Hello there from another hopeless n00bie to these boards. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! I thought I'd start off by asking everyone something that has been bothering me since I saw an episode of "Andromeda" a few months ago. The episode in question mentioned the ability to pass through walls and matter by utilising tesseracts. That started me off looking what tesseracts actually are. I found quite a few examples, some of which are here... http://www.zebra.net/~mfletch/tesseracts.html http://glasstesseract.com/about.html http://www.math.toronto.edu/mathnet/simmer/topic.jan98.html To put it simply, a tesseract is the name given to the concept of a four-dimensional object. The 4th dimension is at right angles to the usual 3 that we perceive. Now you, me or anyone else can visualise three dimensions quite easily... we perceive the universe in three dimensions of length, breadth and depth. Wrapping your head around tesseracts though is liable to give you a headache if you carry on at it long enough. I understand the concept plainly enough, but I am having a great problem actually visualising a tesseract in my own mind. I've seen diagrams, movie clips and computer simulations. In almost every case, they use two displays. One for the usual 3D view, and a second one that represents the 4th dimension interacting with one or more of the usual dimensions. Has anyone here actually managed to visualise multiple dimensions in their own mind? I don't just mean a fleeting grasp of the idea. I mean a concrete, comfortable visualisation as easily as you can visualise a cube. My next question is how the hell do you do it? Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! I've done "magic-eye" pictures, and other visual illusions (eg. the candlesticks/two faces) without much of a problem. Surely this is something along the same lines. Once you can "see" the visualisation, you could do it again and again? I pass the floor over to you...
I've never been happy with all this talk of extra spacial dimensions. To me it has always seemed an excuse to justify the expenditures of maths departments, an excuse to pay the extra staff. Why? It is often said that this imaginary nth dimension is at right angles to the regular three spacial dimensions. Well guess what. X is at right angles to Y, which is at right angles to Z, which is at right angles to X. The circuit is complete with those three. What is at right angles to the three regular spacial dimensions? Each of the others.
"My next question is how the hell do you do it?" Doubt very much if you can. There might be some people, who deal with this concept all the time, to get a feel of what it would look like. "I've never been happy with all this talk of extra spacial dimensions. " It is purely a math tool. You don't have to like it. A lot of mathmaticians hate infinity as it buggers up the calc. They still use it though.
Seeing as the 4th dimension is at right angles, or perpendicular, to the other 3, the only way you can visualise this in your head, is by imagining it being a sphere around the xyz axis, centered at 0,0,0. On an inifinitely small scale, a circle/sphere cutting through a straight line will form a 90 degree angle.
