Would a being from another dimension have to adhere to the laws of our universe?

[mathew101281]

If it traveled to our universe. I’m taking about physical and natural laws.

[Riv86672]

It could be the source of their power.
I created a character that was powered in that exact way back in HS.

[Scott Taylor]

Nope. This was covered in StarTrek: TOS in the Operation:Annihilate episode . But they figured out to deal with the entity anyhow.

[Adam Allen]

I think it would have to, if it wanted to have any meaningful impact in our universe. Look at it this way -- say there's a being who is not bound by laws of time -- past, present, future, all the same to them. Not bound by little details like needing time to be linear, like us lesser beings. You know, the end can come before the beginning for them, no problem.

Well, as long as they're content with not interacting with us at all, then yeah, they can continue ignoring the laws of time that bind us. But, as soon as they'd like to have as much as a conversation with us -- for that to happen, they'd have to bend to the laws of the way time works for us, for at least as long as their interaction with us. Because we are bound by time ... we can't exist outside of it, like them.

[DrNewGod]

I guess it depends. If they breathe methane, for example, they ain't gonna last long. Same if the boiling point of their blood is 2°C where they come from.

On the other hand, if they bring a "bubble" of their reality with them, anything might be possible.

[Jim Kelly]

In reality yes. Anything in the universe is bound by the physical laws of the universe. That's what makes it a universe. The basic theory is that a universe comes already with the mathematical rules that govern it and everything manifested in the universe is governed by those rules. If something came from another dimension outside the dimensions of this universe--it would either immediately not exist or it would be altered by the universe to fit the rules of this universe--or maybe the manifesting of this new property would create a chain of circumstances that changes the universe; however, that would probably already be a mathematical rule inherent in the universe, just one that couldn't be observed yet. The thing is we don't know all the rules for the universe--a lot of the math hasn't been worked out yet. We often discover a new rule when we observe a phenomenon that isn't accounted for in the math, which then produces new theoretical rules.

In fiction no. Something can come from another dimension and behave according to rules not in the universe.

But what is the universe? Many theories say that what we observe is not the whole story and there are many dimensions to the universe. Some suggest that this universe is two dimensional and the three dimensions we observe are a projection. A good theory is that the whole universe is a simulation. If you think of everything as existing in a computer game--the game runs on an algorithm. If the existence of the game is contingent on this algorithm--then everything runs according to that set of math.

If the universe is multi-dimensional, then being in another dimension doesn't necessarily mean something is outside the universe--it just exists in a dimension of the universe that we have difficulty observing. And we can account for some phenomena by using this theory of other dimensions. But if the premise is that the other dimension itself exists outside the universe then that's a different kettle of fish. Another universe with its own dimensions would have its own mathematical rules, but the math could be totally different from our math.