Thanks to Smriti S. for reviewing my spelling & grammar.
Foreword
Before I proceed, you must know that I have no expertise in any of the topics that are relevant to the random thought that sprung into my brain the other day, which I have written in this post. Normally, this sort of content would go in ramblings; however, considering that a friend helped me review & edit this post along with the minimal effort that was required to make diagrams using Microsoft’s Powerpoint, I have decided to promote it to the level of a post. There probably have been hundreds or thousands of physicists, mathematicians, science-fiction authors and science-fiction readers who have probably discussed about a topic related to this post at some point with a much higher attention to detail, but this is my attempt.
Note: [Jan/30/2022] Please check the Erratum at the end.
The Higher Dimensional Light That We’re Unaware Of
While on a video call with a friend recently, I was momentarily blinded by a ray of sunlight that reflected into their camera from a perfectly angled window. Between the few split seconds that occurred during the ironic IT support of “could you close windows?”, my mind had a parallel thought about the same phenomenon at a higher dimension.
The next few illustrations involve a Source of Light and two observers - Observer A and an External Observer. There are a few assumptions in these illustrations:
- the background is perfectly devoid of light,
- both the External Observer and Observer A can see,
- the External Observer does not reflect any light, and
- enough light reflects off of the object’s surface for the External Observer to see Observer A
Figure 1 shows a case of a Source of Light shining on Observer A and not shining on the External Observer. The external observer would be able to see Observer A but not vice versa.
Figure 1: A Source of Light shining on Observer A and not shining on the External Observer
Keeping in line with this line of thought, I wondered whether the same idea would happen in higher dimensions. Let’s assume that a very bright light shines everywhere on the Earth and in the eyes of every being. Evolution would probably happen around the light and creatures wouldn’t even think of the light as something to think about. This happens to humans with all the lights outside the visible spectrum as, for example, humans were in the dark (pun intended) about the existence of infrared light until the 1800s [1].
Bumping this up a few dimensions, what if humanity has been in the metaphorical higher-dimensional dark about a higher-dimensional light that has been shining on the Earth for the entire existence of the planet. Not only would we find the light hard to comprehend (due to it being higher-dimensional), but we would probably be unaware of its existence because it could be invisible to us. We wouldn’t even know what to look for and how to look for it because we wouldn’t know how physics behaves in its absence.
Now for some science fiction. Let’s assume that the External Observer in our diagram has access to a higher-dimensional form of light and has been shining it on the Milky Way Galaxy for the entire duration of the galaxy’s existence. They would be observing us because the light illuminates us and we would be unaware of their existence. I tried to illustrate this in Figure 3 with a focused beam of higher-dimensional light being reflected off of a mirror into a concave lens to illuminate the entire Milky Way Galaxy [2].
Figure 2: An External Observer shining a higher-dimensional light on the entire Milky Way Galaxy [2]
Afterword
If you think this is stupid, it probably is. I really haven’t accounted for any sort of physics, math, and/or logisitics of constructing a giant mirror & lens. Like I wrote earlier, this is just a thought that popped into my mind that I translated into writing and diagrams (over the span of 6-8 hours).
Footnotes
Both diagrams were made using Microsoft’s Powerpoint.
If you’re looking for a nice Sci-Fi book to read, I suggest The Three Body Problem by Liu Cixin.
References
[1] https://science.nasa.gov/ems/07_infraredwaves
[2] Milky Way Galaxy icon source: https://icons8.com/icon/6705/galaxy
Erratum
Nearly after 3 weeks of having written this post, I realize a fundamental error that I’ve made:
We wouldn’t even know what to look for and how to look for it because we wouldn’t know how physics behaves in its absence.
This is untrue. If the higher-dimensional light reflects off of the Earth, that means there must be a shadow, i.e. an absence of light. If it were simultaneously reflecting and passing through objects with 100% intensity (100% reflecting and 100% passing through), then that means the light “particles/waves” are being duplicated, which is probably not possible because, say it with me, “Energy cannot be created or destroyed”. Even if an infinitesimal fraction of the light gets reflected off of a surface and most of it passes through, given enough layers, there should be change in the difference in the “physics” before the layers and after the layers. (Side note: Now that I think about it, isn’t this somewhat similar to detecting neutrinos? I don’t know, I’m not a physics person). However, since this is treading into the realm of hypothetical physics conjured up by a person who nearly failed physics at one point, let’s just imagine that the “particles/waves” are duplicated.