And measured into units that are known.

In inches, feet, and yards the length is shown;

And pounds and tons are used to weigh up lead.

Minutes of time the baker knows for bread;

Degrees show how increased the heat is grown.

Full buckets hold the product of what is sown,

So all are gauged, from start till dead.

However, in that Land of endless light,

Where lambs and lions both are to be tame,

And where there comes no darkness of the night

Dimensions as these are not the same.

To waste the gift of heaven's perfect sight,

And clutter up the realm of boundless fame.   -eab, 12/66

Diffusé sous licence "Creative Commons" et donc disponible gratuitement, vous pouvez soit le télécharger soit le regarder directement en ligne.

"Dimensions"  est divisé en 9 chapitres permettant d'aborder progressivement des notions de plus en plus avancées.

• Ca commence très simplement avec la cartographie et la notion de projection : comment représenter la sphère terrestre sur un plan
• On poursuit avec Escher, artiste géomètre (que j'adore) et FlatLand, qui permet d'illustrer la notion de dimension supérieure en décrivant ce que verraient des êtres à 2 dimensions si un objet à 3 dimensions traversait leur univers.
• Les chapitres 3 et 4 présentent la 4ème dimension d'une façon plus complète et mieux illustrée que je l'ai fait. J'y ai surtout appris l'existence d'un illustre compatriote de plus : Ludwig Schläfli et découvert la puissance insoupçonnée de la projection stéréographique.
• Les nombres complexes font l'objet des chapitres 5 et 6, peu intéressants si vous maitrisez déjà le sujet. Dans ce cas sautez au milieu du chapitre 6 ou on présente les transformations, puis la "dynamique holomorphe" qui donne naissance aux célèbres fractales de Julia et Mandelbrot, entre autres.
• Les chapitres 7 et 8 présentent quelques notions de topologie, dont la fibration de Hopf. Là par contre, le contenu est très dense, il faudra que je revoie ce sujet au ralenti pour pouvoir prétendre avoir tout compris... Heureusement, j'ai pu me raccrocher aux Cercles de Villarceau et aux Cyclides de Dupin
• Le dernier chapitre est un peu particulier : il traite de la preuve en mathématiques et démontre de façon illustrée mais rigoureuse la propriété essentielle de la projection stéréographique : elle transforme un cercle tracé sur la sphère,
  qui ne passe pas par le pôle nord en un cercle tracé dans le plan tangent au pôle sud.

"Dimensions" est un film très instructif et bien fait, à voir pour réviser vos bases de géométrie ou pour les développer un peu.

The very idea that our 3 dimensional world is only a small part of what makes up the Universe is a difficult concept to grasp. With the work going on at C.E.R.N. over the next couple of years we may just discover the existence of up to an 11-dimensional Universe.

So what are these extra dimensions?

Well, to help explain, I've just discovered this movie that's available on line as a download or stream, though I recommend the download, you can even download it in the iPod format ...you can also order the film as a DVD (available only in PAL format). If you prefer, you can even download it in the iPod format.

Click here to go to the download page.

Or here to learn more about the organization.

The question to ask here is, is there any other representation of zero that could allow for a different point of view, one from which a number can be divided by zero? The answer to this question is, surprisingly, yes. It can be done on any number line that includes positive and negative numbers. For simplicity's sake, ten divided by zero is equal to five plus minus five; it is a line segment with an absolute value of ten and an effective value of zero - or zero to the power of one (indicating one bisection). It could also equal two-point-five-sub-x minus two-point-five-sub-x plus or minus two-point-five-sub-y minus two-point-five-sub-y; it is an intersection of vertical and horizontal line segments with an absolute value of ten and an effective value of zero - or zero to the power of two (indicating two bisections).

To be a bit more explicit, any number divided by zero is equal to a symmetrical, neutral "excluded" equation. As stated above, division by zero declares no number of parts into which a value can be separated, but it does not matter. Any rational number of parts that, in absolute value, cancels out the apparent value will suffice. A valid solution of ten divided by zero might be a circle with the circumference of ten at a radius perfectly perpendicular to the number line at zero. In application, a number divided by zero is effectively "displaced" from the working continuum; the segment of the number line bridging zero is effectively compressed into the singularity of the zero point. This could be represented by placing that segment across the zero point perpendicular to the base number line. It represents a number or value that still exists but is now external to or in a different dimension from the original system.

The CERN Project has offically been launched and now the waiting game begins until the first collision of atoms takes place. What will be discovered? What are we looking for?

Is our curiousity that intense that we are willing to tamper with science that we are not 100% sure of? I would love to know the answers to the age old question of how we got here, but not to the point where we could potentially end humanity. Tampering with Black Holes is dangerous, the slightest mis-calculation could be catastrophic.

I don't know much about the project. I continue to read articles to learn more, but there is alot of skeptics that say this could be bad. However, I cannot see investing $10 Billion in a project without knowing that nothing bad will happen. There is where my comfort lies....

So, in the coming weeks we shall see what this achievemnet will bring to humanity.

Here are some links on the CERN project:

MSNBC

European Organization for Nuclear Research

The machine will begin collecting its data and physicist will study and compare against current understanding and theory and help create new theories. The hope is that by creating controlled black holes will help physicist understand the nature of mass, including the barely understood dark matter of the universe which accounts for most of the universes mass. Normal matter only makes up a small portion, with dark matter supporting the rest of "space" (for lack of a better word; no pun intended).
It will help to give a deeper understanding to space and gravity and could also help prove once and for all the big bang theory as the start of our universe. It could also lead to more universally interesting proof of other dimensions beyond our comprehension. Seems far fetched and like a bit of a nerds pipe dream, but for physicists to see and test black holes in more depth the possibilities are huge.

That is what initially captured my attention. Other dimensions and time.
Everyone thinks of time as a continuous sequential happening. Our perception of time on the other hand may just cause that to be a resemblance with time more accurately being more than 1 dimensional.
What we experience may only be slices of time. Despite our evolution as the smartest animals our brains are still very primative in understanding of our universe, so it becomes perfectly acceptable that our ability to experience time will only be in single dimensional relation. I think we percieve time as linear because it allows our brain to paint an understanding of whats going on around us and build a satisfactory reality, it would be too complicated for our minds otherwise. But "time" could be just individual frames along a path with each frame having the possibility diverging down another path. We percieve the frames in a linear fashion allowing us to stitch them together to represent a continuous path.

If you think of time as a path our current understanding is as a linear line extending for everybody and everything in one direction. The possibility of time as a branching line is very intriguing. This gives possibilities to other dimensions. Imagine if we were able to bounce from one slice of time to another slice along a different path. It  could be along the same distance as our present time line in relation to start and finish but could be a very different place.
Modern string theory supposes of 11 spacetime dimensions where current physics only has proof of 4. 3 Physical dimensions and 1 dimension of time.

It will be interesting to see what physicist can learn from the new Hadron Collider, and what information they can gleam from such observation. It may just open up a whole new world or atleast a better understanding of our own.

Found this little interesting pamphlet at the 3rd Ward woodshop and thought it might be helpful to those interested in making furniture that well fits the human form. Measurements like table height, knee space heights, and evening dress hanging heights are supplied. Download a pdf here: interiorsbook.

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The LHC Team wishes to know 'how' that which was created out of nothing, was created out of nothing - ex nihilo . . . Elder Sofrony says:

This movement [going] into the depths of our being [to divest ourselves of all 'limitations'] of our own being, is nothing else but the attraction towards [back too] the non-being from which we were called by the will of the Creator.

- Archimandrite Sophrony: His Life Is Mine

The LHC team admit: "We have the outrageous desire to know, 'how' this all came into existence."

It would be good for humans, to rather turn to God the Holy Spirit, and through catharsis, illumination, and theosis, enter into the 'unknowability' of knowing.

Fr. Serafim [Rose] of Platina wrote [Genesis and Early Man -The Orthodox Patristic Understanding]:

Many of the arguments between "evolutionists" and "anti-evolutionists" are useless, for one basic reason: they are usually not arguing about the same thing. Each one of them means one thing when he hears the word "evolution," and the other means something else; and they argue in vain because they are not even talking about the same thing. Therefore, in order to be precise, I will tell you exactly what I mean by the word "evolution," which is the meaning it has in all textbooks of evolution. But first I must show you that in your letter you have used the word "evolution" to mean two entirely different things, but you write as if they were the same thing. You have failed here to distinguish between scientific fact and philosophy.

WHAT IS THE FUNDAMENTAL DOCTRINE OF THE PATRISTIC TRADITION?

Today, some people view what is called apophatic theology, as a philosophy influenced by Neoplatonists ... The Neoplatonists also have their own apophatic theology ... However, they [Neoplatonists] are not making an effort to be freed from the created universe, but from the world of change, because Neoplatonic philosophy and metaphysics do not have principles or concepts such as creation ex nihilo or uncreated existence. They do not make the distinction between the created and the uncreated. In contrast, the basic category of Christian thought is the clear distinction between the created and the uncreated together with the teaching that between the created and the uncreated there is absolutely no similarity. This is not only the fundamental doctrine of the Patristic tradition, but also of the Hebraic tradition until today ...

ON THE EXISTENCE OF GOD AND THE CREATION OF THE WORLD

Now at certain points, the question about the creation of the world is interwoven with the philosophical problem concerning the existence of God, although they remain simultaneously independent issues. The idolaters’ philosophical arguments against the existence of the Christian God were the same as their philosophical arguments against the doctrine of creation.

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In other words, the idolaters would say, “You Christians claim that there is a God Who is the Creator and that He is perfect. But if this God were perfect, why would He have the need to create the world? The creation of the world philosophically proves that God is different before the world’s existence and after it came into being. After all, if God were perfect and perfectly happy with Himself, if God were love that loves itself, if we can use Christian categories about love in this case, He would not have had the need to create the world. But the Christian God apparently created the world because He is not perfect.” This use of philosophical arguments against the Christian faith rested on the philosophical distinction between essence and energy in God.

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But the Church’s distinction is not a philosophical distinction. It stems from God’s revelation to man. In other words, it is experiential. This is how the Church proves the distinction between essence and energy in God, because this distinction is based on the experience of those who attained theosis. In like manner, the Church also proves the existence of God on the basis of experience. For the Church Fathers, perhaps the only argument that can demonstrate the existence of God is a fact, and not a proof governed by dialectics and logic. And what is this fact? There exists a group of human beings called prophets, Apostles, and saints who have seen God. A philosopher or scientist, regardless of whether or not he is an atheist, is obligated to respond in some way to this assertion that the prophets, Apostles, and saints have seen God. He cannot pass over it with indifference.

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In other words, you will either believe it or you will not believe it. You will either admit that these people saw God and that what we call ‘the experience of theosis’ exists or you will discuss this topic in order to determine whether or not the states of illumination and theosis are a reality. But in order for this discussion to take place, certain conditions and common criteria must also be present. A proper scientific discussion cannot take place with people who spout off ready-made answers, because someone who spouts off ready-made answers will say yes or no in advance even before the discussion begins and will not get beyond his foregone conclusions.

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An example of such a person would be that dedicated Orthodox Christian who was raised in the Church and grew up around the altar. When he was a little boy, he would hold the censer for the priest and would enjoy going to receive Holy Communion, because that little bit of sweet wine tasted good. He would also look forward to receiving antidoron on Sunday, because he was getting hungry and had been waiting for the Divine Liturgy to end. Later, he would become a chanter, and so forth. In other words, we are talking about someone who has been absolutely convinced since childhood that the Orthodox doctrine that he believes in is correct. He accepts as a given the correctness of Orthodox worship, in which he has taken part his entire life. He takes its correctness for granted. He does not harbor the slightest doubt about anything. Everything in Orthodoxy is beautiful and right, just the way he believes in it and understands it.

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In other words, such a person does not leave any room for investigation and inquiry into the rightness and the truth of his beliefs. He has no doubts and for that matter never did. Perhaps, he will even go to college without ever doubting these things, since he will only be interested in passing his exams, so that he can get his degree and find a position in the Greek school system, where he will be set for life. He might also become a priest and try to qualify for the highest salary category so that he can be set up in a parish, have a good life and marry off his children. Naturally, this kind of person does not have the wherewithal for a scientific discussion. Everything he believes in is beautiful as long as it has the backing of the armed forces.

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... pious and zealous Orthodox Christians are not alone in being absolutely convinced about their religion. There are also those outside of Orthodoxy with a corresponding mindset. [The LHC Team, for example] . . .

And there is a noticeable and appreciable turning toward Orthodoxy.

At any rate, these questions about the creation of the world and the philosophical way of viewing these problems are quite important in Western society outside of Greece. You only need to study philosophy in the West from the post-Scholastic period until the current era in order to see how Western thinkers repeatedly try to use philosophy to solve this simple problem. In other words, they repeatedly struggle both with the question of how a perfect God can be considered the Creator of the world, and with tile meaning of creation ex nihilo. Given that nihil is non-existence, the problem is how God brought beings into existence from non-existence while He Himself always existed.

In this case, the basic categories in Orthodox theology are the created and the uncreated. The created comes from non-existence or non-being, while the uncreated is not created, always existed, and always will exist. All uncreated things always existed and always will exist, whereas all created things are derived from non-existence and will exist in the future, provided that God wills that they exist.

This is the teaching of Holy Scripture. This is the teaching of the Hebraic tradition (before the writing of the Old Testament). This is also the teaching of the Church. But as soon as someone tries to speculate philosophically about this teaching, he will encounter the difficulties that we have just described. In other words, the difficulties come from making this teaching part of a philosophical syllogism.

But perhaps one of you will ask, “Where did the prophets, Apostles, and saints learn about these dogmas on creation ex nihilo, the created, the uncreated, and so forth?” First of all, they learned them from the Bible once the Bible was written. But where did the prophets learn about these dogmas in the period prior to the writing of the Bible? What was there before Holy Scripture? There was the oral Hebrew tradition from Adam to Moses. And who is at the heart of this oral tradition? Who are the people that conveyed it from one generation to the next? They are the patriarchs and the prophets. The patriarchs lived before the existence of the written text of the Old Testament. But what made them the bearers’ of this tradition? How were the patriarchs different from other people? They were different because they had the vision of God. They saw God. Even Adam and Eve were God-seers. The core of this tradition is the vision of God, this encounter between God and His friends, the patriarchs and the prophets. In other words, the core of this tradition is related to a certain kind of experience.

The experience or the Church Fathers and the saints, as recorded in their lives, informs us that they were also able to verify these teachings for themselves through the experience of theosis. From this experience, they learned that there is no similarity between the created and the uncreated and that God is self-existent, since He is not similar to created things and since His existence is not caused by anything else. In other words, God has no antecedent as the cause of His existence. God the Father exists on account of His existence. In the experience of theosis, the Fathers also learned that the archetypal Light is the cause of the existence of both the Word, or the incarnate image of the Light (that is, Christ), and the Holy Spirit. They also discovered during the experience of theosis that the Three Persons of the Trinity have one and the same glory and essence.

Of course, the Fathers and the saints did not experience God’s essence, because no man has ever experienced God’s essence, but some people have experienced the natural energy or God’s essence or the glory of God. By experience, they verified that there is a thrice-radiant Godhead in one Godhead or in one Light. In other words, one Light is Three Lights, but they are not three separate Lights. Someone in a state of theosis sees the archetypal Light in one Light by means of another Light. This is the cornerstone of their experience.

But they also found out that all created beings come from non-being. Although all created things exist by an act of God’s will, they did not issue forth from God – that is, from the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. They came forth from non-being. And the Fathers determined even this from the experience of theosis.

So we can see that the Church Fathers and the saints share the self-same experience with the patriarchs and the prophets. They all confirmed the same truths. So the distinctions between the Hypostases of God, between God’s essence and energy, between the Incarnate Word and God, and between the theosis of the Incarnate Word and the theosis of human beings are all based on the experience of theosis. In the Church, all these shades of meaning expressed in the form of various sets of terms have the experience of theosis as their ultimate foundation. This is the reason why the distinction made by the Church between God’s essence and energy is not a philosophical distinction, but a clearly empirical one.

But the point that the Fathers stress is that human thought merely corresponds to human experience. So man’s every thought and every intellectual concept correspond to everyday human experiences and nothing more than human experiences. Man cannot break through the limitations of his created nature in order to be able to grasp the uncreated. According to the Fathers, it is absolutely impossible to break through these limitations. We can think about the uncreated and how something exists that wasn’t created, that always exists, and that does not resemble created things, but none of these categories are positive. They are completely negative. They are not positive positions, but negations. When we say that God is uncreated, we are not saying what God is, but simply what He is not. The word ‘uncreated’ simply means that God is not a creature. But this says what God is not, not what He is. So we have said what God is not ...

Now this phrase ‘before the ages’ is highly significant, because the ages and time are not the same. The Fathers make a distinction between the ages and time, even though they did not know modern physics. In physics, time as understood in the past no longer exists. In the past, time was measured by the movement of the earth relative to the sun and the moon. But now, our understanding of time has changed drastically.But what matters to us is that the Fathers clearly distinguish between the ages and time. So the Fathers say that when God created the world, He first created the ages, then the angels, and afterward both this world and time. In other words, the Fathers knew that time was a dimension of a particular aspect of the created universe, because the ages were the first creation to be created and not time. Time was created later on by God.

The main difference between the ages and time is that in time one event is followed in turn by another, while in the ages events do not necessarily follow one another. Instead, events and reality coexist in such a way that what happens is not necessarily entangled in the process of succession. But since man exists within time, his experience is limited to alternating states. Existence without this process of succession is not within man’s experience, but there is one exception. He can acquire this experience in the experience of theosis, because during theosis time is no longer in effect.

Only someone who has reached theosis has experienced a way of being that transcends existence that transcends time that transcends the ages, that transcends space that transcends reason, and so forth. Someone in a state of theosis experiences the uncreated, but still does not know epistemologically what this uncreated reality is, because the uncreated epistemologically remains a mystery to the person in a state of theosis. In other words, even when God reveals Himself to someone who has reached theosis, God remains a Mystery. Even if someone perceives God with his nous, reason, senses and body, God nevertheless remains a Mystery, since He remains outside the boundaries and means of human knowledge.

And this is the case because human knowledge is based on similarity and difference, but there is no similarity between the created and the uncreated realms. For example, if on the one hand we see an elephant, but do not know anything about elephants, the elephant before us does not resemble anything else. It is simply different from other animals. If we later see two elephants, we will say, “Hey, these two look alike.” But if we examine them more carefully and discover that one elephant is male while the other one is female, then we will be able to see that they differ from one another in certain parts of the body. Yet in spite of these differences, they possess such an overall similarity that we can return to talking about elephants and place them in the same category with other elephants.

When someone experiences theosis, on the other hand, he can recognize a difference, but he cannot find a similarity with anything. Nevertheless, there is a difference. He sees something that he has never seen before in this life, but there is no similarity between what has been revealed to him and what he already knows. Why is this the case? Because the glory of God is different from everything created that he has observed within the created realm. It is different, but it is also utterly unlike anything known within creation. Why is it not similar to anything? It is not similar to anything, because it does not have color, it cannot be measured, it is not light, it is not darkness, it is not big, it is not small, it does not have a shape, it does not have a form.

This is the reason why the Fathers speak about the glory of God being like something without shape or form. Of course, to say that it is without form is to offer a rebuttal to the Platonists, since the Platonists believed in the existence of a world of forms. But when the Fathers say that the glory of God is without form, this means that it has nothing to do with Plato’s conceptual world. Whenever the Fathers describe the glory of God as being without shape or form and whenever they refer to this absence of shape and form, they are making a direct assault on the opinions of Plato and Aristotle and on philosophy in general. This means that Patristic theology completely avoids those categories that belong to philosophical ways of thinking.

Of course, there is nothing wrong with someone studying philosophy as long as he rejects philosophy’s teachings on the existence and nature of God. After all, philosophy trains the human mind. This is what all the hesychastic Fathers say, including Basil the Great, John Chrysostomos, and Gregory of Nyssa, the Church Father whose ability to reason like a philosopher is unsurpassed. And if you read St. Dionysios the Areopagite, you will see that he even follows this same line of thought. So we can conclude that there is nothing wrong with someone spending his time with philosophy in order to train his mind, but it is sheer stupidity to accept the teachings of philosophy when it comes to theological subjects.

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The LHC Team say: "we may even 'open' other dimensions" !

Do they understand this may 'open' us up to psychic and spiritual dimensions?

THE TWENTIETH CENTURY, which began with the presumption of imagining itself the most enlightened of all ages, has in reality proceeded of imagining some of the blackest years of all human history. Symptomatic of this truly dark age is the revival in recent decades of interest and active participation in witchcraft and sorcery. Much of this interest is on the level of dilettantism and crude amateurism, but more and more often it produces real results, leads to an actual contact with demonic powers, and causes the eternal damnation of souls caught in the web of nets far more subtle and deadly than the beginning occultist imagines.

All this is not new to Orthodox Christians. In the history of the world's religions there is a whole tradition of sorcery—the service of the pagan gods, which are demons (Psalm 95:5). This is the religious tradition which Christianity replaced in all lands that accepted the Gospel, and which now comes back in power to destroy Christianity and to conduct mankind to Antichrist.

The Life of Sts. Cyprian and Justina gives one of the fullest accounts in Christian literature of sorcery and its power over men—and its final defeat by the power of Christ. It is not the product of someone's imagination, but is based on the first-hand testimony of one who was a leading servant of the demons himself.

Let Orthodox Christians read and become sober, and resolve with the more firmness and determination to work out their salvation against the powers of darkness in fear and trembling. And let him who has in his heart even a spark of repentance take courage and hope, for this Life is also the surest proof that God's mercy is stretched out even to the most lost of souls.

- Christianity vs. Sorcery.

"We may have answers soon. On September 10, 2008, Tel Aviv University’s Prof. Erez Etzion from the School of Physics and Astronomy will be in the control room of the new CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC) on the border of France and Switzerland when the LHC is first turned on. Scientists are calling it the largest experiment in the world. It’s taken about 6,000 researchers, $8 billion and ten years to build.

Of the 50 countries that have participated in the project, Israel is among those which have made the greatest contributions. Tel Aviv University in particular has played an essential role in constructing equipment for the collider tunnel, dug deep inside the Swiss-French Alps. And when the switch is thrown in September, science may be changed forever."

Courtesy of science daily

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/09/080903112026.htm

A report from arXiv.org about radio galaxy Fornax A's supermassive blackhole raises questions about the stellar object's potential to:

1. Destroy the Universe and reality as we know it.

2. Open doors to transdimensional travelers.

3. Reshape our dimension.

Fornax A has been a focal point for The Loki Times scientific watchdog organization Sars-FR (Scientists About Real Science - For Real) for sometime.  Smigel Von Hoffenpott, co-chairman of the group and resident quantum psychologist, believes that the Fornax A blackhole is responsible for the recent rise in Shadow People sitings around the globe.

Shadow Person sighting from St. Martin Island.  Copyright The Loki Times.

Hoffenpott - "Not to be cliche, but we are only seeing the tip of the iceberg.  My observations have made it clear to me these transdimensional travelers are using the extreme gravitational force of the Fornax A blackhole to slingshot massive numbers of explorers into our very own dimension.  So far they haven't caused any harm, but our research is still unsure of possible negative side effects that could arise from their transdimensional footprint."

Stay tuned to The Loki Times for updates on this developing story.

Read the report at arXiv.org.

read more | digg story

Note: This was originally published with the title "The Self-Organizing Quantum Universe"

Prerequisite knowledge: Relativity and Quantum Mechanics are fundamentally at odds with each other. Relativity seems to work on big scales, from satellites and planets to solar systems and galaxies, while QM only seems to work on smaller scales with electrons up to, maybe, actual cells. (That's another topic ...)

The quest to unify these two physics theories is one that has been voyaged since late in Einstein's life. A theory of quantum gravity is one of those holy grails.

This article tells of some research done by the authors into one such theory of QG. In their theory, they make spacetime itself governed by some the laws of QM. To test it, they ran simulations of evolving spacetime under their theory. They approximated spacetime by gluing 4-simpleces together. (4-Simpleces are the four-dimensional successor to the triangle and the equilateral pyramid.)

What they found was interesting. Either the whole spacetime layed out flat like a polymer, or it folded in on itself infinitely to become a bizarre crumpled-up ball resembling a fractal. This wasn't promising; our universe is in between these two extremes. So they added a new principle that they called "causality," where they give spacetime pieces an arrow of time. This directed the evolution of the spacetime into something that was once again interesting. In the new results, whether spacetime was made of smooth hills or chaotic foam depended on the scale! Furthermore, whereas the polymer universe and crumpled universe from before had "dimensions" of about two and infinity, this new universe had a dimension of about 4.02 plus or minus 0.01, which is what we should expect!

And a close up of the head and shoulders area.  The yellow flowers in the hair are french knots, and you can also see some of the metallic backstitch and cording.

Review: Woodland Enchantress, Dimensions Gold Collection

This kit comes with everything you need to make the piece, including the beads, metallic thread, a beading needle and of course the normal threads, fabric and needle.  The pattern itself is fairly small, but the symbols are coloured so it is easier to read.  The threads come with a thread sorter, and are already divided into four bundles so they are very easy to sort into the correct colours and load onto the thread sorter if that's what you want to do with them.  The cardboard thread sorter did last quite well, but some of the holes broke over time and the gold metallic thread was hopeless to try and keep on it.

The fabric is dove grey, 16 count aida, and is cut to the right size for the piece.  However it doesn't leave much space around the edges, only a couple of inches on each side, which may make it a little more difficult to frame.  It didn't fray too badly though, and i didn't find i had to do anything to stop it fraying.

The instructions that come with the kit are fairly clear and tell you how to do all the different stitches needed.  The only real problem is that the list showing the thread colours and symbols is on the side of the chart, so it does make it a bit awkward when stitching when you are doing the part furthest away as you have to keep turning to the list.

The design uses full cross stitches for the enchantress herself, and half cross stitches for the background.  This gives quite a good effect, and does make the background quicker to stitch, although the half cross stitches use between three and five strands, so they can get a bit annoying.  The colours themselves are beautiful, and very varied, so you shouldn't get too bored.  The major problem i had with this kit was that i ran out of the blue purple thread with quite a few stitches still to do.  I am quite a careful stitcher so i think Dimensions really need to supply more thread with the kit.  I also almost ran out of brown, i only had a couple of inches spare when i finished all the stitches.

A large part of this design is the extra touches that are done after the full and half cross stitches are complete.  There is a lot of backstitching, in various different colours, which does get very time consuming as it is not simply outlining the edge of shapes.  The gold metallic threads are supposed to be done with a technique called couching, but this seemed a lot more difficult and time consuming so i decided to do these sections with normal backstitch.

There are also a lot of french knots, but i quite enjoyed doing these, and they didn't take too long.  The beads were very easy to sew on, and definitely improve the effect of the finished piece.  The cording was a little tricky to get in the right place, but not too bad.

Overall i would recommend this kit if you want a design which has something a bit different, and enjoy all those finishing details which make this piece really stand out.  However this kit is not one for a beginner, as some of the techniques used are a little difficult, and you do have to be very careful about how much thread you use.

Une partie de cette simplicité peut s'expliquer par les propriétés liées au faible nombre de dimensions de notre espace.

Prenons le cas simple de la surface et du volume d'une sphère de rayon égale à l'unité, dans un espace à trois dimensions nous avons S=12.5 (4pi) et V=4.188(4pi/3). Si on extrapole à un espace à n dimension nous avons :

$latex S=\frac{nr^{n-1}\pi^{n/2}}{\Gamma (n/2+1)} $

$latex V=\frac{r^{n}\pi^{n/2}}{\Gamma (n/2+1)} $

Ce qui donne graphiquement:

coef maximal de 5.2777 pour n=5.26.

coef maximale de 33.16 pour n=7.3.

Nous constatons donc que les coefficients de proportionnalité restent relativement proche de l'unité en tout cas pour n<20, au delà les coefficient tendent vers zéros. Leurs valeurs maximales ne dépasses pas  2.6 fois les valeurs des coefficients de l'espace à 3 dimension.

Si les espaces étaient bien supérieur à trois dimensions nous aurions des coefficients géométriques très éloignés de l'unité ce qui aurait compliqué l'expression des formules de la physique.

Autre illustration des propriétés particulières des espaces à n dimensions: le nombre de polyèdres régulier:

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Ce tableau montre que le nombre de polyèdres régulier est toujours proche de l'unité (sauf paradoxalement pour n=2), avec un maximum de 6 pour un espace à 4 dimensions.

On peut donc remarquer dans ces deux exemples que les espaces à n dimensions ont des propriétés remarquables pour des valeurs de n proche de l'unité et une certaine monotonie au delà:

- coefficient volumique maximal pour n=5

- coefficient surfacique maximal pour n=7

- nombre de polyèdre maximal pour n=4

Ce n'est donc probablement pas par hasard si nous somme dans un espace à faible nombre de dimension...

Rq: les conjectures mathématiques qui sont généralement faciles à démontrer pour tout espace à n dimensions le sont beaucoup moins pour un espace à 3 dimensions (la conjecture de Poincaré en est un bon exemple). L'extrapolation des lois de la propagation des ondes ou de la gravitation sur un espace autre que 3 dimensions a montré également la grande singularité de notre espace.

http://www.news.wisc.edu/13422

To add to the physics here are some demonstrations you may or may not have seen in your classes

http://www.mip.berkeley.edu/physics/noteindex.html

David Marr would probably disagree with all of these notions due to his theories that he brain really only sees in 2.5 dimensions. The basic premise of this theory can be found here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2.5D

and a brief analysis of david marr is here

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Marr_(neuroscientist)#Stages_of_vision

http://www.enterprisemission.com/
http://www.projectcamelot.org/

"The advantage of using two eyes to see the world around us has long been associated solely with our capacity to see in 3-D. Now, a new study from a scientist at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute has uncovered a truly eye-opening advantage to binocular vision: our ability to see through things."

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/08/080828120312.htm