Reply #144: Physicists often represent things in "spaces" that are abstract

[caraher]

Although the theory is based on a 57-dimensional object in a 248-dimensional "space" only three dimensions are "spatial" dimensions. It's something like deciding to represent the current state of the economy as a point in some abstract space whose dimensions correspond to GDP, rate of inflation, unemployment rate, interest rates, etc. It's very easy to come up with a "space" with a high number of dimensions that way and something roughly analogous is what's happening in this 248-dimensional space.

There are important differences, of course, but that's basically how there's no contradiction in saying this theory escapes the string theorists' need to account for a bunch of unobserved spatial dimensions. It's the difference between physical space and mathematical space.