Four Dimensional Universe Could Expand to Ten

String theory has provided numerous striking insights into the potential and actual behavior of the physical Universe. Fields Medal winner Shin Tung Yau has co-authored a book published in November 2010 in which he describes ‘The Shape of Inner Space’. Yau’s work at constructing geometrical shapes of hyper-dimensions following on the work of another mathematician named Calabi provided the famous Calibi-Yau manifolds that presently best exemplify what a six dimensional geometric shape might be like.

The Calibi-Yau manifolds are a mathematical construction and valuable for-themselves in the progress of geometry. Yau mentions that a new geometry may be needed for the very small realm of quantum mechanics. Such geometry might work in the realm of quantum uncertainty.

Physicists have applied the Calibi-Yau shapes to string theory cosmology. Strings instead of particles are thought to be the irreducibly smallest component of matter. Strings viewed end on seem like points, and from other points of view can be viewed as circles or ellipses, branes or membranes. If matter can be compacted and folded into six extra dimensions it could better explain gravity and other aspects of mass and energy.

The extra dimensions have energy and were tightly bound near the start of this universe. Their energy could be flexing and providing the recently observed acceleration of space. The six dimensions could decompact suddenly and the Universe would then have ten dimensions disrupting all present forms of matter in the phase transition. The six extra dimensions may locally warp the three full size-dimensions of space. Time as a dimension may transcend all the other nine spatial dimensions.

There may be a hundred years of research ahead in math and physics measuring space carefully to discern the effects of extra dimensions, if not construct a few; would it be possible to construct a ten dimensional object in three dimensional space?