The reason I called the other dimensions fictional, is just because the only reason for imaging these dimensions is because they are necessary to make the numbers fit. I think no one can say what these dimensions are, little yet show evidence for them.
"Making the numbers fit" is how we discovered several of the planets in our solar system. This is called "predictions." String theory
predicts that additional dimensions exist. We simply currently lack the ability to test those predictions and verify or falsify them.
It doesn't mean they're "fictional." It means "if this is correct, then these other things should exist." It's a hypothesis.
To me its a bit like saying 2+2=9 and then when someone replies, no its doesn't it equals 4, and then I said, well in another dimension it equals 9.
"Other dimensions" are not like what you see on Star Trek. When String Theory predicts additional dimensions, it's predicting additional
dimensions...like time, length, width, and height. We experience reality in the aforementioned four dimensions, and string theory simply predicts that there may be additional dimensions that we are unaware of.
A dimension is not a reality, or world, or Universe. Much like a mutant is not a half-turtle, half-teenage ninja.
It's difficult for human beings to conceptualize additional dimensions because we only exerience the four. But think of it like the difference between a drawing on paper and the real world. Paper drawings consist only of two dimensions - length and height. The world we experience includes an additional spacial dimension - depth.
Time is also a dimension, but the nature of our existence forces us to only
experience time as a linear progression of events in the direction of increasing entropy.
Additional dimensions would be similar, except that we apparently don't experience them directly.
Numbers and computers are far better able to represent additional dimensions than our brains.
As far as a test for string theory goes, I guess first we have to define these other dimensions, and I don't think that is going to happen.
They have been defined. The problem is only that the definition is not what you considered it to be.
String theory's major hurdle, as I understand it, is reaching a point in technological progress where we are able to actually test some of its predictions. Right now, it's like the discovery of a wobble in Neptune's orbit, but lacking the capability to see Pluto. The gravitational tug is forcing us to plug in an additional massive body to make the numbers fit, and so we can theorize that Pluto is out there.
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