Carl Sagan's Cosmos - Tesseract
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@SupernautG hold your tongue ans say apple
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So we have to look at shadows of the fourth dimension. We have equations and shadows but nothing concrete to physically see the fourth dimension for all we know we could live in an extremely tangled one dimensional world. For example a ball of yarn. Imagine the yarn as one dimensional its so wrapped up it creates a three dimensional sphere. We may never know but there is a strong chance there are other dimensions
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have to comprehend the you can only see on the dimension below yours. As we can only see in two dimensions the "flat landers" can only see in one dimension. They can only see forwards backwards left and right (x,y). We can experience the up and down directions as well as the others (x,y,z). In the fourth dimension you can experience up down left right forward backward ana and kata (x,y,z,w) each axis perpindicular to one another. It's impossible to imagine something you've never seen and can't
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@Highcon I guess. Thanks;)
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@shaider1982 Ahh but thats just the thing. If the flatlanders need to see a portion of the 3rd dimen. to actually see eachother, then they would, for all intents and purposes, BE living in the 3rd dimension and not the 2nd, no? The idea he illustrates is conceptual and assumes that the flatlanders CAN see eachother in the second dimension, tho it would be physically impossible in reality. He uses this hypothetical situation to illustrate the grand illusion a higher dimension may be entertaining
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@Highcon Funny, in a sense, for Flatlanders like Abbot T. Square, you still have to glimpse a portion of the 3rd dimension to see your fellow flat landers (I read a short part of it in a Childcraft volume, Mathemagics, when I was a kid). Or is it I am so freed by living in 3 dimensions that I can't imagine a 2 dimensional world? Or is it, that, for three dimensions to exist, a fourth has to be present and so on and so forth (no pun intended)?
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@TheForthAngel 18 Flatlanders?
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I always understood four dimensional space in my own way, but Sagan has such a great way of putting it into words.
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@edthehead83 story of my life
The apple is an asshole.
SupernautG 10 months ago 26
Sagan's ability to explain higher concepts was marvelous.
Zontertes 1 year ago 20