Jacob Ghitis critiques the following article, from Physics Web June 1999:
********** How many dimensions are we living in?**************
--This question is fundamental and yet, astonishingly, it remains unresolved. Of course, on the everyday level it appears that we are living in four dimensions: three space plus one time dimension.--
** "Of course," not everybody appears to agree on the 4th. **
--But in recent months theoretical physicists have discovered that collisions between high-energy particles at accelerators may reveal the presence of extra space time dimensions.--
** DISCOVERED that something MAY happen? Besides, I think that it is not collisions between particles at high speed ("high energy") but between heavy atoms. And not between, but high-speed ones crashing onto static ones. And only one collision (crash) at a time.
That is, if the author is referring to the planned experiment with gold atoms. I've seen the graphics in Science about the expected results.
According to the simplified M*A*T*T*E*R postulate, the results of the experiment will depend on the intensity of the impact with the resulting rise in temperature.
If not sufficiently critic, only nucleons will be released, with large accompanying energy from the strong force, manifested as all types of E-M radiations and a shock wave due to the surrounding air. (By the way, I wonder why low-energy explosions have not been tested on the moon or in space.)
If the temperature reached by the impact is totally critic, nucleons are broken too, the energy of the quarks' 'gluons' being now added to provide the maximal energy released, together with the nuclear (quark) particles (MASS). Perhaps some of these particles form part of the cosmic-ray menagerie.
If completely successful, the experiment may destroy the anvil.
I posit that cosmic explosions vary with the degree of nuclear shattering. **
-- On scales where we can measure the acceleration of falling objects due to gravity, or study the orbital motion of planets or satellites, the gravitational force seems to be described by a 1/r2 law.--
** This is The Law of Inverse Squares, also appliccable to electrical attraction. **
--The most sensitive direct tests of the gravitational law are based on torsion-balance experiments that were first performed by Henry Cavendish in 1798. However, the smallest scales on which this type of experiment can be performed are roughly 1 mm (see J C Long, H W Chan and J C Price 1999 Nucl. Phys. B 539 23). At smaller distances, objects could be gravitating in five or more dimensions that are rolled up or "compactified" an idea that is bread-and-butter to string theorists.--
** Here is where my article String Theory Revisited comes to the fore. (See it at http://www.journaloftheoretics.com/ February-March).
I was recently in a seminar on string, at the HU in Jerusalem. I approached two American and one Greek lecturers, about "infinities" and Zeno's "Achilles and the Tortoise" Paradox.
The only knowledge offered was from one of the Americans, after a pause, and with an air of incertitude: "Infinities? Yes, yes, it is interesting, but you know, string theory is still not clear."
By the way, I did not understand a thing of the lectures, and after three hours opted for spending my time with my resident daughter and family. Still, at a lecture, I saw the following formula being chalked down on the board: a-->0 and asked if 'a' really reached 0. As the lecturer looked unfazedly at me with disgust, I asked if my question was a manifestation of ignorance, and now he was happy to answer!
Returning to the paragraph I am critiqueing, it looks to me that the very close distance of less than 1 mm approaches now the critical situation
of nearing 0 distance, which is "forbidden," as is the absolute 0 kelvin
in the case of the Bose-Einstein condensate. The "compactified dimensions," whose meaning I cannot fathom, are reminiscent of the 'voraginous hole' that I assume to be present at the 'virtual' center of gravitational bodies.
I postulate that every physical property has critical limits where said property behaves in a non-linear (complex) manner. An example of nonlinear behavior at critical limits occurs when mass "increases" and time "warps" at a velocity approaching light's.
I wonder if the "relativity" phenomena are not manifestations of "physical property extremism." By the same token, quanta phenomena would be manifestations proper to an 'extremely' submicroscopic mass realm. Gravitational pressure (force) makes the "primal mass" particles coalesce into the 'regular' subatomic particles, which proceed to condense into matter, starting with hydrogen. At this point, the "classical," Newtonian realm we live in makes its debut.
One can think analogically of the recently described bacteria of the genus archaea, with their "extremophilia." **
--Most string theorists however believe that the gravitational effects of compact extra dimensions are too small to be observed. Now Nima Arkani-Hamed from the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) in the US, Savas Dimopoulos at Stanford University and Gia Dvali, who is now at New York University, suggest differently (Phys. Lett. B 1998 429 263).
They advanced earlier ideas from string theory in which the strong, weak and electromagnetic forces are confined to membranes, like dirt particles trapped in soap bubbles, while the gravitational force operates in the entire higher-dimensional volume.--
** The "membranes" are to me terms used to convey what I posit are the gluons holding the potential energy derived from the gravitational pressure acting on the particles that configured the quarks.
As for the "higher-dimensional volume," the reference is to macro, (Newtonian) size. Why shouldn't gravitation start in quantum particles, as posited above?
I get the impression now that the "extra-dimensions" have nothing to do with "universes" but with attempts to rationalize phenomena that occur in the nonlinear critical limbo of two approaching centers of gravity. **
--In their theory extra dimensions should have observable effects inside particle colliders such as the Tevatron accelerator at Fermilab in the US or at the future Large Hadron Collider at CERN. The effect will show up as an excess of events in which a single jet of particles is produced with no observable particle balancing its transverse momentum compared with Standard Model expectations.--
** Since I reject "extra dimensions" as a concept resulting from the incorrect understanding of the 1/r2 law, I have nothing to add. A way might be found to determine when the critical limit of approach is reached, the law failing because of nonlinearity.
A telling example of a linear physical property process going into nonlinear, and having a profound impact on hyperfast signaling, is the one pertaining to photons traversing crystals: the linearity of that process ends at a point of high photonic energy, because the photons start reacting between themselves and also with the cristal atoms. "Regenerators" must be used to correct the nonlinear manifestations.
This is the realm of light-directing "photonic crystals" (the photonic analogs of electronic semiconductors).
No "extra dimensions" will be revealed in the planned experiment. Perhaps the 'primary particles' will be observed before they converge into making the known particles.
But observations will have to be made with femtoscience techniques. **
--In the June issue of Physics World, Steven A Abel from the Theory Division at CERN, Geneva, Switzerland explains how particle colliders will be able to see these effects.
** I would guess that 'femto-cameras' will be used to pry on the particles.
(The realm of the INSTANT, contrasted with the 'pico-cameras' to pry on the realm of the enzymatically determined biological NOW.) **
