God's Compensation/Yes, Einstein, speed of light, discovered higher dimensions
“Yeah, I am with you so far.” You respond, getting a slight smile from Mr. Austin.
“Good,” he responds, “well then, as for how this lead to him discovering higher higher dimensions, Einstein noticed that light would actually slow down or speed up when it approached an object with a lot of mass, very much in the same way a marble would change the way it behaves as it approaches a bowling ball on a trampoline. So, he theorized that just like the 2 dimensional plane of the surface of a trampoline warps around the massive bowling ball, all 3 dimensions of 3 dimensional space warp around massive objects like planets and stars, and this created gravity. This created Einstein's theory of universal gravitation witch replaced Issac Newton's previous long standing model of gravity.”
“Wow,” you respond. Really? Einstein came up with a new model of gravity? You didn't really know about that much, although you really haven't looked that deep into what Einstein's actual research was about at all. You have always just known he was some really smart guy, but now that you are hearing about his actual theories you are gaining a whole new respect for him.
“At any rate,” Mr. Austin continues, “Einstein's theories did not actually talk about higher dimensions, in fact, where a lot of people before him would say time is the fourth dimension, he dismissed it and insisted time was just part of the fabric of 3 dimensional space. Guess even pioneers of the field can't be right 100% of the time.”
“huh,” you respond, “so you are saying time is the fourth dimension and Einstein discovered the fifth dimension with his gravity research.”
"Well," Mr. Austin says, "He was technically correct from a certain point of view. Time is a separate entity from spacial dimensions entirely, but it is still helpful to think of it as a higher dimension. When I said I was from a 6 dimensional world, I was counting time as one of those 6 dimensions. We are able to interact with the time dimension by our own will where as you are only subject to it."
"Ummm...." Ok, you are lost again.
“Well then, that's it for the history of how your species discovered the fourth spatial dimension” Mr. Austin concludes. “Now we can get on to the more practical stuff.”