What can Elementary Particles Tell Us About the World in Which We Live?

Abstract

What kind of space-time do we live in? Does it extend beyond the four dimensions of ordinary space and time? In physicists' efforts to explain the origin of elementary Dirac particles, namely the twelve kinds of quarks and leptons, they find that they are driven to as many as seven or eight additional space-like dimensions. They generally assume that the extra dimensions are curled up into tiny circles or generalizations thereof, with diameters of the order of 10 -34 meter. These models tend to be quite complex. However, I will argue that it may be much easier to model these quarks and leptons if we assume that the extra dimensions are flat, i. e., stretch out to infinity. What keeps quarks and leptons, and us, from drifting off into the higher dimensions may be a local in space (a soliton) generated by the particles' field equations. Furthermore only four extra dimensions may be needed. If there really are four extra dimensions besides the ordinary four, then why don't we see them? It may be that many people who have had an out-of-body or near-death experience (NDE) have seen the extra dimensions. For example, the tunnel in the NDE may lead to another local universe like our own, only situated in another well in the extra dimensions. In the model that I will describe, quarks and leptons which are accelerated to sufficiently high energies can escape our local space-time and travel freely in eight dimensions, as our consciousnesses seem to be able to do. Could it be that large configurations of these particles might even constitute spaceships, the UFOs that seem to come out of nowhere? Higher dimensions may also provide avenues for information transfer ascribed to ESP.