Originally published at: There may be a 'Fifth Dimension' | Boing Boing
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is it testable? if not, then I’m not interested.
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Everything is testable. The challenge is the sophistication needed for the instrumentation to accurately measure.
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Given that string theory requires a dimension count in the double digits, this just seems half-hearted and lazy.
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A team of German and Spanish scientists …
I stopped right there, no need to go any further.
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I bet there was LSD involved. I solved the Unified Field Problem several times with the help of acid.
cuz its all cosmic man
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Mayyyyyyyyybe. There’s always baked-in limitations for the industrial supply chain upon which instrumentation prototyping and testing is based. There’s also the ineffable nature of nature. But I’m up for the challenge. Fund my billion dollar per year grant proposal to find questions that cannot be answered by any powerful new instrumentation no matter how hard we try!
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But did you write it up in a paper?
No?
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OK. But we’re still waiting on an explanation for the “8th Dimension.”
And what about dimensions six and seven? Back up a second, speedy.
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Finally… SUBSPACE!
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I love The 5th Dimension. I was listening to them over the weekend.
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This got past peer review???
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physicists creating new rules for the universe in order to explain their own theory
I mean, that’s kind of how science works, isn’t it? (Except it’s not called a “theory” but a “hypothesis.”) All the “rules for the universe” were created by someone to explain away some measurement.
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I know it’s not the same, but the very fact they’re using the concepts of “Dark Matter” and “Dark Energy” is very similar: trying to fit strange phenomena and an incomplete understanding of gravitation into traditional observable phenomena. Once we understand how gravity actually works (via what mechanism), I think things will become clearer.
I applaud this team for at least trying to think outside the box.
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Place small, but durable, red flags upon any scientific theory which apparently requires more and wilder theories to support them. (“Are you saying dark matter is only a theory!? You fool! It’s been shown to be real by numerous galactic speedometers!”) The earth is the center of the cosmos: so Mars must follow an epicycle to account for its apparent retrograde motion! Heat is a special fluid called phlogiston so it must have negative weight in order to account for the additional mass of certain burned materials.
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In terms of getting past peer review, this isn’t that bad.
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It’s a single-author gonzo perspective paper that physicists looking for personalities can circlejerk over. There’s a ton of similar papers that are basically the same: let’s abuse a few premises and extrapolate wildly.
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It’s in the journal Biosystems, which is, shall we say, not a high-profile journal well-known for erudition.
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This being obvious noise makes it pretty harmless. It’s the papers that seem reasonable but manage to conceal something nasty (hidden bad assumption, copied data, a missed control that would be desperately needed) that are far bigger issues when they get past peer review.
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I saw them.
And then, later, when I got into psychedelics I saw them again.
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Yeah, this is literally the process of science. It’s not so much “creating new rules” as “revising the existing model so that it better conforms to observations.” And sometimes revising the model involves adding dimensions.
Also as @Bemopolis indicates, most modern physics theories require “extra” dimensions of varying levels of understood-ness to work. I think 10 and 11 are the most commonly cited numbers, but IANAP (I switched from physics to math in my sophomore year, sorry).
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