system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Is the inverse square law evidence that space consist of only three (spatial) dimensions?

Some theories suggest that one or more spatial dimensions above the third may exist, perhaps in compact form. But doesn't the fact that the inverse square law accounts for *all* the radiation emanating from a body mean that there are no other dimensions (because if there were, some energy would radiate into them)?
gpt
You're right, the inverse square law seems to preclude the existence of large additional dimensions. What is usually assumed is that those dimensions are compactified to a small size, so the effects of an higher power law disappear above a certain scale.

You can think of it as analogous to water spreading inside a hose. Hoses are 3D, but in a scale large enough you can model them as 1D. Imagine that water comes from a point source inside the hose. It spreads spherically outwards (analogous to following a r^2 law, indicative of 3D) until it reaches the inner surface of the hose, where it's forced to travel only along the direction marked by the hose, and now it can only spread linearly (following a r^0 law, indicative of 1D). A similar thing happens in the case of compactified dimensions.