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?String therory vs. Pandora Gates?

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Thu, 2011-03-24 06:19
#1
OneTrikPony OneTrikPony's picture
?String therory vs. Pandora Gates?
K. I'm a redneck luddite but I happened to go to a seminar about polynomials and describing higher dimensional shapes which got into implications for string theory and now it's 3am and I'm still thinkin bout it cause I'm so friken slow! So my question is: What, if any, implication does current understanding of string theory--and it's 6 extra, minute dimentions--have on the proposed function of EP's Pandora Gates? For purpose of argument I'm assuming that when traveling through a gate you remain in the same universe from which you came and that something more is involved than picotech dis/reassembly and FTL data transmission. So do all those extra dimensions that are too small for matter to inhabit help the problem or are they just incidental? I've already failed to grasp any intuitive or mathematical sense of string theory twice once while reading Brian Green and once while reading Greg Egan, but I'd be happy for any thoughts anyone has as a starting point. Apparently I'm going to beat my head against this one for a while. Again. Thanks
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Mea Culpa: My mode of speech can make others feel uninvited to argue or participate. This is the EXACT opposite of what I intend when I post.

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Thu, 2011-03-24 07:55
Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture
Re: ?String therory vs. Pandora Gates?
Incidental: I don't think it helps or makes things worse. The gates as described do not conform to any sensible physics. Personally I think femtotech disassembly is the only way they could function that is not wallbangingly problematic (and that still includes the FTL issues). Of course, a lot of alien supertech might make use of curled up dimensions in other ways. Maybe the fixors internally uncurl spacetime in such a way that things are held in place by a topological defect.
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Extropian
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Thu, 2011-03-24 09:10
OneTrikPony OneTrikPony's picture
Re: ?String therory vs. Pandora Gates?
Thanks Arenamontanus, You're always around when I need you :) So that's a definite; No? I guess I'm just hung up on the size of these extra dimensions. They're so small and so oddly shaped that they're irrelevant excepting the case of somehow potentially rectifying gravity's conflicts with causality. (or whatever string theory is supposed to accomplish.) But, I can't get over the idea that energy--if not matter--might occupy one of these extra dimensions at the same time as two of our euclidean dimensions, and last night I was reminded that certain Flips to eliminate the negative sphere in Calabi-yao geometry actually tear space... and so of course I was sitting there thinking of EP because that's the only way the subject was even remotely relevant to my life, and vast leaps of logic are necessary to my process because my two synapses are really far apart. Anyhow... Do you really think femtotech is necessary for the gates to work? I guess if it was just picotech there woudn't be any mystery to the gates cause the reassembly would be detectable. I know I'd be pissed if someone put all my isotopes back in the wrong place. Seems to me, any ETI with femto capabilities who beats up on people who are just barely exploring their home system is just being petty.
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Mea Culpa: My mode of speech can make others feel uninvited to argue or participate. This is the EXACT opposite of what I intend when I post.

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Thu, 2011-03-24 10:04
nezumi.hebereke nezumi.hebereke's picture
Re: ?String therory vs. Pandora Gates?
OneTrikPony wrote:
What, if any, implication does current understanding of string theory--and it's 6 extra, minute dimentions--have on the proposed function of EP's Pandora Gates?
This isn't necessarily limited to String Theory (since String Theory is just trying to make a more elegant version of our current Quantum Theory), however... The universe is made up of quantum foam, which does all sorts of nutso stuff, but on such a small level that we just don't notice it. "Nutso stuff" includes making wormholes to other locations. Kip Thorne showed, if you can 'freeze' one of those naturally occuring wormholes and expand it, you could create a passable wormhole. This is what I suspect the gates to be. In String Theory, I guess you'd express it as vibrations on those tiny strings, but sometimes one of those strings (or perhaps its vibration) extends some arbitrary distance out. Capturing and expanding that string creates a temporary link between those two joined locations in four-dimensional space. However, I couldn't tell you how something from the one 'translates' into something on the other side.
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Thu, 2011-03-24 17:03
OneTrikPony OneTrikPony's picture
Re: ?String therory vs. Pandora Gates?
Thanks Nezumi. the wormhole concept, quantum foam, dumping a whole suns worth of power into some quantum effect to make it macrosized, I can 'feel' those ideas. I'm uncomfortable with Kip Thorns idea tho. In the first place 'freezing' a distinct unit of the quantum foam seems (to me) to require that you stop time for that specific quanta to exist long enough to have any utility. I think Heisenberg says that you don't get to pick which wormhole you create in that situation. The second part is that after you pump enough energy into it to stop time you then have to pump enough energy into it to expand it something like 10^35 times. So, lot's of energy expended to open a pandora gate but they can't figure out where it's comming from? Here's a better description of the string theory I'm worrying about. http://library.thinkquest.org/27930/stringtheory7.htm Among the referenced works at the bottom of the page is; Hyperspace by Michio Kaku? Is there anyone who's read that and able to mention any relevance to the gates? I'm just barely getting around to reading Kurzwell right now which means I'm also in the middle of Rodney Brooks, Joel Garreau, and Rob Freitas. I really don't want to start another book right now.
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Mea Culpa: My mode of speech can make others feel uninvited to argue or participate. This is the EXACT opposite of what I intend when I post.

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Thu, 2011-03-24 22:41
The Green Slime The Green Slime's picture
Re: ?String therory vs. Pandora Gates?
I've read Kaku's Hyperspace (many years ago) and I highly recommend it - he really breaks down the potential physics of wormholery in addition to, well, everything else in the universe and beyond (and all without equations!). I think the follow up, Parallel Worlds, contains much of the same material with updates, though I'm not sure how much of it may have been debunked by recent CERN experiments. As I said, my pop science reading days are many years past but I am au courant in the field of handwaving. I tend to think that the physics of the gates is way, way simpler than anybody would guess, and thus the energies involved orders of magnitude smaller than what we assume (personally I believe power derives from the zero point doohickey in the highly sophistomicated casimir field femto-lattice). The mark of minds as advanced as the ETI/TITANS, unburdened by our conceptual baggage that sometimes only the greatest genius can see beyond, would be a parsimony of design akin to mother nature herself. And she doesn't fuck around with any overcomplication.
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[img]http://boxall.no-ip.org/img/iso_userbar.jpg[/img] [img]http://boxall.no-ip.org/img/aliens_userbar.jpg[/img] [i]Time will perfect matter.[/i]
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Fri, 2011-03-25 07:21
nezumi.hebereke nezumi.hebereke's picture
Re: ?String therory vs. Pandora Gates?
I just wrapped up Hyperspace (and ALMOST saw him at the Air & Space - business intervened). It's a good book, but it didn't tell me anything about wormholes you probably don't already know (if you know what an Einstein-Rosen bridge is, you're good). Since space and time are interlinked, I've actually had a lot of luck with books on time travel. There was a great book, Time Machines: Time Travel in Physics, Metaphysics, and Science Fiction by Paul J. Nahin. I really enjoyed that one, since it goes through a bunch of different theories, and half of them apply to bending space as well. Given where you are at, I would recommend that one before Kaku.
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Fri, 2011-03-25 12:50
Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture
Re: ?String therory vs. Pandora Gates?
My understanding of the bundled dimensions is that there is not much happening around their circumference: the electric field (say) is about the same for every point within the bundled up manifold corresponding to a particular point in our big space. All the big variation is along our big dimensions, the curled up ones only have tiny quantum properties changing around their manifolds. Being able to manipulate the shape of the manifold might allow some truly weird tech. Charles Stross has a good example in the beginning of Iron Sunrise where it is used to turn the core of a star into a baby universe with a very high rate of time; from the outside it looks like it just flickers and turns into a ball of supercold iron. Bad things happen. As I mentioned earlier, being able to use topological solitons might allow things like the fixors or apparently reactionless drives.
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Fri, 2011-03-25 16:01
nezumi.hebereke nezumi.hebereke's picture
Re: ?String therory vs. Pandora Gates?
I *BELIEVE* that 'expanding the quantum foam' (as described by Thorne) is equivalent to expanding a dimension above the fifth to non-planck sizes (as described by Kaku), just an FYI.
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Fri, 2011-03-25 20:29
OneTrikPony OneTrikPony's picture
Re: ?String therory vs. Pandora Gates?
Damnit! I'm going to have to read another book aren't I? I never learn anything because I get sidetracked half way through by something else. I do appreciate all the replies and suggestions it helps me target what I look at. My background is so thin I'd just end up picking things to read at random. You'd all laugh if you could see how many EP threads I've got bookmarked :D
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Mea Culpa: My mode of speech can make others feel uninvited to argue or participate. This is the EXACT opposite of what I intend when I post.

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Sat, 2011-03-26 06:55
nezumi.hebereke nezumi.hebereke's picture
Re: ?String therory vs. Pandora Gates?
Don't worry, I'm not too far from you. My formal background is strictly computer science. I do read a ton though, and I really read those Amazon reviews before I invest my time. If you just talk with enough confidence, 99% of people will believe you. If someone disagrees with me, I default to the 'whose icon is awesomer' argument. Really, the goal is to [appear] smarter than your players. As long as the game world is consistent, they'll be happy.
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