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The theories of Einstein's relativity makes us to understand that we exist in four dimensions - three spatial plus one time, generally referred to as spacetime and that gravitational effects are as a result of adjustment in the geometric properties of this spacetime due to the presence of matter. But what if, we exist in five dimensions, i know what you must be thinking, which is, what is the function of this fifth dimension?.
Before we proceed further we would like to look at some few established facts about our universe, which are
The universe is made up of 5% ordinary matter (elementary particles to planets, stars and black holes) and energy.
The universe is made up of 68% dark energy - responsible for why galaxies are moving far apart from each other (expansion of the universe).
And the universe is made up of 27% dark matter.
summing it up gives 100% . Our main concern now in this article is the last fact - about dark matter, it is known that galaxies are made up of solar systems and stars, and that these galaxies are rotating, it was however discovered that the rotational speeds of the galaxies were far too great to be accounted for by the total mass of the stars and solar systems ( or visible matter that makes up the galaxy) and also knowing that such great speeds were enough to tear the galaxies with respect to their components apart and yet no such thing was observed implied that there was an extra mass responsible for the gravitational pull still keeping the galaxy's components in orbit. This extra mass implies the existence of extra matter, however this extra matter is not visible as it cannot be detected with our current physical tools which is mainly due to the fact that it can only interact with matter gravitationally, it neither emits nor absorb radiation unlike visible matter and detecting it at subatomic scale is very difficult as gravity is almost insignificant. It is for this reason that it's called '' dark matter '' and failure to detect it makes it appear non-physical, and also makes it difficult to test proposed theories about it's nature.
Despite these set backs, some group of researchers from Germany and Spain in a paper published last month in the European physical journal C proposed a new theory, in the theory we exist in five dimensions, the hypothetical fifth dimension as we now discuss it's function, is responsible for housing and hiding the dark matter particles which are fundamental fermions and that there is another hypothetical particle responsible for linking this dark matter in the fifth dimension and the ordinary matter in the four dimensions - 3 spatial plus 1 time. They further added that this linking particle would act similar to and interact with the Higgs boson - a fundamental particle responsible for the mass of some elementary particles, and also unlike the Higgs boson it would be too heavy to be detectable by any of our current particle accelerator(s).
If one day this this theory is verified, then it might be a confirmation that we exit in a five dimensional universe and would indeed change our view of the universe just like Einstein's theories of relativity did.