"Benford-FourthDimension" - читать интересную книгу автора (Benford Gregory)

do not roll up, there could be no stable atoms, and thus no matter more complex
than particles. Further, only in odd-numbered dimensions can waves propagate
sharply, so 3D is favored over 2D. In this view, we live not only in the best of
all possible worlds, but the only possible one.

How did this surrealistically bizarre idea come about? From considering the form
and symmetries of abstruse equations. In such chilly realms, beauty is often our
only guide. The embarrassment of dimensions in some theories arises from a
clarity in starting with a theory which looks appealing, then hiding the extra
dimensions from actually acting in our physical world. This may seem an odd way
to proceed, but it has a history.

The greatest fundamental problem of physics in our time has been to unite the
two great fundamental theories of the century, general relativity and quantum
mechanics, into a whole, unified view of the world. In cosmology, where gravity
dominates all forces, general relativity rules. In the realm of the atom,
quantum processes call the tune.

They do not blend. General relativity is a "classical" theory in that it views
matter as particles, with no quantum uncertainties built in. Similarly, quantum
mechanics cannot include gravity in a "natural" way.

Here "natural" means in a fashion which does not violate our sense of how
equations should look, their beauty. Aesthetic considerations are very important
in science, not just in physics, and they are the kernel of many theories. The
quantum theorist Paul Dirac was asked at Moscow University his philosophy of
physics, and after a moment's thought wrote on the blackboard, "Physical laws
should have mathematical beauty." The sentence has been preserved on the board
to this day.

One can capture a theorist's imagination better with a "pretty" idea than with a
practical one. There have even been quite attractive mathematical cosmologies
which begin with a two-dimensional, expanding universe, and later jump to 3D,
for unexplained reasons.

Einstein wove space and time together to produce the first true theory of the
entire cosmos. He had first examined a spacetime which is "flat," that is,
untroubled by curves and twists in the axes which determine coordinates. This
was his 1905 special theory of relativity. He drew upon ideas which Abbott had
already used.

The Eminent British journal Nature published in 1920 a comparison of Abbott's
prophetic theme:

*
(Dr. Abbott) asks the reader, who has consciousness of the third dimension, to
imagine a sphere descending upon the plane of Flatland and passing through it.
How will the inhabitants regard this phenomenon? . . . Their experience will be
that of a circular obstacle gradually expanding or growing, and then
contracting, and they will attribute to growth in time what the external