First of all, happy easter to you! Doesn't matter if you are a believer or not, enjoy your holiday, meet friends and family.......nope it's not the right time. I'm still writing inside my sanctuary, greet you all and I hope you are doing well. We are now already on the first actual season of my posts. Maybe you might ask, why the zero-eth season already ended? Because today is supposedly my first day of the second semester, so I think it will be appropriate and easy to separate my writings with same way the semester is divided.

I actually learned a lot during this at-home-period. Specifically during the easter times, when usually I go out and meet my friends (especially we had a really good weather, what a shame we could not do some bbq), I read a lot about the history of easter and its role to shape our current society. There are a lot of good reads out there, but the best way is actually also look into the bibles and see what is every religion's perspective about easter itself, while also reading from scientific literatures.

So what am I gonna discuss today? Although it seems that my first post about 'The Concept of God' is not as popular as the other ones, I decided also to post this one, since I have a deep understanding and maturity about this philosophical idea. To understand this one, we have to dig deeper about our understanding of 'dimension'.

Are Dimensions Invented or Discovered?


That question is the most fundamental and unanswered question in mathematics. Is math invented or discovered? There is no definite answer, every theoretical math researches have their own understanding, but that's not what we are going to discuss today. We are talking specifically about dimension. What are they? I think at this point you have the basic understanding: Dimensions are related to our perception of space, even it is how we define space. In the simple way, put two points, and  see how many numbers you need to describe its distance.

Mobius strip; how many sides are there?

A zero dimension object is a point. Why? You don't need any numbers to describe its position. It is there, the point itself is our reference. Straight line is an upgraded version of a point; you need exactly one number to describe a single point on the line. Imagine you have a rope, you are holding one end and your friend holds the other. How many numbers do we need to describe a point on the rope? One. You can easily say a point is 3 metres from you, or 2 metres from your friend, etc. That's why straight line is a one dimension object.

How could we upgrade a straight line? Easy, make two lines that are not parallel to each other, then you form a plane. To describe a point on that plane, you need two numbers. Most of you are familiar with cartesian coordinate - the x and y one. Two to right, one up, then the coordinate is (2,1). Cartesian is one of infinite ways to describe a point, but it's the most common one to tackle our daily problems. The other famous one is the polar coordinate. Polar comes from the word 'pole', like our north and south poles. This is used to describe our actual position on earth. Notice we do not use "30km left, 20km down" to describe places, but instead we are using angles. For example, Hannover is located on 52.3759° N, 9.7320° E. 

52 degree north from the equator, 9.7 degree east from the prime meridian.

Maybe at this point you realised that earth is a 3 dimensional object. Yes it is, but why do we only need two numbers to describe a place location? Because all of them are located on the surface. If you want to describe a place inside or above earth, you need the 3rd coordinate : how far it is from a certain point. For example, to describe the position of a flying aircraft, you need 3 numbers : the first two are the "ground" coordinates, which means where you are passing above. The 3rd number is the altitude. So, if a plane is flying above you right now, you need 3 numbers to describe its position : your actual ground position plus its height. 

The question is, can you make a 4-dimensional space? Think about it first. (We can't.)

Why can't we? Try it yourself. Think about a space that you need 4 numbers to describe its position. I can assure you, one of them could be easily removed. But, if we cannot create it, does it mean it doesn't exist? 

Does Time Also Have Dimension?


Let's do a quick getaway from space. How about time? How many numbers do you need to describe time? One. You might think we have years, weeks, days, etc. They are the same things. You could easily say a particular time is 2345678398765 seconds after a certain point, but it's just too inconvenient, so we make bigger units, which only a multiplication from the smaller ones. It does not make time has extra dimensions. 

There is also a special characteristic of time dimension : it only runs one way. You can run back and forth along a straight line, but as far as we know, we still could not turn back time. (I might need to revise this part in 20xx if this changes). But we are talking about 2020, and we now conclude that we are living in a 3-dimensional space and 1-dimensional time.

Our World That We Are Living In


Back to the question : if we could only understand 3-dimensional space and 1-dimensional time, does it mean the higher dimensions of space and time doesn't exist? Let's first talk about higher dimension of spaces. Mathematically, it is possible. How? Think of it this way. Imagine you are still holding that same rope with you friend. Then an ant walks from you towards your friend, and another ant walks from your friends towards you. Firstly they only move along 1 dimension: the length of the rope. But, when they meet on the middle, one of them have to 'invent' an extra dimension : side to side. Although they cannot go through each other, one of them could move aside, then continue their journeys. That way we could say that the ants are living in a two dimensional world. However, from our perspective, there is indeed the third dimension: only if they could fly! But, for the ants that doesn't make sense, because they are stuck onto the rope : they are the prisoner in the two-dimensional world.

What happened if there is actually a creature or something that could access the fourth dimension? They see us like the ants, stuck in our 3-dimensional world without knowing the way to get out : the fourth dimension doesn't make sense to us! We are the prisoner of the three-dimensional world. We always think that there are only 3 dimensions of spaces, but this changes since the idea of a string theory. I won't discuss the details about the strings itself, there is a really beautifully written book titled "The Elegant Universe" by Brian Greene. He explained the concept thoroughly and made it easy for amateurs to learn. Link here.

What so special about this theory is we actually need more dimensions to make this theory works. They require at least 9 dimensions of space. "That doesn't make sense!" you might say. It doesn't make sense to us because our mind only could comprehend the reality we are living in. However, math never lies. If this theory could be proven mathematically, there is a high chance that it is true, even we could not experience it physically. 

The Part of God


This is the hypothetical part. God is often referred as 'the higher power'. Something that could do anything to us, since we could not comprehend their power. But now, how if we change the power to dimension? God is the higher dimension. They see us as prisoner in our reality, stuck in our 3-dimensional space and 1-dimensional time. Let's think it this way: we could do anything to anything in our world if we want to and have the capability technologically. Why I said technologically? Because even we understand everything about atoms and galaxies, we cannot control them because of our lack of technology. But long story short theoretically we could modify anything that lives in the 3 dimensions. We could make stuffs and do chemical reactions: it shows we could actually modify the atoms, they live in the 3-dimensional world, too! 

If you are a physics geeks, you know that there is also a boundary condition that forbid us to do everything : the quantum properties. I have already discussed it last season, click here to read it again. But this is actually where God could play its role. They have full control on us, since they are the higher dimensions itself! You could also say that God lives in the higher dimension, this way of expressing the idea is definitely easier to comprehend than saying God is the dimension itself. But this raised more philosophical question, "if God only lives in the higher dimension, then something else has to create God"

What Does It Mean To Humanity?


Is God only a creature above us, that also created by something higher? Or God is the dimension itself? I do not know, you do not know, no one alive currently knows. What matters is how far we try to explain the creation and the world we are living in right now, there is always the unexplained part. There is no ultimate knowledge for human. Maybe that is what makes us unique. Our ability and nature to chase perfection, knowing that we are not able to reach perfection.

Let science do its part, satisfying our curiosity about the world that we are living in, and let your faith guide yourself to your personal satisfaction: peace and guidance. 

There is always a room for God, if you look hard enough.