I hereby declare that I have come to understand that the fifth dimension after the length, width and breadth of an object and the presence of it in time, is Energy.

Now, how do I come to this conclusion? By understanding that there is nothing within the first four dimensions which can explain the presence of mass and the effects of forces such as gravity on an object.

Let us imagine an area in space, far off from any matter, the presence of which would affect our to-be object’s presence (not tough to assume since there are large swathes in our Universe  which are empty).

Now let us say there exists time in that area (hey, time exists in our Universe doesn’t it??).

Now, the emptiness of the space will not change in any manner possible after any amount of time simply because there’s nothing to change there.

Next, let us say that there exists a cube with negligible dimensions, just a set of thin, very, very thin wires forming just the outline of a cube and not it’s body or walls which exists for only a small period of time, say a second. Obviously, the cube is here now, but gone the next second. This shows that the cube must exist in time in order to exist at all!

This we say that the wire frame cube now exists for a long period of time, say a few million years, just so that we can observe it.

Hence, we are now looking at our wire frame cube just float in the universe with nothing else anywhere near it to affect it at all. We also see that if, theoretically, the mass of each wire in the frame is nil, making then perfect lines along the x-,y- and z- planes, the wire exists in space and in time, but it does nothing.

Why isn’t that a very boring cube? It does nothing and hardly even exists!

But here we introduce Energy. The frame now has energy and by virtue of it having energy, it can move around, spin and do the Hula…

But more importantly, since the cube has energy, it’s wires need a place to store that energy and that location is defined in mass. Therefore, mass is but a derivative of Energy and since it is underivable using any other dimension, it is derived from Energy.

Now let us consider one more idea. Let us replace our wire frame with nothingness. There’s nothing in that bit of space where we are looking. Does time exist? Yes, it does. Do the first three dimensions exist? Indeed, they do and that can be proven by the presence of any object in that space.

Does energy exist in that space? Let us put a single ray of sunlight there, a single wave of light which does not require any medium to travel. Does this wave have any energy? Yes. Does it exist in time? Yes, it travels at, well, the speed of light. Does it have any spatial dimension? In other words, does it have a precise shape in any of the first three dimensions? Nope! This wave does not have a fixed shape in the spatial dimensions and changes over time. This is an example of pure Energy, with no mass. But is it the perfect example? No. Why not? Because at any given moment of time, if the wave is fixed, frozen and looked at, it has a direction, thereby meaning that it has a spatial dimension too.

So what is the best example of pure energy which exists in time but not space?

Is it a magnetic field?

Is it a gravitational field?

Is it Superman?

I don’t know, keep looking…