September 30, 2010 • 20 mins
The world famous globetrotter Flat Stanley is used to encourage literacy in children. Since Flat Stanley is two-dimensional, he's a perfect jumping-off point for Robert and Allison's exploration of string theory and our multidimensional universe.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff from the Science Lab from how stuff
works dot com. Hey guys, and welcome to the podcast.
This is Alison I don't like, the science editor at
how stuff works dot com. And this is Robert Lamb,
science writer at how stuff works dot com. And you know,
(00:23):
normally there there are three microphones in the recording uh
room here, and normally we only occupied to but we
actually have a third person in the studio with us.
Also one you'd like to introduce him. Yeah, to my left.
Sitting to my left is um a special gentleman who
agreed to join us, and his name is Stanley. Yeah,
Flat Stanley. Yeah. Perhaps you all are acquainted with Flat
(00:44):
Stanley and maybe you've taken him on some travels of yours.
There's a big sort of movement with Flat Stanley and
getting him to see the world. Yeah, it's uh, it's
a like actually a literacy thing. Um. So if you
have kids or you know their kids somewhere in your family,
then there's a chance Flat Stanley has paid a visit
to your home, perhaps in an envelope. Um, Now do
(01:06):
you remember reading about Flat Stanley as a kid. You
you said you hadn't read I had not like I
I had never heard of Flat Stanley until like suddenly
my mom, who's a kindergarten teacher, started talking about Flat
Stanley and I'm like oh. And then then um Nis
and nephew suddenly they have Flat Stanley come into our house,
you know, to hang out, and uh, apparently it's a
big deal to deal. Now it's um the brainchild, what's
(01:27):
based on a book by Jeff Brown. And then this
guy Dale Hubert started, Uh, he's a Grade three teacher
in London, Ontario, started this whole take Flat Stanley and
Adventures with Your Thing, and it's a huge deal. I
love the books. I remember reading them as a kid,
and he just some cool things that you know, being
flat allow him to do. Yeah, Like, for example, I
(01:47):
think in one of the adventures he has, he is
able to go down into a sewer grade and pick
up some shiny ring that somebody dropped. And I think
he'd do all sorts of other stuff like squeeze between
doors because of his nice flatness, and probably under window
jams and stuff like that. But I do remember he
uh he can go into the sewer grade. I believe
(02:08):
it was cool. I mean maybe not. He gets a
little dirty Yeah, but kids should probably shouldn't like send
him down the sewer or too often on these, but
you know they are. Yeah, I guess it makes for
a cool story, that's the thing, because then they write
about it in their journal. It's like, here's what Flat
Stanley did today, and then they turn that into their
their teacher, right right, So today we're gonna take Flat
(02:29):
Stanley on a journey across the dimensions. Yeah. You know,
we live in a three D world. He lives in
a two D world, so you know, yeah, we thought
we'd use Stanley to illustrate the concepts of the dimensions
as we know them and some dimensions that string theorists
propose out there. Okay, well let's uh, let's back it up.
Then let's get down to the dimensional, very basic one
(02:51):
dimensional world. So picture of Flat Stanley for a second
in your head, and in flat Stanley if you if
you've never seen him before, and you even you're not
looking him up on a computer right now, he's this
guy on a sheet of paper and you cut him out.
He's like a little cartoon guy. Yeah. Yeah, in this
picture he has a an his tie on with Poka
dots and a white button down shirt, some slacks. Do
(03:12):
you like that? I just call them slacks. I feel
like my mom sings slacks and uh yeah, just a
regular liking dude, maybe a middle aged maybe thirties. So
flat Stanley as we have him, is too deep. Yeah,
so we need get him down to one d we do?
How are we going to do that? Well, basically, right now,
he has no depth, all right, He just has length
(03:32):
in width, So we need to break that down to
just length. Yeah, all right, so let's just come down
to a particle. Yeah, basically, would just be one single
point in the universe that he would live in, would
be a single line. So the universe is a line,
and Stanley is a point on point on that line,
and he's moving. He can only move backward. He can
(03:53):
move backward and forward. Right, say that this line is
ten inches long. You only need one number to tell
me exactly where Stanley is at any given moment. Five
inches there, Stanley. There's no other number needed. It's pretty boring. Yeah.
It's like if if Stanley were hanging out on that
line with another particle being you know, he would be like, hey, dude,
(04:14):
what do you want to meet for lunch? And they're like,
let's meet at six and that's all you would need
because there's no there's no other dimension but that. So
let's take Stanley to his current um, his current shape,
which is two D. Yeah, it's up to two dimensions
too D world. You're looking at length and width. Um.
(04:34):
The the the example I love to use with this
one battleship because battleship is a game where to to
pinpoint any position, and therefore you know injure the other
person's battleships and submarines. Ex second, you sunk my battleship,
injure them. They're not organic, but that would be kind
of cool. I guess they have to be like whales
and stuff. He sunk my whale. It just doesn't have
(04:55):
the right rank. The whale war guys would be really
upset about that one. Um. So now in battleship, if
you want to you want to hit a point, you
just need those two numbers. So it's like coordinates. Yeah,
it's like E five. So you have you line up E,
you line up five, and you connect those two lines,
um and bang, oh yeah you have you have the
(05:16):
location of that object in a two D world. Yeah,
it's kind of like if you you know, it's kind
kind of like on a city map. You know, it's
like if you were going to meet somebody for lunch
and you're like, hey, dude, where you want to meet
for lunch? They might say at the corner of you know, Firstmont,
for example, Tree and Piedmont. There you go, Um, which
Peach Tree? Well that's another issue. Atlanta planning kind of
(05:40):
messes with our ability to to use a proper metaphor here.
But but but yeah, it's like the corner of two streets,
two coordinates. In a two D world, you only need
two numbers to pinpoint exactly where you are in any
given time. So that's two dimensions exactly. I think you
guys are all with us. We're certainly, we're certainly still there.
So let's take it to three D. Let's move on up. Yeah,
three D world, that's where we are now. So you have, um,
(06:03):
flat Stanley. All of a sudden, maybe we need to
give flat Stanley a little girth. Maybe he's not flat anymore,
Maybe he becomes fat Stanley Stanley. I would think your
rotun Stanley. Yeah. Yeah. For flat Stanley to really be
a three D being, he would need all three, Tom,
he needs a little girth, he needs maybe you know,
some some muscle mass and some protrusions, some appendages. Now, yeah,
(06:27):
now we're dealing with with length, width and depth. In depth,
you can also uh swap that out for altitude because like,
let's go back to Battleship. All right, there's a submarine
and battleship. But in the game, the submarine is always
on the surface because you only have those two coordinates.
In reality, of course, the submarine goes to varying depths. Right,
(06:49):
So there's actually an advanced version of Battleship in which
the uh, the game platform rises and falls and you
have to do it like that. Have you ever heard
of that? No? I didn't know that totally, Like, well, wow,
you got okay, So yeah, at any rate, to sink
a real submarine, you would need it's latitude and its
three coordinates latitude, longitude, and depth depth, so it's like,
(07:13):
you know, it would be like e five plus uh,
you know, plus however deep it was in the ocean. Likewise,
if you're meeting up somebody for lunch and the building
happens to be ten stories tall, you'd be like, meet
me at the corner of what was the address, Peachtree
and Piedmont Um. The restaurant is on the fifth floor, right, Yeah,
(07:35):
so yeah, at any given point in our world, three
numbers will tell you where exactly you can be found. Yeah,
the three spatial dimensions I'll work nicely for helping you
find your lunch date, right, definitely. Of course we're talking
about lunch, right, so we have to set some sort
of time, right, Yeah, don't show if you show up
for lunch at three o'clock in the afternoon and you're like, dude,
(07:55):
where are you and then you say when when we
were gonna have lunch. We were gonna have ch at noon,
at lunchtime, and you're late, that's where we end up. Yeah, yeah,
this is your you know. Of course we're not gonna
line up if you're showing up at different times, and
that's where we uh where time enters the equation here.
Sometimes time is referred to as the fourth dimension, but
(08:18):
physicists who are really dealing with with the idea of
multiple dimensions, they often refer to it like this. We
have three spatial dimensions as in space, and one dimension
of time. So in that you need four numbers to
successfully pull off a lunch date. You need to know latitude, longitude,
(08:38):
altitude and when that is taking place, right, Yeah, Okay,
I think everybody's got that so far. So let's get
a little crazy. Yeah, so let's talk about the possibility
of a fourth spatial dimension. And at this point, flat
Stanley is just's he's he's just blanking out because Stanley's
taken a nap because you think it's complicated for us
to talk about four dimension. I mean, this dude's only two.
(09:01):
So well, okay, so let's let's take him. Let's take
him with us for the right. Right, So we've given
him girth in our three D world. Now he knows
what time is, so he's not gonna be late for
a lunch date. Now let's take him into our fourth
spatial dimension and let's talk about how that originated. Okay,
So yeah, now again, this is something our brains can't
really perceive. There's some good analogies. Yeah, we can draw
(09:25):
on an analogies and we can discuss why we think
about it. But don't feel bad if you cannot picture
the fourth dimension, because that's your brain. You know. Um,
nineteen nineteen, you had a mathematician by the name of
Theodore Caluza, and he, uh, maybe I maybe maybe putting
more fun into that lass name than there actually is.
(09:46):
But anyway, he theorized that a fourth spatial dimension might
link general relativity and electromagnetic theory. Okay, that didn't actually
work out, but still he gave it us a lot
of thought. Um, where would that fourth spatial dimension go? Right?
Theoretical physicist Oscar Klein, he worked on the theory a
little more and he little revision, did a little tinkering. Yeah,
(10:06):
and he proposed that the fourth spatial dimension was merely
curled up while the other three spatial dimensions are extended. Okay,
and at this point let me interrupt. Um, I was
watching The Elegant Universe recently, just get a little backing,
and it is really an awesome program that Brian Green
does from Columbia University and explains really some good stuff
on string theory and dimensions. And he was suggesting that
(10:28):
there's really a helpful way to think about dimensions. Um,
And we think about kind of unfurled or stretched out
dimensions and these are your length and your height and
your altitude and then tiny like tape measure type dimensions
curled up right, So there's furled and unfurled. Yeah. I
kind of like to think of you ever seen like
a cartoon where they have like that little like they
(10:48):
take a what looks like a black hole, it's like
a two D thing and they like slap it on
the wall and suddenly they can reach inside. Or or
like indungeons and dragons, you could get like a um,
a little pouch that had limitless capacity, Like you could
reach your whole arm into this tiny little pouch. It's
like the idea that the space is there, but it's
(11:09):
like folded. It's it's like, yeah, tape demension, tape dispenser dimensions. Right,
So we're talking about this fourth spatial dimension as being
um curled up and located at every point in space. Yeah,
so it's like every point in space has like this
extra layer that's just completely folded up inside it. Okay,
(11:32):
let's give a visual to this. Let's think about like
a telephone polar or a cable that's across the street
and you're looking at it kind of far away, so
really to you, you can only perceive it's um it's
length rising up into the sky. But then you you
you walk a little closer. You're curious about this cable,
and you you can see you can perceive it's um
its dimensions because all of a sudden you can tell
(11:54):
it's circular. So you can kind of move flat Stanley
along the cable if you so desire, or you can
move flat Stanley now around the cable. So if you
carry that image with you to the fourth dimension, think
about that point in space and then every point in
space as having a circular to mention that you can traverse. Yeah,
(12:16):
it's um like to go back to the building. Like
one way I was thinking about this. All right, we're
meeting our lunch date, right, and it's we need the longitude,
we need the latitude, and then we need to need
to know what floor it's on. Okay, just dealing with
spatial here, don't worry about time. Now. Imagine you get
to that the third floor of that building for that
that for the lunch date, and then you look around
(12:37):
and you're like, whoa, there are multiple businesses on this level.
Which which door do I go to? Right, It's like
the closer you get, there's there's something. There's another level
of complexity, right, and and and so the fourth dimension
is Yeah, it's rolled up inside this other one. It's
a it's another place that something could hide away in,
right right, right, Yeah, I mean that's the that's the
(12:59):
thing about science and physics, and particularly string theory, is
that the deeper you look, the more complexity is going
to arise. It's just kind of mind boggling. It is.
It is very mind boggling. So again, don't feel bad
if you're your head spinning a little bit here. Okay,
So but let's take it down to that point in space.
And now we have the little circle at that point.
So that's our fourth curled up spatial dimension. Well, now
(13:21):
we're going to make that little circle and we're gonna
make it a little crazier shape. We're gonna form it
into a a six dimensional shape called a collaby Yo shape. Yeah.
And this is, uh, this is a crazy looking it
really is. It's um it kind of looks like like
some sort of like a Nautilus shell or something and
kind of like um an esser painting. You know, it's
(13:44):
like all sorts of curving. Yeah. You also use the
analogy of a star check holiday ornament in your artist Yeah,
very space age and and awesome and so yeah, imagine
that like each if you can sort of menage that
each point in space has it up inside it a
six dimensional object, then then you can begin to see it.
(14:04):
So it's kind of like you get to you get
to that level of the building where you're hoping to
find a restaurant and you find like eight restaurants, you
know that that kind of thing. Yeah, and we should
mention that this need for all the dimensions was somewhat
born out of string theory and called for out of
string theory, although Khalitza and Climber really before string theory
got its groove on, you know, back in the in
(14:27):
the second half of the twentieth century. Um, they were
the ones who really called for all those extra dimensions
and really needed them. They weren't just saying, hey, how
many dimensions could we possibly come up with? Six? Sound good? Guys? Now,
they needed a universe with this many dimensions for the
math to to work. Yeah, essentially, And then if you
if you go on to ten dimensions, well why not
(14:48):
eleven dimensions because surely you've heard that, well, hey, it's
not ten dimensions to eleven dimension guys. You know, Robert
Nowlison what are you thinking, Well, sure, yes, there is
in fact theory M theory and that say, yeah, that's
eleven dimensions, and that what the M stands for mother
or sometimes or the M stands for all sorts of stuff.
You can take it from mother or you. You can
also take it from membrane. And if we if we
(15:10):
go with membrane, then what that's referring to is at
the heart of string theory are of course strings and
strings being these tiny one dimensional strings. Like if you
think about an atom as being kind of the smallest
thing you can imagine a string um if an atom
is the size of solar system, to borrow an analogy
from elegant Universe, a string would be as large as
(15:32):
a tree. Right. So, these very very tiny vibrating strings
that are at the core of everything, of all matter,
and they vibrate, and these one dimensional strings, their vibration
are what gives matter it's unique properties, it's charged, it's
it's being basically build their entire model the universe, or
or continuing to try and build an entire model the
(15:52):
universe that that flows out of this idea of tiny, tiny, tiny,
tiny strings. Right, So the problem of string theory is that.
Of course it's crazy complicated, but their rival string theories
going on. There are as many as five string theories,
one of which proposed twenty six different dimensions. Oh no,
that's just ridiculous. I mean, so if you think we're
getting crazy talking about ten or eleven dimensions, just put
(16:13):
out their twenty six dimensions. They're so high maintenance. What's
it like to date one of these guys. So the
idea of M theory was to unite all these rival
string theories under under M theory and the eleventh dimension.
So it's kind of crazy. We we can do a
separate podcast on the eleventh dimention if you guys are
(16:35):
so interested, although of course it may require a little
prep on our part. Yeah, I can't even imagine the
Stanley we'd have to bring in for that, Like they'll
they're just worth pointing out that F theory is looking
which stands for either father or flat Stanley. No, just
just stands for father, like F theories another string theory
spinoff that's like involving twelve, And they're thinking there would
(16:58):
be more like you know, when what on what stopped? Right?
So the more research you do in two dimensions, the more.
It does kind of seem as though, when will the
number of dimensions stop? I mean, eleven seems like a
good number. But here again we have um F theory.
I mean, who knows how it's ultimately however, many dimensions
they need to make the theory work, right, So there
(17:20):
you have it. We have your three spatial dimensions that
you guys know and love, right, plus the six spatial
dimensions that are all curled up in those crazy collabio
shapes that are at every point in space plus time.
So we bring to you ten dimensions. Yeah, there you go,
Flat Stanley, did you enjoy yourself? Oh? Man, he looks
glazed over. I think he has kind of like a
(17:41):
little half smile, and his arms are outstretched. It seems
like he wants to hug us after that that podcast.
Um dimensions. Sometimes, yeah, sometimes string theory makes you feel
like you need a hug for sure. So do you
have any listener mail? I do have a cool listener
mail I just out today. Um this comes from Daniel
(18:03):
and he writes, Hello Allison and Robert. Uh this is
an ancient Zen story. Allow me to help you and
you will surely drown. Set the monkey for the fish
placing it safely up a tree. So, and then he asked,
is it is it altruism if you try to help
a fish without understanding the nature of the fish and
(18:24):
end up killing the fish instead, Because in the story,
the monkey's like, whoa, that fish is gonna drowning and
put in a tree and now it'll be fine. Anyway,
he says something to ponder Daniel. Right, So Daniel, of
course is referencing our podcast on altruism in the Animal
Kingdom and altruism in bacteria and that whole discovery. Yeah, yeah,
and I think that's right. Yeah, it's it's it's worth
(18:44):
thinking about. Yeah, altruism, it gets kind of like where
you're coming from, you know, it's like and oftentimes, you know,
the best intentions sometimes wind up with horrible consequences. What
a bright note to end on? Ye, Well that that
wasn't really Daniel's intention. It was more just like sort
of zen, you know, contemplation and not uh wow. We
(19:06):
do sure do mess up things up sometimes as a species.
So if you guys want to share his own story
with us, or your thoughts on altruism or of course
the dimensions that we covered today, do you send us
an email. We love to hear from you or or
stuff about Flat Stanley. I'm always especially flat stan flat
Stanley pictures. I would love to see some Flat stan
especially if it all relates to science, that would be
pretty rad, or or if it relates to one of
(19:28):
our topics I would love to see. I wonder if
somebody's taken the taking Flat Stanley to the LHC. I
bet he's been there probably, so it would be pretty
easy for him to infiltrate just about anywhere. You know,
you could just mail into places that actual flesh and
blood humans could never get to. Right, he has amazing access.
Flat Stanley is a spy, as a superspy, like you
can get him the heads of state of celebrities. You
(19:49):
know this goot. This guy has has ends. Yeah, So,
like we said, if you want to share Flat Stanley's
adventures or talk about science in general, send us an
email Science Stuff at how st first dot com or
check out Facebook. Yeah yeah, we're on Facebook as stuff
in the Science Lab, and you can find us on
Twitter where we aren't Lab stuff, and we try and
(20:10):
keep that updated pretty regularly with all sorts of cool stuff.
All right, guys, thanks for listening. For more on this
and thousands of other topics, is it how stuff works
dot Com. Want more how stuff works, check out our
blogs on the house stuff works dot com home page
Welcome to Stuff from the Science Lab from how stuff
works dot com. Hey guys, and welcome to the podcast.
This is Alison I don't like, the science editor at
how stuff works dot com. And this is Robert Lamb,
science writer at how stuff works dot com. And you know,
(00:23):
normally there there are three microphones in the recording uh
room here, and normally we only occupied to but we
actually have a third person in the studio with us.
Also one you'd like to introduce him. Yeah, to my left.
Sitting to my left is um a special gentleman who
agreed to join us, and his name is Stanley. Yeah,
Flat Stanley. Yeah. Perhaps you all are acquainted with Flat
(00:44):
Stanley and maybe you've taken him on some travels of yours.
There's a big sort of movement with Flat Stanley and
getting him to see the world. Yeah, it's uh, it's
a like actually a literacy thing. Um. So if you
have kids or you know their kids somewhere in your family,
then there's a chance Flat Stanley has paid a visit
to your home, perhaps in an envelope. Um, Now do
(01:06):
you remember reading about Flat Stanley as a kid. You
you said you hadn't read I had not like I
I had never heard of Flat Stanley until like suddenly
my mom, who's a kindergarten teacher, started talking about Flat
Stanley and I'm like oh. And then then um Nis
and nephew suddenly they have Flat Stanley come into our house,
you know, to hang out, and uh, apparently it's a
big deal to deal. Now it's um the brainchild, what's
(01:27):
based on a book by Jeff Brown. And then this
guy Dale Hubert started, Uh, he's a Grade three teacher
in London, Ontario, started this whole take Flat Stanley and
Adventures with Your Thing, and it's a huge deal. I
love the books. I remember reading them as a kid,
and he just some cool things that you know, being
flat allow him to do. Yeah, Like, for example, I
(01:47):
think in one of the adventures he has, he is
able to go down into a sewer grade and pick
up some shiny ring that somebody dropped. And I think
he'd do all sorts of other stuff like squeeze between
doors because of his nice flatness, and probably under window
jams and stuff like that. But I do remember he
uh he can go into the sewer grade. I believe
(02:08):
it was cool. I mean maybe not. He gets a
little dirty Yeah, but kids should probably shouldn't like send
him down the sewer or too often on these, but
you know they are. Yeah, I guess it makes for
a cool story, that's the thing, because then they write
about it in their journal. It's like, here's what Flat
Stanley did today, and then they turn that into their
their teacher, right right, So today we're gonna take Flat
(02:29):
Stanley on a journey across the dimensions. Yeah. You know,
we live in a three D world. He lives in
a two D world, so you know, yeah, we thought
we'd use Stanley to illustrate the concepts of the dimensions
as we know them and some dimensions that string theorists
propose out there. Okay, well let's uh, let's back it up.
Then let's get down to the dimensional, very basic one
(02:51):
dimensional world. So picture of Flat Stanley for a second
in your head, and in flat Stanley if you if
you've never seen him before, and you even you're not
looking him up on a computer right now, he's this
guy on a sheet of paper and you cut him out.
He's like a little cartoon guy. Yeah. Yeah, in this
picture he has a an his tie on with Poka
dots and a white button down shirt, some slacks. Do
(03:12):
you like that? I just call them slacks. I feel
like my mom sings slacks and uh yeah, just a
regular liking dude, maybe a middle aged maybe thirties. So
flat Stanley as we have him, is too deep. Yeah,
so we need get him down to one d we do?
How are we going to do that? Well, basically, right now,
he has no depth, all right, He just has length
(03:32):
in width, So we need to break that down to
just length. Yeah, all right, so let's just come down
to a particle. Yeah, basically, would just be one single
point in the universe that he would live in, would
be a single line. So the universe is a line,
and Stanley is a point on point on that line,
and he's moving. He can only move backward. He can
(03:53):
move backward and forward. Right, say that this line is
ten inches long. You only need one number to tell
me exactly where Stanley is at any given moment. Five
inches there, Stanley. There's no other number needed. It's pretty boring. Yeah.
It's like if if Stanley were hanging out on that
line with another particle being you know, he would be like, hey, dude,
(04:14):
what do you want to meet for lunch? And they're like,
let's meet at six and that's all you would need
because there's no there's no other dimension but that. So
let's take Stanley to his current um, his current shape,
which is two D. Yeah, it's up to two dimensions
too D world. You're looking at length and width. Um.
(04:34):
The the the example I love to use with this
one battleship because battleship is a game where to to
pinpoint any position, and therefore you know injure the other
person's battleships and submarines. Ex second, you sunk my battleship,
injure them. They're not organic, but that would be kind
of cool. I guess they have to be like whales
and stuff. He sunk my whale. It just doesn't have
(04:55):
the right rank. The whale war guys would be really
upset about that one. Um. So now in battleship, if
you want to you want to hit a point, you
just need those two numbers. So it's like coordinates. Yeah,
it's like E five. So you have you line up E,
you line up five, and you connect those two lines,
um and bang, oh yeah you have you have the
(05:16):
location of that object in a two D world. Yeah,
it's kind of like if you you know, it's kind
kind of like on a city map. You know, it's
like if you were going to meet somebody for lunch
and you're like, hey, dude, where you want to meet
for lunch? They might say at the corner of you know, Firstmont,
for example, Tree and Piedmont. There you go, Um, which
Peach Tree? Well that's another issue. Atlanta planning kind of
(05:40):
messes with our ability to to use a proper metaphor here.
But but but yeah, it's like the corner of two streets,
two coordinates. In a two D world, you only need
two numbers to pinpoint exactly where you are in any
given time. So that's two dimensions exactly. I think you
guys are all with us. We're certainly, we're certainly still there.
So let's take it to three D. Let's move on up. Yeah,
three D world, that's where we are now. So you have, um,
(06:03):
flat Stanley. All of a sudden, maybe we need to
give flat Stanley a little girth. Maybe he's not flat anymore,
Maybe he becomes fat Stanley Stanley. I would think your
rotun Stanley. Yeah. Yeah. For flat Stanley to really be
a three D being, he would need all three, Tom,
he needs a little girth, he needs maybe you know,
some some muscle mass and some protrusions, some appendages. Now, yeah,
(06:27):
now we're dealing with with length, width and depth. In depth,
you can also uh swap that out for altitude because like,
let's go back to Battleship. All right, there's a submarine
and battleship. But in the game, the submarine is always
on the surface because you only have those two coordinates.
In reality, of course, the submarine goes to varying depths. Right,
(06:49):
So there's actually an advanced version of Battleship in which
the uh, the game platform rises and falls and you
have to do it like that. Have you ever heard
of that? No? I didn't know that totally, Like, well, wow,
you got okay, So yeah, at any rate, to sink
a real submarine, you would need it's latitude and its
three coordinates latitude, longitude, and depth depth, so it's like,
(07:13):
you know, it would be like e five plus uh,
you know, plus however deep it was in the ocean. Likewise,
if you're meeting up somebody for lunch and the building
happens to be ten stories tall, you'd be like, meet
me at the corner of what was the address, Peachtree
and Piedmont Um. The restaurant is on the fifth floor, right, Yeah,
(07:35):
so yeah, at any given point in our world, three
numbers will tell you where exactly you can be found. Yeah,
the three spatial dimensions I'll work nicely for helping you
find your lunch date, right, definitely. Of course we're talking
about lunch, right, so we have to set some sort
of time, right, Yeah, don't show if you show up
for lunch at three o'clock in the afternoon and you're like, dude,
(07:55):
where are you and then you say when when we
were gonna have lunch. We were gonna have ch at noon,
at lunchtime, and you're late, that's where we end up. Yeah, yeah,
this is your you know. Of course we're not gonna
line up if you're showing up at different times, and
that's where we uh where time enters the equation here.
Sometimes time is referred to as the fourth dimension, but
(08:18):
physicists who are really dealing with with the idea of
multiple dimensions, they often refer to it like this. We
have three spatial dimensions as in space, and one dimension
of time. So in that you need four numbers to
successfully pull off a lunch date. You need to know latitude, longitude,
(08:38):
altitude and when that is taking place, right, Yeah, Okay,
I think everybody's got that so far. So let's get
a little crazy. Yeah, so let's talk about the possibility
of a fourth spatial dimension. And at this point, flat
Stanley is just's he's he's just blanking out because Stanley's
taken a nap because you think it's complicated for us
to talk about four dimension. I mean, this dude's only two.
(09:01):
So well, okay, so let's let's take him. Let's take
him with us for the right. Right, So we've given
him girth in our three D world. Now he knows
what time is, so he's not gonna be late for
a lunch date. Now let's take him into our fourth
spatial dimension and let's talk about how that originated. Okay,
So yeah, now again, this is something our brains can't
really perceive. There's some good analogies. Yeah, we can draw
(09:25):
on an analogies and we can discuss why we think
about it. But don't feel bad if you cannot picture
the fourth dimension, because that's your brain. You know. Um,
nineteen nineteen, you had a mathematician by the name of
Theodore Caluza, and he, uh, maybe I maybe maybe putting
more fun into that lass name than there actually is.
(09:46):
But anyway, he theorized that a fourth spatial dimension might
link general relativity and electromagnetic theory. Okay, that didn't actually
work out, but still he gave it us a lot
of thought. Um, where would that fourth spatial dimension go? Right?
Theoretical physicist Oscar Klein, he worked on the theory a
little more and he little revision, did a little tinkering. Yeah,
(10:06):
and he proposed that the fourth spatial dimension was merely
curled up while the other three spatial dimensions are extended. Okay,
and at this point let me interrupt. Um, I was
watching The Elegant Universe recently, just get a little backing,
and it is really an awesome program that Brian Green
does from Columbia University and explains really some good stuff
on string theory and dimensions. And he was suggesting that
(10:28):
there's really a helpful way to think about dimensions. Um,
And we think about kind of unfurled or stretched out
dimensions and these are your length and your height and
your altitude and then tiny like tape measure type dimensions
curled up right, So there's furled and unfurled. Yeah. I
kind of like to think of you ever seen like
a cartoon where they have like that little like they
(10:48):
take a what looks like a black hole, it's like
a two D thing and they like slap it on
the wall and suddenly they can reach inside. Or or
like indungeons and dragons, you could get like a um,
a little pouch that had limitless capacity, Like you could
reach your whole arm into this tiny little pouch. It's
like the idea that the space is there, but it's
(11:09):
like folded. It's it's like, yeah, tape demension, tape dispenser dimensions. Right,
So we're talking about this fourth spatial dimension as being
um curled up and located at every point in space. Yeah,
so it's like every point in space has like this
extra layer that's just completely folded up inside it. Okay,
(11:32):
let's give a visual to this. Let's think about like
a telephone polar or a cable that's across the street
and you're looking at it kind of far away, so
really to you, you can only perceive it's um it's
length rising up into the sky. But then you you
you walk a little closer. You're curious about this cable,
and you you can see you can perceive it's um
its dimensions because all of a sudden you can tell
(11:54):
it's circular. So you can kind of move flat Stanley
along the cable if you so desire, or you can
move flat Stanley now around the cable. So if you
carry that image with you to the fourth dimension, think
about that point in space and then every point in
space as having a circular to mention that you can traverse. Yeah,
(12:16):
it's um like to go back to the building. Like
one way I was thinking about this. All right, we're
meeting our lunch date, right, and it's we need the longitude,
we need the latitude, and then we need to need
to know what floor it's on. Okay, just dealing with
spatial here, don't worry about time. Now. Imagine you get
to that the third floor of that building for that
that for the lunch date, and then you look around
(12:37):
and you're like, whoa, there are multiple businesses on this level.
Which which door do I go to? Right, It's like
the closer you get, there's there's something. There's another level
of complexity, right, and and and so the fourth dimension
is Yeah, it's rolled up inside this other one. It's
a it's another place that something could hide away in,
right right, right, Yeah, I mean that's the that's the
(12:59):
thing about science and physics, and particularly string theory, is
that the deeper you look, the more complexity is going
to arise. It's just kind of mind boggling. It is.
It is very mind boggling. So again, don't feel bad
if you're your head spinning a little bit here. Okay,
So but let's take it down to that point in space.
And now we have the little circle at that point.
So that's our fourth curled up spatial dimension. Well, now
(13:21):
we're going to make that little circle and we're gonna
make it a little crazier shape. We're gonna form it
into a a six dimensional shape called a collaby Yo shape. Yeah.
And this is, uh, this is a crazy looking it
really is. It's um it kind of looks like like
some sort of like a Nautilus shell or something and
kind of like um an esser painting. You know, it's
(13:44):
like all sorts of curving. Yeah. You also use the
analogy of a star check holiday ornament in your artist Yeah,
very space age and and awesome and so yeah, imagine
that like each if you can sort of menage that
each point in space has it up inside it a
six dimensional object, then then you can begin to see it.
(14:04):
So it's kind of like you get to you get
to that level of the building where you're hoping to
find a restaurant and you find like eight restaurants, you
know that that kind of thing. Yeah, and we should
mention that this need for all the dimensions was somewhat
born out of string theory and called for out of
string theory, although Khalitza and Climber really before string theory
got its groove on, you know, back in the in
(14:27):
the second half of the twentieth century. Um, they were
the ones who really called for all those extra dimensions
and really needed them. They weren't just saying, hey, how
many dimensions could we possibly come up with? Six? Sound good? Guys? Now,
they needed a universe with this many dimensions for the
math to to work. Yeah, essentially, And then if you
if you go on to ten dimensions, well why not
(14:48):
eleven dimensions because surely you've heard that, well, hey, it's
not ten dimensions to eleven dimension guys. You know, Robert
Nowlison what are you thinking, Well, sure, yes, there is
in fact theory M theory and that say, yeah, that's
eleven dimensions, and that what the M stands for mother
or sometimes or the M stands for all sorts of stuff.
You can take it from mother or you. You can
also take it from membrane. And if we if we
(15:10):
go with membrane, then what that's referring to is at
the heart of string theory are of course strings and
strings being these tiny one dimensional strings. Like if you
think about an atom as being kind of the smallest
thing you can imagine a string um if an atom
is the size of solar system, to borrow an analogy
from elegant Universe, a string would be as large as
(15:32):
a tree. Right. So, these very very tiny vibrating strings
that are at the core of everything, of all matter,
and they vibrate, and these one dimensional strings, their vibration
are what gives matter it's unique properties, it's charged, it's
it's being basically build their entire model the universe, or
or continuing to try and build an entire model the
(15:52):
universe that that flows out of this idea of tiny, tiny, tiny,
tiny strings. Right, So the problem of string theory is that.
Of course it's crazy complicated, but their rival string theories
going on. There are as many as five string theories,
one of which proposed twenty six different dimensions. Oh no,
that's just ridiculous. I mean, so if you think we're
getting crazy talking about ten or eleven dimensions, just put
(16:13):
out their twenty six dimensions. They're so high maintenance. What's
it like to date one of these guys. So the
idea of M theory was to unite all these rival
string theories under under M theory and the eleventh dimension.
So it's kind of crazy. We we can do a
separate podcast on the eleventh dimention if you guys are
(16:35):
so interested, although of course it may require a little
prep on our part. Yeah, I can't even imagine the
Stanley we'd have to bring in for that, Like they'll
they're just worth pointing out that F theory is looking
which stands for either father or flat Stanley. No, just
just stands for father, like F theories another string theory
spinoff that's like involving twelve, And they're thinking there would
(16:58):
be more like you know, when what on what stopped? Right?
So the more research you do in two dimensions, the more.
It does kind of seem as though, when will the
number of dimensions stop? I mean, eleven seems like a
good number. But here again we have um F theory.
I mean, who knows how it's ultimately however, many dimensions
they need to make the theory work, right, So there
(17:20):
you have it. We have your three spatial dimensions that
you guys know and love, right, plus the six spatial
dimensions that are all curled up in those crazy collabio
shapes that are at every point in space plus time.
So we bring to you ten dimensions. Yeah, there you go,
Flat Stanley, did you enjoy yourself? Oh? Man, he looks
glazed over. I think he has kind of like a
(17:41):
little half smile, and his arms are outstretched. It seems
like he wants to hug us after that that podcast.
Um dimensions. Sometimes, yeah, sometimes string theory makes you feel
like you need a hug for sure. So do you
have any listener mail? I do have a cool listener
mail I just out today. Um this comes from Daniel
(18:03):
and he writes, Hello Allison and Robert. Uh this is
an ancient Zen story. Allow me to help you and
you will surely drown. Set the monkey for the fish
placing it safely up a tree. So, and then he asked,
is it is it altruism if you try to help
a fish without understanding the nature of the fish and
(18:24):
end up killing the fish instead, Because in the story,
the monkey's like, whoa, that fish is gonna drowning and
put in a tree and now it'll be fine. Anyway,
he says something to ponder Daniel. Right, So Daniel, of
course is referencing our podcast on altruism in the Animal
Kingdom and altruism in bacteria and that whole discovery. Yeah, yeah,
and I think that's right. Yeah, it's it's it's worth
(18:44):
thinking about. Yeah, altruism, it gets kind of like where
you're coming from, you know, it's like and oftentimes, you know,
the best intentions sometimes wind up with horrible consequences. What
a bright note to end on? Ye, Well that that
wasn't really Daniel's intention. It was more just like sort
of zen, you know, contemplation and not uh wow. We
(19:06):
do sure do mess up things up sometimes as a species.
So if you guys want to share his own story
with us, or your thoughts on altruism or of course
the dimensions that we covered today, do you send us
an email. We love to hear from you or or
stuff about Flat Stanley. I'm always especially flat stan flat
Stanley pictures. I would love to see some Flat stan
especially if it all relates to science, that would be
pretty rad, or or if it relates to one of
(19:28):
our topics I would love to see. I wonder if
somebody's taken the taking Flat Stanley to the LHC. I
bet he's been there probably, so it would be pretty
easy for him to infiltrate just about anywhere. You know,
you could just mail into places that actual flesh and
blood humans could never get to. Right, he has amazing access.
Flat Stanley is a spy, as a superspy, like you
can get him the heads of state of celebrities. You
(19:49):
know this goot. This guy has has ends. Yeah, So,
like we said, if you want to share Flat Stanley's
adventures or talk about science in general, send us an
email Science Stuff at how st first dot com or
check out Facebook. Yeah yeah, we're on Facebook as stuff
in the Science Lab, and you can find us on
Twitter where we aren't Lab stuff, and we try and
(20:10):
keep that updated pretty regularly with all sorts of cool stuff.
All right, guys, thanks for listening. For more on this
and thousands of other topics, is it how stuff works
dot Com. Want more how stuff works, check out our
blogs on the house stuff works dot com home page
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