X-Message-Number: 19201 From: Date: Mon, 3 Jun 2002 16:47:37 EDT Subject: Re: Dimensions --part1_119.126f4486.2a2d2fe9_boundary Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit R. Ettinger said: > Now space "dimensions" again. Consider a "universe" consisting of the > surface > of a circular cylinder of small diameter and infinite length. Most of > today's > writers would say one of the dimensions is small and coiled. Not only is > that > diseased language, but it is not even clear by what criterion the angular > coordinate (or the second linear coordinate, if you want to do it that way) > > can properly be elevated to the status of "dimension." Coordinates, degrees > > of freedom, and dimensions are all separate and different things, > frequently > mixed and confused even by the brightest and the best. > > Robert Ettinger > Cryonics Institute Not so long ago, a friend started to speak about R4-R5, I asked what that was. He said it was the world in four and five real dimensions. I told him that that was too much for me, I don't understand dimensions beyond 3. In fact, when doing phisics, I don't really understand dimensions beyond one! Dimension is often taken in place of abstract coordinates or worst, free parameters. When a problem is badly set, you need many adjusting free parameters, so, the less cleaver you are, the more dimension you need. For example, quantum mechanics is built on an infinite set of dimensions, I think this is the worst element of the theory, clearly it lacks something to bring it back to 3 dimensions only. (I have been one month off line with a set of computing problems, so I read my message backlog in "negative time dimension". :-). Yvan Bozzonetti --part1_119.126f4486.2a2d2fe9_boundary Content-Type: text/html; charset="US-ASCII" [ AUTOMATICALLY SKIPPING HTML ENCODING! ] Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=19201