News You Can Bruise for 2006 June 20

J. Michael Straczynski's rejected proposal for rebooting the Star Trek franchise. Gorgeous.

I have a question about these little buggers. Kris couldn't answer it, so you know it's tough. Whenever I heard an explanation of string theory or any other theory that predicts more spatial dimensions, they always said the extra dimensions were "rolled up very small". That doesn't make sense. Rolled up very small through what dimensions?

Then I think I figured it out with a Flatland analogy. Suppose Flatland exists in a 3D universe, but one in which nothing is more than a Planck distance tall. The Flatlanders extend in three dimensions, but they only perceive two. They would say that the third dimension was "rolled up very small", even though that doesn't make sense.

Wikipedia seems to back me up on this one, ladies, so the first question is, am I right? Does the analogy hold? Second question is, what is with the "rolled up" nonsense? Are they trying to convey that the structure of space makes it impossible for something to be large in that dimension ("the universe measured along these additional dimensions is subatomic in size")?