The Biggest Frickking Scientific Discovery for a Long Time, French Artists, and Your Momma

“Could they be talking to us from the future?  Maybe.  Okay, if they can?  They are beings of 5 dimensions!  To them, time might be yet another physical dimension.  To them, the past might be a canyon they can climb into.” – Interstellar

Pictured, cool lens flares from the Saturn IV rocket first stage.  Not pictured?  Transdimensional aliens. 

The Family Wilder was having breakfast this morning lunch this afternoon (we don’t get up easy) and were discussing the news of the past week, and somehow Pugsley drifted the conversation into “how would you make a fully functioning holodeck, such as was seen on Star Trek© but for use with multiple people.”  The easy answer is to wave your hands about and say “science.”  But, we came up with an explanation that would fit the facts shown on Trek™.

We then ended up talking about inserting a jack into your skull (as in The Matrix®).  The Boy was in favor of this, and was looking up surgical tools on his iPhone®.  I noted that, no, we’re probably pretty close to just being able to put a hat with electrodes on – no surgery required.  At this point, I’m pretty sure the other folks eating in the small-town diner who overheard our conversation figure we work for the CIA or . . . we’re nuts.

We’re nuts.

But then I remembered the biggest story of the week:

“Hey, did you guys here that they’ve discovered proof that there is at least one other dimension? (LINK)”

That stopped the conversation at the table, let me tell you what.  Pugsley was first out of the box:

“How does that work?”

I tried to explain a hypercube using a salt shaker, bits of hash brown, three cream containers and the spare plate from someone else’s table (they were nearly finished with it).

Turns out that’s a difficult thing, explaining something that’s so beyond how you normally think.  But that brings me to one way, dear Internet, to give an explanation:

In 1912 a French dude named Marcel Duchamp (pronounced “John Smith”) tossed together a painting that irritated his friends, namely, Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2.

This was the initial centerfold in “Multi-Dimensional Playboy”.  The main problem was the centerfold was in 11 dimensions and no one could figure out how to fold it back up.  (public domain via Wikimedia)

What Duchamp was attempting to show was the human body with time as a static dimension – you got to see the body’s outside perimeter.  Imagine rolling a tennis ball – but you get to see it at each point of its path at the same time – it would look like a fuzzy green tube since the parts that got covered up through subsequent motion wouldn’t be visible.  Fuzzy green tubes are cool looking.  Now imagine the perimeter of the human body heading down a staircase . . . you’d have a fuzzy-topped blob of flesh with frozen waves where the body had moved through.  Kinda like a fleshy, hairy, meat tube.  Kinda like . . . Marcel’s picture, but Marcel skipped on the gross parts.  And it’s not a surprise that Duchamp tried this – he was a great mathematician and chess player as well, so his mind thought in these sorts of abstract ways.

His friends thought it sucked, and the art show asked his brothers to ask Marcel to either take the painting down or to change the title.  After this initial reaction, Duchamp thought, “Merci!  I must take my genius to New York!  Certainly zey will understand it!”

Marcel apparently didn’t know any New Yorkers, because they certainly didn’t appreciate it:

Hey, any publicity is good publicity.  Just ask Harvey Weinstein. (public domain via Wikimedia)

The New York Evening Sun parodied Duchamp in print after his picture made everyone in New York mad as well.  Apparently New York was a better place to be hated in, because eventually Duchamp moved to the United States and shot John F. Kennedy.

Anyway, Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 is the only Cubist art I really care for – precisely because it attempts to show reality through the lens of another dimension.

Here’s another good one:  it shows a hypercube.

Yes, keep watching it . . . beautiful, isn’t it?  Imagine 4 spatial dimensions.  Some weed might help.  (Source, Jason Hise via Wikimedia, Public Domain)

I can draw a hypercube, but it’s not really very good unless it’s in motion, like this one.  Only as it moves can you see the way that it shows another dimension.  Ironic that Duchamp stopped time to show another dimension while this requires motion to show that dimension.

But what are the implications of this?

Nothing short of stunning.  Last month we have a stunning disclosure about UFOs (LINK).  This month?  WE HAVE FOUND PROOF OF ADDITIONAL DIMENSIONS.

This has the possibility of being the most profound discovery in the last 12,000 years (second only to agriculture and the mysterious mechanism of the PEZ® dispenser)!

Keep in mind that we went from not understanding the radio to being able to use it “see” the images of galaxies 11 billion years in the past within 70 years.  We went from not understanding the atom to atom bombs in 15 years (plus a war’s worth of investment).  We went from stuck to the ground to the Moon in 65 years.  Transistor to personal computer?  30 years.

We are remarkable as a species at understanding and exploiting new ideas.  I imagine this one has implications similar to radio, the atom, flight, and information technology.  So, let me re-write the above:

HOLY FRICKING CRAP!  WE HAVE FRICKING FOUND FRICKING PROOF OF OTHER FRICKING DIMENSIONS!

Additional dimensions might (and I stress might) be able to provide:

1. Space Travel – Imagine that distance isn’t the same in one (or more) of these dimensions. Step into the dimensional transformer and step outside 2000 miles away.    Why Miami?
2. Time Travel – Imagine that time works the other way or at other speeds in one or more of these dimensions. Step into the dimensional transformer and step outside 2000 years in the future.
3. Surgery Without An Incision – Reach inside your patient in the fourth dimension. Pull out his gall bladder without breaking the skin.  Caesarian sections?  How about Einstein sections for having babies?  (Since I’m the first to think if it, you should call them “Wilder Sections.”)
4. Explanations for Gravity – Why is it weak? It’s like gravity doesn’t even lift!  Maybe it bleeds off into other dimensions and surrounds your mother.  Which is why she’s so fat.
5. Explanations for Dark Matter – Okay, dark matter is just a theory – we can’t see it, we can only see its effects. Let me explain:  The planets all rotate around the Sun like particles.  At different speeds.  The spiral arms of the Milky Way galaxy (where you live) all rotate around the Milky Way like the Milky Way is a record album.  Sorry – out of date.  CD?  Sorry – out of date.    Yeah.  Except no spinners.  Why the difference?  Some say that there’s a halo of dark matter around the galaxy that causes it spin as if it is a solid plate.  JOHN WILDER OFFICIAL PREDICTION:  dark matter is bogus.  It’s either gravity leaking from another dimension or gravity has a non-linear distance component.  I actually calculated it, and it works, but it doesn’t explain some effects, so my Physics Nobel© medal still hasn’t been engraved.
6. Explanations for Dark Energy – What is it? Why is the Universe expanding?  What will stop it?  When will it stop?  Maybe . . . another question that might be answered by other dimensions.
7. Explanations for Why Your Mother is So Fat – Oh, sorry. That’s chardonnay, canned frosting, Twinkies®, and regret.
8. Explanations for Things We Haven’t Even Thought Of – So many things this might explain, including the Grand Unified Field Theory – the theory that explains all of physics, chemistry, and why your Mom is so fat. Except we know why your Mom is so fat.

So, it’s a big deal.  A big thought.  Maybe, just maybe, the biggest scientific discovery of your lifetime.  And you heard about it here first.

So, who is the journalist now?  Yeah.  This guy.