Hunting for Higher Dimensions

Abstract

nly 2 years ago, the idea of extra O dimensions inhabited nebulous region somewhere between physics and science fiction. Many physicists had already begun to see the up-and-coming string theory as the next major steD for theoretical physics. In that theory, everything in the universe is composed of tiny loops, or strings, of energy vibrating in space-time that has six or seven extra dimensions beyond the seemingly endless three standard dimensions of space and one of time. Conveniently, however, those extra dimensions are compactified, as physicists say, crumpled up in space so small as to be unobservable. The idea that extra dimensions might be larger-perhaps detectable-was something that scientists mostly talked about late at night, after lot of wine, says Gordon L. Kane, theorist from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Kane therefore felt he was walking on the wild side when he penned fictional news story about experimenters discovering extra dimensions. Kane's story, which appeared in the May 1998 PHYSICS TODAY, was one of three winners of an essay contest sponsored by that magazine. Basing his tale on some innovative theorizing published in 1990 by Ignatius Antoniadis of the Ecole Polytechnique in Palaiseau, France, Kane wrote of peculiar sprays of particles yielding startling data. He set his experiments in 2011 at European accelerator, known as the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), which is currently under construction. The results could imply the existence of one or two extra spatial dimensions, the story stated, a surprise to everyone. Even by the time his article came out, however, the possibility no longer seemed quite as surprising as it had when he wrote it few months earlier. Between the sub-