How can extra dimensions of space be detected?

(Inside the tunnel of the Large Hadron Collider)

Robert Deyes over at Access Research Network offers an accessible explanation of what questions physicists hope the Large Hadron Collider will answer (when it is fixed mid next year). One thing I had wondered was how the extra dimensions of space that string theory requires could be detected, and he obliges in "Hadron And The String Theorists' Dream Of Unification" (10/23/08). Basically, new dimensions might be detected by deviations from the familiar inverse square law:

The inverse square law of force tells us that a mass (A) at a distance of radius(r) from mass (D) will experience gravitational (G) and electrical (E) forces that are proportional to 1/r2 (Ref 3, pp.394-398). So for a universe many dimensions larger, this proportionality would simply increase such that in four dimensions G and E would be proportional to 1/r3, in 5 dimensions, to 1/r4 and so on (Ref 3, pp.394-398). Today the race is on to probe distances smaller than a 10th of a millimeter with the aim of detecting any deviation from the inverse square law that might indicate the presence of the additional space dimensions predicted by String theory. As astrophysicists Bernard Carr and Steven Giddings have noted, the spilling over of gravity into adjacent dimensions may provide the avenue through which String theory can truly be tested (Ref 10)

For now, no measurements on gravity have revealed any deviation from the inverse square law. But the Large Hadron Particle Collider, scheduled for completion in 2009, may change this (Ref 10). If the gravitational force really is much stronger than we observe in our three dimensional space and it is leaking out into adjacent dimensions of space as predicted, the production of tiny black holes- objects whose immense gravitational hold trap anything including light- would require much smaller amounts of energy and matter. Such a scenario would be achievable through the high-energy particle collisions that the Large Hadron Collider will be capable of (Ref 10). While Hadron has recently suffered some major technical difficulties (Ref 11) it promises much when it is finally up and running. If the planned experiments do provide evidence for gravitational spilling, we may be one step closer to achieving the String Theorists' dream of unification.

The whole is well worth reading.

See also:

Big physics could end up putting physicists out of a job?

Will it be a disaster for physics if the Higgs boson is the ONLY thing the Large Hadron Collider finds?

Mass: Is the Higgs boson the "stuff" of all that stuff we call matter?

Here is a video about the Collider:

Science fiction mag discovers intelligent design theory

Dave Springer noted recently at Uncommon Descent that after 40 years, Analog Magazine had finally tackled intelligent design:

What I found really amazing about this was that this is the first time, to the best of my knowledge, that Analog has published any fact OR fiction article which explicitly uses the phrase “Intelligent Design” (capitalized no less). What a delightful breath of fresh air. The editor must have felt like he was letting Pandora out of her box. Let’s hope there’s much more to come.

I bet they chicken out. Plenty of time to prove me wrong though.

Springer has also expressed doubts about string theory as the saviour of the no-design universe: Apparently, a physicist has estimated that there are now 10^500 possible solutions to a popular version of string theory.

A few years ago, there were only a few and none produced a universe like ours. If any of the rest do, how would we know?

10^500 is a, like, big number to hunt through.

Cue space aliens: You guys are up next, just after Richard Dawkins. Relax, fellas, he believes in you now.

This just in: A kind reader (wrf3) [?] has just written to say:

It has been a long time since I've read an SF mag so I'm not as up on the genre as I used to be, but I do read the Years Best SF anthology edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer. In the twelfth of the series, published in 2007, there is the short story Applied Mathematical Theology by the respected author and scientist Gregory Benford, who is professor emeritus of physics at UC Irvine. The very short story was first published in Nature and tells of finding a non-random pattern buried in the cosmic microwave background. It's ID through and through, even though the term doesn't appear in the story.

I would have thought that the publication of this, especially in Nature, would have been picked up at Uncommon Descent, Colliding Universes, or The ID Update, but I never saw it and 30 seconds with Google didn't turn up much.

Ah well, we are all volunteers, and sneak the time to do this, so we can not troll the Net as we might. Now back to work.