Well i must say AuldSoul what a brilliant explanation. From a casual glance, it does seem quite possible that the 5th dimension is a 4th spacial dimension, but i'd need to have a long old think about that one, lol. String-theory has a tendancy to get my brain in knots. I do agree though, that every thing that we experience in our world is in the 3rd dimensional level (or the 4th if you include a sence of the passage of time). Even the piece of paper or a dot are just illustrations to help ease the mind into this difficult concept. Interesting to note that it is called "string"-theory and "brane"-theory, even though strictly, strings and membranes do not exist as strings of membranes in their current form in any of the higher dimensions.
Dune, that crumpled up paper illustration is quite interesting, and seems to relate to wormholes and warps in the fabric of the imperfect dimensional continua.
Flyphisher, that comment was interesting. Time is said to be an illusion. It is merely another dimension, similar in quality to the other two, but we as living beings merely percieve it as something that moves forwards but not backwards, when it is in fact us who are moving in it.
A similar illustration is the spinning Earth. Earth spins at over 1000 mph, but we don't percieve it because we are moving with it, at a constant rate. We therefore dont percieve it. The Earth spins around the sun and the Sun, and the Sun round the Galaxy, adding two more levels of speed to the equation, but equally, we do not percieve them.... When we are in a moving car or train though, we sence the movement, because we are closer to the level of the car and we can actually percieve inertia and motion outside. We only percieve movement when we are moving slightly against it, so when the object we are fixed to is small, tacit movements allow us to sence the overall movements. (Just like the eyes have to dart quickly about in order to see an object.)
In the same way, we cannot sence the upper dimensions because we are not on there level. When we are still in space, we dont notice it, but we almost always notice Time, becuse we are always in motion in that dimension. The only time we seem to be able to completely ignore all 4 dimensions is if we are sleeping or engrossed in day-dreaming. Time therefore, seems to be the base-dimension, the 1st dimension, and not the 4th as i said before.
I remember my A-Level Physics Professor noting that the 3 spacial dimensions go infinitely in either direction, but that Time only goes in one direction, forward. However, i couldn't get my head around that as a person who does not like exceptions unless there is a good reason (thats why i decided to become a linguist and not a physicist). Anyway, i questioned that maybe Time does go in both directions but that we are trapped on a downward slope as it were, on the dimensional "surface" of Time, or maybe there is another particle that fonctions like gravity.
Time, like the spacial dimensions is never ending and never beginning. Time began, but it has no beginning. (In other words there was a moment where it did not exist, but it hs always existed in itself becuse it is infinite in itself.)... Highly theoretically then, if you were to travel faster than light and try to reach the end of the universe, you would reach right back at where you started again. (Just like Neo the train station in Matrix Revolutions).
So theoretically, i argued, we are moving in Time, but since we don't know how... "big" the Time dimension is, we could have already been "here" several times this millenium or even just today. I thouhght that things do not have to occupy the exact same position in space the next time you reach the same spacial position again, so why would they have to be in Time? This was one of my arguements back then against backwards time travel... what is preventing the arrangement of things from being completely different the next time we go back? For all we know, Time is an infinitely small dimension, in which we are already travelling back and forth and round and round... I was never been able to get my head around that one, as i became a traitor to the sciences and decided to take up linguistics and philology as my main interest.... but recently the most simple answer came to my head: The reason why things will not be the same in the spacial dimentions is because of the very passage of Time. Things would indeed be in exactly the same position because they only move in space in relation to Time, without Time, they cannot move in either the 2nd, the 3rd or the 4th dimension. Like d'uh...