Joe Republican wrote:For those of you interested in alternate universes, may I suggest reading up on string thoery? It's the cutting edge of physics right now and it breaksdown modern physics into a plane of vibrating strings which make up all matter. To put it simply, all matter can be broken down into fundamental particles much smaller then the atom. In fact they are two levels down from the atom.
Anyway, part of the theory is the advent of higher level dimensions which allow particles to appear in our universe and dissapear our of our universe using powers of higher dimensions. This is analgous to trying to explain something that lived in 2-d space what the third dimension would be like. It would not be a reality to imagine it for a 2-d man or a flatlander (I believe that's the name physiscs use for the analogy).
Two books to read are "The Elegant Universe" by Brian Greene and "Hyperspace" by Micho Kaku. Both of these modern day Einsteins use analogies to relate complex problems to laymen and they are able to break the complex theories into simple explinations. THis isn't to say they are right, but this is where modern day Physics is turning to in search of the unification theory.
A NOVA special on the Green theory and a website with several links describing the theory
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/elegant/
Welcome aboard as well. String theory as I see it is another misguided attempt to add band aids on top of band aids for a wounded paradigm. Once we recognize that there are particles of matter smaller than the currently known "point particles" it becomes quite evident that much of the current paradigms flaws can be more easily explained with real concepts and formulas. The existing paradigm has included such oddities as vacuum fluctuations, virtual particles, self-annihilating virtual particles, multidimensional vibrations, and wraps it around an uncertainty principle. I say the whole crock is uncertain. Deductions and analysis marked by skewed observations not of the real world. Observations of man induced high-energy particles flung at each other then impacted upon a detection grid, cloud chamber, or electrophotropic plate.
When one steps back for a moment and considers the true nature of infinity then one becomes a point. People don't like to be so insignificant so we hold onto the false concept that our planet actually means something in the grand scheme of things so we avoid including the natural infinity in either end of our current paradigm to describe the universe and all it contains.
One of Einstein's early works included the belief in the Aether to unify the forces and explain the true nature of the universe. Ideas went one way and his work and others on the subject were left uncompleted and unverified. If we one day recognize the inclusion of sub-point particles in our universe (that are as of yet undetectable but someday may be measurable) we may find that the density of these particles is the Aether that binds our universe together. Aetheric Density is the variable that can tie the four basic forces together into a grand unified theory proving the universe is truly infinite and many of the conclusions drawn over the last quarter to half a century were but child's folly. Afraid of the big bad infinite boogeyman we held onto the shreds of archaic self-importance trying to find value or meaning to our place in the grand scheme of the universe.
The Emperor has no clothes. The current paradigm is a farce. To many holes being patched with silly putty.
