While we live our everyday life in the space of three dimensions, some scientists anticipate researching hypothetical particles that may serve as a gateway to a warped fifth-dimensional space. The researchers visualize this fifth dimension as a region that mediates the cosmic realms of light and dark.
While you may be thinking that passing through a portal to another higher dimension is only portrayed in science fiction movies and books, these scientists published a study that may improve our chances of reaching fifth-dimensional space. Why did the researchers think that they have found a portal to the fifth dimension? Continue reading to learn more.
What is Fifth Dimension?
A five-dimensional space is known as a space with five dimensions. This dimension usually comes after the four dimensions of time which are often used in relativistic physics. However, scientists have been debating the possibility of finding a five-dimensional space in the Universe.
In 1921, German mathematician Theodor Kaluza and Swedish Physicist Oskar Klein came up with the Kaluza-Klein theory independently which they used the fifth dimension to unify gravity with electromagnetic force. Klien suggested that the fifth dimension might not be directly observable as it would roll up in a tiny and compact loop.
However, their approaches were later discovered to be partially inaccurate by different research conducted before the end of the 20th century. While scientists in the 20th century hold a different view about the fifth dimension, researchers in the 21st century are now thinking of the possibility of using hypothetical particles as a portal to the fifth-dimensional space.
Scientists share a different opinion about entering another dimension. The researchers that participated in the study suggest that speculative particles would offer a natural explanation for the abundance of dark matter, which is an unidentified substance that makes up most of the Universe’s mass. This natural explanation will help to resolve the challenging problems of subatomic particles generally referred to as fermions.
Javier Castellano and Matthias Neubert, who are both theoretical physicists at the PRISMA+ Cluster of Excellence at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, alongside Adrián Carmona, an Athenea3i fellow at the department of theoretical physics and the cosmos at the University of Granada authored this study and published it in the European Physical Journal C.
This fascinating study presents a model of the Universe with a fifth dimension that can be reached via a portal created by particles. The study further mentions that the presence of new physics can explain in detail the fundamental mysteries surrounding the possibilities of traveling to the fifth dimension through a speculative portal. In an email sent to VICE, the team of scientists that participated in the study shared their motivations and inspirations with the media.
“We have been working on a similar topic for quite some time,” the team wrote to VICE in an email. “Our initial motivation was to explain the possible origin of fermion masses in theories with a warped extra dimension. We knew that the masses of these constituents had some special features, which were crying out for an explanation,” they said.
The team of scientists has also been researching the possible existence of a four-dimensional space that humans can easily relate to. The fourth dimension is a 3D space and time and have marveled scientists at how we can unlock the portal to it. While many people assume that the fourth-dimensional space is all that the universe has to offer, many scientists think that the universe can offer more.
In fact, the scientific knowledge of the fourth-dimensional space inspired researchers to come up with the fifth-dimensional field equation that describes the implications an extra dimension would have on the Cosmos and our reality. In the process of researching the relation of the fifth-dimensional field equations to fermion masses, the team of scientists drew out the existence of a new scalar field that may be linked to a speculative particle.
This particle is discovered to be greatly similar to the Higgs field associated with the popular Higgs boson particle. The scientists marveled at their discovery as it led them closer to answering the impossible curious questions about the universe.
“We found that the new scalar field had an interesting, non-trivial behavior along the extra dimension,” the researchers explained to VICE. “Since this new particle has very similar quantum properties as the Higgs boson, it was very natural to assume that the two particles should mix with each other, meaning that their quantum-mechanical wave functions are intertwined. Studying this mixing was one of the original motivations for this work,” the team added.
While they inspect the model, the scientists discovered that heavy particles could create a unique insight into learning more about dark matter. This is because the heavy particle can easily mediate a new force linking dark matter and its closely related visible colleague which might exist in the form of planets, stars, or any other bodies discovered in the Universe by astronomers.
“If this heavy particle exists, it would necessarily connect the visible matter that we know and that we have studied in detail with the constituents of the dark matter, assuming that dark matter is composed out of fundamental fermions, which live in the extra dimension,” the physicists explained to VICE. “This is not a far-fetched idea, since we know that ordinary matter is made of fermions and that, if this extra dimension exists, they will very likely propagate into it,” they added.
What Scientists think are current limitations to Finding the Particles to Unlock the Fifth Dimension
Most scientists often refer to our current technological advancement while making newer scientific findings. The team of scientists that participated in this study thinks that we still have to build more powerful and sophisticated colliders before we can spot the particles that may aid in unlocking the fifth dimension.
In 2012, astronomers used the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Switzerland to discover the Higgs boson. This discovery earned the scientists a Nobel Prize in Physics. However, the scientists that came up with the 5th dimension study noted that the LHC would not aid in finding the particles as it would be too heavy to be created in any current facility.
However, the researchers think the particles might be detectable using a new generation of proposed colliders like the Compact Linear Collider (CLIC), the International Linear Collider, and the Future Circular Collider.
“Due to its large mass the prospects for such a direct discovery seem very challenging even at the high energies discussed for such a machine (100 TeV),” the researchers said.
Aside from these proposed colliders, scientists that participated in the study are suggesting that the particles could also be detected indirectly via observing gravitational waves that exist as ripples in space-time.
“Another possibility, which we did not explore yet, is that this new particle could play an important role in the cosmological history of the universe, and might produce gravitational waves that can be searched for with future gravitational-wave detectors,” the scientists noted.
With the limitations of our current technologies, the team of researchers is hoping that future studies of dark matter could move us closer to discovering the possible existence of these particles. Hence, the team is confident that their 5th-dimension model will likely be advanced in the future in particle physics and cosmology.
“One could study the potential role played by the new scalar particle in stabilizing the extra dimension,” the team said. “This could also eventually lead to an interesting cosmological history of the universe and might lead to the production of gravitational waves. This is an interesting line of research, which we plan to follow in the months ahead. One could also try to find new ways of probing this particle at future hadron colliders,” the researchers concluded. “As you can see, there are really plenty of things one can think of!”
Conclusion
Scientists are some great-minded people that make fascinating discoveries for humanity. The idea of hypothetical particles serving as a portal to the fifth dimension has revealed that humans could make today’s impossibilities to become possible in the near future. What do you think about this discovery?