Are there other dimensions?

We’re used to the three dimensions we live in

Scientists count time as a dimension as well, which makes four dimensions

At the scale of fundamental particles things are very different There might well be extra dimensions that we can’t sense

Scientists think that everything - including protons, neutrons and electrons - is made of families of fundamental particles that take up no space at all They’re called quarks and leptons But is something that has no volume really a “particle”?

Are they something completely different? Like one-dimensional strands of vibrating loops and strings? This is the idea behind string theory, and if it’s true it will really shake up our view of what the universe is made of on the smallest scale

String theory could sort some big problems with our present theory of what stuff is made of In particular, it allows gravity to fit nicely into the equations that describe all the particles and their interactions But extra dimensions must exist for string theory to work 10, 11 or even 26 extra dimensions!

From a distance, an ant crawling along a string is moving in just one dimension But the ant is aware of three dimensions in its tiny world Could the extra dimensions proposed by string theories be the same? Compacted down to an invisibly small size that we just don’t sense?

The experiments at the LHC might just provide the missing evidence for other dimensions We won’t “see” them, but we might catch freshly-created particles slipping away into them… …And that will change our whole concept of what the universe is made of