is space made of solid photon?

peanut
peanut
Joined: 4 May 07
Posts: 162
Credit: 9644812
RAC: 0

Hey, I've been wondering

Hey, I've been wondering along the same lines as ChipperQ's last sentence. If Einstein is right and space-time can be warped, What in the name of God is it warped against???

String theory predicts many dimensions. Is dark matter just in dimensions other than the 4 that Einstein seems to lay out? Other dimensions would seem to make sense out of the quantum theory where particles zip in and out of existance. Perhaps they just leave the dimensions our senses can see.

Nereid
Nereid
Joined: 9 Feb 05
Posts: 79
Credit: 925034
RAC: 0

RE: Hey, I've been

Message 71345 in response to message 71344

Quote:
Hey, I've been wondering along the same lines as ChipperQ's last sentence. If Einstein is right and space-time can be warped, What in the name of God is it warped against???


The General Theory of Relativity (GR) is breath-takingly simple - gravity is geometry, the 'shape' of space-time.

Trying to explain the mathematical clarity of GR with fuzzy (English) words is very difficult, and sometimes the attempts to do so lead to questions just like the one you asked.

Here's something that might help, but may only make things worse: imagine a line, a pure mathematical line. Imagine it can be 'warped'. What is it 'warped against'? I don't know about you, but to me the question is meaningless.

Quote:
String theory predicts many dimensions. Is dark matter just in dimensions other than the 4 that Einstein seems to lay out? Other dimensions would seem to make sense out of the quantum theory where particles zip in and out of existance. Perhaps they just leave the dimensions our senses can see.


The nature of dark matter is largely unknown today.

However, this kind of speculation is either easily shown to not work or so imprecise that you can do nothing with it.

Remember what (experimental, observational) scientists actually do - they make observations (e.g. astronomers) or do experiments (e.g. particle physicists), often to test an explicitly stated hypothesis.

Comment viewing options

Select your preferred way to display the comments and click "Save settings" to activate your changes.