experiment to test string theory

[chebby]

If gravitons escape into other dimensions, doesn't it mean that gravitons from other dimensions can escape into ours?

What if we try to find a gravitational disturbance, send a probe there and find that there is no mass there (any dark matter or anything) to account of it. Would this prove that it's a mass in another dimension that has gravitons escaping into ours?

 

[harper05]

One of my favorite current ideas, postulated by a physics professor at harvard, I cant remember her name right now, but if i find it ill post a link here.

She says that gravity is constantly leaking into our universe, from the 11th dimension,( the gravity dimension), and in her math she uses this to explain the weaker force of gravity. And they also hope to find proof of this at the LHC! which will probably win her and Stephen Hawking( for his work on black hole radiation) a nobel prize!

Lisa Randall, thats it, google her.. Very exciting stuff..

I like to think of the other dimensions as places within our universe, within matter, most smaller on the atomic level or smaller. Not places separate from our universe. Ive listed some of the "thaught" dimensions, this helped me alot, to kinda put a name on them, not just think of them as mysterious unknown places. In math sometimes we refer to the extra 7 as w1,w2,w3,w4,w5,w6,w7, it makes it so alien or wierd...

Length, width, hieght, time or (space,time), strong nuke force, weak nuke force, charge, gravity, electromagnetic force, pressure..... My memory is bad anyone Know the one im missing? Cant think of it..

Forgive my simplicity, Hopefully this helps ...

 

[harper05]

LIGO and other gravitational wave detectors are constantly looking for gravity wave bursts and such. google LIGO

 

[chebby]

I just read up on LIGO - very interesting! Can't wait till they make it more sensitive with Advanced Ligo and put Lisa into space.

I have only basic physics background from college days but I saw the NOVA's elegant unviverse and the idea of branes which allow extra dimensions sounds very appealing to me (unless I understand the dimensions too literally.) It seems most physicists are skeptical about the idea (and just limit their theoretical wonderings to a small set of micro dimensions you mentioned) but some (like Dr. Randall you mentioned) are supportive of it. Bascially my idea is a variation of branes idea, is that dark matter is actually mass in other dimension(s) that clumps together to mass in our dimensions because gravitons can freely travel in between. That explains why noone seen dark matter!

One question: these microscopic dimensions that you mentioned, w1-w7, do they correspond to M-theory? Or one of the 5 the were used before? Thanks.

 

[mabus]

Bascially my idea is a variation of branes idea, is that dark matter is actually mass in other dimension(s) that clumps together to mass in our dimensions because gravitons can freely travel in between. That explains why noone seen dark matter!

I definately agree with your views on Branes being a possible solution to dark energy and dark matter. I think it certainly makes more sense than appealing to exotic unseen unexplicable matter and energy. That all just seems luck mysticism to me frankly, 95% of the universe is there but invisible... really? :roll:

I go back to the 2 dimensional ant walking along the surface of a table. If an object is overhead and "exerts mass" on the table (spacetime) warping it. We would not see the object (the matter) causing the gravity. Brane theory perfectly explains this phenomenon IMO.

 

[harper05]

I guess w1-w7 was a poor example,..
my point was it is easier for me to think of the property of the dimension, than a variable, or direction of freedom.

But yes the w's come from string theory, and more specifically, in a book about physics called "the end of time" by Julian Barbour, I would'nt recommend it unless you have abundant excess of,.... "time". He says time is an illusion and moreover motion is an illusion. Just static instants recreated in succession on the planck scale. In a nutshell, "The arrow paradox", If I shoot an arrow at a target say 100 meters. when the arrow is half way there it will have 50 m. When it is halfway there again 25, and so on, and so on, it will never reach the target.. This one is readily resolved in physics by adding time to the equation. However, Julian Barbour,s argument claims the arrow in the target, is not the same one that left the bow! Simply put, he thinks the arrow is recreated at planck intervals all the way to the target. You have to do all this imagining of platonia, red and green mists, triangle land, its really out there... But by all means indulge!!

But then again, and I forget who said it but the basic quote is this, maybe Feynman, "we are all in agreement,.. that your theory is crazy... Now we just have to figure out why it works, and makes perfect sense".

 

[ramparts]

The quote was by Niels Bohr, and is much more awesome than that:

"We are all agreed that your theory is crazy. The question that divides us is whether it is crazy enough to have a chance of being correct."

 

[harper05]

Thank you Ramparts, Niels Bohr, True that.. Good Stuff