The Status of Modern Five-Dimensional Gravity

Abstract

Recent criticism of higher-dimensional extensions of Einstein's theory is considered. This may have some justification as regards string theory, but is misguided as applied to five-dimensional theories with a large extra dimension. Such theories smoothly embed general relativity, ensuring recovery of the latter's observational support. When the embedding of spacetime is carried out in accordance with Campbell's theorem, the resulting 5D theory naturally explains the origin of classical matter and vacuum energy. Also, constraints on the equations of motion near a high-energy surface or membrane in the 5D manifold lead to quantization and quantum uncertainty. These are major returns on the modest investment of one extra dimension. Instead of fruitless bickering about whether it is possible to "see" the fifth dimension, it is suggested that it be treated on par with other concepts of physics, such as time. The main criterion for the acceptance of a fifth dimension (or not) should be its usefulness.

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Cited by in corpus (14)

• A New Unified Theory of Electromagnetic and Gravitational Interactions
• Spherically symmetric wormholes of embedding class one
• Traversable wormholes sustained by an extra spatial dimension
• A Dark Energy Model in Kaluza-Klein Cosmology
• Accounting for exotic matter and the extreme radial tension in Morris-Thorne wormholes of embedding class one
• Towards a Geometrization of Renormalization Group Histories in Asymptotic Safety
• Dynamics of a higher-dimension Einstein-Scalar-Gauss-Bonnet cosmology
• Cosmic Acceleration from Varying Masses in Five Dimensions
• A model for dark energy based on the theory of embedding
• Interacting Induced Dark Energy Model
• New asymptotic Anti-de Sitter solution with a timelike extra dimension in 5D relativity
• Exact Geometries from Boundary Gravity
• Possible existence of time machines in a five-dimensional spacetime
• Fermion behavior around Sung-Won-Kim wormholes in a generalized Kaluza-Klein gravity