So we ask the question, where is gravity stronger?
Arkani-Hamed began pondering this quandary as a Stanford University researcher and continued at Harvard. He stumbled onto the idea of extra dimensions. Imagine a piece of paper floating in space. The space is the fifth dimension. Our world, everything we can perceive, is confined to that paper. But what if there is interaction between the paper and the surrounding space?
Perhaps gravity bleeds into this fifth dimension, Arkani-Hamed theorized, or even more dimensions. But, given our four-dimensional reality, we're able to experience only the gravity left over. In other words, gravity is much stronger than we realize. Perhaps, Arkani-Hamed speculated, at super high energy levels, of an intensity never seen by humans, such as the split second after the Big Bang, gravity is like the other forces, before leaking into the fifth dimension.
Describing this conceptual breakthrough, which he backed mathematically, thus rocking modern physics, Arkani-Hamed says: "At the time, I was just in the mood for thinking about something different." As speculative as his ideas might sound, experimental verification is on the way. In three years, a massive particle accelerator in Switzerland comes on line, giving scientists a means to create super-high energy levels that will enable them to measure nature at the most fundamental scale ever. This should provide evidence confirming -- or refuting -- Arkani-Hamed's theory.
I added bold to reinforce the conceptual thinking that we are dealing with.
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