We seem to be hearing a lot about other dimensions lately. It is a fascinating subject, but one that is yet to be proven, as far as I am concerned. You will hear about a theory, then you will see it described in an article and before you know it, it will take in other dimensions and maybe space and time will be thrown it for good measure. As if this wasn't complicated enough, you might even find that quantum physics is mentioned. Yipes, if this isn't enough to give anyone a headache, I don't know what is. If one throws in enough of this stuff they can explain almost anything, but the big question is, doesn't this type of explanation make it right? You hear a lot about folding space to make it easier to travel to other star systems. We are also told that this will alter time, not all time but only the time that effects us if we are in our space ship. The rest of time is said to continue on it merry way ever forward at the same pace.

I have been wondering about several issues and not the least is that no one has ever folded space that we know of. How do we even know that this is possible and not just some dream? Let's say for the sake of argument that we build a machine to test out this theory, how would we build it? What would it be made of and how would it work? I have never seen any plans for such a machine just loose talk about gravity and electromagnetism. We don't even know how gravity works yet, but we are basing machines on it. O. K. we build our machine and we think that it will work and we turn it on and it either does nothing or rips a hole in space and destroys us all. Could this happen? Why not? The chances of doing nothing are far more likely than the chances of ripping a hole in space. I always thought of space as being nothing, but I was wrong. It is almost nothing. There are a few atoms floating in it that make it the thinnest of something, but it is close enough to nothing that we can call it that for this article. So how do you make a hole in nothing?

It seems to me that to be able to make a hole in space, there would have to be something on the other side of space. I guess this is where our other dimensions come in. Of course we don't really know if they exist, we just think that they MAY exist and this is based on some scientific theories that just could be wrong. So what would happen if they do exist and we rip a hole in our space? We might get a doorway into their space which they could travel here through, if there were beings in that dimension, and we could travel there through. On the other hand, their space might rush into our space or visa versa causing some unknown calamity. Here is another question that I have wondered about, would time be the same in other dimensions?

In our dimension we think that time is always marching forward. The faster you travel the slower time is traveling. The planet Earth is traveling through space about 600,000 mph. If we could slow down the speed we travel would we age faster? If we met people or beings that lived on a planet that was traveling through space at only 20,000 mph what would be their life span? If we colonized their planet, what would be our life span? These may be curious questions, but wouldn't you like to know the answer? Say we find a planet shooting through space at near the speed of light and colonize that planet, would we live a lot longer, but not actually realize it since we would be moving slower? If we meet a race of aliens that have a life span of hundreds of years, and they settle on earth, will their life spans decrease if our planet is traveling slower than the one that they come from?

Oh there are so many questions. It might be that planetary speed doesn't have any effect on time, just as the speed doesn't seem to be noticeable to us poor creatures that inhabit the planet. What about planetary rotation? Well the Moon rotates once in about 27.32 days and Earth rotates once in about 24 hours, yet the difference wasn't felt by the astronauts or at least I never saw it mentioned. How fast can a body rotate before a resident of that body feels it? I really don't know the answer to this. The Earth has a circumference of 24,901.55 miles, so that means that is how fast it rotates in 24 hours. We are spinning at 1,037.56 mph and feel nothing. Could it be that when people sometimes get dizzy with inner ear afflictions they begin to feel this rotation and that is the real reason that can't stand? Maybe it is a question of biology. If we were born on a planet that rotates two or three times faster than Earth, we might need to have some compensating factor to be comfortable on that world.

Back to space and time. Have you ever heard of the theory that a universe exists for every possible contingency there is? That would mean that billions upon billions of universes exist and we are in most of them except for the ones where we died for some reason. An example of what I am talking about is pretty simple to explain. If you ever had a car accident, there would be a universe where every possible outcome of that accident happened, including your death. In one universe, the accident was prevented, in millions of other universes there were millions of different outcomes both in damage and injury. I would like to know where such a wild theory came from? It certainly doesn't seem sensible on the face of it. I am not saying that it is wrong, because I am not qualified to state this, but I am saying it is very hard to agree with. These other universes have also been referred to as other dimensions and have something to do with string theory. String theory is a theory that replaces points with strings and suggests at least eleven space time dimensions and has never been proven.

So there you have it, what we basically have is guesses about things that have yet to be proven. Should we take these things seriously? Yes because some of them may be right, but some may also be wrong, very wrong. It would be interesting to see where science stands a hundred or even a thousand years from now on these theories. Will we find that other dimensions exist or will we find that this was just a wishful dream in the head of some scientists and science fiction writers?