Hermes_Trismegistus - 3-12-2003 at 18:29
I am beginning to come to some grasp of it, starting with the mass nature of gravitons and the duality of the strings arrangement.
But I am still unsure as to the exact nature of the (alleged) 11 dimensions of existence...
ps....is it just me or is utter madness a prerequiste to a Phd in nuclear physics.
11 dimensions
tom haggen - 3-12-2003 at 19:51
basically string theory states that including our's, there are 11 parallel dimensions corresponding with ours, making up our universe. Invitably
some of these dimensions will collide creating a massive explosion. The reason for the collision is (correct me if i'm wrong) because these
strings are vibrating or something of the sort toward each other. but exsitance will still go on in other universes so don't worry to much. i too
am some what in the dark on this subject and will be checking for new posts
[Edited on 4-12-2003 by tom haggen]
ziqquratu - 3-12-2003 at 22:30
Um, I may be completely backwards or something, but (if memory serves) isn't it more like we have 11 dimensions - 10 of these are spatial
dimensions (length, width, height, and 7 others), and the other is time. The 10th spatial dimension allows for multiple universes according to M
theory (and more than just 11 of them!)... I don't pretend to understand a huge amount of it (admittendly that could be because I'm too busy
and/or too lazy to read much about it), but I'm pretty sure this is right.
And Hermes, I am yet to meet a sane physicist in any field... is insanity a prerequisite to physics, or perhaps a result of it? 
Of course, the chemists aren't much better, so maybe it's just science that
does it to us!
Wasn't that 10?
Iv4 - 4-12-2003 at 03:08
www.superstringtheory.com has a simple overview so please pardon me for sounding like I do on BS 
There are several string theorys depending on how many charectoriristcs are taken into account.Sometime matter is comepletely ignored for theoritcal
studys.In the end the total number IMHO is a result of all forces which are known to play a part.
I think there are 10(ten)dimensions in total so 3 for matter and one for time leaves another 6 which are tiny.
I think...
slvr_phoenix - 5-12-2003 at 13:36
I too was going to mention M Theory because it ties together the loose ends of the various string theories into one theory and thus is usually easier
to talk about. I readily admit that I'm far from an expert myself, but of all of the research that I have done on such I have to say that for a
basic understanding the piece that Nova aired on TV is actually remarkably simple to grasp. Yay for public television!
As for the various string theories and M Theory and such I myself have to kind of laugh at the absurdity of trying to prove that which is by
definition impossible to prove because it requires knowledge of interactions with dimentions that we cannot partake of. It is silly. Yet it is also entertaining. 
Personally I've been bumming around with my own list of dimentions. I'll list them in order of subset to superset. There's XYZ
Spatial dimentions of course. We know this one well. The Spatial dimentions more or less exist uniquely in each of the larger sets. So our XYZ in
this universe is not necessarily tied to the XYZ of another.
Next are the Linear dimentions. Of them we know Time pretty well too. Then there's what I'm currently labelling as Entropy, which is
difficult to describe but is actually related to Time in a manner similar to the relation of XYZ as spatial dimentions. I call them Linear because
moving through them requires linear movements in Time in order to reach key points where changes in the Entropy dimention can be made. Think of the
Linear dimentions as a sort of branching tree where Time is the trunk and Entropy are the branches. The 'beginning of time' has a singular
point of Entropy. However as time progresses forward from there each individual event where something in the universe could go one way or another
(such as flipping a coin) in fact goes both. We consciously only traverse one path of Entropy, but other paths of it branch out, and as Time
progresses there become more and more branchings from previous branches, etc. ad nausium. So there is more than one possible path of travel through
time, but each path through time links paths of Entropy. So if one point of Entropy was changed, all points of Entropy along the path of time from
that point of Entropy can be affected by that change.
The whole of the energy of our universe at any given point in Time, regardless of being along the same Entropy/Time path or not, is however spread
across each and every location in Entropy at that given location in Time, hence why the universe expands. The actual amount of energy per (Entropy,
Time) location deminishes as the number of Entropy branches increase. Hence the universe slowly expands because the amount of energy holding it
together at each specific point decreases as time progresses forward.
This is also why time travel is difficult to theorize, because as we travel backwards in time paths through Time converge together as the branches of
Entropy converge. Unwittingly one must change their positioning in Entropy as they position themselves backward through Time. However when they
begin moving foward through Time again if they are not exactly reversing their changes through Entropy then they can actually end up arriving at an
identical position in Time to when they left, but at a completely different position in Entropy. Talk about confusing!
The next three are as far as I know the most basic of all of the dimentions from which the rest tend to spread. These are the Primal dimentions.
They relate to positioning between poles which emit states of infinite singular energies at which the dimentional position between them defines an
ambient amount of radiant energy from each Primal pole. The poles are Nothing (anti-existence) Order (positive-existence definable) and Chaos
(positive-existence undefinable). Their radiant energy is a balance roughly defined by a general equation where (Ch + Or) - No is approximate to
zero. So the positioning along the Primal dimentions not only defines physically unique spaces but also a level of ambient energy inherant to that
space.
So an entire universe could be right next to another at a minute difference in Order energy but be completely seperated from the other universe's
Linear and Spatial dimentions.
There could easily well be more than these eight dimentions. Those are just the ones that I've been able to categorize right now. I'm
actually contemplating another dimention, Vibration, based on something akin to the vibrational frequencies of matter and energy forms with
matter-like properties that more or less defines a point between supermatter (no vibration, no energy properties) and superenergy (infinite vibration,
no matter properties) so that differences between energy and matter can be expressed in terms of Vibration. I'm not entirely sure how that ties
in to any of the other dimentions however. :\
chemoleo - 5-12-2003 at 15:04
According to Brian Greene, 'The Elegant Universe' - which is a superb book by the way, especially on relativity - people currently believe
there are 11 dimensions, not 10. There is one time dimension and 10 space ones, xyz & time being the ones we notice, and the rest curling up on
the Planck scale... so immeasurably short. Apparently the reason why there are 11 follows from mathematical models, where there are mathematical
restrictions to the *GEOMETRICAL SHAPE* those curled up dimensions take. Edward Witten et al showecd that there are a particular class of shapes thats
meets the conditions required by string theory, they are called the Calabi-Yau spaces. Those spaces are 6 dimensional, plus xyz and time, making 10
altogheter. THen there came the additon of the 11th dimension, although I don't remember any more why that additon was required...but yes
orignially they thought there were 'only' ten...
[Edited on 5-12-2003 by chemoleo]
slvr_phoenix - 8-12-2003 at 07:35
Don't you find it interesting though that mathematically we can lend credence to dimentions which we cannot interact in? How does one actually
go about proving that when by proof of our own limitations we cannot interact with those dimentions?
Dimensions and Chaos
chemoleo - 19-12-2003 at 15:35
Regarding the mathematical description of dimensions, just consider this:
a^2 + b^2 = c^2
Which is the Phythagorean formula for describing the length of the third side of a triangle (via sqrt(C^2)).
Similarly,
a^2 + b^2 + c^2= d^2
is a real equation, that describes (via sqrt(d^2) ) the length of the diagonal line between two of the far corners of a cube.
Now, the important thing is that
a^2 + b^2 + c^2 + d^2 = e^2
also holds mathematically, it describes the behaviour of a 4-dimensional body (just like the two previous equations described that of a 2- and
3-dimensional body.
But we can't visualise it. So here we go, that's one example of it. Riemann was a German mathematician who explored the mathematics of
n-dimensional spaces, google him and I am sure you will find something.
Also, here is a great site that has all sorts of books, this one specifically is Einstein's book on the General and Special Theory of Relativity.
http://www.bartleby.com/173/
Another example of dimensions, which I think is quite cool, concerns Chaos theory, or specifically the Mandelbrot set. Here, you plot a simple
equation such using complex numbers (that is, employing i, which defines the root of (-1)). With this, you can embark looking at structures at the
'i' axis, or the imaginary plane axis.
Where the iterative equation would only yield a straight line in the real plane (that is, on the x-axis), the complex plane dimension reveals a
beautifully patterned Mandelbrot set which noone ever was aware of, until Mandelbrot came along (the guy in the early 20th century who discovered it,
he drew it by hand, which means he must have spent years on it, as each pixel requires many iterative steps).
I have once written a computer program that does just that, it is a Mandelbrot set of the simplest kind, and one can explore deeper and deeper... to
find the similar structures again and again. The actual algorithm is not that hard, it requires crude knowledge of complex numbers and a few
programming skills. Anyway, that's a fun program to write!
The picture you see is a magnification of a tiny section of the imaginary plane (about 10,000,000 magnification, with 1000 iteration limit). THis is
my computer background image
PS If you want to have a look at the program, send me a U2U.