Faith Based Physics

The Quick Study in this months issue of Physics Today is called "The Case for extra dimensions". I find it intriguing to read that "But perhaps the most compelling reasons to believe in extra dimensions are ...." Interesting how the frustration of scientist to find a solution for cetrain problems they have with their standard model and the weakness of gravitational forces makes them sort of religious, hanging on to strings of hope. A little later in the article the author does state that "Even if scientist believe extra dimensions might exist in Nature, we don't have blind faith". Let's hope for them their faith is not shattered along with the colliding particles in the new and really huge "Large Hadron Collider" (at CERN, nice Quicktime VR's are linked at BoingBoing). Lets also hope that the theoretical possibility of the creation of a black hole that will suck up the earth does not materialize (or should I say "immaterialize"?)

The theoretical existence of such hidden dimensions were a source of inspiration for my Multi Dimensional Eye Virus Series. Maybe my next project should be about branes. As the quick study explains: "You can think of branes as extended objects that do not necessarily extend in all the dimensions of the higher-dimensional space". In computer graphics terms: an Illustrator file imported in a 3D animation package.

But wait, didn't I have another animation to finish? True enough, and I did just finish the composite of scene 1 an 2 (anyone working in digital media knows that here isn't such a thing as a final version, one can always keep improving, but at some point one just has to say "it is done"). I actually spent most my time this week creating animation DVD's for the international center at SIGGRAPH 2007. Anyway, I will be working full time at Mechanism again the next two weeks, and hope to play with Blender and Python while commuting.