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Gravity, though one of the most common forces we experience, is also one of the most mysterious. At the fundamental level, it is significantly weaker than the other forces, and its suspected force-carrying particle, the "graviton," has not yet been seen. However, one explanation for the weakness of gravity and the elusive graviton is that gravity travels through extra spatial dimensions. Living in a three-dimensional world (with time as the fourth dimension), it is hard to imagine extra dimensions in our universe, namly because we cannot see them.
Posters:
The Standard Model
New Physics: Supersymmetry
New Physics: Extra Dimensions
Finding New Physics
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The display "Lost in Translation" is inspired by the novel "Flatland: A Romance in Many Dimensions" written by
Edwin Abbott in 1884 and Carl Sagan's Cosmos presentation on the Tesseract. By piecing together a two-dimensional object from only one-dimensional slices, the display demonstrates the limited perception of multiple spatial dimensions. Another interpretation is concerned with our perception of time. Like experiencing time passing only from moment to moment, it is really our perception that gives this 4th dimension this characteristic. Time covers the past, present, and future, but we only experience the present. The display shows only a sliver of a picture at a time to represent how we only perceive one moment at a time.
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Called the Mirage, this black, circular box can make a realistic 3-D hologram of an object. When an object is placed inside, the mirrors inside of the Mirage show the hologram on top of the box, making a person reach for an object that isn't there.
The Magic Eye display is a flat, 2-D object that gives the illusion of 3-D. It fools the brain to see the pictures with depth, allowing one to experience an additional dimension.
The Tesseract represents a cross section of a hypercube, a geometrical object in four-dimensional space. It is to the hypercube what is a square to the cube in our 3-D world. The Tesseract (and Supersymmetry) inspired the
picture "Fluid Dimensions" also shown in the exhibit.
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