The concept of extra dimensions, dismissed as nonsense even by one of its earliest proponents nearly nine decades ago, may soon help solve seemingly unrelated problems in particle physics, cosmology and gravitational physics, according to a panel of experts who will assemble from 8:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. Feb. 15 (Saturday) at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting in Denver. "It doesnt happen often that you get a confluence of ideas and experiments that come together and its something that obviously would change your whole way of looking at the universe," said one of the panelists, Joseph Lykken, Professor in Physics at the University of Chicago and a scientist at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. Even though scientists lack direct evidence of extra dimensions, "we have a number of hints from experiments and theoretical ideas that make us think theyre probably out there. Thats why were so excited about looking for them," Lykken said. On the theoretical side, string theory, developed over the past two decades, requires that space-time has extra dimensions if it is to include gravity. "Its just built into the way that string theory works," Lykken said. Experiments, meanwhile, have produced the standard model of physics to describe the most elementary particles and the forces that hold them together. Physicists have come to suspect that something is missing from the standard model.
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