Tesseracts and Madeleine L'Engle

Over the weekend, children's author Madeleine L'Engle died at 88. Her most noted work, A Wrinkle in Time, is a story about a girl's journey across the universe in an effort to rescue both her father and the galaxy itself from the evil "Black Thing." The book, which dealt with heady (and un-kid-friendly) concepts like religion, theoretical mathematics and evil, took years to finally find a publisher due to its perceived weirdness. Since finally going into print in 1962, Wrinkle has sold millions of copies and remains a favorite read for young teens today.

One concept L'Engle explored in the book was tessering, a method whereby people could traverse great distances in the universe by "folding" space and time. Although they don't behave in exactly the way L'Engle describes, tesseracts do exist, and serve as important and elegant examples of multidimensional space.

An actual tesseract is best described as a four dimensional cube...and is kind of confusing. So, in memory of L'Engle, we met up with Physicist David Morgan who took a little time out of his day to talk tesseracts with the BPP. Put your measley three-dimensional brains to work on this one.

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[kjonesification]

I'm reading a Wind in the Door :D

[GodrictheGreat]

Thanks for posting this. I love L'Engles books, and this is a very interesting video.

I don't think a tesseract really has anything to do with space/time travel like in the books. In the books a tesseract is supposed to be the fifth dimension while time is the fourth. They're wonderful books all the same, some of my favorites.

[kapplejacks22]

Very interesting...I've read all of her books and could never fully grasp what the heck a tesseract was...lol

[dragonquest1453]

...What?

[LJB85]

Madeleine was an ET in a past-life. I am almost sure of it. i truly believe aliens and UFOs visit the earth also.

[who8mahbacon]

@AdamLore if what they say is true that we have 11 or 12, then there is a 13th, which can see the 12th as if it were our own 3d world compared to a 4d world

[who8mahbacon]

@happymyster it is impossible to imagine the fourth dimension, but completely possible to think about it

[iLuckyyy]

Yeh, I'd rather be 2 dimensional.

[happymyster]

Think of it this way: Imagine a 3-D cube. Now flatten it in your mind; imagine the depth of the cube shrinking until it resembles that drawing on the blackboard, where it's a cube that's just barely three dimensional. Let's call that a "flat cube". Now imagine a cube where each side of the 6 sides of the cube is a "flat cube". That's a tesseract.

Like he said, you can't fully wrap your mind around it.

[AdamLore]

I think that most scientists that think we have 11 or 12 dimensions are using that as a working hypothesis, and perhaps one that can never be tested. So I don't think many people are stating it as a fact, just that it works to describe some of the weirder stuff you will find. Although they may be confirming some of it at this point. There are a lot of good analogies out there for us laymen to get a feel for it. Check out Brian Greene 's 'the Elegant Universe' if you haven't already.

[burnmetodeath]

It would be even better if you could provide an example or two. Fractals, or something? I just don't get how it goes from 2+2=4 to "We know there are at least 11 dimensions" or whatever the number is they've gotten to at this point. Is it just such a maze of blind corners that it can't be merely explained to a layman?