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In Geometrical Physics B, the reader will find our personal approach to building a group acting on ten-dimensional space; this work is closely related to matter-antimatter geometry.
Additional dimensions? Which ones? What could be their physical meaning? Can we measure them?
In his works (Géométrie et Relativité, Hermann-France, ed. 1964; Structure des systèmes dynamiques, Birkhauser, 1997; and Dunod-France, 1973), the French mathematician Jean-Marie Souriau has greatly extended physics within a five-dimensional framework. Thus, we obtain the four classical dimensions (x, y, z, t) of space-time, to which is added an extra dimension z. This last was initially introduced by the Polish Kaluza in the 1920s.
The superstring approach is an attempt to extend Kaluza's idea to six additional dimensions. Why 4 + 6 = 10? Because constraints related to groups and symmetries impose it.
When a physicist wants to conduct experiments, he asks himself the following question:
- What energy do I need to provide?
Energy is related to frequency and wavelength, according to the relation:
The smaller the wavelength, the greater the energy.
Physicists have therefore examined these additional dimensions, looking for their characteristic length, and therefore the associated characteristic energy. They found:
The Planck length: 10⁻³³ cm
Truly ugly. To give particles such energy, you would need an accelerator as large as our galaxy.
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Normal, says Michio Kaku in his book "Hyperspace", Oxford University Press, 1994. We are dealing with future physics. Superstring theory belongs to the science of the next century...
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Hmmm...
A strange and new discipline. A few years ago, I was at Souriau's house. He showed me the proceedings of a meeting devoted to superstrings. On the first page, the session chairman had declared:
- Although this new science cannot make any predictions or interpret any observation or experiment, the increasing number of papers published in this field is an obvious symptom of its great vitality and dynamism.
Souriau is easily sarcastic, but always with a good sense of humor. Regarding today's theoretical physics, he has his own brief and incisive definition: Mathematics without rigor.
Physics without experience.
According to him, fifty years of "zero physics" have passed since Feynman's work.
(98)
Theoretical physics : "Mathematics without rigor. Physics, without experience".****
The kingdom of research.
Is there something rotten in the kingdom of research?
Today, there are more living scientists than there have ever been in the entire history of science. Who will write his name in books, in golden letters?
Between 1895 (the year when natural radioactivity was discovered in France by Henri Becquerel) and 1932 (the year when the British Chadwick discovered the neutron), only 37 years have passed. In such a short time, the scientific landscape has been completely transformed. Everyone knows that.
I am writing in 1998. What have we discovered that is truly great since 1961, thirty years ago?
Of course, we have sent humans to the Moon, we design microcomputers, CD-ROMs, we have radio-telephony, biotechnological engineering, etc. But these are technological developments. No really new fundamental idea. No revolution.
Science seems imprisoned in a golden paradigm.
After the Second World War, the anonymous peer review system became widespread. The official idea was to protect the independence of the required referee, the expert who decided whether a paper could be published or not.
Then, when you want to publish something, the rule requires you to submit your paper to a journal, which calls in an expert. After a month or two, the response comes back.
I have published dozens of papers in my life. If the work is conventional, it is relatively easy to publish; but if you go boldly west, searching for "the physics at the west of the Pecos," if you try to propose something truly new, you encounter serious problems.
In fact, you have no problem at all. The answer comes back quickly:
Sorry, we don't publish speculative works.
No expert was chosen. Your paper was not reviewed. Why?
Because top-level journals receive too many papers every day. Nature receives 100 papers every morning. Physical Review receives a dozen. How do you think they can manage that?
Next, historical references: