  Recent developments in string theory suggest that there might exist extra
spatial dimensions, which are not small nor compact. The framework of most
brane cosmological models is that in which the matter fields are confined on a
brane-world embedded in five dimensions (the bulk). Motivated by this we
reexamine the classification of the second order symmetric tensors in 5--D, and
prove two theorems which collect together some basic results on the algebraic
structure of these tensors in 5-dimensional space-times. We also briefly
indicate how one can obtain, by induction, the classification of symmetric
two-tensors (and the corresponding canonical forms) on n-dimensional spaces
from the classification on 4-dimensional spaces. This is important in the
context of 11--D supergravity and 10--D superstrings.
