If our universes membrane merged with another in the 11th dimension what effect would it have in our spacetime
954078
.sdrawkcab gnipyt trats dluow enoyrevE
486183
I find it to be quite fascinating.  Although mind-bending as well (11 dimensions - my brain hurts just thinking about it).  I don't know if it is correct or not (well, no one knows for sure), but it seems to have potential, particularly with resolving the Relativity/Quantum Physics battle.
911710
This is a very difficult concept and you probably won't get a great answer for it.  First off, this is only speculation - there is not a shred of evidence that there are 11 physical dimensions.  We can only claim 3 (time is considered the 4th dimension, because you need all 4 to describe to fully describe an event - for example, if you throw a rock in the air, if you want to know everything about where it lands you have to know the longitude, latitude, altitude and time with regards to a reference point).\n\n11 physical dimensions spring from string theory, which postulates that everything including time and space and matter and force are made up of vibrating "strings", either open ended or looped like rubber bands.  These strings are inconceivably tiny - if an electron were the size of the solar system out to Jupiter's orbit, filling in the volume, the string would be about the size of a granny apple.  It's thought that physical dimension 4-11 curled in on themselves at the Big Bang, and are only relevant on the same scales as the strings themselves - the other 3 expanded to fill the universe that we know today.\n\nOne way to image it is to imagine the Earth as a perfect sphere, without mountains or valleys, no hills, no riverbanks, no sidewalks, just a perfect, absolutely perfect sphere.  Now imagine an ant walking on the sphere.  The Earth is so fricken huge compared to the ant that the ant will only think there are two dimensions, x and y (assume that the ant has no self-awareness, and didn't realize he himself is above the x-y plane).  In reality, the Earth is a sphere, with a z component, but the ant will never know that.  The same, in reverse, could be true for the other 7 dimensions - they are so small we can never comprehend them.\n\nUnfortunately, with today's physics, that also means we can never confirm or deny their existence.  Without empirical proof, string theory is just beautiful mathematics, without a shred of proof.
21045
It depends on your opinion on how the universe works. There are many different theories, but I know of none that sugest what the "material" would be for the boundary of the universe. I am a quantum mechanist, thoguh I'm only in middle school, so I will not go off on M-theory and stuff. But, if I were you, I would read up on some of the theories and equations to form your hypothesis. My sugestion is that the universe is expanding at light speed because it is the light that expands the universe. Let me explain; if something, including light, tries to travel to the "boundary" of the universe it would continue forever or until it is blocked. (Because light is affected by gravity, I think it would eventually come to a stop, as in a frozen star, or black hole.) So, there is a boundary, but it always expands as objects try to reach it.
725282
Space and time aren't the same thing, they just form one continuum. Not that you're particularly interested in the actual answer mind.
658780
We observe four dimensions everyday, three spatial and time.\n\nBut...theories such as string theory predict that the space we live in has in fact many more dimensions (frequently 10, 11 or 26), but that the universe measured along these additional dimensions is subatomic in size. As a result, we perceive only the three spatial dimensions that have macroscopic size.\n\nThis is not so strange as it sounds, which I'll show with an example. Imagine you are in an airplane, flying over sea. Seen from a height, the sea looks flat, two-dimensional. But when the plane looses height we start to perceive the waves, that move in a third direction we could see before.\n\nThe universe could be the same. Four macroscopic dimensions and a few more, hidden ones. We can only perceive them for instance, by the small effects their existence might have on subatomic particles.
10073
The size of the universe in terms of length, width, height, time is in a state of flux. At any instant it may be expanding or contracting. The universe is generally accepted to be currently expanding. \n\nM Theory (the conglomeration of the 5 superstring theories) tells us that the universe is the result of, so called, “membranes” colliding in such a way that create a pocket of space which we call the universe. If M Theory is accurate, it is probable that there are many universes just as there are many planets, solar systems, and galaxies. \n\nFor more information:\nhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M_theory
970996
According to Superstring Theory, gravity operates in 10 dimensions (for M-theory, it would be 11 dimensions) and the gravity that we feel is just a little leakage (like a leaking sprinkler), and that's why gravity is so weak compared with all the other forces. So in a sense, your alternate reality is in fact the othe 6 spatial dimensions outside our 3, but we can never see or touch them.\n\nBTW, the reason physicists say that they don't understand gravity is because we current do NOT have a complete quantum theory of gravity, but we do have a very well tested classical theory, and that theory is called General Relativity (by Einstein).\n\nRight now, Superstring theory and Supergravity are the 2 contending theories of quantum gravity. However, physicists have found that Superstring theory and Supergravity may in fact be the same theory but described differently mathematically.\n\nBTW, anti-gravity does exist and has been discovered recently, but was theorized by Einstein back in the 1920's. He called it, the Cosomological Constant. Today physicists call anti-gravity, Dark Energy, which exists everywhere in space and is part of spacetime itself. Again, we find that our own little reality is more than strange enough that we really don't need an alternate reality to make it stranger.
499903
it the way the math worked out, there are supposedely either 11 or 26 dimensions. this math is way beyond me, but the theory is still unproven so they may be any number.
934539
Space, outer space, is a something.  It is not a nothing as many people might imagine.  Because it is a something, it can be and is affected by gravity.  It is warped by it.\n\nThe presence of observable mass, like hydrogen atoms, is not necessary for space to warp because it is space itself that warps.  Thus, the warp has no dependency on or affect on the temperature and pressure of hydrogen or any other distributed mass throughout space.\n\nIt is affected by accumulated mass, like stars and the planets, however.  These are the bodies that create the gravity that bends the space (and time).\n\nThere is a theory that space is made up of something called the Higgs Field.  [See source.]  As a field, the Higgs Field has direction, but the direction may be over higher dimensions than the 4 dimensions we can observe.  What is of interest in the Higgs Field is that, theoretically at least, it determines if quanta (like bosons, muons, photons, etc.) have inertia or not.  \n\nIf the quanta are aligned with the Higgs Field (in these multiple dimensions), they exhibit no inertia.  If they align against the force field, they exhibit inertia in our 4D universe.\n\nIf a quantum has inertia, we say it has inertial or, equivalently, rest mass.  And rest mass (m0) is that mass we find in E = mc^2, F = GmM/r^2, F = ma, and all those other force and energy equations that have mass in them.  So the quanta making up that mass (m) are aligned against the direction of the Higgs Field.
747739
Theories such as string theory predict that the space we live in has in fact 10 dimensions, but that the universe measured along these additional dimensions is subatomic in size. As a result, we perceive only the three spatial dimensions that have macroscopic size.
697552
See my answer to roughly the same exact question:\n\nhttp://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=Alup4mffF.dC.kKLZuPl1_Xsy6IX?qid=20061108093837AAg5ALh\n\n\n-----------\n\nactually, here:\n\nOnly the visible universe started. The rest of it always existed as a consequence of that which we call the Heisenburg Indeterminancy Principle (HIP). A vacuum with 0EV as its vacuum energy (aka: zero-point energy) would be perfectly determinable and a violation of the HIP.\n\nThis initial baseline is known as the inflaton.\n\nImagine a big rubber sheet, infinitely long and wide, and extremely thin. The thing will be vibrating fairly randomly just from the non-zero zeropoint energy. These energy fluctuations propagate as waves. Get enough waves adding up, and you'll get some pretty high crests and valleys. Get a big enough deviation, and you'll stretch the rubber in that immediate area so much that its elasticity will change. This is analgous to a vacuum phase change. In the rubber, the sudden rearrangement of the molecules will be released as heat, in a vacuum phase change, the potential energy is released as a massive swelling of spacetime and particles. It's as though the hill gets so high that the rubber loses a great deal of its elasticity and spreads out hugely because it no longer has the same force pulling it back to itself.\n\nIts presence in the rubber sheet will remain only the size of the original hill. Its internal size however, will be much, MUCH larger. This also extends to the real situation. Within the inflaton, the whole universe, our visible universe is smaller than planck scale. However, internally, we're so big that our universe would literally be spawning nearly infinitely many universes itself. We can't see them because they are sub-planck to us, nor can they see us because we are behind their inflationary wall. Inflation happens at speeds that are superluminal, so causality breaks down at this point. The interesting thing of the wall though is that it perfectly MAINTAINS causality.\n\nLong story short: what we see started, randomly. Where it exists had to ALWAYS exist, it could not have not existed.\n\n-------------\n\nThe inflaton isn't being damped. Quantum wave functions are perfect in that regard -- they aren't ACTUAL waves... or they are waves propagated by lossless particles... or... well... you seem an intelligent gent, I'm sure you realize quantum physics has some non-normal takes on a few things. It's sufficient to say that quantum wave functions are fundamental. The vacuum energy of a vacuum is a constant. In fact, it's possible via quantum tunneling for a vacuum's energy to increase in a small area, and this itself would cause a propagative state change.\n\nLet us say, for example, that the base inflaton has a 10 ^ 100 EV baseline. Our visible universe's particular vacuum state has something significantly lower (I don't recall off the top of my head -- a single cubic centimeter contains enough vacuum energy to boil off earth's oceans though). Let's say 10 ^ 90 EV. Because of the nature of quantum randomness, it is possible for a sub-planck fluctuation to momentarily jump to 10 ^ 110. If that fluctuation then spawned a sub-universe, it's vacuum energy might be 10^100 EV -- the same as the original inflaton, more than the 'parent' universe.\n\nThere, by the way, is your quantum entropy. The average total of all universes' vacuum energies would be fluctuating around a central point in a probablistic manner.
674188
well, spacetime does not seem to end, and nothing is "holding up" spacetime.\n\nthe universe is not infinite. the universe is finite yet has no edge and no center. it may be something like the two dimensional surface of a sphere. nothing inside or outside the sphere exists for the two dimensional surface.\n\nalso, i have something for you to think about. the radius of observable universe is about 46 billion lightyears, yet the universe is 13.7 billion years old.
347537
I have given an answer to this elsewhere, but I will repeat it here.\n\nAssuming that by the question you ask, you are essentially asking what is beyond the edge of our Universe, the answer to which will change depending on whether we live in a flat, open or closed Universe.\n\nOne way to try to understand it is to throw away a dimension, and imagine being a 2 dimensional being living on a sheet of paper. Sort of like a cartoon that you drew. To them, the Universe they occupy consists of only the paper itself. There is only up/down, left/right, there is no in and out of the paper for them, it may exist for us observing them, but they can't see us, and they are not aware of this extra dimension. Living on this sheet of paper, whilst flat on the desk there is quite obviously an edge beyond which to them, is nothingness...... hmmmm\n\nOk, so now imagine that they aren't living on a flat piece of paper but on the surface of a sphere (say of a baloon for example). The inside and outside of the sphere is a dimension inaccessible to them. Therefore, there are now NO edges to their universe. If they travelled upwards from their position (NOT leaving the sphere), then they would eventually come back to where they started. If you then started to inflate the baloon, it would expand, but to the "cartoon" people, all they will experience is seeing their surroundings expand. To them, their universe is expanding into another dimension, that they cannot see, and that it inaccessible to them.\n\nThis in a way, but with one dimension less, could be what is happening to our Universe. There may be no physical edge that we can ever come across, but it could be expanding into another dimension. \n\n\nOn the other hand, if you are asking if the Universe will, one day, simply cease to exist .... then that is a completely different answer!!!!\n\nThe Universe is expanding - into what, could be another dimension - and the amount of matter in the Universe will determine whether or not this expansion will stop and reverse, or whether it will carry on for eternity!  As it happens there is evidence to suggest that the expansion of the Universe is actually accelerating, and so the end of the Universe will be a very dismal cold place.  There will be no stars left giving out light, the heat of the Universe will be stretched out over infinity!  It will be the death of the Universe.\n\nIf there was enough matter in the Universe then the gravitational pull of all the matter could force the Universe to start to collapse back in on itself. Eventually it would all come together in one place in what would be called "The Big Crunch" - and this would be the end of the Universe as we know it.
271997
It's amazing isn't it?! It's so beyond our technology to fully test the theory though. I do however believe in parallel universes because math proves that you can have more dimensions beyond what we possess. Have to be able to open your mind to understand, ya know?
316623
The most recent investigations (WMAP) about the shape (geometry) of our universe show that it is FLAT, meaning that it will expand infinitely, parallel lines never meet, etc.,.\n\nhttp://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/m_mm/mr_content.html
705669
it depends on ones perception of time,the universe may have ended already,but we exist in a dimension that does not recognize it.perhaps the universe as humanity knows it will never end...