brane theory

I am not to familiar with the membrane theory brane for short, i just read an article about it in discover magazine. Apparently string theory predicts that our universe is a large 3 demensional brane right next to another universe across another spacial demension. Every trillion or so years our two universes collide releasing all the energy stored up in ever cubic centimeter of space resetting all the order elminating the need for a point of creation. Any one have any more to add?

yup...I got a brane theory toobut it's probably more like no braner

I'd relay on what is on the web. That and a few articles is about all I can grasp. I could give you some out of Hawkings "Universe in a Nutshell" if you really want. There is some discussion (light) in there.

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Common sense isn't

Imagine, if you will bubbles......expanding as they float around
bumping into other bubbles
and inside of these bubbles
is another bubble expanding
and so on......and if all these bubbles
made a musical note,
as they bumped and merged
and expanded,
they created chords and melodies
and so on...on a side note Ned...what does Hawking have to say about it ???

Branes are really speculative at this point. They are an aspect of M theory, which currently doesn't even make any testible predictions. Interesting ideas, but nothing to put much value into.Ultimately, branes can be thought of as different ways of slicing a bulk 4D space. The same way a volume is a continuum of planes with boundary planes at each edge, a 4D bulk space would be bound by volumes, one of which is the universe we live in. The brane collision can be seen as the collapse of the extra large dimension in between boundary branes. It's kind of like squishing a volume into an area and then pulling it back.

Meh....Go to Popular Science Homepage | Popular Science they have a very good article to explain this, and it makes sense.A definition of a brane is an object rests on another object with one more deminsion. The analogy goes something of the skin on your soup that arrises over a period of time. The two deminsional skin is resting on a three deminsional volume. Therefore a brane.The brane theory says we are a three deminsional world resting on a fourth deminsion plane. This plane is time. Also through this grouling math, there comes to be about six more deminsions. The displacement of these deminsions create a six deminsion object that I can't pronounce, and even the people who came up with it have a hard time comprehending what the object would look like. It turns out you can cut this object into the fourth deminsion with another three deminsion figure inside it and a two deminsion plane.So what do they conclue? That there are two branes, each a three demensional world resting in the fourth deminsion, and they are seperated from a two demensional object. So, there are parallel universes with a two demensional plane seperating the two. That is all I know, its pretty wack if you know what I mean.And here is a really really wierd thing. The only thing that can travel between these deminsions (I just realized I keep on altering my spelling of demensions....too lazy to look it up) are gravitrons. The particles of gravity. That is why gravity is such a weak force relative to all the others. When an object is falling, some of the gravitrons are traveling between demensions. Therefore force is lost.That introduces particle theory, and I don't want to go over that because it is off topic. You can easily google it up and find out about it. But keep in mind this theory goes againse relativity, and then a genius by the name Stephen Hawking came with an answer. I honestly think he should get more credit than Einstein, not saying Einstein is stupid or anything, but saying Hawking is that smart. Whatever, hope that helped.

There is even more to the picture than that. Some recent articles talk about an "ekpyrotic universe" (click for an article) where the "big bang" event is one of many recurring collisions between branes. This allows the event to cover substantial portions of space in the collision(s) such that "inflation" is not required. It also predicts the effects observed that require the additional concepts of both dark energy and dark matter to the standard model.The repeating cycles of universes should make fundamentalist Hindus very happy.To summarize:
(1) energy comes from the collision (not "something from nothing")
(2) inflation not required to match theory to observation
(3) dark matter not required to match theory to observation
(4) dark energy not required to match theory to observation
(5) it matches the "standard model" for the rest of the observations.Occam's razor anyone?Enjoy.ps - it's "dimension"

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand

With the existence of 7 extra dimensions (which no evidence supports even in the slightest) I don't think colliding branes is the simplest model at all. At least models like inflation work within the observable 4D universe we know of.

If you read the article the minimum dimensions is 5 to allow for the other branes.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand

Actually, it merely states that the branes are embedded in a 5D bulk space. M theory while still requires the extra dimensions of string theory. Ockham's razor most certainly does not support the brane collision model, even if it was only a matter of adding one extra, unobservable dimension.[This message has been edited by Beercules, 03-22-2004]

you need to look into dark energy and dark matter a little further, methinks.there is no theory that produces them, they are observations that do not fit the "standard model" so the model is "tweaked" to accomodate them ... the reason they are called "dark" is because they are "black box" fixes.looks like "epicycles" to me (and to some scientists)

quote:

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there is no theory that produces them, they are observations that do not fit the "standard model" so the model is "tweaked" to accomodate them

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That's exactly what M theory is - a model that is fine tuned to fit the current experimental evidence. In fact, all new scientific models are ad hoc in this way. In order for a hypothesis to be scientific, it must be consistent with the data. But science goes beyond that, requiring models to make testible predictions about the observable universe. Of course brane models attempt to do this as well, though technology does not allow for anything to be tested as of yet.On simplicity alone however, the brane model falls short because all it does is replace seemingly arbitrary fields with arbitrary dimensions, superstrings, branes and so on.[This message has been edited by Beercules, 03-22-2004]

Obviously we disagree on which is more likeley.Enjoy.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understandRebel American Zen Deist

And here I thought this board didn't support e-mail notification at all.

Hahahaha...I love reading what 'the man in the street' makes of these things...Let me xplain about dimensions... and there really are lots of them, in fact if your maths require it, you can just pop up another to make it work!They are a construct, a framework to give form to an idea, they exist only to perform this task!'Pan-dimensional' merely means that something works when tested in some of the more complex constructs of Maths.In this they are no different to the 4 dimensions we construct to make sense of the consious world we live in.Think of it like this, to survive and go to work you need [say] just 4 coat hangers these keep your clothes smart and tidy, but if you go somewhere special you will need different clothes so you get some and you get some furhter coat hangers to keep the 'nice'... do you understand the analogy?