mostly just about directions. So like instead of calling dimensions,
you could just call it directions, right kind of right,
like you could say, in our three D world, we
have up and down, left, right, forward backwards. Those are

(07:28):
the three main directions. Yeah, And and there's an important
concept there which is not just main directions but orthogonal directions,
directions that don't overlap, right, so they're moving in one
of them doesn't change your position in another. You mean,
they're like in a corner of a cube. You know,
there's ninety degrees between each direction. That's right, So imagine

(07:49):
yourself on a chessboard or something right, and you can
hop left or right just along one road doesn't change
which column you're on. That's because those two directions are
orthogonal there, they don't affect each other. You can move
independently in those two right. Now, you could put a
third dimension. On a piece of paper, you put a
third direction, like a diagonal direction, but then moving along
it would change your direction and the other two. So

(08:11):
that's how you know on a piece of paper that
there are only two dimensions, because there's no place to
add a third one. Oh, I see, they need to
be like totally independent directions exactly, exactly, got it. So
that's three dimensions, and so dimensions is kind of like directions.
So then if we add more dimensions, that means that
what does that even mean? Yes, So in order for

(08:32):
there to be more dimensions, and they have to be
more ways that you can move, right, it means that
specifying your position just with three numbers isn't enough. Right,
There's like another way that you can be at those
three places but not be on top of each other. Right,
it's space has this other way you can move. And
this is really hard to think about, right, because we

(08:52):
are used to being in a three dimensional world. We
understand depth and height and and and with and these
sort of ways to move. It's hard to imagine like
where things could go or where this dimension could be, Right,
But I think it's interesting to think about how long
people have been thinking that way. You know, I think, um,
thousands of years ago, people weren't thinking in terms of

(09:14):
three dimensions. The whole concept of dimensions is actually fairly
new and scientific, what I mean, you know, it's only
a few hundred years old. You know, Decartes came up
with Cartesian coordinates. He was the first person to really
lay this idea out that there was a space around
us and that you could define it mathematically in terms
of a few independent directions. Yeah, but like ancient civilizations,

(09:35):
they could build pyramids and buildings and columns and blogs, right,
And it's not like they thought in two D. Well,
it's not clear how they thought. I mean, they lived
in three D. Right, Certainly they lived in the world
and they could understand it. But look at their art,
you know, their art was really flat. The whole concept
of like perspective and geometry and art is only a
few hundred years old, and some people even think that

(09:56):
art might have led the way. You know that people
artists trying to figure out how to make an image
look accurate, develop this concept of perspective in order to
describe it. And it's out of that idea of perspective
and geometry change the way people thought about the space
in front of them mathematically speaking, you mean mathematically speaking, Yeah,
that they gave us a more mathematical view of the

(10:18):
very world we live in. And this is one of
the core problems is that it's hard to pull apart
the way you think and think about the ways you
could be thinking, right, other ways that you could imagine
the world, because it's so ingrained in it's just the
way you are. It's really difficult to imagine what would
you like to live in another country, or to use
another kind of toy let or whatever, right, because these
are just the way we live and we think it's

(10:40):
basic and inherent to everything, but it might not be so.
At some point somebody said, hey, hey, guys, wait a minute.
If we're going to do science, we we got to
think about these directions of space. Yeah, and the whole
concept of spaces is even kind of new. I mean,
Aristotle didn't believe in space. He thought everything was filled, right,
He's like, there's no void, everything is filled, there's no
gap between me and the air surrounding me. You know.

(11:03):
He didn't believe in atoms, right. He thought air was continuous, fluid,
and everything was continuous and the cold concept of like
a huge universe out there mostly empty was an anathema
to Aristotle, and you know, Aristotle was an influential dude,
So people thought that way for a long long time,
and it wasn't until much later the people embraced this
concept of space. And you know, Decarte invented this this

(11:26):
coordinate system, which now seems like totally trivial. Right. I
love these inventions in history where you're like, do dude
just wrote down X Y Z, and he's like a
genius and like a staggering genius, and the history of
intellectual thought, like it's so obvious, but that's a clue
that the concept was so deep and fundamental and insightful
that changed the way everybody thinks so much that you

(11:46):
can't even imagine another way. Right. It's like when you
see a joke in a movie, you wish you had
been born a few hundred years ago, so you could,
you know, become more famous a little bit more easily.
I don't think I would have been a man of
leisure and had the opportunity to do any science. Plus
a few years ago, like the food wasn't nearly as good.
So I'm pretty happy to be alive now, yeah, I
think the bathrooms were also less comfortable, and then the

(12:09):
broadband was terrible. Yeah. Um. But you know it's like
when you see trope in a movie and you're like, oh,
my god, what a cliche, and then you discover, oh,
this is the movie that invented that cliche, and actually
it's totally forward thinking. And at the time it was
it was a crazy idea, right, That's how crazy the
idea of dimensions was at the time. And then Newton
extended it to space. Right, he said, well, if the

(12:31):
laws of physics are the same on the Earth as
they are out in the cosmos, that these three dimensions
should extend all the way out and they could go
on forever. And so this whole concept of thinking of
the world around us is having three dimensions and that
we moved through it in this space is actually kind
of new. Okay, So we think that there are only
three dimensions in our world. I mean, that's why we're

(12:51):
used to We're used to only being able to move forward, backwards,
left and right, up and down. And so now this
idea is that maybe in the same universe that we're in,
you can also move in other directions that are sort
of invisible or not apparent to us right now. Yeah,
and so let's think that through, Like what would that
be like? And we talked at the top of the

(13:12):
program about you know, could you disappear into another dimension? Yeah,
let's get into it, but first let's take a quick break. Okay, So,
how can there be more than three dimensions around me

(13:34):
right now? How it is an even possible? Well, almost
anything is possible. I mean, we should take everything we
know about physics with a huge grain of salt, right
because everything we've learned is something we've learned by studying
a tiny little slice of the kinds of stuff in
the universe only around us here on Earth for the
last few decades. Basically, so a lot of things that
we think could be wrong. We should be prepared for

(13:54):
almost anything you think is fundamentally obviously true to be
overthrown by physics in the next few decades. Okay, so
you're saying physicists are salty A and B. Not even
the things we take for granted, like three dimensions we're
certain about. Is that what you're saying? That's right? In fact,
we're pretty sure there are more than three dimensions I mean,

(14:15):
no concrete proof, but if the world would make more
sense if there were more than three dimensions, Well, I
guess um. It's something we had in our book that
I always liked, was this idea that why only three dimensions? Yeah?
Like what is special about the number three? Right? Yeah?
Three is a weird number? Like there's no argument in
physics it says there must be only three dimensions. So

(14:38):
that's a weird thing. It's weird. And mathematicians don't like
the number three either, you know, they like simple numbers zero,
pie e, nobody, but the Catholic Church thinks that three
is a deep fundamental number in the universe. Right, Um,
why don't we think about, like what would be like
if we saw something that was four dimensional? Okay, so
I can move forward, backwards, left, right, up and down,

(15:01):
and I can also move in this other fourth dimension. Yeah,
let's invent a name for this fourth dimension. Okay, you're
the creative one, go ahead, Yeah, sure, red blue okay,
Marshamallow unicorn, marshallow unicorn. No, I like red and blue.
That's cool. So before we think about the fourth dimension,
that's practiced by thinking about three dimensions as if we

(15:22):
were two dimensional beings. Right, say we lived on the
surface of a piece of paper. Okay, so we're flat
Daniels flat Jorge talking on a flat podcast somehow delivered
to you. I mean like we're stuck in a comic book, yes,
exactly right, or a TV screen. Yeah, we are comic
characters on a comic page. Now, of course we live
in a three dimensional world. But as comic book characters,

(15:43):
we're not aware of that. We can only see our
two dimensions. Right, We're moving around inside the page, we're
walking around each other, we're bumping into each other, but
we're still stuck on the page. Yeah. Now, imagine what
happens if a three dimensional object passes through the page, right,
what do we sense? What is that like? For us
to experience a higher dimensional object, it would suddenly appear, right,

(16:05):
or if it was I guess, if it was a
like a sphere, like a ball going into our page,
if we would see first the dot, and then it
would get bigger and bigger and bigger, and then would
get smaller and smaller and smaller, like it would just
suddenly appear, yes, exactly, because it's moving in this dimension,
we can't understand or appreciate or measure, right, And so
we just see a slice of it. We see the

(16:26):
two dimensional slice of this three dimensional object, and that
slice is changing as it moves through this dimension that
we can't observe or notice. Right, So that's the useful strategy, right,
that's how you think about going up one dimension. So
now we're in a three dimensional world, right, maybe we're
three D people, flesh and blood, etcetera. And now imagine somebody,

(16:47):
a four dimensional being, passes a four dimensional sphere through
our universe. The analogy tells us that it would start
out looking like an object, appearing and then growing and
then shrinking, right, and um, so that's how you see
a higher dimensional object. You only observe your dimensional slice
of it. So we see a three dimensional slice of

(17:08):
a four dimensional sphere. It would do things that three
D spheres just can't do. You only see part of it,
that's right. Yeah, Because the three D slice has three dimensions, right,
it looks like a physical object, but because you can
move in this fourth dimension, it can do things that
make no sense to us. Right. It can seem to
disappear or change or grow or whatever. It's like. You
call it a slice but it's it could almost also

(17:30):
like the shadow or the projection of that thing in
our world. Oh I like that projection. Yeah, okay, so
that's what What would it? What would it feel like
for me to move in this other dimension? Like if
I'm sitting here talking to you and then suddenly I
decided to move in the other direction, what would that
be like? Well, if you are a three dimensional being

(17:50):
and you can only observe three dimensions, right, so you
can't tell where you are in this fourth dimension, then
you're going to be seeing different three D projections of
that four D world, and so the whole world around
you would change. It would change, Yeah, the same way
a four D object passing through your three D world
would shift and change in ways that don't make sense

(18:10):
to you. If you, as a three D object pass
through a four D world, then the whole world around
you could change. Like what does your house look like
in this fourth dimension? Is it the same? Does it change?
Does it disappear? Does it have a finite extent in
this fourth dimension? So that if you move through that
fourth dimension, your house disappears, right, and you're not observing
the whole thing. Okay, I'm getting a three D headache

(18:33):
you're getting exactly. Imagine a cartoon character walking through our world, right,
only perceiving in two dimensions. Things would suddenly appear to
them and disappear, and the whole world around them would
would be changing constantly. Would be very hard to understand. Oh,
I see. So you're saying, like, if I can move
in four dimensions, but maybe my house didn't have a
four dimensional aspect to it, then it would just disappear

(18:56):
once I moved to this other dimension. Yeah, like that
comment that two D comic book character jumping off the page, right,
if they can still only experience two D, then the
world around them, the comic world they've known and loved,
disappears instantly, right Wow. Okay, so then it could it
could be sort of like in science fiction where it's
a whole another world, right, Like not really a whole
another world. It's like it's a larger it's an expansion

(19:19):
of our world. We there were, we are a slice
of a larger world. Okay, I could change my red
blue coordinate and what if there's a whole another world
in another red Boudloe coordinate, then I would sort of
be moving to another world. Yeah. Absolutely, that could totally
scientifically actually happen, but there wouldn't be a door, and

(19:39):
there'd probably no marshmallows and no uniforms. But you know,
I can't guarantee. Like I said, we should be prepared
for everything. I think. I think all physics theories should
have the caveat. You know, not may pack your own marshmallows.
It's double footnote. Forget about the unicorns and the marshmallows.

(20:00):
B y o marshmallows. Okay, So it's all about kind
of like slices of reality and projections a reality. That's
what would be like to move between dimensions. Yeah, and
so if you're moving through these dimensions and things are changing,
then you have to build in your mind the sort
of four dimensional map of this space. You're like, Okay,
when I'm on the red end of this dimension, the

(20:22):
world looks like this. When I'm on the blue end,
the world looks like that, and then you can sort
of interpolate between and get an idea of how things
change as you move through this fourth red blue dimension. Right. Um,
but you have a little bit of practice with that already,
because in some sense you already know how to move
through a fourth dimension and that's time right, oh, right,
time people, something's call it the fourth dimension. Yeah, exactly.

(20:44):
If you think about time as another dimension, like a
direction you can move, it's a good practice because moving
through time is different from moving in like X, y
or z. Right, there's no replacing one with the other.
It's something like you can do it while standing still. Yes, exactly,
it's into pendent right. And really to specify where you
are you need to say when. Also, you can't say, hey,

(21:05):
meet me at Lexington and Fourth Avenue, you know, Um,
you have to say, well tomorrow, next year, yesterday, like
when are we meeting? Right, um? So you really do
need to specify time. And also it's in this time direction.
You're used to the world changing, Like the world is
different now than it was a hundred years ago, and
it will be different in a hundred years. The whole

(21:25):
three D world does evolve through time, and you're used
to sort of making a understanding of the world through time.
So it's not that much of a brain meld to
think that the world is changing through this fourth dimension
because you're you're used to doing that a little bit
with time. It's kind of like a videotape of view,
scrub it back and forth. If you hit rewinding for

(21:45):
it's backwards. It's like the world changes, but it doesn't move.
That's right exactly. And you know, listen to our podcast
about time travel to know how time is different from
the other dimensions. Rights like another dimension, but it's not
actually like another dimension. Right, has all sorts of special
rules and we don't understand it at all. And one
of these days we're gonna have time to sit down
and do a whole podcast about how time is weird.

(22:08):
But that's not the time for today. We'll run out
of time time after time. Cool. Well, I guess the
question is why are we even entertaining these crazy ideas
about dimensions? Like what makes us think that there could
be more dimensions than the three we're in? Yeah, that's
a great question. But before we get into it, let's

(22:28):
take a quick break. What makes physicists think that there's
more than three dimensions in our universe? Well? Number one,
physicists hope there's more dimensions because that would be like

(22:49):
a crazy discovery and awesome and like mind blowing is
there it could be more funding in that other dimensions
like a product cats, Right, that's right, or you just
have more lab space or something. So it's just it's
like on the list of crazy ideas you would love
to discover because it reveals the universe. It's different from
the way you always thought it was. And nobody said
there can be more dimensions, and so therefore it's tantalizing

(23:12):
to be the one who discovers it. That's right, But
it's more than that. We have some concrete hints that
there might be more dimensions. And hint number one is
this the unification of space and time into a concept
called space time, right, And this is Albert Einstein. More
than a years ago. He noticed that if you think
of space and time together as one four dimensional world, right,

(23:33):
that's a lot of things mathematically make a lot of sense. Um,
things just sort of unify. But most importantly, it helps
us understand what gravity is. Right. So we're used to
thinking of forces, and space is totally different. Right. Force
of gravity is something that pulls you through space, pushes
you away, or whatever. Um, it helps you move through space.

(23:54):
But Einstein, by bringing time and space together into space time,
made this argument that act truly, gravity is not a force.
It's just a bending of space. Right, You curve space
in a certain way, and then it's very natural for
the Earth to go around the Sun or the Earth
makes a bending of space, and so gravity is just
you sort of falling into the well that the Earth

(24:15):
makes in space. Right. So Si Einstein said, hey, actually
there are aren't Actually there aren't three dimensions. There's actually four,
and so that's kind of kick things off. That kicks
things off. And then people thought, well, if you can
explain gravity, this force we all know and love, in
terms of other dimensions, can we explain the other forces
in terms of other dimensions? Right? And so guys said, well,

(24:37):
if you make five dimensions, then you can kind of
explain electromagnetism, Like maybe electromagnetism isn't the force either, it's
just a way of bending in five dimensions. And then
to explain the other forces, you add another dimension. Other forces,
you add another dimension, meaning like the reason two magnets
are attracted to each other, it's not some kind of

(24:58):
magical force, it's just that in this if dimension they
want to be together. Yeah, Or that magnets are the
manifestation of space five dimensional space getting bent in such
a way that it's the most natural thing for these
things to do slide together or to be pushed apart,
and exactly the way the gravity is a bending of
four dimensional space. Maybe the idea goes that space has

(25:22):
more dimensions eight, nine, ten, eleven. This is why you
might hear sometimes that space might have eleven dimensions, ten spatials,
ten physical dimensions of motion, and one for time. Let's
just go for the Baker's dozen, you know, why not?
This is not like an auction or where we saying
let's figure out what the universe is. I hear twelve
going once, let's do anybody for thirteen. That's not how

(25:45):
That's not how physics conferences go. No, No, you've been
out of academia a little too long, I think. For Hey,
that's not the way we figure out the way the
world works. Um, it's not like the prices, right, you know,
who can get the closest without going over Welcome to
physics the game show. But it turns out, if you
want to explain the four fundamental forces we have, right, gravity, electromagnetism,

(26:09):
the weak force, and the strong force, you need ten
physical dimensions, ten dimensions of motion, and one dimension of time. Really, like,
that's part of the current theory of physics is that
there are eleven dimensions. That's one theory of physics. Yeah,
it's um theory that involves strings. Right. So string theory
maybe you've heard of, and it says that the universe

(26:30):
has ten dimensions and that three of them are physical
that we can move through, and that the other ones
are ways that the universe can bend, that the space
can bend. That explains what forces are. Really I never
knew that about string theory, is that it's it uses
these dimensions to explain the other forces. Yeah. Yeah, And
you know, the's a lot of questions. They're like, why

(26:52):
are these three dimensions seem to be infinite and orthogonal
and physical and the other dimensions are like these curled
up little rink that you can't like notice or move through. Mean,
somebody out there might be saying, Okay, maybe there are
ten dimensions. How do I move through those? Why can't
I notice them? Um? You know what's going on with
those other dimensions? Even if they do explain the forces,

(27:13):
where are they? Right? And the thing is that the
dimensions that we know and love X, Y and Z
might be different from those dimensions because X, Y and Z.
We think go on forever. I mean, we don't know
how long the universe goes, meaning they don't have to
be straight, right, like another fifth dimension, sixth dimension. It
could be like a little curly loop where it could

(27:34):
be who knows, right, that's right, we don't even know
about X, Y, Z if they eventually curl around themselves
and come back to where you started. We don't know
if you go straight forever, if you run out of
space or come back to where you started. But let's
assume for now that X, Y and Z go on forever.
The universe is infinite, and you know, and there's an
infinite number of locations in X, Y and Z, and
you can go on forever and never come back to

(27:55):
where you started. That's probably not true for the other dimensions.
The other dimensions were pretty sure are rolled up little curls,
tiny tiny little curls like ten to the minus thirty
centimeters or tend of the minus ten centimeters, meaning like
like if my coffee cup suddenly took off and went
off into this one of these other dimensions, it would
just make a little loop, like it would disappear and

(28:17):
then come back. Yeah, that there aren't many places to
go in these other dimensions. And also we don't even
really know what it would be like to notice those dimensions.
I mean, um, if those dimensions don't play our role
in our lives, then you know we have and we
have no senses in which to detect motion in those dimensions.
And also of motion of those dimensions is really limited

(28:37):
because they're really super duper tiny, then you might not
even notice, right. The takeaway is that those other dimensions,
if they exist, are really small, um and looped up
on themselves. So they're really different from the kind of
dimensions were familiar. So well, physicists suspect that there are
dimensions of space. They're probably not the dimensions you can
move through or extend your house into, or go and

(28:58):
gallop on unicorns. While problem wouldn't be like the ones
that we have and know about. They'll be really weird
and different, pretty small, yeah, And so mostly they would
confirm like our understanding of the way forces work. And
maybe string theory, and you know, there's a bunch of
variants of string theory. Uh, there's one variant of string
theory called bosonic string theory that suggests twenty six dimensions

(29:21):
in order to get all the math to work out
really really nicely. How do they pick these numbers? Is
it just from the math or they I don't think
they're just like, you know, going out for froli and
being doing like, hey man, how many dimensions you think
there are today? Is that your model of how physics
is happening? But guess what I mean? It's like twenty
six makes the math work, but twenty seven and twenty

(29:41):
five do not. That's kind of exactly exactly. I think
the game is what's the minimum number of dimensions you
need to make the math work to make the theory
come together to have a universe that makes sense. So
it kind of seems like all the dimensions we have,
that's that's it. That's we can't escape to another universe
or other world, or we're kind of stuck with this reality.

(30:02):
Hey is this reality is so bad? Or hey man,
you're impressing me. You mean like, hey, this is an
awesome reality. I'm glad we're stuck with this awesome and
amazing reality. We have to spend at all day looking
at the pressing news articles. They will be good news
one day in this dimension getting and there's all sorts
of other fascinating things we get to in another episode

(30:23):
of the podcast, which can talk about like why these
dimensions can explain mysteries like why is gravity so weak?
It's so much weaker than the other forces, and can
we make black holes in the large Hadron Collider? All
these really fascinating things could be explained by having other
dimensions of space and time and having them be rolled
up and curled up. It can even explain why how

(30:44):
farts moved through the universe. Why what it could explain
how farts moved through the universe. And you're like what,
You're like, stop paying attention there, he said, from here
you know about fart physics. Of fart physics is a
whole new growing field. Yeah. To put it in perspective, right,

(31:09):
remember that the universe that you think you understand, it's
definitely not the universe that we live in. Right. The
universe we live in is more complicated and richer and
fascinating than you can probably even imagine. And sometimes we
get these crazy glimpses of other possible theories of how
the universe could work, and they might actually work that way,
and and one day we hope physics will crack them
open and reveal to us the universe is strange and

(31:31):
bizarre and beautiful in ways that we can we really
have a hard time even understanding. Yeah, and you'll discover
there's more sites to it than you think. Yeah, and
one day you will eat a four D marshmallow. That's right,
writing a unicorn. Yeah, how many sides are there on
a four D marshmallow? I mean three D marshmallows a
three D c right, so it's a four D hyper moment. Actually,

(31:52):
marshmallow only has two D s right, like two flat
ends in one cylinder. What are you saying marshmallows are cylinders?
I think I thought marshmallows were cubes. Did I just
blow your mind? You just taught me the universe is
different from what I always thought it was. Yeah, there's
always something's more to the universe. No, that was terrible

(32:14):
slash wonderful. The four D version of that joke really
is hilarious. Thank you everyone for listening. This has been
a mind blowing experience in other dimensions. See you next time.
If you still have a question after listening to all

(32:36):
these explanations, please drop us a line. We'd love to
hear from you. You can find us at Facebook, Twitter,
and Instagram at Daniel and Jorge That's One Word, or
email us at Feedback at Daniel and Jorge dot com