Carl Sagan's flat-land thought experiment, and the tesseract

Carl Sagan performs a thought experiment in flat-land, a two-dimensional fictional world, in order for us to better understand our four-dimensional Universe. He also discusses a four-dimensional hyper-cube, the tesseract. This clip is from Carl Sagan's Cosmos episode 10, "The Edge of Forever."

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• Carl
• Sagan
• Cosmos
• Universe
• Stars
• Earth
• Space
• Astronomy
• Science
• Atoms
• Chemistry
• Physics
• Math
• Humanity
• World
• Evolution

[ubuntuibex]

Wonderfully orchestrated. Carl Sagan was quite the genius of his time.

[orca222]

interesting stuff...

[Jaynagurl1]

@Borogoroeaesum Well that makes more sense, lol...except the few people who can see it, but I guess that's another subject :P

[Borogoroeaesum]

@Jaynagurl1 nothing of one dimetion can persive anything in another dimention but it can persive anything in its own dimention infiitely.

so even if you make an abstract as if there were multiple dimentions then you would still not be describing anything of any dimention but the one you are at in that moment.

there is only one dimention and you can sretch it anyway you like

but carl is doing it poorly.. so does everyone else.. but me

coz i am cooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo­oooool

[Jaynagurl1]

@Borogoroeaesum If perception is infinite, wouldn't that mean that it would in fact be able to perceive the 3d object, and in turn, not be limited to only seeing the 2d imprints this proposes...and not have to enter as a 2d form in the first place?

[Borogoroeaesum]

that is imaginative bullshit

if 3d object enters 2d environment a 2d object will see it as 2d object and that means that in order for 3d object to be persived by a 2d obect it needs to enter a 2d environment in a 2d form and that means that carl sagan is generalizing contridictory perseptions without taking in account that perseption is infinite and the way an object persives can not be described from any point of view but the view of an object itself therefore there is no need for explanations

[freedomofthought100]

i understood the experiment. this is exactly the case with UFOs

[heehawkdown]

This is one dimension before the dawning of the age of Aquarius.

[etraise2]

Apple tomography! Hooray for med school.

[75whm]

@CoN0R115 what he is describing is a fourth spacial dimension. Einstein's special relativity tells us that there are three dimensions of space and one dimension of time which make up a four dimensional space-time. what Carl Sagan is doing is describing a fourth dimension of space.

[shakin2009]

the power of thinking, awesome

[manwithouthat44]

I love Carl Sagan, but this was just crazy. Ive heard guys on crack that make more sense than this.