Esquisse d'une synthese

Abstract

Since antiquity, from Euclid of Alexandria to Galileo Galilei to Immanuel Kant to Hermann Minkowksi to Albert Einstein, the question of the nature of space and time has occupied scientists and philosophers. In the four-dimensional space-time of Einstein's wonderful theory of gravity, the squared interval, in units such that the speed of light is unity, is the difference between a squared time increment and the sum of three squares representing the three dimensions of spatial change. More recently higher dimensional theories have been proposed, which aim to unify gravity with the other forces in nature. Such theories typically have a hyperbolic character in that there is one time variable and many spatial variables (rather than just three) in the formula for the squared interval. Here a new physical theory is advanced, based on spinors, which clearly predicts that the basic extra dimensions are timelike: in its simplest form, there are three timelike and three spatial degrees of freedom. It is expected that devices such as the Large Hadron Collider will be sensitive to these new degrees of freedom and thus one may hope that in the near future, this issue can be settled experimentally