NEW YORK: The Universe is made up of three dimensions of space and one of time, it is known. Now, a team of researchers at Virginia Tech University is searching for the possibility of an extra dimension.
“The idea we’re exploring is that the Universe has an imperceptibly small dimension (about one billionth of a nanometre) in addition to the four that we know currently.
“This extra dimension would be curled up, in a state similar to that of the entire Universe at the time of the Big Bang,” lead researcher John Simonetti was quoted by the ScienceDaily as saying.
In fact, the team is looking for small primordial black holes that, when they explode, may produce a radio pulse that could be detected here on Earth.
These black holes are referred to by the term primordial as they were created a fraction of a second after the beginning of the Universe.
The researchers are planning to set up an eight-metre wavelength Transient Array radio telescope to search the sky for these radio pulses from explosions up to 300 light years away from Earth.
“We have a number of things in mind that have been predicted to produce radio pulses, which have not been seen. One of them is a primordial black hole explosion. Basically we’re looking for any exotic, high-energy explosion that would produce radio waves.
“If a pulse is detected in both instruments at about the same time, that’s a good indication we’re talking about something real as opposed to a pulse from manmade interference,” Simonetti said.
But why search for extra dimensions? One reason has to do with string theory that claims the fundamental building blocks of the Universe are small strings of matter that oscillate much like a guitar string, producing harmonics.
“String theory requires extra dimensions to be a consistent theory. String theory suggests a minimum of ten dimensions, but we’re only considering models with one extra dimension.
“If we had evidence there is an extra dimension, it would really revolutionise how we think about space and time. This would be a very exciting discovery,” Michael Kavic, who was the co-researcher in this project said.
(Original headline: Search begins for the fifth dimension )
