by Ken Renshaw
"Now, we will address another idea that was way before its time, higher dimensional spaces, specifically Minkowski's eight–dimensional spaces. We will let Geroiamo help out in the explanation."
We see Professor Minkowski in his academic robes speaking before a class, and drawing on a blackboard."
"Let me introduce you to an eight-dimensional concept of spacetime. The first four dimensions are those of common experience. We can have one dimension of front-back, one of left-right, one of up-down, and another for time that could be before-later.
"Let me illustrate with this three-dimensional checkerboard."
Professor Minkowski goes over to a structure that is four 8 x 8 regular checkerboards, one above the other, separated by plastic legs.
He places a black checker piece at the corner of the bottom board and says,
"Here, we have a three dimensional space. For now, we will let velocity equal zero. The piece can move forward or back, let me call that x, right or left, let me call that y, or up or down, let me call that z. Let's call this corner the zero of all dimensions. Now, I will move this piece up four, to the top layer, forward four spaces, and left four spaces. It is now at z=4, y=4, x=4. How do we figure out how far the piece has moved from the zero corner?"
Pythagoras appears in his toga from the side of the stage. He says," All you have to do is use my theorem." He writes on the blackboard:
(d)2= (x)2 + (y)2+ (z)2 + (vt)2= 16+16+16+0=48
Minkowski produces a calculator from his pocket and says,"d equals the square root of 48 that is 6.93. If we had moved the whole checkerboard structure through the time dimension such that vt=1, then d would be 7 even."
"In these four dimensions, shown here, all of what you might think of as normal physics taught in our k-12 schools applies."
Minkowski then places another set of four checkerboards, made out of clear plastic, on top of the other four, with the zero corner located where the piece is at 4,4,4. He says, "Here, we are adding four mote dimensions that start from where the piece is in after moving in the first four. Since we used our normal four dimensions in the bottom checkerboards, we have to use imaginary numbers here."
Geroiamo walks in from the side of the stage and says, "Don't worry about the idea of imaginary numbers: they are simply another kind of numbers that are convenient for mathematicians."
Minkowsky continues, "The physical piece, here at location x=4, y=4, z=4, can't move into the imaginary space. That is the law of physics. However, information about the piece can move into all eight dimensions. It can be up here in the imaginary space at ix=4, iy=4, iz=4."
The commentator returns to say, "Here, we have to say that this is a new theory. To prove Pythagoras' theorem, all we have to do is go out and measure a bunch of triangles and see whether it worked. We know that Einstein's E=Mc2 idea behind all our nuclear power plants. Later, we will show you examples of how information travels in eight–dimensional space."
Minkowski returns and continues,
"If our physical piece is at location x=4, y=4, z=4, and has eight-dimensional information about the piece at coordinates of the x=4, y=4, z=4, ix=4, iy=4, iz=4 and t=it=0 (so we don't have to bother with time here) the information then, we can calculate the information distance between the zero corner (on the bottom checkerboard)."
Then, Pythagoras reappears and says, "We can use the eight-dimensional form of my formula." He writes his formula mumbling to himself:
(d)2= (x)2 + (y)2+ (z)2 + (vt)2+ (ix)2 + (iy)2+ (iz)2 + (ivt)2
He says, "Since we are letting t=0.we can rewrite this as:
(d)2= (4)2 + (4)2+ (4)2 + (0)2+ (i4)2 + (i4)2+ (i4)2 + (0)2 "
Geroiamo jumps up and says, "Since (i)2=-1,
(d)2= 16 + 16+ 16 −16 −16 −16 = 0 "
Minkowski returns and says, "The eight-dimensional information distance between the starting square on bottom checkerboard and the physical piece is zero."
Einstein returns and says," When I first learned about all of this I was a little tyke, when the words Pythagoras and hypotenuse were beyond me. My uncle, Herman who lived a few miles away, explained it this way:
To get to my house from your house, you have to go down the highway for four miles, turn left on the crossroad and go three miles, and there you are. Or, you could not go by the road and take the shortcut across the field directly from your house to my house. You calculate how long the shortcut is by squaring the distances on the two roads adding them up and taking the square root. 42+ 32= 25=52. The shortcut to my house is 5 miles.
I like the word shortcut better than hypotenuse."
Minkowski says, "I agree, lets not confuse people. Let's call the distance the shortcut distance."
The commentator returns and says, "What does all this complicated mathematics mean? It means that, in eight-dimensions there is a zero-distance information shortcut from the corner square to where the checker started to where it is on the fourth level. If you were at the starting square and wanted to know some information about the physical piece (if it is heads-up or heads-down) The information could come through the shortcut.
"You don't need to care about or understand all these mathematics. You do need to know that a valid, scientific, paradigm exists for the many kinds of information shortcuts we use and observe.
"We all have something I call the 'Magic Mirror of The Mind.' In fairy tales, some witches, or sorcerers have magic mirrors that they can command to get information for them. You remember, 'Mirror-mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all.' Well, the one we all have is more limited. We can say, 'What did I have for breakfast," and our Magic Mirror of The Mind makes an information shortcut in spacetime, from where you are now, to when and where you were having breakfast You might think it is a memory stored somewhere in your brain, but it isn't. Scientists with their MRIs can pinpoint areas in the brain active when you try to recall breakfast. However, they have not found any area that has the possibility of storing all the zillions of bits of information you can recall. This is a new idea so there is not much research on this yet because we think it is simply memory. This idea does not fit the current scientific paradigm.
"Conventional scientists such as physicists, engineers, chemists, medical researchers, and others who believe that reductionist science has all the answers, are reluctant to believe that any psychic phenomenon can be valid, because it doesn't fit any scientific paradigm that they know. They would have heard many anecdotal tales of people experiencing psychic phenomena, but will dismiss it as superstition, ignorance, or lack of education. Many will present an angry response to the mere mention of the idea."
The film now shows interviews of a few people who report of their own psychic experiences.
The first interviews are with people who made changes in their routines, for no special reason, and avoided accidents. They had a premonition.
One is an executive who refused to board an airliner because of his visions of it crashing. The airliner did crash on takeoff, and everyone was killed;
A second clip is a housewife who, for no apparent reason, decided to pick her daughter up at school. The school bus that her daughter would have ridden was hit by a drunk driver and several children were badly injured.
A third clip is of a farmer who related that, on his way home from town he decided to take an alternate route, that he never used, past a lake. As he arrived at the lake, he saw a car with a woman and child go off a bridge and plunge into the water. He was able to save them.
This is followed by an extended clip of experiments at SRI with people remote sensing targets in the Stanford area.
The commentator returns. He is talking in front of a slide show of people in laboratories involved in psychic research. He says:
"Many university laboratories have done experiments with psychics and other people to test the ability to perceive things in spacetime. Little of that research is highly valued in the academic community. Largely these studies document and make statistics about observab
le psychic phenomena, stuff that simply happens, that has no scientific basis. It falls into the same general category of studies of UFO sightings. If there is no scientific basis, the subject can be ignored by the scientific community at large. This scientific response is as though science is an ostrich, hiding its head in a four-dimensional sand."
The movie ends with a picture of an ostrich with its head in the sand.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ken Rnshaw was Chief Scientist and Marketing Manager at a company that manufactured communications satellites. His job was to sell commercial satellites to companies like AT&T and its foreign counterparts.
The trouble with selling satellites is nobody can see them.
All he had to sell were the beliefs about satellites we could build. His real job was being a "peddler of beliefs" to very technical customers.
He made a lifelong study of recognizing the beliefs and patterns in peoples' lives. This led him to write a book, "The Secret of Your Life Script" about how beliefs make the same things happen to us over-and-over.
Then, he tackled a really big belief. He always had certain secret psychic abilities (which were most useful in business) that he could never talk about in the presence of other scientists. He set out to create a scientific explanation of ESP phenomena. The product of all this thinking is the book, "Science, Remote Viewing and ESP: Beyond Einstein's Horizon."
He decided that we are entangled in a psychic web of life that guides our everyday existence. He shows this in this novel,"Love Story: In The Web of Life."
For more background on Ken Renshaw visit his site www.renshaw.info
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