Extra-dimensional conversations October 13, 2014
Posted by mareserinitatis in physics, science, younger son.Tags: alternative universes, calabi yau, dimensions, physics, spacetime, younger son
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The younger son occasionally has band lessons after school. Recently, I picked him up and he said that his band teacher hadn’t been in her office when he was supposed to have his lesson. The next comment surprised me.
You know, in an alternative universe, I forgot my instrument but she was in her office. And then there’s other universes where I had my instrument and she was in her office and others where I forgot my instrument AND she wasn’t in the office.
Apparently he has combinatorics licked.
I was somewhat surprised at this response, so I asked him what he knew about other universes.
Not much. I just know you use wormholes to get between them.
I responded that wormholes are supposed to transport you across time and space, but wasn’t sure if the strict physics definition allowed for travel outside of our universe.
Mom, wormholes transport you across dimensions!
This made me wonder if he knew about M-theory. When I asked him what he knew about higher dimensions, he said,
Well, they’re really similar. But after a short time, you notice differences.
I was confused, but he continued.
And some dimensions have aliens and some don’t.
Ah! His definition of higher dimensions was basically an alternate universe. He was working with the ‘sci-fi definition.’ I needed to change terminology, as we obviously were discussing two different things with the same word, so I said the world we live in has three spatial dimensions and time as the fourth dimension.
Time is a dimension?!
He understood and explained the concept of two dimensional space and then three dimensional space, but he was perplexed about time as a dimension. My explanation was that you can move through time, but only forward. With the spatial dimensions, you can move forward and backward, left and right.
I think I blew his mind at that point, so I figured we’d drop it and move on to Calabi Yau spaces another time. In the meantime, I’m trying to decide if I should introduce him to Abbot’s Flatland.
I need to brush up on my theoretical physics. http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calabi-Yau_manifold#mediaviewer/File:Calabi-Yau.png
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