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Re: How many dimesions are there in the universe/space?
It all depends on what you mean by dimension. In principle the most consistent defintion for dimension is 'degree of freedom' So the number of dimensions of my problem is the number of things I can change. In this case a simple freely moving particle should not be considered to move in 3 dimensions (+time), but in 6 (+time). The reason is that the particle not only has a positionvector (3 dimensions), but also a velocity vector (also 3). If I want to I can add all kinds of other dimensions (e.g. a variable mass to effectively make gravity a dimension as GAHD wants it)
With this definition of dimension the number of dimensions is unspecified. It just depends on what degrees of freedom you take into acount.
If you talk however about spatial dimensions; our common sense tells us there are 3 of them (left/righ, up/down, forward/backward). (and indeed string theory predicts more). However relativity tells us that space and time are actually the same kind of things and space and time degrees of freedom get mixed depending on 'how you look at them'. Therefore it makes sense to talk not about spatial dimensions, but about the total of spacetime dimensions. (3+1 in our world)
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