Question: are there additional dimensions ?

Adam Baskerville answered on 21 May 2020: last edited 21 May 2020 1:26 pm

An excellent and profound question. I assume you mean additional, on-top of the three spatial dimensions we see around us (x, y and z)? The answer is yes, there are additional dimensions. Time is often thought of as the 4th dimension, and large parts of physics are formulated in terms of these three spatial dimensions and time dimension to make up 4-dimensional models in terms of (x, y, z, t).

At a more fundamental level, you can have as many dimensions as you desire, as they represent the information on where something is. Sometimes we need more information (more dimensions) and sometimes less information (fewer dimensions). Mathematics allows for us to think of shapes in any number of dimensions which we cannot build or visualise very easily but we can still calculate their properties. There is no real difference between x, y or z and a 4th, 5th or 6th spatial dimension, which we can call a, b or c. They are just much harder to picture in our heads!