# How many dimensions are there in total? [duplicate]

I happened to get my hands on a string theory book where its been said that the universe's fundamental particle i.e. the string, takes about ten dimensions for specifying itself under symmetry. What are those?

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## marked as duplicate by Brandon Enright, Qmechanic♦Jun 16 '13 at 19:13

This question was marked as an exact duplicate of an existing question.

I'm confused by the multiple downvotes on this. It seems like a legitimate question for this site. Would the voters care to clarify their positions? – wsc Jun 15 '13 at 16:23
Possible duplicate: physics.stackexchange.com/q/29328 . – jinawee Jun 15 '13 at 16:27
@wsc: I downvoted because the question is too "popular science"-ish and doesn't really make it clear what it is asking "specifying itself under symmetry"?! Sounds like something taken from an innnaccurate popular science book like "String theory for dummies" – centralcharge Jun 18 '13 at 4:07

It depends on what theory are you useing, in theory of relativity there are only four dimensions $x^{\mu}$ but in another theory like general relativity there is a higher dimension which there is a constraint to eliminate the artifical 5th dimension (schwartzchild metric).