Science a GoGo's Home Page Forums General Discussion Physics Forum Flatness Problem: To call a spade a spade.

The alternative is that the universe was born with 3+1 dimensions but the uneasy question why 3+1?

I had the pleasure to hear Dejan speak and it was that historic paradox that got him to think about space and dimensionality and I was amazed that aristotle insight could be as valid today as it was back then ... scary hey.

The historic arrow paradox where he was trying to explain how the air was not actually empty and trying to not be executed for offending the gods is pretty amazing.

At the time for Aristole open air spaces were considered nothing and the god of the wind made its presence felt but by and large air was perceived as empty.

Aristotle worked out that if you keep reducing the frame of reference in tighter and tighter on the arrow eventually you reach a point where you can not tell the arrow is moving. That state must therefore be nothing or as he declares "the flying arrow is therefore motionless". So by deductive reasoning if you can move by definition there is most definitely something and therefore the arrow is moving thru something you can not see.

I am told like alot of science at the time it was bound in these almost philosophical wordings so only fellow scientists would understand apparently "hey I can prove that there is something in this space I will call air and your gods aren't real" would get you killed :-)

What is also so cool is the idea after all these years should pop up in space and should very soon be testable by the LHC probably after the restart at higher energies.