String theory predicts your extradimensional doom

Stole the gif from Terri Pilling, at NDSU......obsessively interested in string theory currently and enjoying the potential existence of Calabi-Yau structures embedded within this universe, at every conceivable point, as if they belong there. That is what those things are, undulating in that creepy manner.......there are an infinite number of them, at every conceivable point in space, because they are not really structures at all, just aspects of the dimensionality of the universe we are not able to observe directly......I am even more partial to the notion that this universe we currently observe is a "brane", a four dimensional slice of a larger, multidimensional reality which we cannot observe directly, but only through inference. In fact, both possibilities might actually be the case. Even better, and I am surprised at the timidity of string theorists, not timid in other respects, from proposing that there may be other time-like dimensions folded up into the small interstices of the spacetime we experience.

I think it promising that, before such a theory existed, adding stringy dimensions to normal, 3d physics produces interesting ways of explaining things we take for granted....like electromagnetic waves.... This was done by Kaluza in 1919 before anyone understood quantum mechanics....all Kaluza did was stick an extra dimension into reality, combined it with Einsteinean spacetime, and found that his model predicted Maxwell's electromagnetic waves. Oscar Klein was the person who first described what this extra dimension might look like. Imagine a dimension, perpendicular to the four dimensional timespace we inhabit, but small, so that any trip along this axis inevitably leads to the same place in a very short distance. All of us, or the subatomic particles within us, at least, move in this direction constantly. Trips in this direction cycle, though, they oscillate. Add more dimensions, you get the spaces described in the gif above.

I also like the idea that there are big, macroscopic dimensions, we are simply unable to sense. That is, of course, what people implicitly mean when they say "creature from another dimension". Such a creature would inhabit a universe parallel to our own, but removed along the axis of one of these invisible dimensions. Our entire physical universe, the spacetime we think about, can be though of as a plane, cutting through a larger solid. This creature's universe would be another such plane. If the planes intersect, you get a line. If two four dimensional timespaces intersect within a five dimensional solid, you get a three dimensional space at the intersection. This could be the entire universe, as the worlds pass through each other instantaneously, or a two dimensional field that exists for a duration. Through this field, terrible creatures could come and go, perhaps dragging human victims to their doom. But, could they exist here? Unless you tweak other elements of reality, physical laws should work the same there as they do here.

This could happen to you. Tonight. As you sleep. An interdimensional Hound of Tindalos could drag you, screaming, out of your bed, through a gate into a terrible world, never to be seen again. Nothing in string theory precludes such a thing, and, following the logical lead of all string theorists that they must be right because their ideas are cool, even in the absence of evidence, we must assume that this can and will happen. Tonight. Beware.