Actually the universe is four dimensions (at least) - proponents of string theory say many more but that is unproven. Short answer, no. Of course there are the things that go bump in the night, so to speak, that make me nervous but I recognize it is just older parts of the brain playing tricks. There are things that are not known but all that means is they are not known; it was not until the 1930s that we knew why the sun and stars are hot. Doesn't mean it was some mystical something and certainly doesn't meant they were cold; we just did not have the information. Currently we do not know if there is life on other planets (probably but still no evidence), what dark matter/dark energy actually is, whether there is extinct life that was not DNA/RNA based, how Neanderthals became extinct - although not entirely since Asians and Europeans carry, on average, about 2% Neanderthal DNA. And a ton more. But no evidence any of those unknowns cannot be explained materially. Oh yes, not Christian. Jewish by culture and tradition but I "made my decision for atheism" at 13 and never wavered. Won't until I see some evidence for the god hypothesis.
Seriously, it's insane man! You see things that are so far fetched, you forget you are even tripping.
No, you can't say that first sentence as a fact. It's just a theory. Not only is it unproven (= lots of evidence but not enough), but there is zero evidence, by science's standards. But I think it's what's coming up as the big wave in the next couple of centuries. Higher dimensions can explain what religious people (and any other imaginations, too) are perceiving. There is a lot of nonphysical existence out there that is currently beyond science, but science will slowly capture it. As I said, I'm content to wait for science instead of pretending to know it all, as the religious do. Maybe before I die I'll edit the 2000 pages of ideas about higher dimensions I wrote in the early 70s after my acid trips and make it understandable. Yeah, right. That would take years. Let someone else do the work someday and get the credit.
i'm sure cran was referring to time as the fourth dimension as in GR. otherwise you are correct, higher spatial dimensions are just theoretical at the moment. some physicists think there might even be more than one time dimension. try picturing that if you want to simulate an acid trip.
higher spatial dimensions than 3 if they exist would just be a feature of our physical universe - something we exist in already, but that we haven't evolved to notice. a fourth spatial dimension would not be a different 'place'. a 'non-physical' realm (if that is even a coherent concept) would have to be something entirely different having nothing to do with higher spatial dimensions.
If you think about it as I did in the past, you will quickly see that each dimension swims in the next higher dimension. Relative to each nth dimensional frame of reference, its "time" is the (n+1)th dimension. So yes, there are many. Just as there are an infinite number of 0D points in a 1D line, 1D lines in a 2D plane, 2D planes in a 3D space, and 3D spaces in a 4th D, there are many 4D superspaces in the 5th D. Our 3D space is in only one of those 4D entities, not all. So most 4D entities are indeed a different place from where our 3D space will ever be. The definition of physical as meaning 3 dimensions is pretty standard. As in, "Basketball takes its toll, mentally and physically." Physical means the corporeal body, as opposed to the mental, spiritual, and imaginative dimensions. I won't get into what I think the 4 forces of physics (electromagnetism, gravitation, weak and strong nuclear forces) are. It's not what people would call "physical."
My wife and I both saw what was a "UFO" in 1999 while driving at night through Rice Hill on our way to Ashland. Thing was hovering over the interstate, then sped off and 'crashed' into a mountain, although there was no explosion. We both thought it was a plane crash.
this is really cool stuff to trip out on and all, and it sort of works mathematically, but there are technical reasons having to do with degrees of freedom that physicists don't expect this type of conceptually simplistic view of higher spatial dimensions to work in the real world (string theorists think higher dimensions if they exist must be 'curled' up on the scale of subatomic particles). also the entire framework you are describing is definitionally physical. the concept of space itself implies physicality regardless of number of dimensions. 'non-physical' is an unrelated philosophical concept you are just tacking on ad hoc. have to be careful not to confuse everyday figures of speech with scientific definitions. they are often competely unrelated.
The definition of one word is the least of my concerns. You can have the distracting word; it's yours. If "physical" has been officially defined in science, it's news to me. Other than the "physical sciences." My philosophy of dimensions requires new definitions or new words for 30-50 words, as I recall, and I'm carefully not using any of those technical terms here so as to be understood. So far I haven't even covered Page 1 of 2000. This isn't the space, uh, place or time for it.
cool. i was just pointing out that science itself doesn't fundamentally distinguish between the corporeal and non-corporeal. it necessarily treats everything that we know exists from rocks to brain activity to spatial dimensions as part of/emerging from the same 'physical' existence. differentiating between a physical dimension and a mental/spiritual dimension is more of a philosophical exercise, not something you can meaningfully relate to the scientific notion of limits of 3D perspectives in 4D spaces. nerd out
I'll note it in the preface to the thousand-page tome I will someday write between posts to a certain addictive basketball board.
