If I read it correctly, this Science article shows some good evidence for extra spatial dimensions from what to me seems like a surprising source.
Essentially the idea is that two sorts of molecules form two sets of parallel crystal structures in the same solid. These crystal structures can lock each other into different phases and they can transition into different phases but what they observed was a phase transition that, as the accompanying Perspective states “can only be described properly in superspace …” Sort of (but not really) like having a penny being changing from heads up to tails up can only be described by flipping it over in the third dimension, this crystal re-arrangement can only be described by flipping these structures around in a fourth spatial dimension.
If I’ve got it right then this has implications beyond that of organic solid state chemistry and chemical engineering. Implications that support the extra dimensionality required by string theory and its ilk. And on questions such as - if regular matter can flip around, unobserved other than by effect, within extra dimensions to some limited degree, could antimatter flip in there and out of there as well, unobserved other than by the fact that it looks less than perfectly symetric with regular matter in the three observable spatial dimensions and by gravity effects (perhaps being part of the source of dark matter)?
It looks to me like the “extra dimensions” they’re referring to here aren’t exactly “extra”. There are many things in the sciences which are best described by spaces of some dimensionality, but that space does not necessarily have anything to do with the “real” space of length, width, and height that people usually think of. It’s quite common, for instance, to deal with “phase space”, where the components of velocities of particles, in addition to positions, are regarded as “dimensions”, so the phase space for a single object is six-dimensional. A fellow grad student’s thesis involves a search through a space of seventeen thousand dimensions, where each dimension refers to the value of a single pixel in an image. And quantum mecanics calculations are done in Hilbert spaces, which typically have an infinite number of dimensions. None of these relates to the dozen or so dimensions associated with the String Model, or any of the brane models out there.
Read the entire article. When they’re talking about "extradimensional superspace’ they’re not referring to some kind of compactified extra spacial dimensions or anything like, but rather additional non-linear degrees of freedom which can be represented as additional dimensions, or in other words, multiple links between sublattices that allow additional degrees of freedom; in other words, just because you have lattice A and lattice B in a particular configuration, they can “snap together” in multiple ways. Imagine a Lego block that can snap into another 4x2 Lego, and then suddenly morph to also fit a 3x3 Lego without actually deforming or changing energy state. (I know, there aren’t any 3x3 square Lego blocks…just go with it, okay?)
“Space” is often used in multiple contexts in relation to mathematical modeling that has nothing to do with real “space”; for instance, in controls and information theory, both “state space” and “phase space” are commonly used even though they have nothing to do with physical space. You frequently find “sci-fi” jargon used in technical literature in a way that turns out to be much more mundane and prosaic than expected. This is, of course, because sci-fi authors originally adapted these words to their own use, like Asimov’s “positronic brains” (even though there is no conceivable reasons why Asimov’s robots would need anti-electrons to function).
Stranger
p.s. Ah, I should have reviewed; it looks like while I stepped away, Chronos already provided essentially the same answer, but with greater clarity. Oh well.
Ah, I did read the article. Now understanding it all … that’s another thing! Which of course is why I am posting here and asking. Thing is statements like this from the Perspective (already partly given)
sure sound more like they are talking about behavior that can be described best spatially in four spatial dimensions rather than the use of dimensions as a mathematical metaphor for handling degrees of freedom.