What If Humanity Was a 5D Civilization? | Unveiled

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What if humanity was a 5D civilization?</h4>

The universe we exist within consists of four dimensions - three spatial, and the less obvious dimension of time. We move through height, width and depth quite easily, which we can alter and control in any direction… while we flow through time but can’t yet manipulate it in quite the same way. Is there any wider reason why we live in this particular number of dimensions, though? And, if there isn’t, then might nature have more up its sleeve?

This is Unveiled, and today we’re answering the extraordinary question: what if humanity was a 5D civilization?

It’s been fairly obvious to humans for millennia that we’re able to move in the three dimensions of space, but there was no formal definition of these until the Ancient Greek mathematician Euclid. In 300 BCE, Euclid published one of the most important books in history - “The Elements” - containing a thorough description of geometry in up to three dimensions; otherwise known as Euclidean Geometry. Two thousand years later, in the 17th century, and René Descartes began to describe Euclidean space with coordinates, thus developing a branch of mathematics we now call Analytic Geometry. This field has advanced and advanced ever since, creating the rich and sophisticated understanding we have of space today.

The story for the fourth dimension - time - isn’t quite so straightforward. It’s existence may seem clear to us now, but for most of human history time was considered to be absolute. According to Isaac Newton, time existed independent of observers, as a kind of universal, permeating force, believed by Newton to advance at the same rate throughout the entire cosmos. For a long while that position didn’t change; the concepts of space and time were viewed as entirely separate. That was until Albert Einstein. Einstein’s game changing Theory of Relativity did away with the notion of absolute time, and found that space and time were not two separate entities. General relativity unifies them into one mathematical model… explaining that they’re both components of a singular four dimensional continuum. Einstein aptly named this spacetime, and deduced that gravity arises as a result of the warping of spacetime due to mass. As part of his calculations, he further determined that the speed of light in a vacuum is constant from any frame - i.e., relative to everything. And that time moves relative to its observer, thus causing the relativistic effect of time dilation. This again shows that time isn’t absolute, but will flow at different rates depending on conditions. In short, while space is quite simple, time is quite strange. 

But perhaps not quite so strange as what a fifth dimension would be. Not long after the publishing of General Relativity in 1915, work began on adding that fifth dimension to our view of the universe. This arose as an attempt to correct one of the greatest issues with General Relativity, one which still remains unsolved today; a complete explanation and quantisation of gravity. General Relativity describes gravity on a large scale to a mindblowing level of accuracy… however, on the comparatively tiny scale of quantum particles, those macro models crumble. And we still don’t have a unifying theory to link between both fields. If we ever were to unlock a fifth dimension, then that in itself might prove to be the link we’ve sought.

Two physicists in the 1920s, Theodor Kaluza and Oskar Klein, were some of the first to try and bridge this gap by introducing a fifth dimension, and using it to unify the incomplete force of gravity with the fully formulated force of electromagnetism. Kaluza and Klein speculated that an extra spatial dimension could be key. However, they believed it would be very different to the three we already know. The fifth dimension was hypothesized to be curled up and microscopic; all but inaccessible from our human perspective. And definitely unobservable to us, since it (in itself) was deemed to be only 100 times (or less) the Planck length, which is the smallest measurable distance known. In this particular model, the fifth dimension was linked to the electric charge of a particle; it was deemed that a charged particle must rotate around the dimension, as though ticking along in the background of reality as we know it. The direction of movement around the fifth dimension would then determine if that particle were positively or negatively charged - therefore having a profound impact on all matter, energy, and the universe as a whole. Really, Kaluza and Klein’s thinking was mathematically sound… but, at the time, it didn’t gain much traction. 

Almost six decades later, though, and the Kaluza-Klein theory made a major comeback, being recognised as an essential piece of the emerging String Theory in the 1970s. In short, String Theory is one of the most promising attempts at creating a unified theory of everything, by describing all fundamental particles as vibrating strings. Here, the frequency at which the strings oscillate determines what kind of a particle they become. Currently, String Theory remains unproven, and there’s still no such thing as a singular, mathematically complete version of it… but instead multiple differing versions, which all operate on the same basic principles. And one similarity they all share, is that they all predict tiny, unobservable dimensions almost exactly like the fifth dimension predicted by Kaluza and Klein all those years ago. One version, called Bosonic String Theory, actually requires a total of twenty-six dimensions to work. A second version, M-theory, predicts eleven dimensions. And then Superstring theory assumes just ten. All, however, posit more than “only” five. As incredible as it may seem, then, a fifth dimension might actually be the least we should expect - if any of String Theory is ever proven right. The problem is that… none of it has been. Due to its lack of validity, then, musings on extra dimensions can be quite a stretch. 

Nevertheless, if there were a fifth dimension out there, what would it mean for us? In many ways, any number of extra dimensions actually wouldn’t change anything on the scale of humans. Again, as per String Theory and the like, this would all be happening something like background noise, and never truly bleeding over into our everyday experience. But, let’s take a step back from these genuinely hypothesized, abstract, but hidden away potential dimensions of science. What would happen if, instead, we simply added to the universe a fourth spatial dimension, on top of the three (plus time) we already have? Naturally, it isn’t true to life as we know it…  but we actually can theorize how things might appear in this alternate universe, with our current understanding of gravity. 

For example, studies have shown that one way in which gravity might behave differently is in the strength of its pull. Compared to four dimensional gravity, in five dimensions the force would be significantly stronger closer to an object. On the other hand, it should also get weaker much quicker. Another consequence of this extra dimension could then be a great difficulty (perhaps impossibility) to form planets and solar systems in the universe. In our universe, it’s natural for celestial objects to lock into orbits with one another. From the Moon around the Earth, to the Sun around the Milky Way, orbiting bodies are in abundance - largely thanks to how gravity works for us in four dimensions. It’s something that we take for granted. With an extra spatial dimension however, that setup’s extremely unlikely to continue. In three or fewer dimensions, it works; add more, and it probably breaks. Perfectly circular orbits might be possible under some conditions, but if any deviation sets in… then the types of cosmic structure that we see would fail.  

The chance of planets existing in a 5D space such as this diminishes further when you consider how planets form. In our universe, the earliest version of a solar system is essentially a giant sphere of loose dust and gas, surrounding a young proto-star. The gravitational attraction of the particles within causes the sphere to gradually collapse, and as it does the particles flatten out into a two dimensional disc, from which planets form due to a continuous clumping of matter. That all checks out fine. With an extra spatial dimension, however, this dust and gas would form a four dimensional sphere, or a hypersphere, and it would harbor an extra plane to rotate around. Interestingly, this extra plane makes it tricky for the dust to collapse in on itself. So even the existence of planets is potentially impossible in a 5D realm. And of course without planets, there’s no way for life to evolve. 

All in all, humanity being a 5D civilisation in this sense just isn’t what’s happening; the extra spatial realm would basically contradict us. On the other hand, though, there is a likelihood (perhaps a strong likelihood) that we’re already living in a universe with way more than we know. A 5D reality that does already work out, and perhaps a ten, eleven, or even twenty-six tier structure in total. If only one day we could properly tap into it.