Do you remember when talking about your avatar, I said that maybe you were deeper than you let on? I think ill start calling you Mr Wonder from now on. Or Captain Wonder, one of the two.
The alleged scientific method: 1. Observe something. 2. Formulate a hypothesis. 3. Devise a test. 4. If the test fails, go to #2. 5. If the test passes and is confirmed, the hypothesis might be promoted to a theory and used to prove other hypotheses. And it might not.
The actual scientific method: 1. Formulate a theory. 2. Make a computer simulation. 3. Compare the simulation to observed data. 4. If they don't agree, find some way to adjust the data. If you can't adjust the data, ignore it. 5. Be sure your fellow scientists will agree with your findings, then publish.
If there were a fourth dimension, knots would not stay tied and blood would not stay in arteries. But theoretical scientists think they can get around those problems if their theory is clever enough.
It is not something known. It is something hypothesized. It could very well be true, but we're not sure just yet. We need further examination. The 11 dimension theory comes from String Theory, which suggests that everything is made up of infinitesimally tiny (Planck Length) one-dimensional vibrating strings of energy (open or closed) called Superstrings. These exist in 11 dimensions, but the other 7 are rolled up so tightly that you'd have to be as tiny as a string to experience them. It's sort of like how a wire appears one-dimensional to us (it has length), but if you were an ant, you could explore its full three dimensions (its length, width, and depth). It's called a Calabi-Yau manifold, if I'm not mistaken. But yeah. If you want to learn more about this topic, watch Brian Green's The Elegant Universe Nova production. It's an old documentary, but an excellent source of information on String Theory and the 11 dimensions theory. It's put so simple, a 12 year old could understand it--or at least, I did, when I first watched it back then :) The Elegant Universe should be available on YouTube.
Math is only useful when it describes reality. I would not bother watching any presentation until they can convince me that they are discussing reality. So far, nobody agrees with that requirement, so we go our separate ways.
Believe what you want to believe, but just know that most mathematics was theoretical until someone realized there was a way to apply it practically years later ;) Black holes were proven mathematically long before they were actually observed :) If nobody bothered to discuss theory, nobody would ever understand reality, for theoretical research is what eventually gets proven to describe reality. Go ahead and be a bystander--you ain't gonna be the worldchanger.
MathematicallyMindedFractal 