clifford_a-_pickover_surfing_through_hyperspacebookfi-org

204 appendix h
travel along an essentially 1-D (time-like) world line through the (m + n) universe.
Your wristwatch would work. However, the world would be odd. If two people
moving in different time directions happen to meet on the street, they would
inevitably drift apart in separate time directions again, unable to stay together!
Also, as discussed by J. Dorling, particles like protons, electrons, and photons are
unstable and may decay if there is more than one dimension of time.
All sorts of causal paradoxes can arise with more than one dimension of time.
However, I do not think this precludes life, even if the behavior or the universe
would be quite disturbing to us. Also, electrons, protons, and photons could still
be stable if their energies were sufficiently low—creatures could still exit in cold
regions of universes with greater than one time dimension. However, without welldefined
cause and effect in these universes, it might be difficult for brains (or even
computers) to evolve and function.
None of these arguments rules out the possibility of life in the fourth spatial
dimension (i.e., a (4 + 1) universe). For example, stable structures may be possible
if they are based on short distance quantum corrections to the 1/r 2 potential or on
string-like rather than point-like particles.
A Simple Proof That the World Is Three-Dimensional
In 1985, Tom Morley (School of Mathematics, Georgia Institute of Technology)
published a paper titled "A Simple Proof That the World Is Three-Dimensional."
The paper begins:
The title is, of course, a fraud. We prove nothing of the sort. Instead
we show that radially symmetric wave propagation is possible only in
dimensions one and three.
In short, this means that it may be difficult to have radio, television, and rapid
global communication in higher-dimensional worlds. [For a theoretical discussion,
see Morley, T. (1985) A simple proof that the world is three-dimensional. SIAM
Review. 27(1): 69-71.]
When I asked Tom Morley about some of the implications of his theories, he
replied:
These results should affect the inhabitants of other dimensions. Surely,
Abbott's Fla.tla.nd creatures would have greater challenges than we do
when communicating. In three dimensions, sounds get softer as we
walk away, but in two dimensions, they get increasingly spread out in