Fifth and Sixth Dimensions
The stretching of where and when. The effects of additional dimensions of time and space.
If you’re a fan of Star Trek or any other science fiction show, you’ll have seen episodes where spooky things happen because of the existence of additional dimensions. Gene Rodenberry had a terrific imagination, but do additional dimensions actually exist?
There is no definitive answer to this question at the present time. Additional dimensions have not been proved. The most we can say with absolute confidence is that they are plausible. But additional dimensions are much more than helpful devices for science fiction writers. Since the twentieth century, additional dimensions have become part of the tool kit for cosmologists, quantum physicists, and mathematicians. These people often assume additional dimensions exist; they use them in their calculations, and often require them to account for their theories. While most scientists would say that they are agnostic about additional dimensions, they also say that there is reason to suspect that they exist, few would be surprised if they existed, and none would rule them out.
We perceive a world of three dimensions of space and one dimension of time because that’s the limitation of our senses. If you find the little tag behind your eyes, it reads ‘For three-dimensional viewing only. Don’t poke with sharp objects or look at the sun. Wash in cold water … etcetera.’ The three spatial dimensions are usually described in terms of various lengths, such as height, width and depth, or latitude, longitude and altitude, and they provide the conceptual framework of where. The dimension of time is a length of a different sort - duration - and it provides the conceptual framework of when. Armed with these concepts we can describe something in space and place it on a timeline.
Now let's assume that additional dimensions actually exist, and that the world we lived in contained one extra dimension of time and one extra dimension of space. What would the world be like?
We will call the fourth dimension of space ‘Rotation’, and the second dimension of time ‘Recall’ because of the way these dimensions would change our perception. This is also a useful device to confirm that additional dimensions actually exist; I mean, how else could they have names?
We call the additional spatial dimension ‘Rotation’ because we would no longer have to walk around or rotate something in our hands to see all of it. Rotation would enable us to see something from all sides simultaneously. And we would be able to see all this without in any way fragmenting our perception of the object as a whole. We would be able to see the whole of something, not just the bits that were large enough, on the surface, and happened to be turned towards us at the time.
Our vision would also be free of the distortion of perspective - objects would no longer reduce in size as their distance from us increased. Nor would objects at different distances appear to move in different directions from the point of view of a moving observer - a phenomenon known as parallax. The combined effect of all these would be an enhanced vision, one that reflected the way things are more accurately.
We call the second dimension of time ‘Recall’ because of its effect on our perception of the past. Recall would enable memory as vivid as if the event were happening again. Recall is therefore more than mere memory. We would be able to experience the events as if we were actually there. We would be able to smell the smells and experience each and every detail, and we would probably be able to see and feel these moments over and over again, in slow motion, at any particular frozen moment, and at whatever speed we liked. However, if we could access this dimension we could only be an observer, we couldn't interact or change the events, or we run into the old 'What if I went back in time and killed my grandfather' problem.
An additional dimension of time would also mean that if there was something in our past that we’d prefer to forget - we probably couldn’t. An additional dimension of time could force us to deal with our past because it wouldn’t let us dodge it.
But Recall would also change our perception of the future. Imagine that you’re travelling by train through the countryside, looking through the window and watching the changing landscape. That’s what one dimension of time looks like. Now, smash the window and stick your head out - because that’s what an additional dimension would do. The first thing you would realize when you stuck your head out is that although it’s a changing landscape, it’s not the landscape that’s changing. What’s changing is your perspective. With an additional dimension of time we would be able to see the future, that is - the landscape ahead of us - at least a little way ahead, because it already exists.
Weirder than anything you’ve seen on Star Trek, isn’t it?