What If We Found A 10th Dimension? | Unveiled

What If We Found a Tenth Dimension?

For human beings it can be tricky to comprehend the existence of even a fourth dimension, or a fifth. If we could move between them, what would we see? And how would our perspective change? Despite the challenge in imagining even one extra dimension, though, some physicists believe there are at least ten extra levels to our universe.

This is Unveiled and today we’re answering the extraordinary question; What if we found a tenth dimension?

We, of course, live in a three-dimensional world. The three spatial dimensions that we can see and interact with are length, width, and height. We’re aware of the fourth dimension as well - time - but it exists alongside the other dimensions of space. We don’t interact with it in the same way. Time is unique because it’s the only temporal dimension. Even in a proposed universe with ten dimensions, nine of them are still thought to be spatial.

The general idea allowing for ten dimensions is known as String Theory. String Theory attempts to unify all forces and particles in nature into a single structure - it’s a proposed “theory of everything” and it ultimately argues that mathematically there are at least six extra dimensions as well as the four that we’re familiar with. There are other variations of string theory, too, which posit even more… including M-theory which proposes eleven, and Bosonic String Theory which allows for a whopping twenty-six.

But, even if we stick to “just ten”, if there really are so many dimensions, then where exactly are they? There are some proposals as to why we can’t perceive them… For one, we could live in a 3D part - a kind of offshoot - of something bigger called a Brane. This theoretical structure would restrict all the evidence of the other dimensions that aren’t accessible for us... Everything we know would essentially exist in a pocket; a pocket that makes sense to us but doesn’t provide the full picture of what reality really is.

The alternative is that the extra dimensions are too small for us to experience; they’re curled up and compacted down into tiny structures called Calabi-Yau manifolds. While we would never know for sure that this was the case (without somehow evolving to see these tiny dimensions), there have been studies to suggest that the universe had ten dimensions at the time of the Big Bang, with only three of those - the three we experience - expanding into the observable universe. The rest exist in unseen Calabi-Yau manifolds. We can, though, use what we know about the three dimensions we live in to predict what proposed other dimensions could be like if they weren’t so small.

Our first dimension is length, which can be a straight line. If we add another straight line through that, we get width and two dimensions. Add another line at a different point and we have height; the third dimension. If we could see time (the fourth dimension) we’d have a trail of all the variations of a 3D anything, from birth to death. But now we move to truly uncharted territory!

Most models pitch the fifth dimension as another timeline - where an alternate Earth exists in time with similar conditions to our own, providing us with a “different version” of our reality. For the sixth dimension, we’d see many of those worlds, all similar and all still starting with the same conditions and the same laws of physics as our own did. A sixth dimension would reveal all the possible outcomes that could have happened to us and everything else; it’s the basis for some interpretations of the “Many Worlds” theory.

The seventh dimension brings it up another level, though, granting access to the timelines of worlds that started out completely differently to our own - with different fundamental physical laws. By the time we reach the eighth and ninth dimensions, if we could access them we’d be seeing a plane of infinite universes built of the same or different physical properties as our own…

While all of that’s pretty mindboggling, however, the tenth dimension is the eye-watering icing on top of our colossal, cosmological cake. If humans were able to find and see such a dimension, well, they wouldn’t really be human anymore. They’d have the ability to view all of the possible universes and realities, regardless of each one’s fundamental physical properties, but also all of the possible timelines that all of that could create. It’s every possibility in any space or timeline, right before our ultra-ultra-advanced eyes. There’s nothing that we wouldn’t know! And, while bosonic string theorists imagine a different, more populated path to get there… there’s really nothing (at least nothing imaginable) beyond this.

Back in the real world - that is, the one we can see and comprehend - string theory physicists theorize that there are vibrating “superstrings” which form all the matter we know about - right down to subatomic particles. In the tenth dimension, every other dimension and all possible particles (all possible strings) are wrapped up into a single point - and it accounts for literally everything there is. If you could control the tenth dimension, you’d have ultimate, unmatchable power.

Finding the tenth dimension would answer any problem that humanity had ever encountered. By now, today’s ultimate questions like how and when this universe began would feel like small fry. We’d not only know all about our own universe, but all about every possible universe. We’d also know precisely how life evolved on our planet, in our star system, in our universe - as we’d have access to our specific timeline. But we’d also know all about every instance of life that has ever lived in the multiverse. What’s more, we’d automatically know the eventual fate of all of it, too. With every timeline laid out in front of us it wouldn’t so much be us “looking into the future” as we wouldn’t really be having to look anywhere… we’d just know it. But, in this way, we’d understand every single civilization that has lived and also that ever will live. If there is to be an “end of humanity”, we’d be able to perfectly pre-empt it. Even an eventual end of reality would be something a tenth dimensional being would naturally and objectively understand!

In many ways, the universe would feel bigger than ever. But it would also be more manageable than ever. We’d understand the smallness of Planet Earth in amongst everything else, being able to instantly map the Milky Way, and even our entire universe as we currently view it. We’d also know all there is to know about our own timelines - our own life and death stories - but also everything about every possible alternate version of ourselves. Again, our lives would feel crazier than ever, but also easier to accept and comprehend as one strand of truly infinite possibilities.

With tenth dimensional powers we could actually see and experience the lives of anyone or anything; much as we could appreciate any other planet as existing in a similar state of importance and uniqueness as Earth. All possible combinations of the fundamental forces of nature would be accessible for us. We’d have god-like omniscience and wisdom, with the only “limit” placed on our knowledge being that we’d already know everything there is to know. We’d no longer be tethered to a single perspective or a single point in space or time; instead allowed to travel through and enjoy every single aspect of it.

Unfortunately, while some argue that ten dimensions could be a mathematical necessity for our reality… We’re a long way away from unlocking new dimensions for ourselves. Until then, we’re like a fish that spends its life in the ocean but suspects that there’s a completely different world above the water. The potentially multi-dimensional multiverse is close, but also so, so far away. And that’s what would happen if we found a tenth dimension.